What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

I know, I know, there was a time in my life when reading was reserved specifically for homework and transatlantic flights and I lied to everyone about not only what, but how often I read. Eventually I came to my senses and began to actually enjoy nonfiction. It turns out reading stuff you care about is infinitely better than reading about Essentialism or Postclassical film critiques. And that’s when I discovered I had totally wasted my academic career.

It wasn’t just the way the library suddenly became the professor of How to Do Anything You Want 101, although seriously, does no one else see the public library as a real life Narnia? It was the sinking realisation that I could have done way less work, had way more free time, and still been an amazing student. I could have worked on grand projects I was deeply invested in. I could have taken advantage of all the opportunities availible to me. I could have been awesome. Easily. Instead I spent a lot of time being mediocre and watching Adult Swim. While the crash course in American pop culture wasn’t a total waste, there’s no denying I could have done it way better if only I had known.

Except that’s not true, because I did know, or I could have figured it out after a minute of googling. I’m not interested in consoling away lingering feelings of failure, I want to know what really kept me from kicking ass back then because it’s undoubtedly the same thing keeping me from reaching my potential now. As tempting as it is to chalk my mediocrity up to a lack of knowledge or immaturity, you and I both know that we haven’t changed that much. I could have done better then and I can do better now.

I find myself saying the same thing about my career choices. I say the same thing about decisions in my personal life. I say the same thing when I find out that new years resolution I made last year, I actually made three years ago and let slide by for 1,116 days without progress (totally unrelated: I might have a slight addiction to tracking personal data). Years of obsessing over my perfect future and chasing after resolutions via web sites, complicated timetables, moleskines, and spreadsheets have disarmed my denial and left me with some pretty hard-to-swallow facts.

In fact, I didn’t learn much in college. Even more disappointing, I didn’t really try. I spent years of my life trying to unravel the mystery of my disappointment: was it the city? The fact that I didn’t find my tribe? The weather? The cost of living? The food? The timing? I’m always searching for an explanation. I’m wondering why I can never see that invisible wall holding me back. Present-day me is appalled. Obviously it was none of those things. It was me. I got in my own damn way.

My mate calls it “Leigh Cooper syndrome,” the state of being wherein you’re permanently convinced going somewhere else would solve your problems. Maybe she’s on to something. Sure I like jet-setting all over the world and knowing I can start anew anywhere, but I also spend more time looking forward to the future than I do paying attention to the present. Worse still, when I finally do pay attention, I find I’m still heaping blame upon stuff that has no bearing whatsoever. It’s the city! The weather! The roommate! The boyfriend! The mailman! I can still easily talk myself into moving to a new place, convinced it will be different. You’d think I’d have figured the ruse by now.

Then again, it isn’t exactly a ruse. Every time I zig and zag geographically it’s awesome. I spend my time doing something new. I find different people. I develop favourite cafes and restaurants. I fall in love with new countries. I go on unforgettable adventures. I develop new interests. I become a little less ignorant each time I move. I spend too much time in parks. I agonise over picking a hypothetical neighbourhood to purchase future property in. I adore it. What can I say, I’m a dreamer. Even though I am 100% aware that my problems don’t change the same way time zones do, months pass and I get itchy feet again. I think about how awesome it will be when I change everything — my job, my zip code, my “personal brand” — and wipe the less glossy moments of my life on the remains of whatever city or situation I am leaving behind. And that new place? Of course I don’t imagine fighting with my boss in it or being bored on laundry day. So naturally when I fight with my boss and have no clean underwear I feel like a roving goldilocks in search of the perfect fit. This one’s too quiet. This one too small. Why can’t this work out juuuuuuust right? Where is my perfect fit? Why can’t I find it?

Because the best version of my life is not going to just spontaneously come together like that. This is the same reason university was boring. A dull subject or a bad professor can only bear so much of the blame. No matter how killer your education was (and mine was pretty unbelievable), the one skill I needed to learn was how to take responsibility for my own learning. No one else is going to do it for you. No one is pushing me. If I want those things, things like fulfillment, growth, a stellar career, a tribe of kindred spirits, a life seriously lived, it’s on me. It’s my job.

All through university I was waiting for these things to magically fall into place, and when they didn’t, I would seek out elaborate explanations. I loved the illusion of fellow compatriots who would help me shoulder the responsibility of my own happiness instead of facing it head on, alone, like everyone must. But when taking out the trash is your duty and your apartment smells like garbage, well, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. That’s why it’s easier to fight with your roommate about recycling than it is to actually recycle. Rather than blaming the true culprit, myself, for any unhappiness that came up, instead I whined and moaned about dull subjects and bad professors and the city and the weather and and recycling and anything that would prevent me from having to feel the crushing weight of real responsibility.

With much embarrassment I admit University was the time to learn my lesson, and when I didn’t, “responsibility for my own learning” became “responsibility for my own life.” Even after graduation I was still waiting for something else to swoop in scoop up the job. For once, figuring out what you want is the easy part. Figuring out how to get it is pretty easy too; it’s applying the knowledge that’s so tricky. I knew what I should have done, but I didn’t even attempt to do it.

As enraged as I am that this whole time I didn’t have to wait, that I could have been kicking ass years ago, the truth is, you learn your lessons when you learn them. Can’t rush it. It took me as long as it took me to figure out I can be hands off and let the big life decisions be made for me all I want, but even when I let someone else take the wheel, the responsibility for the outcome still has my name tattooed all over it’s backside. So now, I’m staring it down like I should have long ago. It’s time. My life is amazing, and I want more. I want more fulfillment. I want a dreamier job. I want to keep improving my Korean. And hells yeah I still want a six pack. Knowing is the easy part. No one else can help get them. It’s on me. And that’s both the most terrifying and the most empowering thing I ever learned.

I am thrilled that libraries exist, expanding my life goal list to unreasonable lengths, but the advice of experts and the how-to hypotheses can only take you so far. If I want to step it up, I’m going to have to do things a little differently. Right now, that means amputating my many flailing attempts to “figure it out.” It means doing more than I talk about doing. It almost certainly means shutting up for a while. It means feeling lost and scared witless but moving forward anyway. So this is me, moving forward. Taking responsibility. Stepping up. Wish me luck!

Four years ago, I spent most of my free time figuring out how to land better gigs. Now that I’ve got gigs I like, these days I’m working on how to keep my clients happy. I’ve come a long way. Back then, I was totally afraid to say no, even when it was in the client’s best interest. I thought dressing appropriately was important (do good work and no one cares). Most dangerously of all, I thought all you had to do to land the job was be the best. Just be the best at what you do and the work will come. I couldn’t have been more wrong. For starters, after you reach a certain level, there are plenty of people as capable as you are, and simply being the best isn’t good enough. You need more. You need to be pleasant to be around. You need to bring out the best in the people you work with. You need to market yourself properly. That’s what being the best really entails.

