Back day.
It was still freezing. I didn’t feel clumsy today. Still trying to get the hang of breathing, who would have thought the activity that we did multiple times every minute of everyday would be so hard!
Feeling good 🙂
Category: Projects
30 days of yoga – Day 3
I didn’t want to leave the warmth of my jeans in exchange for my bike shorts to show up today – day 1 the temperature was around 30oC, today, it’s closer to 13.
But I did, and I’m glad I did.
Today’s practice featured lots of balancing on one foot. Unfortunately my weak arches kept collapsing and I was falling everywhere. But they’ll never strengthen if I don’t try. I hope that they strengthen as a by product of this practice.
30 days of yoga – Day 2
Today was a little more challenging than yesterday. Adriene added a couple of moves that really tested my flexibility (or lack of it).
- Placing fingers on the lower back with palms towards the floor, fingers to the sky. I really felt the stretch through my wrists / forearms.
I did notice that while my hips felt tight and inflexible, there is an improvement on the past few days.
I found myself better connected to my breath. Although there was still a challenge of connecting the instruction, with the bodily movement and trying to release tension while only focusing on breathing.
My intention for this practice: To connect with my body better, so in turn I can connect with the divine.
Project getting shelved
The client behind the “biggest creative project I’ve attempted” rang me today with news that the project is going to be put on hold for 8-10 months.
Sad news, but it adds room for other smaller projects which is good. It also allows for further skill development.
In other news I got to play with some new software today, very techy, but in a some way it’s a creative outlet, configuring server setting & getting locked out of the box!
Two things on my mind
Today a video project that I worked on a few weeks back went public. My first long form video project in years (the run time is 22 minutes). The band that was featured in it wanted to know how I wanted to be created. I hadn’t even thought about crediting myself.
I’m sure I’m the worst person at self promotion. I just want the work to speak for itself, and if people are interested enough in it, they’ll find who created it. But maybe I should have at least put my name at the end for 3 seconds. (Although I’m currently having an identity crisses around branding…)
It’s been up for a few hours and has about 100 views which is cool, especially given the long form nature of it.
The second project is a technical one, where I’m doing some basic, but interesting reverse proxying of a website. But the technical side is easy, trying to integrate it with a software provider is the tricky part. It’s really weighing me down in a mental sense trying to solve this problem.
In other news DigiDirect has 10% off over the next few days :)…I might do some shopping.
6 weeks down!!!
Look at that, 6 weeks has rolled around since I started this blog.
A quick recap on my top posts. These all have an important element for me, whether it was the content or the story, a growth felt in my writing style, or a growth in my thinking.
This might not work….
A confession
Painting, piano & sailing
Let’s have a conversation around digital minimalism
Grieving with Hope
I feel more at ease in a room full of pole dancers, than a church
Tiredness
Awesome Jar
Hope to catch a glimpse of how loved you are brother
Thanks for being on the journey. I plan to keep the journey going.
How has blogging every day changed my thinking process?
A daily blog has forced me to stop at the end of the day and reflect on all that has happened, to take count of what new things I’ve learnt, or noticed & then forced me to try and turn those thoughts into words on a page. This is something that I hadn’t practiced for years (& some would argue if I really wanted to practice them, I should attend a university).
It’s also interesting to see how a thought changes as I process it through the writing. Sometimes the place I start from, is a very different place to where I end up after having to think and process the idea in detail.
A “better do a few things” fun Friday
Unfortunately fun Friday was a little dull today. Nothing awesome to put in the awesome jar unfortunately.
Instead I spent the day fixing up loose ends on various projects.
The problem with being a thinker and someone who comes up with a small stream of ideas, is sometimes the last idea isn’t ipfinished before the new one is started, it’s even worse when that creeps over from personal projects, into professional projects.
I discovered that I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
But that will have to be a post for another day.
Creating something and putting it out there
So I created my first end to end vlog (filmed, edited, uploaded).
The response has been mixed, a couple of “that’s goods”, a couple of “well, it’s a bit boring”.
Truth be told it is boring. It’s 5 minutes of me talking about doing stuff, travelling, and a bit of show and tell. It only stars me. And if I never saw it again in my life, I wouldn’t be fussed.
But what it represents is so much greater than what the content is. It’s a new beginning, a starting point. Are there technical issues? Yep. Are there story issues? Yep. But did I actually complete something and put it out there? Yes, and to me that is the biggest achievement. It’s not going to go viral. It’s drop dead boring, that stuff doesn’t go viral. But it’s there and done, wrinkles, pimples and all.
That not to say that if someone left a comment saying “your video is shit man” that I wouldn’t be a little bit hurt, but it would inspire me to make a better one, and a better one. And if I follow the philosophy instilled in me by my year 7 English teacher
“Each new work, should be your best work. ”
– My Year 7 English Teacher, Greg C
If each thing is 1% better than the last, then with time and practice, it should grow into something amazing.
Case in point, I was asked to photograph a couple this evening. I’ve never had to photograph a couple in love. I’ve only ever photographed friends and couples acting like friends, not all lovely and kissy. I felt we came away with an OK result. But next time it will be better. I’ve learnt a few things that worked, and a bunch of things that didn’t. That’s ok. 🙂
First vlog
It’s done. I created a 5 1/2 min vlog video in under 48hrs. While I’ve been toying with the idea and filming things since February, today was the first time I actually pulled the trigger and sat down & forced myself to edit something together.
I know that this isn’t sustainable to do a daily vlog of the likes of Casey Neistat, but I can probably start with one a week. Although something has to give, unfortunately it will probably be the daily blog post 🙁
Strangely enough, it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought to post a vlog. Maybe I just wanted to get it over with, I’m not sure.
I’ll just have to see where this creative path takes me.
Photography review
Yesterday I wrote about starting my biggest creative project to date. Here is my review on the day of photographing. Just a heads up, it’s pretty dry & lifeless, you might want to skip along to another post.
What worked?
- The concept of getting a large group of people involved was daunting, but we managed to create enough interest. I was hoping for 40 people to get involved. I’m yet to do a final count, but I think it was around double that. Win – win.
- Having a production plan. It made having a goal very easy, and whenever there was doubt of what to do, any of us could refer back to the plan.
What didn’t work?
- We didn’t have an flow to the system, there wasn’t a defined “here is the line to get a photograph”, and thus I felt people slipped through the cracks.
- After session 2 I adapted one of the poses, to give us more options in post.
- I didn’t have a tick up my sleeve for making people smile.
- I didn’t communicate with a couple of people after the server meltdown saga of last week. Had I followed them up, things could have moved along a little smoother.
- I grabbed someone who was camera shy for my lighting test. She wasn’t comfortable & I was trying to talk to her and sort out the lighting, which was a challenge. At the same time, one of the lens fogged up, this also through me, it was like photographing with a smoke machine.
What did I learn?
- Planning is key.
- Leave enough time to setup and get things working.
- My HD600 stobe is a bit of a work horse, easily handling the 1100 photos at 1/8 power.
- It’s ok to work in a team. I do not have to do everything, all the time.
The next phase will be post and editing into the final concept before it goes to print.