November Mojo | A Riff on the Month’s Mojo

Dolinsky, Mark Dolinsky of the click bait and switch podcast.

I'll look at you plugging stuff. Anyway, Mark's here. You've heard it before. He's my bro master behind the scenes on Mojo moments. And we're trying something out, where we're just going to kick around a theme once in a while. It's not because we don't have a lineup of people, mojo masters, wanting to be on our podcast.

It just goes occasionally we have to go down a little rabbit hole of our own. And today we're going to rabbit hole on what is considered the least mojo month of the year, November.

You're on the mojo moments. I looked at the data recently. We're up to 8,000.

Unique listeners? Oh, that's pretty good. We're getting there.

I made that up. I have no idea.

I just assumed it was you listening on a loop.

So let's just say you and I are jamming here on mojo for a sec. Okay. We started this off. Maybe we, uh, we didn't actually have the hit the recording button yet, but you're like, so I went for a run. It's November. We're in November, 2020 full COVID full sort of existential crisis in the U S a full economic clouds on the horizon, greens, Greenspan.

The nine-year-old old wizard of banking. Read his article. In fact, I've been reading too many, they call it, there's a word for note doom scrolling. I've been doomed, scrolling too much, my friend. And so, you know, here we are in the Moja show. So it's sort of like the danger of always trying to capture mojo is like, when, what do you do, you know, do you have to be that mojo master yourself? Like, or do do we just embrace the fact that we have shit days.

I mean, you have to, you have to accept the ups and downs. It's kind of like what Charles de Brabant was saying that you need coping mechanisms. Obviously he was talking about, you know, cancer, but it goes, it's generally like you, when you have a lull in your mojo, you go running, right?

Yeah. But it's a bit of a drug hit. Like I'm realizing I'm chasing the endorphin. I'm chasing a, you know, I'm doing a bit of cobweb, you know, cleaning of the brain, you know, getting that. And it gives me a good, it lasts a little bit for sure, but I've realized something today running. So just before we jumped on this cast, I went for a run and realized I'm missing something that I had in the first half of COVID.

I shouldn't call it a first off. Cause I don't know when it'll end, but imagine the first half leading up to today's date. So I had, I had running, but I also had a project, painting the guest cottage.

And what are you doing now? You have a cat.

Yeah. I have a cat, but that's not a project. That's just a...

There's no end point.

Yeah. So here's the insight. So that project, when my wife was very excited. Oh, we can paint the best cottage. He'll be a family project, which it was in the beginning, but in her view was three weeks to three months. And as we progress, I lost my teammates, but that was okay. It's not like there was three months of painting.

There was, you know, fits and starts with the painting, but it was, it was, it was, it was a full on paint job and here's the insight. You ready for this dude? Like, are you going to like, Oh my God transformational? Or you're just like, whatever, that's fine. What I realize. So the running, what does the running do?

What does physical do? Gets you moving. That's good. Gives you endorphins. It shakes up the body helps you go to the bathroom. Better. Apparently read about that. So that's one part, but what a project, like say the painting project gave. Sense of accomplishment, industriousness. Um, and most of us in zoom calls or the lives we're living right now, or there's, isn't that feeling of I'm progressing on something.

And it reminded me of, uh, so Winston Churchill. Who technically, I guess I'm related to, cause my middle name is Churchill, but not just because I, you know, my parents want to try and throw that in there's some family link, way, way, way down the line. But reading about Winston Churchill. He had a pretty dark side to him.

I mean, he's, he had a pretty deep form of depression. So he would use booze of course, but he's other thing he called it, I think the dark dog or the black dog. Was his name, his nickname for his, when he was in a dark depression type mood. And his, his solution to that is he'd go off to his, going to call it his cottage, the mansion.

I forget where it was. There's a name, Chartwell, something like that. Don't remember it, it doesn't matter.

Your ancestral home.

Yes. They don't let me in. It's a museum now, but he would go there. And you know what he'd do. He would build brick walls around his property. He do brick lane twos to fight off the darker black dog, whatever you call it.

Yeah, there's that little task, right? There's an ongoing task that you can do. That's somewhat meditative that allows you to sort of disconnect from other things. It's kind of like you're painting. Like it's not overly onerous in terms of mental capacity or even physical demands, but it's something that you can sort of do, you get a sense of accomplishment from it.

