SMC of SLC

It is the SMC of SLC’s pleasure to highlight new member Josh Hanagarne, recipient of a 2009 Utah Social Media Award for his blog, World’s Strongest Librarian. His acceptance speech generated a lot of buzz, so we wanted members to have a chance to get to know him better.

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SMC: Josh, thanks so much for joining us on the SMC of SLC blog. First, tell us about your life – about being, as you say on your blog: “an aspiring strongman, bookish nerd, twitchy guy with Tourette Syndrome, devoted family man, tearer of phonebooks, and humble librarian. A tall, thin paradox wrapped in thick glasses.”

JH: It’s actually not that exciting, but it makes for an intriguing “about” page, doesn’t it? I get up early. I lift something heavy. I eat a lot of eggs and then I go to work. At work I yell and twitch all day in a relatively quiet library. Then I go home, play with my toddler, and spend time with my lovely wife, Janette.

SMC: Tell us more about your workout of choice: kettlebells. On your blog you describe kettlebells as “the greatest, most fun, awesomest, most brutal strength tool of all time” that “becomes a lifestyle.” You’re going to have to explain that passion!

JH: Kettlebells are just a tool, like barbells, bodyweight, dumbbells, sandbags, or whatever else you can think of. But for me, they deliver the greatest benefit in the least amount of time. A lot of it depends on what your goals are, of course. A power lifter who wants to deadlift 700 pounds, is not going to be able to find a heavy enough kettlebell to practice with. But for people who say things like, “I want to be fit,” or “I want to lose fat or weight,” or “It hurts when I lift,” kettlebells are superior, because every ounce of effort you put in has a payoff; every lift involves most of the body. Kettlebell progress is measurable, useful, and constant for people who commit. That makes it fun – and addictive. They also look way cooler than pink dumbbells.

SMC: Hmmm….would kettlebell training be of much help if you met Conan the Barbarian in an alley?

JH: I was Conan’s prize pupil, so we wouldn’t have a problem. But if we were bitter foes, kettlebells would definitely help. I would lure him into the alley. Then, when his shoulders wedged in and he got stuck, I would club him over the head with a 70-pounder.

SMC: Intriguing strategy! Let’s chat about another adversary: Tourette Syndrome. Tell us your history with the disease, including your forced withdrawal from society as you fought to get the symptoms under control.

JH: When I was six, I started blinking my eyes and contorting my face during the first grade Thanksgiving program. The small, involuntary movements concerned my parents, but it didn’t seem serious enough to seek medical help. But when I reached ninth grade, the tics suddenly became vocal as well. I didn’t know I had a condition. I just thought I was crazy. I was diagnosed, but was told treatment was unnecessary.

Fast forward to when I was 19 years old, serving as a missionary in Washington, D.C. One day I punched myself in the face while on a busy street. It surprised the people around me – but me even more so. The punching led to screaming. The screaming led to a hernia. My weight soon dropped to 150 pounds, as I was shaking so badly that food couldn’t settle in my stomach. That wasn’t good, considering I was 6’8”.

Purpose-built kamikaze planes had no landing gear. It was like my brain had become a little kamikaze pilot and my skull was the cockpit. I would circle and circle, searching for a place to touch down, but knowing there weren’t any runways for me. So I withdrew. I couldn’t be in public for long without causing a disturbance. I was just a scared kid who dealt badly with enormous challenges. It was easier to mope than to fight, so I curled up into a ball for a long, long time.

I eventually resorted to receiving Botox injections in my vocal cords every five weeks, so that I could be out in public. The Botox made it so I couldn’t scream – but I couldn’t talk either. During the three years of injections, I fell in love with writing, which let me communicate in ways that my whispering didn’t.

SMC: Wow. On your blog you write, “Someone recently asked me what I would do if I could suddenly choose not to have Tourette’s. Their jaw hit the floor when I said that, given the choice, I would keep it.” Explain how you’ve come to see the positives of your disease—including your view that Tourette Syndrome has made you a better person.

