Lee (0:01)

Hey Story Pirates Podcast listeners. Lee here. Today in celebration of the New Year, we are sharing a very special episode of our bonus series Imagication where Peter has a pretty passable Australian accent and leads listeners through a very special creative visualization exercise to celebrate the year that's ending and the new one to come. This episode originally aired for our Creator Club subscribers only, so this year we are super excited to share it with all of you for free. Grown ups. Remember you can subscribe to Creator Club for brand new subscriber only bonus episodes by visiting storypirates.comcreatorclub or by subscribing right in Apple Podcasts. Lastly, I want to thank all of our listeners, kids and grownups for making this past year another special one. Whether you're a Creator Club member, you saw us on tour, or you just listened to the podcast, we feel super lucky that you choose to spend your time with us. So thank you and onwards and upwards to a wonderful 2025 imagication New Year's edition. Coming up right after a few words for the grown ups.

Unknown (1:30)

I love storytelling. I'm very different from everybod. Confusion is the step before curiosity. Okay, that's a really funny idea. We have to send that in. I just get some joy when I hear other people giggling. I believe all the things in my story. Human beings are just able to create the story. Pirates.

Peter (2:01)

Hello. I didn't see you there. Welcome back to my gurgling stream. I'm Peter, with an at times passable but mostly wildly inconsistent Australian slash New Zealand accent. Why do I have this accent? Still undetermined. Least that I had to. And since then, every time I bring it up, he just points at me and says, do the accent and slowly walks out of the room. It's very creepy. I've stopped asking. Anyway, I'm Peter and I'm here to help you take your imagination on a vacation. An Imagication. Today I have a very special episode of Imagication for you. It's the New Year's edition and would you look at that, it's timed perfectly for the New Year. They actually didn't even plan it that way. It's just a crazy coincidence. Now, normally during the New Year, people like to do two things. First, they like to think back on the year previous, all the good things and annoying things, and say, all right, year, that was a doozy, thanks for stopping by. And second, people like to look forward to the coming year and think about all the great things they're gonna do with their friends and family in the Future. Here at Imagination, we do something sort of like both of those things, except, well, frankly, it's a bit weirder. Now, before we start, it's time to get comfortable. Find yourself a comfy chair or a bed. Anywhere you feel safe and comfy. Alright, now close your eyes and take a deep breath. In through your nose and out through your mouth. Lets try that a couple more times before we start our imagication. In and out. In and out. Alright, I'm feeling relaxed. I want you to start by imagining with your mind's eye a place that you visited in the last year. Maybe it's at your school or your house, or maybe it's somewhere you went on vacation. Maybe it's even a special secret place that only you knew about. Are you there yet? Okay, now I want you to look around at all the things that you might see in that place. As you see them, point them out to yourself in your own head. Hey, there's my desk. You might say looks about right. Now I want you to notice how your other senses feel. Is this place warm? Cold? Do you hear anything? Maybe it has a bit of a smell. For example, Maruma on the ship always smells like beans. That's because it's right above Rollo's Coffee House and Bean Emporium. He's basically cooking beans 24 hours a day. You smell my clothes, you'd think I was a bean. One time Lee said to me, hey, where ya been? And I took it personally. I was offended till I realized he just was emphasizing been in a weird way. So where you been? I thought he was. Anyway, I'm not a bean. I'm Peter. Anyway, back to the place where you are. What's the light look like? Is it morning or is it in the middle of the night? Take in as many details as you can about how it feels right now. Now I want you to think about how you feel in the place you're in. Does it make you feel happy? A sad, or a completely unrelated third way? Maybe bemused, befuddled, bewildered? B. Be scared. That's not a word. Be skiddy. Completely lost track of my thoughts now. Emotions baffled, blundering, bumbling, sorry, got dramatically lost right there. Just gonna find my way back to the point. Right. Whatever that emotion is, I want you to take a minute and really feel that thing. Go ahead and really feel that emotion. Wrap yourself up in it. Say hello, emotion. Whether it's nice or a little bad. Just give a little handshake. Say nice to see you, and then say goodbye. There it goes, your new emotion friend is waddling away. All right, now it's time to get a little bit weird. Just, you know, for fun, staying in the place that you are with all of the real things that you see, smell and hear. I want you to add something really unexpected to that place. Like a dancing cheetah. Oh, hello cheetah. Nice moves, mate. Now normally I'd be afraid of a cheetah, but today this cheetah is doing a little soft shoe. Which if I'm not mistaken, means he's doing a little tap dance. Why would a soft shoe have tappy taps on it? Right. Seems contradictory. Are the hard shoes the hard shoe tip dancing? Would that be more slap dancing? Well, maybe this cheetah is slap dancing. Don't know what that means, but you could imagine whatever you think that is. Anyway, that cheetah's really dancing up a storm, isn't he? Oh, I think you switched styles. I think you would refer to this now as breakdancing. Ah, now that's the worm. Now he's doing the row bit. Now he's doing the row boat. Now he's doing the sharpened cat up. Cheetah's doing the floss. But he's somehow doing the floss with both sets of legs, which doesn't make sense. All four of his legs are swinging. I'm not sure what's holding him up. I guess it's a weird sort of a magication physics where he's just floating because he wants to. We don't question it. A floating cheetah doing the double floss. Tell you right now he's flossing twice as much as I do daily. But