Now whenever I work with someone who does just that, I ask them what they think the most important part of the job is. I ask them if they have trouble finding work (they never do). I ask the their other clients why they like working with them so much. Although film gigs are a specific kind of beast, what I learned on set helped me keep my web design clients happy. And you know what? Whether you’re after landing better gigs, turning them into long-term gigs, or getting more client referrals, building any of that good mojo requires the same things.

Shut the hell up.
Stop bragging and get to work. Seriously, no one cares who you got to hang backstage with or what car you got to drive. The guys who sit around in pissing contests are too busy name dropping which films they’ve worked on to actually get anything done. The really accomplished people never talk about it. They’re too busy accomplishing more stuff. If you’re really so competitive you can’t shut the hell up, at least compete about what you’re doing not what you’ve done. Everyone on set likes a good bet going, so challenge people to see who can work harder. Who can get the DP to learn their full name. Who gets called back first. Who makes fewer trips to the grip truck. When you shut up and pay attention, you start to anticipate what other people need, and every field needs people who pay attention more than people who talk a lot.

Laugh instead of complain.
You work in film, buddy. Of course you don’t have all the stuff you need. Of course the project’s behind. Of course that thing is broken. The situation is always less than ideal. As my buddy Joe likes to say, “Creativity is not the absence of limitations, but their presence.” Expect it, get over it, and when the going gets tough, crack a joke and keep everyone in good spirits. Complaining will get you nowhere but the bottom of the morale barrel. So laugh instead. Your boss will appreciate it.

Don’t be a hero.
Don’t try to carry all the four by fours in one go. Don’t try to set up those C-stands at lightning speed. Don’t try to cut corners on your render. The deadline may be looming, but take a breath and do it properly. The risk of damaging equipment, wasting hours on a silly oversight, or injuring other crew members is too great. If you can’t move that amp by yourself, say so. If you need to borrow someone’s gloves, say so. Don’t try to be a hero, just try to be helpful.

Help without discrimination.
You’ve taken care of your own business but you don’t get to check out yet. It doesn’t matter which unit you’re in. If you see something you can help with, then help with it. Newbies seem to let the fear of stepping on somebody’s toes stop them from lending an often much needed hand. Don’t discriminate against who you can help, just help when and how you can. I’m all about a healthy break now and again, but you are here to work. The more you help, the more you’ll get called back.

Trust other people will do their job.
Give your colleagues the benefit of the doubt. They were hired to do their job, so trust that they will get it done. A team ceases to function the moment you stop trusting other members, and every crew is a team. You’ve got to hold people to their word, and you just might be surprised how many will step to the plate. Every once in a while, you’ll come across that guy whose job you really could do better, but by and large that guy is rare. It’s better to trust others will get it done and occasionally be proven wrong than the other way round.

Specialise, specialise, specialise
In Hollywood there are people who do nothing but run the teleprompter. There are teamsters that make a living as set drivers. The industry is big enough to support ultra-specialised technicians. It’s tempting to look at the small indie film world and think you have to be a jack of all trades. Knowing a little bit about everything is only helpful when it informs what you do. So pick something and master it. Get into the gritty and know as much as you possibly can about it. Spend more time on it than the next guy. Drill down and really specialise in something. Film is collaborative, so you won’t be able to do everything yourself anyway. Be good, really maddeningly good, so good they can’t ignore you good, at your thing. So when someone asks, who’s that? Everyone will know. You’re the awesome sound guy. You’re the camera op who does killer docs. You’re the compositing genius. The PM who will save you 50k.

See it through.
If you say you’ll be there at eight, be there at eight. If there’s a set, you’ll need to strike it. See the thing through and you’ll garner a great reputation. I have two drummer friends: Travis and J.R. J.R. is not as talented as Travis but he gets way more gigs. Travis spends a lot of time whining about how hard it is to get drumming gigs. J.R. on the other hand, is gainfully employed because he shows up when he says he will ready to play. He gives back tracks on time. He always brings his own mics just in case. He stays late when the album needs finishing. It doesn’t matter that Travis is a drummer savant, producers and professional musicians would rather work with J.R. So would I.

Remember whose project this is.
Is this your project? If you’re head honcho, then you’re allowed to tell people how to do their job. Otherwise, you will have to defer to the big boss man. I believe in lending your professional opinion and expertise, but at the end of the day, it’s not about what you want or how you’d do this, it’s about what the client wants. They need to be happy with the product, not you. This is the hardest part of the job, because oftentimes the big boss man doesn’t know what he’s doing and the client doesn’t know what she wants. It’s your job to figure out what they actually want and then deliver it. Never forget this, and you’ll find it a lot easier to say “sure thing!” with a smile.

Be grateful for the work.
You’re working with people, remember? Treat them like people. Be polite. Be considerate. Thank them for their time. Apologise for the inconvenience. Ask if it’s alright. Watch the corners when you’re carrying stuff. Shower before you come to work. Check your shoes for gunk. Tell others when they’re doing a good job. Express your gratitude. Being a little bit human goes a long way, so make the effort to be civil. When others are petty or snippy, meet them with kindness. Remember that being hired is a gesture that deserves some thanks. Never take the gig for granted and you’ll bring your best self to work.

Inspired by Anger Burger’s post last week, I thought it might be fun to talk bout the jobs I’ve held — the brilliant, the miserable, and the utterly ridiculous.

And those are just the jobs I can talk about. What about you? What fields have you dabbled in? What odd jobs have you taken?

Back by popular demand, I’ve got another batch of words of wisdom to help you cultivate the right attitudes for change. Check out my first post on mantras to live by to get started on the subject.

1. What you do everyday is more important than what you do occasionally. (via Gretchen Rubin)
It’s so easy to burn out on change, whether it’s a lack of willpower or a commanding pace of life, so when all seems lost, remember that what you do every day is way more important than what you do every once in a while. The everyday actions are the things you’re really committed to, the things important enough to make it into your already crunched day. These are the things that stick with you. If you’re going to make a change, don’t focus on being able to deadlift 150kgs, focus on lifting every day. Change starts on a much smaller scale than we think, just as the small routines we complete have a much larger impact than we might have imagined.