JH: Tourette’s has taught me that I’m not made of glass. That there are worse things in this world than pain. Once I learned that I wasn’t going to shatter every time something went wrong, I figured out how to take the pain and give some back. I’m not saying that people need to hit themselves in the face and bark in the movie theater to learn how to toughen up. But for me, I don’t know how I would have cultivated this level of self-reliance if things had been easier. Very little was required of me growing up. I excelled in school with no effort and was a natural athlete. I made friends easily and was a whiz at every instrument I touched.

Tourette’s takes – and will never stop taking. It preys on confidence and vulnerability. It isn’t a riddle to be solved, but an opponent to be outdistanced.  My only chance is to produce so many good things in my life that it can’t ever take more away than I am creating. I’m winning a fight I shouldn’t be able to, and I’m winning big.

SMC: So tell us how you began blogging. And about your potential book.

JH: I decided to start my World’s Strongest Librarian blog, via Blogger, in early 2009, as a way to keep track of my workout numbers. I was always losing my training notebooks! My early posts included thrilling info such as: “02-18-2009: Deadlift: 5×3x185.” But then I wrote a guest post for a friend’s blog, Straight To The Bar. When he told me that I could “really, really write,” and that I should, I moved World’s Strongest Librarian over to WordPress, launching with a humor video called Enter The Librarian!. As you can see, it shows me using kettlebells and abusing library customers. Classy stuff. But it got the traffic rolling in—and it hasn’t stopped. Lunatics, all of them.

Specific to book news, I am currently revising a book proposal for the memoir of The World’s Strongest Librarian. I have a fancy agent, but I haven’t signed a book deal yet. But I’ve got my fingers crossed.

SMC: We’ll keep our fingers crossed, too. That video, by the way, is a far cry from your daily goal of not making anyone’s day worse! How close are you to hitting that goal 90 percent of the time?

JH: Life is difficult. There’s no shame in saying so. To quote from The Wire, “Sometimes things just got to play hard.” Why would you want to be the dark spot in someone else’s day? How do you feel when your otherwise perfect day gets screwed up because of someone being inconsiderate? The writer Kurt Vonnegut saw some horrific things in his life, but he traced many of the world’s evils back to a simple lack of courtesy. He said, “Love may fail, courtesy will prevail.” I value love more than good manners, but I think I see what he meant. My life revolves around the pursuit of bettering myself on behalf of bettering others. I probably hit my goal about half of the time. But usually the only day I make worse is my own.

SMC: When your journey is over, what do you want to have accomplished with your life?

JH: At my funeral, I want everyone to know that I was a kind, gentle, honest man who did right by his family and friends. In the past, I have failed at most of those. Now, nothing matters more.

SMC: You’re certainly making an impact on others rights now – as evidenced by your Utah Social Media Award. By the way, what ran through your mind when you heard your name called for the Best Blog category?

JH: The first thing I thought as I walked up to the dais was “I think Angie [Larsen, co-host, Good Things Utah] is taller than I am.” Then I thought “How shiny is my face?” I was sweating in my suit. My tics were starting to get the best of me and I was hot.

SMC: And yet your acceptance speech was so inspiring! Last question: Please tell us, in one sentence, why social media blows your mind.

JH: People harbor barriers and prejudices, which are often insurmountable in person. But they may be able to overlook them in the online world. If you couldn’t sit down and have a conversation with me because I’m white, male, tall, thin, ugly, handsome, gay, or straight, we might still be able to get along fine online. That’s innovation I care about a lot more than the latest application.

SMC: Hmmm….that was actually four sentences, but we’ll take it! Thanks, Josh! We’ll look forward to seeing you at lots of SMC of SLC events in 2010.

Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt is a freelance writer, editor, and social media trainer/marketer. Catch her online at www.Bell-Rehwoldt.com, http://www.facebook.com/SheriBellRehwoldt, and http://www.linkedin.com/in/sbrehwoldt