You know, and it's, it's somewhat mindless. Bricklaying is also somewhat mindless, repetitive.

It is mindless. It's meditative. You're right. But there's still a little bit of skill. There's a little, like a little fun thing involved, you know, and you stand back and look at it and go, yeah, that's good. Or, Oh, no, I got to touch that up.

You see progress.

So that's, that's my insight. I feel right now. That's the missing link. So I got to find a new thing thing. New project.

You can paint the office.

That it's fine. I don't know whatever I didn't ask for ideas. I'm just telling you. I'm sorry. I know you. I know. And that's normally, generally why I'm here.

Yes. So what about you bro? What's going on? You. Yeah, here we are mid November, 2020

November sucks though. Like generally speaking as a month, like we were talking about this initially, like this idea of November. Yeah. It's awful. November in Canada, in North America is particularly terrible. The weather is brutal. There's very little to look forward to. No. I was doing some research into this cause we talked about this before.

I was doing a little research and in November, do you wanna know what I found out?

Yeah. I want to know.

November sucks. That's what I found out.

Oh yeah. I really like, it's a universal culture.

You start with the fact that the word November is actually wrong for what the month is. What do you mean wrong? November was the, the way the word breaks down.

It was initially it was for the ninth month. So in the ancient Roman calendar, it was the ninth month of the year. So November was nine some ninth month, but then when the, the, uh, the Julian calendar came in in 45 BC, they added two more. So it was technically no longer the ninth. It was the 11th.

So it's like a.

Like it's a legacy carry over. It's just wrong. So the name itself is wrong. And I was like, okay, well, that's, that's a rough start for November. I was looking at, you know, Catholicism, the month of November is dedicated to the Holy souls in purgatory. Okay. Well not, no, no, that's it. You're in this level.

You're actually better off in hell. You know?

Exactly. You're at least your somewhere. Yeah. Instead of in this middle ground of nothingness and I was like, okay, well, that's, you know, another strike against. Fun fact is that Shakespeare never mentions November in any of his works. 154 sonnets, 37 plays. He never mentioned the month, but maybe he didn't like it,

But did he mention months and all his other.

Well, that's the thing. I couldn't find any research. It's like what breaks down when, but you got to think, you know, the ides of March at least appear once.

Anyways, one fact and I'm going to stick to it. That's all the facts I need.

The landscapes and whatnot.

Anyways, one fact and I'm going to stick to it. That's all the facts I need.

And I was looking at what else is there? And the full moon is actually a fun name for the full moon in November, here in North America, it's called the Beaver moon.

In North America or Canada?

North America. So it was for like the, like Algonquin tribes, uh, and early colonists used to set their last Beaver traps of the year because after that, the waterways start freezing up and the beavers go away.

So it was obviously incredibly important for Canadian history with the, uh, the fur trade. So, this is like the last moment you can catch Beaver pelts. And it was also the moment when the beavers are most winter ready making the bee rebels really important. So the November moon is a Beaver moon. So that's kind of funny, but other than that, this one sucks.

Like nothing, nothing good is in November.

Well, there was that whole Movember's movement of growing mustache.

Sure, there's that

But you know what that is, is just like dudes looking really ugly. Well, yeah, unless you're,

There's a lot of other times of the year where you can't get away necessarily with growing a mustache, like in February for Valentine's day.

And you've got like halfway through the month, you've got a shitty mustache going, going out on romantic dates. You know, your Christmas parties, everyone's got a mustache. Like you can't do it in certain months. You can't just have everyone in hideous mustaches.

It's so funny for when our kids were little. It's like every family goes through this where they hire the photographer to, have you done that. Okay. So we did that and we did two, two years in a row. When we early, early days of November here at cloud Raker, we were like the first ones doing Movember and we all got into it. And for whatever reason, two in a row, my wife decided to hire the photographer, the family pictures of us with the little kids.

And then do the Christmas card out of it. And I'm like, and it'd be like, not the end of November, but kind of like second, third week. So I got those bad, like, you don't know if it's a mustache.

It's not a polished mustache.