2. Shoot for the stars, you may land on the moon. (via my dreamy nature)
I’ve always said this phrase to explain to people why I’m such a dreamer. I think big and you should too. Really big. Expect to get there. It will seem absurd to everyone else, but when you aim for the big fish, you inevitably end up somewhere cool, regardless of whether you catch the whopper in the pond or not. Don’t be afraid to overshoot or to aim high. How else do you wind up on top? Ask yourself what really makes you and the greats of the world different, and you’ll be surprised how often we scale ourselves back instead of letting ourselves be big picture thinkers.

3. Make no apologies. (via Ross Wells)
I’m not ashamed of who I am and what I do, and even someone as infallibly confident as myself often makes too many apologies. Ramit Sethi calls it the “Eeyore effect”, I call it “youtube syndrome,” but anyway you slice it, overapologising is no good. Creative people often fall into the trap of apologising when they miss a post or the sound is bad or the focus off. I do the same thing. I used to regularly kowtow a world of “sorry”s when I sent a newsletter out too close to the end of the month. Don’t. Just show up with what you got and make punctuality or presentation or production value or whatever your private area for improvement. Not only will most people never notice, but you end up putting your best foot forward. I did a documentary shot entirely in noisy, crowded, dark restaurants all over Los Angeles. Sure the picture was grainy, the noise floor was higher than heaven, and the subjects hard to understand, but what are you going to do when you know your shooting conditions suck? You go with your gut. You do your best. You make no apologies.

4. You can’t eat the meat until you kill the cow. (via Outlandish)
It sounds like something Dr. Phil would say, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. You do have to walk before you can run if you don’t want bruises on your face, but the old adage is so much more than that. Once you’re ready for a steak, it’s really easy to start thinking about how you’re going to get it. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, if you want the meat you have to kill the cow first. So before you grow livid wondering where the steak life promised you is, pop in Bread and Barrels of Water until you remember that you haven’t killed the cow yet.

5. As in the beginning, so in the middle, so in the end. (via Danielle LaPorte)
It’s a Buddhist proverb I’ve heard before to describe infinite nature, but Danielle LaPorte gave it a whole new meaning for me. In her regular appearance with Mark Kelley on CBC, she spoke about trusting your intuition and your first impressions when it comes to business. While I do believe humans can change, I agree that most of us are unwilling to. If someone comes off as rude at first, they generally continue to be rude and are still rude when you decide to stop taking their rudeness. As it was at the start, in those first few seconds you thinsliced the situation, so it usually ends up being. Stop fighting the things that are unchangeable and changing what you can: in LaPorte’s case whether you work with them, in Buddha’s case how you look at the world, and in your case too.

Let me tell you about my views on the smartphone five years ago. Five years ago I was carrying around a rucksack everywhere I went that held my mobile, my palm pilot, my digital camera, my mp3 player, my TI-89 calculator, plus a paper agenda with my to-do lists, important documents, and maps, a 3.5″ hard drive and enclosure, a spindle of CDs for my car and a bundle of charging cables. Five years ago I toted around eight different objects on a daily basis with a combined weight of 8.5kg and still eschewed the idea of an all-in-one device.

Why? There were devices of that variety on the market, including the Blackberry and Palm Treo which dropped two years prior, many of which could have lightened my load, yet I was convinced none of them could do a series of combined tasks successfully. I required that the quality of my pictures, the features of my PDA, the speed of my data transfer, were maintained to the point that I ran the risk of back problems from a heavy bag in order to accommodate my digital needs.

It’s fairly insane to consider carrying around so many devices today, especially given my travel-heavy lifestyle, but at the time it was considered normal for tech-heads like me. It’s not because I was so gadget-lusty that I needed to try everything, and it’s not because I was so tight-fisted I wouldn’t go out and give the Treo a go, but it was that five years ago you couldn’t find a mobile device that did everything I needed it to. There was no device on the market that could give me cellular service, keep my calendar and contacts, take decent pictures, play most of my music, calculate differential equations, hold copies of my presentation, or store my data, let alone play videos, back itself up, or sync to my email account. Heck, there were hardly any internet-ready devices in the market at all five years ago.

Now there are numerous devices that perform multiple functions, and not only do them, but do them well. The camera on the Droid is better than my point and shoot camera was five years ago. 16GB of storage has never been so light or so sturdy as it is today. Cellular data coverage has become so popular you can use it as your primary source of the internet. These are equally insane times, but in a different way. People have finally jumped on the smartphone bandwagon, everyone keeps talking about digital convergence, and the projections that everything will move up to the cloud are in unanimous agreement.

Today, while rumours about the Apple tablet closing the gap into a single, everything device, I think people are too optimistic. It could be done, but the reality is that what I want in a device and what you want are going to be different, and both of us aren’t going to want a whole bunch of extras taking up system resources, adding bulk to the thing, and cluttering the interface. I still agree with my opinion five years ago: the all-in-one quality device will never exist. Just as you’ll never be able to grill steaks in a soup pot, the iPhone will never take pictures or videos as well a DSLR or an EX1 without ceasing to be an iPhone. The Nexus’s 3G coverage will not be as high-performing as a cable modem anytime soon. You still can’t watch TV on your phone on the bus. The Kindle can’t adequately display vivid National Geographic images. So yeah, devices are still specialised, but it’s okay. As much as I’d like it to be, my smartphone is not my computer, but it can do almost everything I need my computer for yet fits in my pocket and has a longer battery life. I can take pictures, edit them, and upload them to flickr. I can ad-hoc a live video broadcast that is automatically geotagged. I can ask this piece of metal for directions to “Roy’s Donut World” and it’ll get me there. I can play football with my mates or answer my work email from Amsterdam or write my own app for something that can fit in my pocket. That’s really incredible, and what’s more incredible is that none of it existed in a pretty, little, usable package five years ago.

The technology might have existed, but what’s really changed is the overlap between devices. Phones used to have atrocious calendar functions that didn’t sync to your desktop, but have you tried to get a PDA that doesn’t come with a network carrier contract? The old-school palm pilot of yesteryear has long since been swallowed up by more advanced smartphones. It’s not just smartphones that have evolved either. Canon’s new line of cameras can shoot full-size 1080p HD video and still function like the kind of quality still SLR camera you’d expect from the company. You can control your Sonos music system from your iPod touch and stream Netflix to your and your friend in a different city’s XBoxes.

