March 16, 2025 – Give Yourself Permission to Just Create
Yesterday, I got the opportunity to hang out with Bella Roberts and her brother Cam for a little bit in L.A. A couple other people (3) came by also and we just talked about living in California, different projects we’d been doing and just life in general.
It was really great to just chill out and make friends, be IRL and, for me, “act like humans” for a bit. By that, I mean isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, meet people and talk and exchange ideas? No agendas, just meeting new people and enjoying each others’ company.
It was really quite pleasant. We also got a sneak preview of the short film they’d been making and I must say, I’m really impressed with their skills as filmmakers.
They’re from England and are just visiting, which is a shame because I’d like to hang out more often. But I guess we have technology to help with that.
After that, I went and hung out with Joaquin Elizondo and some fellow Hollywood Editing Mentor peers at a “post-Eddies” meetup. This was very casual too. Just having a beer and talking about film and TV stuff. These folks, most are L.A. locals and a couple east coasters who come to town a couple times a year, it seems. At least I get to see them more often.
Traveling to and from LA, I listened to a couple podcasts and between those and the conversations I had, I came up with a theme for the day and that was, “Give yourself permission to just create”.
The commonality of both groups of meetup attendees and the podcasters I listened to was that we were all creators of some sort.
Heck even today, I re-listened to an interview of Bella from last year and when she was asked if she had any advice for up-and-coming creators, it was basically to just do it. Don’t wait for having the right tools, just go out and make ten videos. They’re gonna suck but just do them and learn. This is something that Chase Jarvis talks about all the time. “Go make crappy art”. The interview of his I listened to yesterday was with Amee Mcnee, called “Stop Waiting for Permission to Create”. It occurred to me that the thing in common with successful people is that they are doing it. Just doing it. They are out there doing it and talking about what they’ve done, not talking about what they “will do” or “might do”. They DO first.
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