Internet, newsletters, design, music, etc.
Five minutes doing the thing you love doing counts. Just a few minutes writing on your phone counts.
Because this much is true – five minutes mindlessly scrolling through Instagram counts. Binging eight straight episodes of some show counts.
It doesn’t count for much, but it still counts.
That drawing above wasn’t done in one shot. It was five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 30 minutes at night four minutes waiting for my french press coffee.
Make your minutes count.
Fill today with tater tots and saying YES for yourself without remorse or guilt. You have to put on your own oxygen mask first before you can help others!
Holy heck, you got this. Today, your next phone meeting, that next customer, you’re gonna fly!
I don’t know, I just need to stand in wonder, wide-eyed amazement of everything I’m gonna do each day. Every problem I’ll solve, every work load I’ll manage – whatever.
I don’t consider it naive, or cheesy. It’s work. It’s work, emotional labor, to think in a way of expecting positive outcomes. An always learning mindset. I’ve tripped up a few times in the past week (lost some money, etc.), but chose to accept it as lesson, and not let it weigh be down as failure.
Like, I could spend $250 on some online course for money stuff, right? Or, when I lose money in an online transaction (oh, eBay), I can LEARN from it. And those are usually the best lessons.
So, HECK YES! That shift in thinking is hard, it’s work, but it’s worth it.
I’ve been to a few mediocre burrito joints, where the rookie burrito makers misjudge the amounts of goodness they’re adding, and by the end they have difficulty closing up the tortilla. Sometimes you have to be that bright eyed, first-day-on-the-job burrito make and pour everything into your day and make it burst with awesome.
Some days you’re in a funk, and that’s okay. Remember that one day isn’t forever!
Usually I work from home, being as I’m self employed and all. But today I have a 5 hour drive ahead of me, so I’ll be working on the road. I LIKE the comfort of my desk and chair and blender for smoothies, but today I gotta shake it up. Kick off April 1st with a karate chop!
Okay, maybe don’t start a band. But you should really start a band.
What I mean is this; in the early 90s, when I was in high school, I joined a band. Back up, in the mid 80s and beyond I loved hair metal. I bought Poison’s ‘Open Up and Say Ahhh’ at a drug store. On vinyl.
By the time I was in high school, I was a rocker. Or at least I wanted to be. I wore the shirts, had the mullet, I was a would be rocker. I signalled to other would be rockers that I, indeed, did wanted to rock.
So I got to join a band!
That was 27 years ago, and that course I set back then because I loved the ‘Paradise City’ video by Guns N’ Roses is why I do what I do today (helping busy music publicists).
So why should you start a band today? Well, you don’t need to really start a band, but you should start something.
See, back then we didn’t have the internet. To find other weirdos we had to rent fire-halls, or drive two hours away with printed out MapQuest directions to see a show that I’m not even sure how we knew about.
But these days, with the internet, with the super computer in our pockets, we can connect with all sorts of weirdos from all over the world. From there we can “form a band,” and do all sorts of fun stuff.
We can start websites, movements, services, gigs, and all sorts of things.
But we do that by finding our fellow weirdos through intentional actions. Just like I used to practice my bass everyday, you need to practice your craft everyday out in the open. Posting your progress, your finished products, your incomplete drafts, and some of your normal day to day drudgery.
Like I said, this is easy compared to driving into New Jersey on a Friday night in the rain without a smartphone.
So form your band, find your weirdos, and do great stuff.