It’s not just the devices that have evolved, but the way we use them. The ability to link up your social networks, to have the websites you read pushed to one location, to automate everything from file storage to television viewing is widely accessible. You can take a device that has great capability and customise it to meet your exact needs, without having to pull a linux and hand-code everything yourself. The idea isn’t to make one device to rule them all, because a gamer will never want the same things in a device that a business executive will. The idea is to increase the overlap and make everything play nice, so that instead of carrying around eight devices, you only need to carry one or two light, energy efficient, globally connected objects. If I’ve gone from a back-breaking rucksack to a single pocket’s worth of space and weight in five years, just think of where we’ll be in 2015.

My greatest fear in life is that I won’t be able to do the things I want to do. Maybe it sounds familiar to you, maybe it sounds kind of superficial, but the truth of the matter is I’m one of those few people that puts my long-term goals before much else. So, good as I am at accomplishing life goals (I’ve managed to finish 22 in the last 18 months and accrue over a dozen new ones), I still feel I’m selling myself short. I hate the idea of uni-tasking, especially when my list of life goals are so tantalising and exciting, yet every time I try to overdo it, no matter how detailed my plan of attack, I always burn out. We are just not used to implementing large-scale, long-term change or remembering more than 7 things at once; it just isn’t in our hardware. So, if you’re going to tackle a long list of areas you’d like to improve, you have to understand your limitations. Almost every self-help, personal development, and lifestyle design guru will tell you to narrow your range and pull your focus to one thing at a time, an approach I’ve spent my whole life fighting only to find it’s actually the best way to get things done. They tell you in great detail how to organise your list or how far away to put your deadlines, but no one ever explained to me why you can only chase after one habit right now. I never found a compelling enough reason to deviate from my do it all at once approach. Well, now that I’ve experienced some success at the unitasking method, I thought I’d let you know a few good reasons why you can really only do one thing at a time.

You know what happens when all the emails in your inbox are marked high priority? Not only do they all become equally unimportant, but you lose faith in the whole priority system. On top of that, it makes it so much easier to close your mail if you have 26 things you consider urgent instead of one nagging thing you needed to get done. The same thing happens when you try to tackle too many areas at once. The things you really want — to start a garden, to visit Paris, to run a marathon, whatever your goals — become lost in a mass of too many things, and it becomes overwhelming and far too easy to just turn your back on the stuff that matters to you most.

Moreover, life is hard enough. You’ve got to pay the bills and wash your garments, feed yourself and show up on time, and still find enough hours to sleep well and unwind so you don’t breakdown the next day. That’s nearly too many things to worry about already, never mind the limits on your money, your time, and more importantly your energy. You’ve only got so much energy, attention, and willpower to give, so you need to be ultra-discerning where you spend it. As much as I’d like to wallow every second of the day in my dreams, the truth is I have to go to work and I have to do my dishes and I have to sort through the mail. If I tried to learn more Japanese characters AND try new recipes to improve my cooking AND do 50 crunches every day, I wouldn’t have time or energy to go to work, do the dishes, or sort through mail, and I’d be in pretty hot water come the 31st. So instead I pick one of those things to work on, and make sure I can still function as a human being when I’m not quizzing myself on Kanji.

This is key. I’m not saying you should put stuff you don’t care about, like laundry or hoovering your carpet, before your dreams. I’m saying you need to take care of yourself first. You need to know your rent will be paid and your stomach full before you can worry about owning an Aston Martin. This is because you need to bring your A-game to make a change. You can’t be recovering from a stressful week at work and a bad head cold and expect to still hit the gym every day to start that new routine. It’s going to take an intense amount of energy to turn your dreams into reality, and you’re going to need a stable foundation to grow from, so recover first and hunker down second.

And it will take a surprising amount of energy. There will be lots of inertia to overcome, lots of emotional baggage and circumstantial barriers to surmount. It might be stressful at times, but these are dreams you really want, right? The effort should be worth it. Bottom line, you can’t put the same amount of effort into everything. You’re going to have to be a nazi about time drains, constantly asking yourself “is this really what I want to be doing right now?” You’re going to have to take the guesswork out of it when you reach that vital fork in the road: french fries or fruit? This is a lesson I learned from polyphasic sleep. I’ve always had trouble getting up in the morning, and though my goal was to adapt to a polyphasic schedule, when my alarm went off four hours after I fell asleep I seemed to conveniently forget that goal. I learned not to trust my 6am self and instead rely on my 6pm self to take away all my 6am self’s decision making authority. It wasn’t that I lacked discipline or motivation, it was that getting out of bed when you’re in desperate need of REM took more energy than my groggy, sleep-deprived, un-showered self could muster at sunrise. I did it though, because polyphasic sleeping was something I wanted, and it was worth every rough early morning. You have to know what you want, and concentrate your energies on getting it.

The really fiddly bit is that there will always be more things you want or need to put your effort into. Your trough will never be empty, your to-do list, never complete, so in the constant stream of desires and duties accomplishing anything feels rather anticlimactic. To combat the sense of futility that lets us give up on our dreams of having the Rock’s six pack or Linda Hamilton’s ass in T2, you have to find a way to make accomplishment satisfying. If you celebrate adopting an exercise regimen the same way you revel in returning a library book on time, you’re throwing a kink in what could be a huge motivator. Fulfilling your personal goal is not the same as finishing a household errand, so make that distinction as clear as possible and be clear about what really is a victory. If you aim for too many victories, they won’t be worth throwing a party for.

How do you pick which victories to aim for, then? I’m convinced most abandoned new years resolutions are due not to a lack of realism, but a lack of priorities. What really matters to you? Don’t answer right away. I’m not asking what you want off your plate right now, I’m asking what really matters to you. Make two lists. On the first list write down what you spend your time doing, starting with the piece that eats up the largest chunk of your time. On the second list write down what the most important things are to you. Compare. Is family your top priority yet you spend the most amount of time at work and playing golf with your buddies? Is travel your number one on the second list but keeping house the number one on the first? You don’t have to drastically redesign your life and hack the soul out of your time, the idea is to make you think about the relationship between where you want your priorities to lie and where you show the world they do. Perhaps the two need reconciling?

Okay, that little exercise was slightly unfair. Sometimes it is hard to even accurately judge such lists because certain tasks carry a heavy psychological weight we’re pretty good at pretending doesn’t exist. There’s that one thing you’re procrastinating that might even be a tiny, trivial task, like mailing a form or stopping by the DMV, but the longer you put it off, the greater the burden it becomes. Yet, in your brain you rationalise it, thinking it’s such a little thing that surely putting it off another week couldn’t do too much harm? WRONG. ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Just as having time isn’t nearly as important as using time wisely, the best judge of tasks and priorities is actually their emotional impact. Once you figure out the weight of each goal, then you simply tackle the one that’ll have the greatest emotional impact. It’s easier said then done, I know, and not just because quantifying your emotions comparatively is tricky, but because then you have to actually followthrough and take on that task, no matter how painful it may be. It might be painful, and it’s going to be hard, so if you try too many difficult things at once, you won’t have the emotional capacity to followthrough.