don't tell my dentist. That's a dental hygiene joke right there. I thought was pretty good. Alright. But now it's time to leave the past. Let's say goodbye to your place and definitely say goodbye to that cheater. Bye cheater. Decided your name is Gregory now that we're leaving by Greg. He prefers Gregory. He prefers the full name Gregory. Wow, he just ran away very fast. Not surprising as he is the fastest land animal on this planet Earth. Oh, look at this. We're back at our gurgling stream. Because it's time for you to go someplace else. This time we're going to the future. Specifically we're going to next year. Now I want you to imagine another place, a place that you want to go next year. It could be a place you know that you've been to before or could be a brand new place you've always wanted to go. It could even be an imaginary place. Whatever it is, this should be a place that makes you feel real good and nice. For example, I'm going to imagine that next year I'm at a skateboard half pipe. Except instead of the normal cement that you'd skateboard on, this half pipe is a giant potato chip. It's even got a great natural curve to it, which really helps for cool skateboard tricks. And in case you're wondering, I definitely don't know how to skateboard. Fortunately for me, this is an imagication in which y'all can do literally anything. So in my imagination, probably do a lot of kick flips and ollies, 360s, 940s flat flatbacks. Then I'm gonna do a double jumpy. Those are real tricks in my mind. Here I go. Do some quick skateboarding. Ready? Watch me now. And here comes my big trip. This is a flippy flop. Nice. Perfect landing. All right, I'm gonna sked up here. Now I'm gonna do an eagle's nest. Oh, amazing. Alright, now picture this move. I'm gonna go up the ramp and then suddenly I'm gonna do almost biscuits. Oh, yeah, that's right. Perfect landing. Nice and smooth, relaxed. Here comes a big ramp. Gonna fly down the ramp. Picking up speed. I'm gonna do my biggest trick once I head up this ramp. Here we go. It's the oh, hug your grandma. Because she asked. And also because you want to. Ah, she's got a fuzzy sweater on. Ah, fuzzy sweater hug trick. Lending that one made me feel good. Reminded me of hugging my grandma. She's got lots of sweaters. Anyway, let me kick my skateboard up here. Oop. I flubbed it. Broke my skateboard. But that's alright because it's imaginary. I'll fix it with my mind. Ready? Oh, fixed. Goodbye, skateboard. Fly away. There it goes. My skateboard just grew some wings and flew into the sunset. Alright, now it's your turn. Pick a place that you'd like to visit next year. Start to imagine it right now with your mind's eye. But put yourself in the middle of it. Are you there? Now look around. What do you see? Open your ears and listen to the sounds. What does it smell like? And on top of all that, ask yourself, how do you feel when you're there? Remember, since this is the future we're thinking about, you can be as hopeful and positive as you want. All right, now it's my favorite part. Now it's time to get Weird. Now, in that space that you've been, something very unexpected happens, right? A giant walking hair dryer with arms and legs. It's got two little eyeballs on top staring right at you. And its mouth seems to be the end of the hairdryer. So it's in a perfect circle and it's making it look like it's constantly surprised. And it's dragging the cord behind it like a tail. It's like a real long, draggy tail. The hairdryer, despite its surprised expression, you look at its eyes and it seems to be smiling at you. It's a happy hair dryer. And then it tries to speak to you. And what it says is, and it just blows some warm air right at you. Not too hot because it's far away. I think it knows that it's a hairdryer, so it's giving you some appropriate space. But every time it tries to talk, just blow some hot air. But it seems to want you to understand it. You take half a second to wonder how it's blowing hot air when it's not plugged in. But don't worry about that. So let's try to speak hair dryer language. Back to it. So make your mouth like a hair dryer and say hello. Oh, it liked that. I think we said hello. Oh, it's trying to say something back. It's saying. I think that was the setup of a hair dryer joke. Let's pretend that we get it. Alright. Let's smile and shake our head and say, all right. It's paused for dramatic effect before it delivers a hair dryer punchline. Let's look like we're excited. Here comes the punchline. Oh, he expects us to laugh. All right, let's laugh right now. Let's laugh real soft. Let's all laugh now as a hairdryer might laugh. Here we go. Ready? I don't get the joke, but it's still fun to laugh. I'm actually really happy that it told us that joke. Oh, it's leaving now. Say goodbye, hair dryer. That was nice. Anyway, I wonder if that'll happen in the new year. Alright now, my friends, let's return to the gurgling stream one more time. Ah, it's so relaxing here. I might even like it better than my potato chip half pipe. Maybe now, today, in celebration of the new year, we've revisited the past and we've taken a trip into the future. But now, this gurgling stream represents the present, the right now. So when you open your eyes, try your very best to stay right here in the present. Don't think too much about the past or the future. Just look around you and see what you see, hear what you hear and smell what you smell and feel what you feel in the very moment you're in right now. Most of all, as you celebrate the New Year, take a moment to be present with the people in your life. Sometimes people can be weird or kind, or even annoying, but in the end, we're pretty lucky to have them here with us. Alright, well, that's it for today's magication. I hope you found it relaxing and weird and maybe even funny. Now take a minute if you need to slowly come back to reality and when you're ready, open your eyes and maybe do a little stretch. Take a moment and thank your imagination for being pretty great at what it does. And now you can move on with your day or head to bed, or do what I'm gonna do, which is take off this wildly inconsistent accent and eat some snacks. Whatever you're doing next, stay creative and stay kind and a Happy New Year to all of you and we will see you next time.