{"id":17591,"date":"2021-10-30T15:08:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-30T19:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/?p=17591"},"modified":"2021-10-30T15:08:39","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T19:08:39","slug":"welcome-to-paxgiving-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/2021\/10\/welcome-to-paxgiving-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Paxgiving 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gentlemen, welcome to Pax Giving.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It\u2019s really simple: For the month of November, I\u2019m challenging everyone to put their gratitude for F3 into action. I hope you will:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reach out to guys who you have not seen in a while, invite them to come out, or just check-in. If it\u2019s your thing, EH some FNGs.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Increase your posting. Maybe add in one more a week or visit an AO you have not been to in a while (or ever.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you are in town, post at the <strong>Pax Giving Convergence<\/strong> at 7am on Saturday, 11\/27 at Hanes Park. We\u2019ll have a canned food drive set-up, so bring something (no, not the outdated can of beef broth in the back of the cabinet), as well as a friend, a lapsed Pax, your 2.0s, or that uncle who is in town for the holiday weekend.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why? I\u2019m grateful for this group, in ways I didn\u2019t expect when I posted at that first Urban Assault workout, forced by Hop to finally come and see this crazy thing he had kept telling me about. I think many of you are as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While I know we have had a small number of pax intentionally walk away from F3, my impression is most of the guys we have lost just kind of faded away. In the excellent and hilarious supernatural book <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good Omens<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the authors refer to their antagonist, an actual hellish demon, as \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">An Angel who did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards.\u201d That line has stuck with me for years. I think it is that way in most things in life&#8230;we often don\u2019t so much dramatically fail or fall, we just kind of&#8230;saunter vaguely in a less righteous direction.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, this month as we rocket towards the holidays, the colder months, and, incredulously, THE YEAR 2022, I hope we can all take a moment and reach out to the \u201cwhatever happened to\u201d and the \u201cwonder why I never see\u201d guys. Again, if you are inclined to proselytize on behalf of our little cult, invite some new guys. Not all of us are, and that is fine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>I encourage you to share your efforts, who you have reached out to, what you have heard, where you are posting, on Slack on the General channel, and on Twitter, if you still use it (*cough Perry Bros *cough).\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>At the end of the month, I\u2019ll confer with our other leadership and determine who seemed to have given the most effort to Pax Giving and I\u2019ll give that stout soul a gift certificate to the F3 store at the Convergence and make a small donation to the charity of their choice.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Side note: this whole effort started with a much more complex, tiered system of rewards and encouragement but it just made me tired. So, let\u2019s keep it simple.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Again, why?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can look at it virtuously: reach out your benevolent hand to that wayward dude. What a HIM you are.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can look at it selfishly: your workout experience is probably better with a diverse group and more guys. Plus, the lapsed pax is going to be slower than you and you\u2019ll feel tougher.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can look at it obediently: our dork of a Nantan asked, humor YHC, OK?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Send that short text or make that phone call&#8211;maybe more than once. Give a nudge if you see someone walking out of church, at the bar, at the soccer field. Start collecting canned goods. Post. Be grateful, but let it be an action, not just a feeling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u2019m thankful for all of you. See you in the Gloom.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Your inexplicable and humble Nantan,<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">-Wobegon<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gentlemen, welcome to Pax Giving. It\u2019s really simple: For the month of November, I\u2019m challenging everyone to put their gratitude for F3 into action. I hope you will: Reach out to guys who you have not seen in a while, invite them to come out, or just check-in. If it\u2019s your thing, EH some FNGs. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-event"],"acf":{"q":"Wobegon","date":"","pax":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17592,"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17591\/revisions\/17592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f3winstonsalem.com\/f3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}