That’s of course the trickiest part, the followthrough. I could write a whole book on how we spend so much time planning and making lists and dreaming but rarely do we ever do. It’s not easy and there are many real barriers (like being unemployed) and many fake barriers (such as lacking discipline), but the reality is that pursuing your dreams is hard. That’s why you have to tackle them one at a time. If 16 burly footballers come at you, the goalie, simultaneously each armed with a soccer ball, you’d be the next Edwin Van Der Sarr if you could stop them all. Why? Because your dreams require all sorts of different things from you. Being well-rested requires you sleep in yet making breakfast every morning requires you to get up early, and while not all of your goals will be in direct conflict, they will all require you to, well, dive in different directions to get them. Unless you’re Van Der Sarr himself, trying to pursue all those various dreams at once will overwhelm you and probably cost you the game. So focus on one footballer and block that one ball. Focus on one dream so you can actually followthrough.

There’s a bonus in all of this though, because by concentrating your effort onto one individual task you A) find a focal point, a central aim about which you can obsess, let passion overrun, and inject excitement back into your life, and B) forget all about whether or not you fail and instead do. Even if the process of pursuing your dream to get free of debt means you won’t be seeing as many movies in the theatre as you’d like, the relief you’ll feel at being in the clear is far greater than any disappointment you could muster at missing Sherlock Holmes.

So do yourself a favour. Recover before you tackle anything, clear your plate and define your real priorities, make the right thing the only thing, remove the biggest emotional burden first or give yourself the biggest break first, but most of all, only do one thing at a time. That’s more than enough. Life is tough enough already.

New Years is a time for resolutions and reflections. Usually people spend the month of January trying to adhere strictly to the new idea of who it is they want to be. New gym memberships and exercise routines, new diet plans and a huge purge of possessions, and new enrollments in language classes and stricter bedtimes are all well and good, but generally I find a new perspective does more than any resolution list could. So, instead of writing about all the to-dos and endless goals I have, something that I don’t review in December but rather revisit regularly throughout the year, I’m writing about the kind of attitudes necessary for true change. It’s not enough just to read these mantras and say, “oh yeah, that makes sense” and expect some real change to come about, you have to really adhere to these adages, you have to shift your perspective and make these mantras more important than whatever excuses your feeble ego could muster, because on some level you know that the mantras you really understand are the ones you really need to hear. So good luck with your 2010 endeavours, happy new year, and may these mantras help you on your way to whatever dreams you’re currently pursuing.

1. It’s never a good time. (via tiny coop)
If you’re waiting to do something, to buy something, to be something, to start something, essentially if you’re putting anything on hold until the stars magically align and the path before you is clear, you’ll be waiting forever. I’m a firm believer in living now and not slaving away, longing for some idea of the promised land 14 years, 40 years, your entire life later. The truth is, it’s never a good time to buy a car, to have a baby, to finish that project. It’s never the right moment to say that, or to let go of this, so don’t lie in wait. Recognise there is no perfect moment, and waiting for it is just another way to procrastinate actually doing what you need to do. Life is never fully-baked, so why are you waiting for the kitchen timer to buzz? It’s never cooked through, so just take it out when it looks right and worry about eating it later.

2. Do what feels right. (via my university mates)
It seems simple, but “do what feels right” is one of the most complicated mantras to not just believe, but to truly live. There are at least one million reasons to do what feels important, or what feels comfortable, or what feels logical. But what feels right is often just the thing we need. It feels right for a reason, so stop denying who you are and just go with it. Do what feels right, and the rest — the joy, the success, the freedom, the fulfillment — will follow.

3. Put the paint on the barn. (via family friends)
Two guys go to paint a barn one guy spends a lot of time carefully picking out paint, searching around the garage for the right-sized rollers, and trying to find the ladder. The other guy grabs the first can of paint and the first paintbrush he can find and goes to start painting the barn. When the day is over, one guy has painted half the barn, and the other guy has barely started. Whenever you’re faced with a task, before you spend hours agonising over it, ask yourself whether it’s more important to pick out the paint or to put the paint on the barn. More often than not, you’d do better to just put any paint on the barn. It doesn’t matter if you’ve found the perfect shade of mauve, or if you can’t reach the roof yet, the simple truth is that your barn will remain in disrepair until you put the paint on it.

4. Fail better. (via Adam Gottesfeld)
The little diddy goes something like “if you aren’t failing, there’s no way you can be succeeding.” There’s some truth to that; people who are wildly successful have failed quite a bit more in their lives than the average Joe who hasn’t pursued enough to fail more than once or twice. I’m not advocating you just throw statistics at the problem and try more so you can fail more, what I’m suggesting is that you stop counting failures and instead start qualifying them. Don’t worry about failing, worry about failing better. Did you learn from the experience? Were you in the know when all was tanking? How will your next attempt be better? So you failed, who cares. What matters is that you failed better — better than the last time, better than the other guy, better than you expected, whatever better matters in your field — failed in a higher quality way each time around. Everyone fails, so make your failures count.

5. Any number is better than zero. (via Gary Vaynerchuk)
Unlike failure, where not all failures are equal, progress is progress no matter what progress it is. Any progress is better than no progress. One dollar is better than no dollars. A handful of followers are better than no followers. Hell, even negative numbers are better than zero; they at least tell you something, usually that you’re doing something wrong, while zero means that you’re stagnate. No movement, no improvement, no progress. The number itself doesn’t matter so much as the fact that it isn’t zero. And if you’re back at zero, keep moving, anywhere, somewhere, because any number is better than zero.

Generally, I hate rewards programmes. I believe in complete services instead because I’m driven mad when companies pretend to offer you something but instead just waste your time or fill your inbox with junk mail. When was the last time your supermarket rewards system saved you more than .02% of your total? When was the last time your bookseller membership’s 20% off actually paid for itself? I was an Arclight member for years and dozens of $14 movie tickets never once got me so much as a free popcorn. There’s nothing fair about frequent flier miles you can’t actually redeem and magazine subscriptions that haunt you for years after you’ve stopped subscribing and I’d be lying if I said I was comfortable with so many unused perks accounts opened in my name. Yet, the perk has a purpose. At their hearts, rewards programmes aren’t evil things. It doesn’t have to be a one-way street, and even someone as skeptical as I can fall prey to a few well executed perks. As the holidays roll around there are quite a few point systems sending me weekly email reminders to redeem before 2010 arrives, and though most of these newsletters are auto-filtered into my bin, every once in a while a company gets it right. Hateful though I may be, there are a few perks programmes that I actually adore.

