June 14: #23 Endeavor not to curse

Phil: I couldn't fucking do it. Bruce is right. This was pathetically difficult and I also had a pretty frustrating day for a bunch of reasons revolving around my daily life. I tried for the first few hours of the day to watch my mouth but threw it all out the window by the afternoon time because it just spewed from my potty mouth. I must be one unsophisticated bastard. It's weird how a part of me these words have become. Who the hell am I?

Bruce: Sort of strange or pathetic that this was one of the hardest tasks to stay faithful to! Profanities are ticks, crutches and fillers. I broke this somewhere between 5-7 times. In one observable trend curses slipped out in two different conversations and it was totally unconscious, the commonality was that I was talking with people who routinely swear, so I guess we reflect and adapt to those we speak with. I remember Malcolm Gladwell reporting in The Tipping Point that we synchronize our micro expressions and speech patterns to people we speak with to subtly meet them in the middle, making for smooth conversation. Another time was I was typing to someone and halfway through typing “sh..” I started backspacing censoring myself with comical alarm. The majority of my swears didn't happen as I walked to work for 4 hours after a dealership 2 miles from my house declared they could not in fact give me a rental car. They happened while I was rehearsing my songs and frustratedly blurted agitated profanities impulsively when I kept consistently forgetting lines. I played a few songs live with mild curses. Today was a reminder of holes in my eloquence or crutches in my ability to express myself. They're so useless! Also keyed me in to how often other people use curses and with this new personal rule in place as funny as it sounds I wanted to convert them to my pure and innocent vanilla speech! I often stopped myself before cursing casually or even stopped myself from the moot expletive declarations of agitation. They may be called “curses” but they don't magically change anything!

Tomorrow's challenge: #1 Text someone you haven't interacted with in years