Episode 01 - Let's Get Started (for real this time)

I recorded this once. I edited it. I did not like it.

I recorded videos that will come after this video, and it made me like this video even less. So I decided to re-record it randomly. I literally just came out of a grocery store, and while I was in there, I was thinking about what I needed to say and decided I'm just going to set up my camera in the car.

It's weirdly attached to my steering wheel and we're just going to call it good. I've been trying to figure out what this is and how to explain what this is. So I guess I kind of came across the best way to put it.

Maybe it's not the best way to put it. A way to put it, let's just put it that way. Years ago, I had a photography client.

She came to me. The session went well at the end. She was like, this was good.

It's not remotely what I expected. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And she couldn't quite explain to me what it was.

Just it went better than she expected. And I was like, all right, you know, cool. Well, that's always a good thing.

Right. Over deliver. About six months later, I redid my website and I made it a little bit more personable.

It was much less generic marketing and more me talking about who I was as a photographer. And in doing that, her comment to me, she sent me a message and she was like this. She was like, if this was the website, this is what I read before I came in for my session, I would have been way more comfortable to start with.

I guess I was just, it was very neutral. And that was kind of my goal with my original website and all of that. It was very marketing-y and not in the cool, fun marketing way now.

It's in the very boring, like traditionalist marketing kind of way. I'm finding that my website is kind of that way again. It's even arguably a little edgy for education, which is the industry I work in.

And it's probably, I haven't figured out a better way to manage it. So it's kind of going to be what it is for a while until I can figure out how to make it a little less uptight, for lack of a better way to put it, because it's sort of the expectation of someone that does the kind of stuff that I do in this field. But I really like the idea of me just being me.

It's always a big thing. Authenticity is a very important thing to me. So that being said, one of my issues with it being an uptight website is I am not that kind of person.

Can I be in certain situations? Yes, I can be the super professional, put on a suit and tie, do the thing. Is that me?

No. Can I play that act? Can I perform in that role?

Yes, I can. So what is this? I think this is my long-term answer to how do I show people who I am and talk about the things I want to talk about.

I've thought about doing a blog in the past. There's stuff I kind of want to write about. And there's been some people that are like, you should write papers about blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I don't really want to write papers and do super in-depth research and produce these journal-based kind of articles. I don't want to do that kind of research. It's just not my jam.

My thought was, I'm just going to have thoughts and I want to put them out there. So it's partially that. Some of my thoughts might be personal.

Some of my thoughts might be related to work. Some of them might be related to personal projects. Some of them might be related to random live events.

And I thought, you know, I like recording video and messing with video and playing with all the different things, which is why you'll probably see two or three different microphones. Right now I'm using like a little DJI action camera because it works if you're sitting in a car. So I like I keep this little setup in the in a bag behind my driver's seat and I can stop at lunch and pull out the camera.

It takes about two minutes to set up and then I can record something and then I can edit and upload and call it good. I think you're going to see a lot of the inside of my car and a lot of the inside of my brain which is probably the scarier of the two things um you're going to see lots of you know shiny spots on my forehead because the car has glass roof and um it's lunch you're going to see lots of cars moving around and me being distracted as somebody drives past and gives me a weird look because i'm i have this weird contraption in my car which i sort of find amusing to be honest so there's going to be lots of different things it's just going to be me, which is why I named it what I named it. It's just going to be me as I am throwing out their ideas and stuff that I have written.

So I recently have started, there's probably going to be a video on it. I've started, I carry a couple of field notes and a little leather thing. I was having a hard time keeping track of digital notes.

That probably does need to be a video actually. So what I found is when I started writing in that, it was really, it became more of a narrative than notes like I thought it was going to be. And since it became more of a narrative, I thought, well, maybe some of those things are going to become this kind of narrative.

I scratch it down when I think of it and then I think it through a little bit more and, you know, have a rambling video about it. You know, it's just going to be me throwing my thoughts out there kind of in this format. Sometimes I might record at home in my home recording space.

I might be in a hotel room at a conference. A lot of times I think it's going to be lunch hours sitting here having conversations and you're going to be distracted just like me by all the cars going by. Hopefully what I say is interesting enough that, you know, it's not super distracting.

But who knows, you know, a delivery truck, maybe this is definitely not the parking lot to sit in. Let's put it that way. So yeah, that's kind of what this is going to be.

It's head to get them out of my head if the notebook didn't do it well enough or if I think I need to expand on what was in the notebook. It's just me being me. And, you know, my website's going to be a very proper, this is what a person that works in education makes if they have a personal branding website.

And then there's going to be this weird offshoot section of me saying whatever the hell I say. I hope you stay tuned for more of these. Thanks for watching, listening, however you're consuming this.

And hopefully when I put this one out, there will be two or three others because I've already recorded them. I just have to edit them and I just didn't put them out because I didn't have the starting video. So hopefully I will edit this one and actually like the way it I said what I've said.