1. Godiva Chocolate Rewards
Make no bones about it, gourmet chocolate is a luxury good. I enjoy a nice truffle now and again, and I think fancy consumables make for a classy gift, which is how I ended up at the Godiva store purchasing a host gift. I’m all about free rewards, but when I enrolled in Godiva’s rewards programme, I did not expect to actually use it, let alone enjoy it as well. It’s pretty simple, for signing up you get free shipping on one online order, one box of two candies, and one free piece of chocolate a month. That’s right, you get a free $2 truffle, any truffle in the store, every month. You can walk into the store and get a free candy, just like that. Of course, that’s the genius of it all. Godiva says, “Hey, we get that gourmet chocolate is a little too pricey to splurge on all the time. But now you have an excuse to come in and get excited about chocolate without having to buy anything,” and you do. I find myself in the store once a month to keep that free truffle from going to waste, and, I’m sure to Godiva’s joy, I buy my token gifts exclusively from Godiva, occasionally treat myself to a half-dozen truffles, and have become a snobbish elitist who eschews the competition. It wouldn’t work if chocolate wasn’t already a trivial purchase, but because the freebie gets me in the door, I’ve gone from a rarely consumer to a regular customer. Plus, I get free high-quality chocolate every month.

2. Half Price Burger Night
My local pub round the corner is just that, a pub round the corner, and as such my expectations are pretty low. I go because it’s a good place to meet up with mates and catch a pint, to grab a seasonal Sam Adams on tap, and to watch the Man U games they occasionally air on Sundays. It does its job well, but their breakfast sucks, the service is mediocre, and I’d ordinarily never frequent the place for anything more than a nightcap or a football game. Except every Wednesday is half-price burger night, so, presuming I come early enough for happy hour, I can get a beer, a burger, and a side of luscious mac’n'cheese for something in the single digits. Glorious, and brilliant, because now I’m a customer who instead of never buying a meal, goes once a week. We both win, and if that isn’t perky, nothing is.

3. Amazon Coupons
Paying for Amazon Prime was the best decision I ever made (I had to talk myself out of buying paper towels via Amazon yesterday and go to the grocer’s like a normal person), but I expect that decision to pay off. It’s a service I paid for. What I didn’t expect is all the coupons that come from buying things. I much prefer Amazon’s MP3 service to buying a hard album — much less waste all around, plus you get it instantly and it saves me a step to getting the album on my iPod — but Amazon Prime won’t save you much on digital downloads. Amazon, to encourage me to buy more music, keeps giving me $1 off my next album purchased through the MP3 store. They keep giving me 10% off my next MP3 store purchase. They keep giving me special prices on the new releases by artists I’ve already bought from them. Except, unlike an endless stream of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons I keep receiving as junk mail, I actually use these coupons. $7 is insanely cheap for a full-length album, and the break suddenly makes me not only buy more music from that store, but makes me insanely loyal. Between routinely getting music freebies and constantly getting my 2-day shipping packages a day early, Amazon has made me into a die-hard customer for life. That’s intelligent marketing.

What about you? Any perks that work?

If I wanted to sound like a douche-bag, I’d assert that I am indeed a “content creator” looking to enter the “VOD-sphere” and possibly “hypersyndicate.” Or I could just tell you that I make videos, and yeah, you can watch them online if you want. After attending a three-day conference on the subject of streaming video and listening to some of the questions asked, I can’t help but feel there’s a lot of misinformation going on around the ideas of online video that I’d like to set straight. Now, I’m in no way an expert, but just because I don’t bill myself as a social media consultant doesn’t mean I’m completely clueless about the subject. Let’s just say there are 10 really obvious myths about streaming video that with just a little research are fairly easy to disprove, if not easy to dispel.

1. Your video can only survive if it’s interactive.
Flat out wrong. Social media is great, I’m a huge fan of it, but in the excitement over its development, a few of us seem to have lost touch. First of all, avid social networkers are a small piece of the pie. Not everyone’s on facebook, and not everyone on facebook is an active participant. If this wasn’t proof enough, let’s take something like TV. Just about every home has a television nowadays, including your grandma’s, but I would love to shake the hand of the grandma that’s on twitter (no offence to grandmas) and catches up on her soap operas via the internet. The point is, youtube may have caught on, and “vote for your favourite!” is the standard now, but to put all your eggs in the social media/interactive basket is to only appeal to a small percentage of your possible audience. Second of all, your product can’t be all that great of a product if it can’t stand on its own without the social aspect. I’m a member of the Gowalla community and not a member of the Foursquare or Brightkite community. Why? Because none of my real-life friends are into that sort of thing. Foursquare sucks without a network of people you actually know, and Brightkite has no purpose if all your “friends” are strangers you’d never meet up with. Gowalla on the other hand is still fun even if it’s just a location tracking app. Social is cool, but your product/service/purpose still has to be at least a little fun without the social aspect.

2. You can make money off of online video.
This is a huge misconception that’s hurting the industry rather than helping it. Now, if you’re online video is associated with a broadcast or studio content available elsewhere, then you can still be making money off of the endeavour (I’m talking to you, Netflix and CNN Money), but if you’re relying on online video itself to foot your bills, then you’re chasing a wave that will never come. The costs are still too high, there’s no good advertising model that actually delivers, and while users will pay for services, they’ll almost never pay for content. Should you be able to make money off of online video? Yes, but it’s damn near impossible unless you’ve already got a billion-dollar budget at present or unless you’re using it as a promotional tool to sell something else.

3. HD is the standard now (and everything is going mobile).
This is a big whopper of a lie. HD still has almost no demand; it’s all culture. If you offer HD you look legit, but pretty much no one is watching in high definition. The percentage of people who subscribe to HD cable and own a HD television is still a fraction of the market, and the number of online video viewers who can even stream video at speeds fast enough to accommodate HD still hasn’t reached 10%. It’s the trend to move towards HD certainly, but right now it’s still in infancy. There’s no HD standards, little HD-capable device proliferation, and a minority of carriers even providing it. Going for HD might be reaching for the stars, and our media rocket hasn’t broken the atmosphere quite yet. Same goes for mobile devices. Sure more and more of us have single-use, multi-use, and “smart” mobile devices, like cell phones, in-flight DVD players, and automobile flat screens, but being able to watch youtube on your droid doesn’t necessarily mean mobile streaming is here. There are hundreds of problems with streaming that much data to users, even fewer players in the CDN market able to deliver consistently, and almost no telcos ready, able, and willing to step up the game. Like HD, video-enabled devices are certainly the direction we’re going, but the train’s only just left the platform and it’s a long journey ahead.