Yeah. Just impale. Genuinely people will come up to me and go, you look really tired. And I'm like, actually, no, I'm not.

I'm just, just really. Like pale, like, I don't know what's going on. So she would choose November mid twice, and then we never did it again. So in the, in, in our sort of photo books of pro family photos, Yeah. There's two years of me looking absolutely hideous.

I did it for two years, I did the year I did my master's degree at the university of Toronto.

And the year after, when I got my degree, my master's degree, I went to the ceremony, which was in November. So the photos of me graduating with my master's degree, I have is disgusting mustache. It's the only time in my life that I have a mustache. It's like two weeks of the year, once the year, before and that week.

And I have obviously my graduation photos have a mustache.

So I think we have something in common. So we're, we're getting excited. We're seeing maybe something exciting in November.

Well, the, like I was, I was trying to find the silver linings of it. And I was thinking like, I want to pop culture next. And I was like, is there anything in November or that references November?

And the only thing that I could find, there are two things like movie song wise, I thought really crossed over. One was the, uh, obviously the movie with Keenu Reeves sweet November, Charlise Theron. I don't, I'm so bad with the name Bobby, but then there's also November rain by guns and roses. And that's it. That's it.

Okay. No, but let's okay. Here's here's I dunno, silver lining. I believe

I'm going to put this out there. That underlying mojo is melancholy. Okay. It's like when you're painting, you kind of need. Sometimes and not painting the walls of the home and pretending you're on a canvas and I'm pretending I'm a painter and I'm not.

The landscapes and whatnot.

Yeah. You kind of need, you need the contrast.

You need a bit of that. That, and November is not a, I love the word melancholy. It's a melancholic month.

Cause it's a terrible month.

No, no. Okay. I'll go. I'll go with your terrible terrible month. I had a moment. And for all our listeners who are vegetarians out there, I'm sorry to say this, but I do go duck hunting.

Okay. And a few years ago, I was in, in, in Quebec here duck hunting and, and it was a, it was a November early November day, crispy, cold, uh, no more leaves on the trees, because up here in Canada, we lose our leaves earlier. And it was just these gray trees. And then in, I was in the sort of marshes and all the little branches and stuff were all gone Brown.

And there's a, it was a bit of frost across some, so I, yes, it was this sort of emptiness and there wasn't a drop of sound. There was no wind, it was just, and I looked across and there was these, I don't know what you call it. I should know the names of these, these little, you know, those. You know, Chris's timing by the little branches with the little red sort of berries.

I can't eat that. You get sick, but they, they look pretty. So I looked across and I saw Bush of those and I was like, that's nice because then the contrast of this melancholic colic mood of what I'm looking at, there's this little patch of red that pops up.

 A polly?

 Because, and even in the bleakness, in the darkness, you saw that little glimmer of hope and light through the red berries on the trees.

Perhaps. That's how I would put it. If I was eloquent.

I mean that's that's what I mean, we keep coming back to that. Like, you can only sort of see the positives after experiencing the negatives at the same time. November is such a brutal month. It's it's. I just find this month is incredibly solemn at all times.

I don't know. Maybe it's just the Canadian thing. Like you finished you finish Halloween. Then eventually it's remembrance day, which is a very solemn day where we honor those who have fought and perished and you know, all that. Then you sort of get American Thanksgiving and like the gluttony and, and crass consumerism from the Americans,

By the way, they've ruined Thanksgiving.

They have,

I actually think, you know, I'm not going to be mr. Canada here, but that's the one. Thing for sure. We do way better. Well, there's maybe

Ours is a celebration of the harvest during the harvest season.

There's is just like go buy a lot of shit.

 Yeah. No wrapped around this whole, like how we abused the settlers, the settlers abused, the indigenous populations.

It's like, Oh, great. So you got the crass consumerism there and everything is cold. Everything is wet. Everything is miserable. You don't get any light because the sun goes down at like four 30 in the afternoon.

You don't have snow on the ground. Like, you know, snow on the ground is a bit of brightness.

 Exactly. You can't do the winter activities. Cause winter hasn't actually started yet. It is like the, the end of the decay of the year before the beautiful rebirth that is, you know, the Christmas season, the start of winter.

No, that, well, I don't know. No, the teacher,