I juggle, I’ve mentioned it here before. I’ve been doing it for quite a while, but generally in fits and bursts, sparked by the fact that whenever I clean my room I come across about 12 different juggling balls stowed away in my room. Since I don’t clean my room too often, I can go for months without juggling before I remember what an awesome hobby it is.
The main trigger for me juggling lots is CTYI, since I learnt there it’s always the place I feel like juggling is just required. In my last year there were some other juggling enthusiasts and I was reminded of how much more fun it is to juggle with other people. There were 3 of us who worked together on some tricks and put together a routine for the talent show. The routine itself didn’t go fantastically, I made a mess of it to be honest, but it really didn’t matter. We had a lot of fun learning the new things, and practically everyone had seen us rehearsing the tricks and doing them right anyway.
About 9 minutes into this video.
After CTYI I didn’t juggle as much because it’s much less fun to do it on your own. I made some attempts at learning 4 ball, mainly when I was meant to be studying, and a friend bought me some rings so I worked on them a little, but it got boring quickly and I reverted to more traditional methods of procrastination.
The thing I always really wanted to do was join a juggling society. Since the guy who taught me used to walk around in one of these 
And had talked about how much fun being in the juggling society was, I wanted in. In fact I kind of started looking at courses in Galway based entirely on how awesome that shirt design is. However, since I was only heading into 3rd year at the time, I had a bit of a wait. But as soon as I knew I was going to college this year, I was all psyched up to jump right into the juggling soc at NUIM. So on fairs day I immediately spotted the flying objects and headed over to pay my €2 and start chatting to the other people who found the strange mess of throwing and catching (and, let’s face it, dropping) just as amazing and as fascinating as I do.
I spent the guts of 2 hours on fairs day hanging out by their spot, juggling and chatting. Having an instant shared interest that’s so interesting meant that I was able to be loud and forward and CTYI me, in a way that I found harder in college than I initially expected to. I’ve been to 2 juggling meetings so far and I’m already absolutely hooked. I was appointed first year rep of the society, which is a position with absolutely no responsibilities but it still makes me feel involved, and in the 2 sessions I’ve already tried so many new things. Usually when I think about juggling I see so many things that I want to do that I end up doing none of them so I’ve decided that for the moment I’m going to focus on clubs, and I’m going to attempt 5 ball. The clubs might work out, the 5 ball most likely won’t but it’s like the coolest thing ever so I’m willing to devote some time to it, after I learn clubs anyway.
I only messed around with the clubs for 30 minutes or so yesterday, but I plan on focusing on them on Tuesday and the aim is to be able to participate in Gladiators soon. Gladiators is basically last juggler standing where everyone tries to disrupt everyone else, and it looks wicked fun, so I’m hoping to be able to join in with that by the time I go to the Tralee Juggling Convention with the soc in November (which I’m already looking forward to loads because juggling is awesome and a convention would only be more so.)
The one thing about hanging around with people who juggle is that it really drives home how bad I am at it. I mean I know this, I have very bad hand eye coordination, juggling doesn’t come naturally to me and I don’t spent enough time at it to do the really awesome stuff, but like when I see people doing all their stuff it makes me hella jealous. But in a cool way which makes me want to work on my stuff more so it’s all good, plus everyone’s been really nice about giving me any tips that I could possibly ask for so it’s all great.
Another really cool thing about juggling is the potential for awesome photos out of it. My profile picture on facebook has been one of me juggling for ages now. I tried replacing it with my debs photo but like that’s so much less cool!! Of the 200 or so tagged photos of me on facebook, nearly 100 of them are of me juggling in the quad at CTYI. Although it was disconcerting at the time to have the constant clicking which I attempted to keep my concentration (and the intense stares of focus in some of the shots are quite funny) it also meant that I did manage to find one cool photo where I’m actually smiling and juggling. The addition of the coloured balls on the black and white makes it like my favourite photo of me around.
So yeah juggling is just win. It’s the one society I can see myself becoming absolutely obsessed with, because the people seem lovely and it’s just so damn cool. I cannot wait to go to the juggling convention and pick up new skills and basically drive everyone who knows me mad by becoming juggling obsessed. It’s great!!