4. Subscription is dead.
Not true. Subscription is hardly dead, and the model might be the saving grace of the industry if we can ever get it together enough to offer more software as a service and make the subscriptions worth paying for. As I mentioned before, pursuing ad-supported online video isn’t really working well. Either you don’t get the bills paid, or you inundate your customers with cheap advertising and they have a terrible user experience. Neither sounds like a great option. But give ad-free, unlimited access so long as you pay your subscription fee, and it isn’t such a bad idea. In fact it works with video on demand precisely because it doesn’t work with services like Napster. Streaming video on demand isn’t something you own, like a CD is, it’s something you do. You don’t suddenly lose all the music you thought you owned if you don’t pay the bill, because you can’t lose the experience of having watched a movie. The problem isn’t finding an alternative to subscriptions, it’s making the subscriptions feature-rich and easily available enough to be satisfying and the price point still low enough to reach the masses.

5. Digital distribution has totally taken off.
Don’t let iTunes statistics fool you; there are still some major problems with digital media distribution models. It’s great for the distributors, but there’s absolutely zero incentive for the customer to invest in digital assets. A blockbuster on iTunes (if you download to own) is at least double the price of going out and buying the DVD. You could buy a Blu-Ray disc of a new release at Best Buy for less than you could download an ’80s classic on iTunes. It’s even worse for other digital distributors. So how did we buy into this model? Because the music industry wanted you to. Downloading an mp3 of the latest Vampire Weekend album on Amazon’s MP3 store is actually less expensive than it is to have the physical CD shipped to you. Buying that album is better than pirating it because it’s faster, better quality, and you know what you’re getting. They tricked us into thinking record stores were a thing of the past. But downloading a movie is slower, worse quality, and harder to find than just buying or renting or netflixing it. No incentive, no selection, and no storage space means digital distribution of video is still taxi-ing before takeoff.

6. Viral is good.
Viral is not good. It’s hardly an advertising model, and it drives me bonkers when I’m asked to begin a viral campaign for anything. You can’t force viral. You can push through word-of-mouth — package it as clever and interesting and it gets re-tweeted, re-embedded, and re-purposed, giving it exposure to many more eyeballs than before — and that’s a good idea. Even if I could make a video reach viral status on command, “going viral” is a terrible idea, because by definition viral content is short-term. It’s quick, explosive, and then gets so oversaturated that everyone goes from loving to hating your product faster than the guy that lists side effects of drugs after commercials. Want examples? “Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.” See what I mean? You want your product to be treated seriously, thoughtfully, and well-recieved if and when it’s circulated around the cyber-rodeo, not as a constant source of wisecracks for decades to come (”Where’s the beef?” anyone?) or as the posterchild for THAT thing (remember the poor lightsaber kid!). So get over viral and go back to marketing basics.

As you might have surmised, I am a blogger. I’m not just a blogger. I’m a vlogger, and a photographer, and a traveller, and a filmmaker, and many other -ers besides. This can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be worrisome. Through my blogging and general out-there-ness, I’ve ended up making portions of my life transparent. If you’re someone like Kevin Rose or Barack Obama, making part of what you do transparent can be a real success strategy, but if you’re someone a little less deliberate, you might find yourself in hot water pretty quickly. As with anything on the internet, there is common sense, and there are risks that supersede common sense. Giving out your home address is not the wisest course of action in life or online, but sometimes you don’t give it out, someone else does, and while there’s a lot of legal precedent for identity theft and privacy invasion in the real world, the rules governing online privacy have a much shorter history.

Before I delve headfirst into my take on online privacy, first I’d like to make a distinction between safety and privacy. These are two different concerns, though they often overlap. Privacy, to me at least, is about the balance between your right to express freely and your right to keep information out of the public eye. While safety is often a violation put upon us by others, the extent of your privacy is often a choice you make. So how do those of us exercising our free speech (transparently in places like the US and often anonymously in places like Iran) practise transparency while still maintaining our privacy, and the privacy required to retain our safety?

PROBLEM 1: In vs. Beyond Our Control

It’s worrisome because I find myself making decisions about what to write, do, or film based on these sorts of questions. A healthy dose of internet paranoia is probably wise, but it’s a shame that there are whole chunks of photographs I’ve taken, for instance, that I’ll never publish on the internet because they either give away too much personal information or could possibly divulge someone else’s. Some things I’d like to keep private, but sometimes the far reaches of google get the better of you. If you create a myspace page and then remove it, does it still exist? If you delete a file on your hard drive, can you get it back? If you send a private email, can you erase that information? Joi Ito, the CEO of Creative Commons and internet entrepreneur with some pretty strong privacy opinions, in an interview with the Japan Times spoke about a series of lists and references, essentially information about you collected and held onto by others that you have no control over. It happens offline too, but it’s so much easier to unearth online, that the thought of blogging personal or professional information, as Ito does, can seem terrifying for some. Ito combats the problem by controlling the information put out there, and he claims that by publishing the information first on his own platform, it’s much harder for it to be misunderstood because it’s framed in the proper context. He controls the information and thus maintains a level of privacy.

Ito’s tactic is an interesting one, and while my own writing can seem very personal, I honestly believe I don’t post anything I wouldn’t tell a stranger at a bus stop. There’s an alarming amount of information about me floating around the ethers already, and any determined hacker or con artist or wrongdoer could find out shedloads of personal information about not just me, but about you too with just a few internet searches and a phone call or two. So it has always been, and just because you don’t have a digital alarm system that tells you when someone is breaking and entering doesn’t mean having one would help. The thing is, there is information I wouldn’t divulge to a stranger at a bus stop, and that information certainly doesn’t get published here.

PROBLEM 2: Ownership vs. Privacy

So what’s the difference between the photos I put up on flickr and the photos of me on facebook? If I publish my photos to flickr, I’m controlling the content. I have no control over who’s putting photos of me on facebook. But with facebook comes the illusion of granular control. Because there are privacy settings, people feel okay putting up pictures, regardless of whether they use those settings. I’m guilty of it, sometimes I post pictures of passerby that may not want to have their photos available for download. It’s a risk I take, because I use flickr as a platform for my work and as a way to share my life with friends and family, and generally, more good than ill comes of it. Just because I have ownership of that photo though, does not mean that I have no moral qualms about publishing pictures of my friends and family. The internet is great for sharing my travel pictures with those I know, and showcasing my photography to those I hope to know, but I’m uncomfortable knowing that there are photos of me floating around facebook that I don’t even know were taken. It’s not a supposition, it’s fact by now.

