KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

25 February 2009 22:00 PST

ray guns are not the future, electronic pop/rock deep cuts are

Every Wednesday night at 10pm I host a 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for this week’s show. Feel free to tune in live to the show next week at kscr.org. In the meantime, enjoy.

It sounds strangely contradictory, I know, to embrace something as daunting as performance anxiety. Not only to accept an audience watch you perform, but to invite judgement on it. It seems like a terrible idea to open yourself up to such forces, especially if performance is neither your livelihood nor your forte, but before you experience a minor panic attack at the very thought and read no farther, I assure you, there is a way to use just the tiniest bit of performance anxiety to your advantage. So don’t let fear of failure ground you, but instead use that same debilitating force to catapult you forward.

Life Goal: solve a rubik’s cube

I’ve often been asked what it is that drives me to accomplish so much, or how I manage to find time to fit in all the things on my “one day” list. My secret is much simpler than you’d think: accountability. My list of life goals isn’t just a torn sheet of notebook paper ferreted away in my sock drawer but a well-documented, self-published list of to-dos I’ll tell anyone who cares to know about. The benefit of this goes beyond just forcing yourself to take the list seriously, but extends to holding yourself subconsciously accountable. People will start asking, “how’s the new workout routine going?” or “what have you learned to cook so far?” and even if they don’t needle you about your goals, a small part of you expects them to. This makes you orders of magnitude more likely to start working out, or to sign up for a marathon, or to learn to cook. It’s the same idea with the NaNoWriMo declaration, or the Power of Less pledge. By publicly announcing your intentions, you add a dimension of reality to your goals. They are now promises you’ve made to the world, and it’s much harder to break a promise to others than it is to break a promise to yourself.

Life Goal: visit Japan

Moreover, inviting any subsection of the public (family, friends, or as public as complete strangers) into your personal improvement regimen can be constructive in ways you may not have considered. For example, one of my personal goals was to live somewhere completely foreign, and while I had assumed this would entail a long-term move to a foreign capital and years of language lessons, a friend reminded me that studying abroad for six months clearly classifies as living somewhere. I ended up living abroad for over six months, which required a temporary resident visa. I accomplished this goal much earlier than anticipated because of outside help I never would have received had I not made my intentions public. If one of your goals is to speak Elvish, you may discover one of your best mates is fluent in the fictional language but generally too embarrassed to bring this fact up. You now have an Elvish tutor. Or if your aim in life is to bake the perfect loaf of French bread, one of your avid blog readers or New Years partygoers might own a bakery and be more than happy to help you learn the craft. You never know where taking your private to-do list above the table will take you.

Life Goal: live abroad

Most importantly, taking your life goals public at first seems like a risky thing to do, but it’s an important step in making your dreams reality. You don’t have to send out a letter of intent to everyone you know, but you can confide in a few choice friends or join a community of other ambitious folks like yourself (check out 43 Things if you’re intrigued or need some goal inspiration). If you’re interested in sailing you can join a sailing enthusiast group, or if you’d just like to finish War and Peace, start a facebook group. Purchase a fitness tracker or play Wii Fit if you don’t want fellow humans privy to your BMI or weight stats. You don’t need the world to know your goals, you just need someone to. It helps you be honest with yourself to know someone else is watching, with the slightest chance of judgement.

Life Goal: time travel

Still unsure of how powerful just a little performance anxiety can be? Try one simple exercise. Every week, say every Sunday evening for one month, take out a blank sheet of paper and write down what you accomplished that week. What did you spend your time doing? What do you remember from the last seven days? What will you take away from it? Once you have that list in front of you, it will become abundantly clear how you feel about the way you spend your time, and just knowing you spent a humiliating amount of time staring at the ceiling might be enough to motivate you to take up that new hobby. I’ll share a personal example. I knew I was going to be abroad for some time, and I knew I wanted a way to share my experiences with my friends and family while far away and with limited internet access. So I decided to create a monthly newsletter called Exposure. It seemed like a great idea at the time, but the first three months I tried to write the newsletter, I found I had nothing to write. Sure I could fill up about half a page with inane dribble, but at the end of every draft I looked at my finished product and decidedly felt my life was not worth reading about. But I kept at it, and knowing at the end of the month I had to write a newsletter made me seek out more photo opportunities, made me take my camera everywhere with me, made me plan more fun travels, made me think about my big-picture list every thirty days. The fact that my family and friends, the very people whose opinions I value most, were expecting something to read pushed me to live a read-worthy life. I’ve now been publishing my newsletter for over a year and to be perfectly honest, feel the last year of my life has been the most accomplished yet.

Life Goal: snowboard

So a little performance anxiety and a little vulnerability can go a long way. I’m a huge believer in transparency (as evident by my website) for the openness and opportunity for support it provides. As Leo from zenhabits writes, we should never fear mistake but instead celebrate our failures. Every mistake is a precious opportunity to learn, to pay attention, and to grow. A bit of pressure to get it right ASAP will help keep you on track doing your best. In case you do stumble, it’s also uplifting to have a network of followers to help pick you back up, turning what had potential for public humiliation into a support system, transforming private failures into public opportunities for change. Be brave, and I urge you to let performance anxiety help you rather than hinder you by going public with your goals.

On my plate: homemade wild rice pancakes with sliced bananas and pure maple syrup

KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

18 February 2009 22:00 PST

french touch, disco mix, superhouse

Every Wednesday night at 10pm I host a 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for this week’s show. Feel free to tune in live to the show next week at kscr.org. In the meantime, enjoy.

KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

11 February 2009 22:00 PST

instrumental hip hop, underground rap, new skool soulfunk: in short the freshest flippin beatz you ever hearrrd

Every Wednesday night at 10pm I host a 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for this week’s show. Feel free to tune in live to the show next week at kscr.org. In the meantime, enjoy.

On my plate: natural red spice cake with creme anglaise and raspberries

On my plate: Daikokyua ramen special in Little Tokyo (the closest to authentic ramen I can get stateside). Read about Daikokyua here

On my plate: teriyaki glazed salmon and sesame sugar snap peas with citrus dressing

KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

04 February 2009 22:00

electronica, drum ‘n’ bass, classical/techno fusion

Every Wednesday night at 10pm I host a 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for this week’s show. Feel free to tune in live to the show next week at kscr.org. In the meantime, enjoy.

On my plate: southern-style johnnycake with cinnamon sugar and Minnesota maple syrup