Quintessential Studios' Weblog

Alternate Title: What Inspires Me? (Every G’damn Thing I Witness!)

A recent podcast discovery of mine is Scruffy Thinking by Kanen Flowers.

I’ve known about his That Post Show podcast for some years now and his Life Zero one (now defunct) a bit too.

Since the return of That Post Show (there was a bit of a hiatus) I noticed that it was under the banner of Scruffy Thinking, apparently an umbrella moniker which describes where the idea well springs from.

I, at first, just perused the “new” podcast looking for post related content. One guest who caught my attention on That Post Show was Merlin Mann. Sorry, I’m late to the show but I didn’t know who he was. Still don’t really but he’s really smart and thus funny. I am utterly impressed with his ability to geek out on Star Wars and take you on the longest freaking tangents only to be spot on with every step of that journey and bring you right back around to the salient point of the topic at hand. I really admire his ability there, definitely a quality I wish I had.

It’s so funny how he keeps going on the tangent, all the while apologizing for doing so and still keeps going! Just fucking epic!

So, searching for more Merlin Mann content, I find Scruffy Thinking podcast episode 18, “Chasing Wildebeests”. This particular episode also has Stu Maschwitz, writer of The DV Rebel’s Guide, a book that just happens to be in a lot of independent filmmaker’s library, including mine.

I commute about an hour to work, on the days I work, and podcasts provide a great way to get more filmmaking inspiration and education (mostly inspiration).

This particular episode is also an hour and forty-four minutes long! So, it took two sides of my commute to finish but well worth it. So much so, that I’ve listened to it a number of times. I think the reason it resonates so much for me is that it talks about a lot of the things that are constantly on my mind: priorities, doing what you love vs. a “day job” and time management (which is really “priorities” isn’t it?) especially “family time”!

Kanen’s grandma, I think has had to have been one of the most amazing influences on his life, mainly because of two reasons that I know of: buying him his first computer and giving him the advice to follow what you love to do and you won’t have to worry about making a living, it’ll happen. Looking back on my life, my Grandmothers were very influential to me as well. I think I could go on for quite a long time about how important grandparents are to a child. Parents too, obviously, but sometimes a grandparent has just a bit more of a broader view. They’ve seen a bit more of what life really comes down to and imparting that loving view to a kid brings a much needed balance, they may not get otherwise.

So, in the “Chasing Wildebeests” podcast, that particular advice is examined in great detail. Stu taking the “this is why you must do what you want to do” view and Merlin taking the “let us not forget the trail of the fallen on your ‘path’ to superstardom” view. The ying and the yang of these two on this topic is EPIC!

This topic is so much on my mind these days, it consumes almost every minute of my thoughts and I’m constantly working on solutions to answer questions related to this topic. I even mentioned trying to balance what I wanted to do with my life vs. time with my family to Kanen himself at NAB, before I even knew about this particular podcast. So, I think it’s kind of serendipitous that I happened to listen to it when I did.

I’m even going to take a Franklin-Covey class, in about a week, called “FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities”. This I’ve been planning for quite awhile. It was recommended to me by one of the most (apparently) organized guys that I know. He went on quite a while about the virtues of this class and how it’s changed his life and how it helped him be able to brush off the unimportant. In short, it sounded like just the thing I needed to take!

I am pretty excited to have the opportunity to gain another tool to help me define who I am and what I want to become and, hopefully, gain more traction in that direction, all the while being able to, hopefully, achieve the balance I want to achieve in my life.

There are so many views and ideas related to this very topic, that I think I’m going to start my own webcast/vidcast on it. I want to share what I find in this arena to others. Those that know me, know that one of the most important things to me, that define who I am, is helping people do what they want to do. I have long held the same belief that Kanen’s grandmother shared, “do what you love to do.” You can see that as a common thread in my past blog posts too. It’s who I am.

At this point, if you haven’t listened to “Chasing Wildbeests“, please do so. Then return and finish reading this blog post. Then leave a comment. Thank you.

Okay, so now you get what I mean. Right?

How many of us are that hyper tiger/lion trying to catch ten wildebeests? How many of us are chasing our dreams at all? Are you “driving a beater around the track”? Were you a skater in the mid 80′s too? Yes, I too went on the hunt for Mr. Chin in my late teens. (a motorcycle accident later ruined my balance but “good times” for sure.)

I hope we can all find balance and work better at reaching our goals. It’s, as they say, the journey, not the destination, right? To borrow a line: Happiness is the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward a known goal.

Kanen Flowers’ podcasts inspire me to action and I hope they do/will for you too. I hope that what I “keep rappin’” here reaches some people. I hope to improve all I do too. I hope to be passionate about “every g’damn thing I do”!

Talk to you soon!

For those of you expecting a NAB post, one’s coming. In the meantime, check out @Kyl33t’s post on Creative Cow: http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/confessions-of-an-nab-virgin. Pretty much describes what I feel about NAB!