It all comes down to your boundaries. A fellow vlogger in Osaka that I follow, Scott from Unrested, brings up a good point about other people’s privacy. There are certain no-nos that we all seem to agree on, whether we’re in Japan or in America. You can’t just walk around filming anyone or anything. You can’t film (and often blog about) your workplace, for example, if you intend on keeping your job. While there are laws (as any photojournalist knows by heart) protecting your right to take pictures in public places and laws sanctioning your freedom of speech, singling out others and exposing parts of their lives is considered an invasion of privacy, culturally at least. Unrested is married, but he asserts that he will never show his wife or his children in his videos, and in my opinion, rightfully so. “This isn’t their hobby, this isn’t their craft,” he says, and as such it would be unfair to put their faces unwillingly in front of all to see via the interwebs. He takes the risk but doesn’t throw it upon others. Merlin Mann, on the other hand, has no problem discussing, filming, and posting pictures of his baby girl, Ellie. So for him, the line falls in a different place.

Where’s that line between personal and public? It appears to be wherever you can get away with drawing it, because who you are changes everything. If you’re Scott, who has a large number of subscribers and whose videos garner substantial view counts, your line has to be pretty clear. If you’re 14-year-old Jane from Salt Lake, you can probably post videos of your family reunion and nothing will come of it. If you’re Paris Hilton, you’ve got to be okay with that sex tape leaking out before you even film it. It might be unfair, especially as your standards change, but it’s a fact of life.

PROBLEM 3: Good vs. Bad Judgement

The other half of the problem with digital privacy is social. Anything you post can be used against you at any time, any place. Treat digital like it’s never truly gone, because that facebook photo could turn off a potential employer, and that twitter comment could get you fired. On the other half of the coin, anything you post will be used to support you at any time, any place. That potential employer might see your blog posts illustrate how knowledgeable you are about finance, and that video of you dancing might fund your next vacation. The problem is, socially we keep condemning people for having opinions and activities outside of their professional image, but then we keep asking them to. We’re expected to be social networkers but put ourselves out there and still carry the same cleaned up image politicians and their PR teams create. I’m not talking about reputation blemishes, I’m talking about having a public opinion, a public face. Be forward thinking and with the times, but only in an outdated, conservative way. As long as this dichotomy exists, we won’t be able to build clear legal and moral boundaries around online privacy.

I won’t lie, it terrifies me to think that years from now I might be regretting writing these very words as my interviewer asks me, “We see you’ve written on your website about Korea…” They can’t hold your support of gay marriage against you, but enjoying South Korean cinema could still be a liability, never mind that my two years of blog posts thus far illustrate I am reading and thinking about contemporary issues like healthcare and international relations, spending my time and money experiencing other cultures instead of, say, doing drugs in my mum’s basement and watching trash television. It’s a double standard in its own way; it’s great that you write but it’s still a strike against. I’m sure something somewhere will come back to bite me but I make no apologies, because I am presenting a true and honest version of myself. That’s my solution: to be the same person on my weblog that I am in real life. I’m not hiding my name or masking my whereabouts. I’m putting myself out there because I believe I have something to say, and hopefully my consistency and character will be enough to see it through.

CONCLUSION

Here’s where the real discussion begins, because in spite of all the dangers and all the problems that come with putting yourself so out there, people still do it. Personally, the benefits of blogging currently outweigh the risks. As someone is passionate about new media and would like to continue working in the field, not participating would deny me a great experience. Putting my work on display has allowed me to become a part of projects that would ordinarily never have come my way. The community of bloggers and vloggers has been a huge source of inspiration and both personal and professional development for me, and I enjoy giving back to the same society that supported me when I decided to become a serious traveller. If the costs start outweighing the benefits, then I’ll probably reconsider my participation, but for now I’m willing to put my word on the line for the better parts of the experience. There are of course still a great many risks, but I do my best to mitigate them.

I’m a person, not a robot, not a secret team writing under one alias, not a committee designed to test you. As such, I have feelings, I am under time constraints, and I always run the risk of upsetting someone. So let me lay this on the line: this website is my personal vantage on the world, comprised of thoughts, opinions, first hand accounts and experiences, and a good deal of speculation. At risk of sounding like a copyright disclaimer, please know the views expressed here are mine and mine alone, and the writing published here was penned by and belongs to me. I want to believe that I’m making a difference with the words I say, and I’d hate for anything to be a) taken out of context and misconstrued, b) passed off as something it isn’t, or c) held accountable as anything but my own thoughts, opinions, and experiences. While this website is my personal blog, this website is not professional writing. I am not a published writer at present or a professional journalist, in fact, I’m not even a civilian journalist, and I assure you there’s no team of editors proofreading, fact checking, and ghostwriting anything you see on the site. That said, I know I can get it wrong sometimes. If you find anything erroneous in my posts, just let me know. Email me, direct message me on twitter, leave a note in the comments, message me on youtube, however you let me know I would be grateful for the assistance and more than happy to do a little more research, correct the misinformation, or even take down something wildly off-base. If you disagree with what I write, I’m open to a dialogue. That’s the beauty of a blog: contact me, write or film a response, comment my posts, or even reference my site. While I refuse to entertain hatemail for hate’s sake, I am more than willing to consider and give credence to decent arguments and other valid viewpoints. I’m in it for the exploration and the discussion and the expression, not to shout down to the world from my soapbox.

Please also know that, like other bloggers, I often reference and link to other people’s material (though I will never republish it or claim it as my own). This is meant purely to spread the joy and share some of the neat stuff I love with the readers of this website. I think the world deserves to discover some of the amazing work people are doing and am often excited to further the word-of-mouth. If you happen to be making any of this content and are uncomfortable with my allusions, think I have violated your rights or privacy, or feel I have taken it too far, let me know. The last thing I want to do is prevent the artists and designers, figureheads and companies I admire from doing well, so I’d be happy to remove content or come to an accord that we can both agree on.

Sources from this post include merlin mann’s personal accounts, Joi Ito and his interview with the Japan Times, Scott from Unrested’s great videos, Barack Obama’s whitehouse.gov and Kevin Rose. If you look closely, you’ll find I’m not the only one being upfront about who I am and what I do. Chris Gen, John Eckman, The Budak, Cabel Sasser, Gary Arndt, Dustin Curtis, and too many others to count are doing the same thing.