My Magic 8 Ball and Me

What’s good y’all? Today we’re talking about Magic 8 Balls & Cults. Normal 🙂 

Hope you had a great week. I’m gearing up for Sea Hear Now next weekend (Sheryl Crow, I’m coming for you!!!), planning outfits for a trip to Paris in October (my first time!!), and generally enjoying the shift into September.

Not much by way of Sanity Check this week — but sending lots of love and hope this week’s bside makes you giggle!

X O

Bogs

MY MAGIC 8 BALL & ME

This weekend was spent in Asbury Park. On Saturday night, after a lovely dinner at Reyla, my friends and I hopped to a nearby wine bar for a nightcap. Somehow, our conversation wandered into cult territory, as things tend to go. I lean over and ask my friend Harley, “if you were going to be in a cult, what would drag you in?”

Harley looks at me, about as unfazed as if I asked her about the weather, and answered by saying she couldn’t be sucked into a cult because she has too much “main character energy” and always needs to be doing her own thing. Vin laughed and agreed. But I admitted, a little too quickly, that I’d be an extremely good candidate for a cult.

I mean, remember my dalliance with the Psychic in the West Village a few months ago? I’m a sucker for a good plot line and a dose of whimsy - and someone who claims to have “answers”.

For a brief period earlier this year, I had a Magic 8 Ball on my bedside table. It was very Minnie-Driver-in-Goodwill-Hunting-chic* of me - I’d purchased the toy as a prop for an astrology-themed party that Holly and I threw, loved the aesthetic, and kept it in my apartment. Little did I know this prop would serve as yet another metaphor for my ‘20s.

I started shaking the Magic 8 Ball with innocuous intention here and there, asking silly questions like “will today be a good day?” or “is that boy I went on a date with the love of my life?” It started out as a joke until I found myself gravitating towards the 8 ball with an almost slavish need for its unpredictable guidance. I’m always seeking out new rituals, OK??

I’d start my day with the toy advising on outfits and end the day with it predicting good or bad dreams. I’d ask if now was a good time to do laundry, and if the outlook did not look good, well, guess that chore could wait till tomorrow. It became obsessive, like a nervous tick, and I was wary of doing anything without consulting the toy that I bought for $9.99 on Amazon, made in China and delivered to me in less than 24 hours.

Who doesn’t love some good ‘ole wisdom on demand, you know? Anything for a serotonin boost, really.

In the midst of my Magic 8 Ball madness, a friend texted me that she was doing a project about enneagrams and asked if I was a “Four”. I said I didn’t know - but she urged me to take the online quiz and see if anything about my results resonated. Sure enough, she was spot on, and without consulting my 8 Ball, I skimmed through the results page.

If you don't know anything about Enneagrams, don’t fear - it's yet another personality test. Type Fours are dubbed “the individualists,” and we have an intense desire to be unique. We’re most comfortable dwelling leagues below the surface and getting to the deep heart of things. Small talk? Don’t know her. Tell me your deepest darkest secrets, please, I beg..

Something us Fours need to watch out for, though, is a desire to be rescued from the burden of said uniqueness. It can be exhausting trying to solve life’s mysteries. I relate to this deeply. I know better than to be out here waiting for a knight in shining armor, but I have to admit, if one rolled up at any given moment I’d get the fuck on his horse.

After all, here I found myself legitimately seeking guidance from a toy.

Accepting life’s mysteries - and that there are so many things I’ll never get answers to - can sometimes result in a low-grade melancholy, and when that sadness flairs up into a more intense depressive state, it’s tempting to seek out people or things that can take the pain away.

And that’s the thing about cults, right? They promise to take away the pain -- or lure you in with the promise that the pain you’re experiencing will all be “worth it” someday.

In all seriousness, cults are a problem, and I have no intention of joining one anytime soon (but then again, does anyone really intend to join a cult?). I can’t say I’ll ever stop questioning or seeking meaning in life, though - and I suppose I’ll have to settle for the Enneagram for now.

My affair with the Magic 8 Ball lasted a good two months. I know it sounds fucking ridiculous - but I really did shake that ball looking for genuine life guidance more times than I’d like to admit. Eventually, I snapped out of it, realizing how insane I was acting and how even having the toy in the apartment was becoming a liability.

So I dropped her, without ceremony, on the donation table in my laundry room, wishing her well in her new home and hoping that whoever picks her up next treats her for what she is: a toy.

*bedside table, right side