Life – Page 28 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

Attracting Good People

If I ever needed to see these words, arranged in this specific order, it’s been right now.

“I guarantee you that the second you stop pretending that everything is fucking hunky-dory and start building the life you want instead of waiting around for someone to save you, you’re going to start attracting people everywhere you go.”

This quote from Ask Polly, the aptly titled ‘I’m Pretending I’m Happy Single, But I’m Not!’

I mean this from the strategic standpoint of hindsight, in which I’ve lived many years waiting to be saved. It was only after some wise words from a friend that I looked at things differently, and managed to walk a different sort of life.

Currently I believe I am attracting good people everywhere I go. Not in the romantic sense and no, my heart does not ache over my singledom, but I needed these words in some sort of odd, time-travel completion sequence array.

These are words that I see today as a mindset, a reality that I envisioned a few years ago for myself. Content, able to exhale and be at peace with who I am today, without any sort of external validation.

Just Get Started

One of my favorite podcasts is Friendshipping! In their latest episode (listen here on Overcast) they talk about starting creative projects, and wowzers, it’s gold.

I started Skull Toaster back in 2011, on Twitter. Here we are seven years later and Twitter is a bit different these days. So now I’m starting my second Skull Toaster podcast. It’s like an audiobooks version of the Skull Toaster metal trivia I post on Twitter, but without each question being surrounded by nazis and news of school shootings.

Depressing I know, but that’s Twitter these days.

The first Skull Toaster audio program was the Metal Minute podcast. We did 115 episodes, but I decided to end it. Is it a failure? Nah. I learned from the process; the week in and week out of recording, promoting, and publishing a quirky, regularly published podcast. But it wasn’t growing, so we brought it to a close.

So now in 2018 I’m starting a new podcast. I’m on episode #3 and I have no idea if it’ll be a success. I’ve been talking about doing a podcast like this for years (I remember a coffee shop conversation with a Dan Diemer about this, back in 2015 or so), and I could have waited to start it better, or buy a better microphone, or whatever… but nope. It’s out. Episode #10 is gonna be better than episode #1. At least I hope so.

This doesn’t even have to be about podcasts. They can be about your newsletter. Your first tour. A new painting. But you just have to make it, then keep making it.

Tiny Experts of Millions of Things

How many articles do you read in a day? The occasioanl click or two per hour, and maybe you don’t finish the whole piece, but just enough to get the point. Let’s say you do that a dozen times a day. Easy, right? And let’s say you maybe spend about two minutes each time per article. That’s quick.

But thats already 24 minutes of your day.

What about when you add video into the mix? We easily watch three videos per day, and maybe maybe 2 minutes each? I mean, on average. Cool?

That’s 6 minutes of video per day, and I bet that’s on the low end.

Can we agree that we spend at least 30 minutes per day reading / viewing / skimming things? And that these are mostly micro bursts of taking things in? I’m not talking that 15 minute documentary where you learn something, or the 1000 word article that leaves you in tears. Nope. Just the sort of “content marketing” and “re-written news” that we practicaly trip over and consume every day.

If we figure 30 minutes per day, that’s 3.5 hours a week. Which is 14 hours per month. Almost a full day of awake time in a typical day.

And at 14 hours per month, that’s 168 hours per year, or 7 days of reading and watching.

Seven full days per year we’re staring at our phones, scrolling, squinting, skipping ads / clicking Reader mode, thumbing. Chances are you’re reading this on your mobile device right now.

I KNOW it’s just a minute here, a minute there. Don’t be such a kill joy, Seth! But dammit, this ain’t natural. Multi-tasking is a myth, but multi-consuming can’t be real either.

Have you tried listening to a podcast while scrolling through Twitter, then clicking a story, and trying to read it. How – HOW – do we even think this is normal?

I understand when a friend I’m having lunch with has to reply to work email (GIG ECONOMY, YAY), but please don’t interuppt our catching up with your catching up with your Instagram feed.

I clicked Twitter just now, and was able to take in all this:

A 3:21 song by my friend Norah.
A mesmerizing GIF of Lebron James dribbling between someone else’s legs that I watched 10 times.
Something about autonomous drones. Waste of a click.
Reading about a media outlet closing and blaming Facebook. Meh, heard about that yesterday on Daring Fireball.
Of course someone wrote ‘Why vinyl LPs are better than CDs and MP3s.’ In 2018. Whyyyyy?
This article ‘Jeff Derringer: Can you be a real artist without focusing on your craft full time?‘ is something that really interests me. It’s over 3000 words.
I read ‘How I Address Remote Isolation‘ and nodded along in agreement.
‘It’s not you. Phones are designed to be addicting.’ Five minutes long.

That’s just tonight. That’s the last 15 minutes, maybe. But it’s happening around the clock. There are important stories to read, articles that are informative, music being released in different time zones, funny videos being uploads (how many hours of content are posted every morning from the late night shows), it goes on, and on, and on, and on…

And right now I’m adding to it. But I’m hoping to be like some messenger from The Matrix or something, typing on your screen in the middle of the night. “Knock, knock, Neo…”

You don’t even need to delete social media and throw your computer down a well. You just need to do your online work and get the hell away. Your best ideas will come when you’re out on a walk or having a conversation with a friend, not scrolling endlessly through some design inspiration site.

I don’t mean that the internet is bad, but the continual flood of infomration that we keep ramming into our brain can’t be healthy.

While I’m sure ‘Jared Kushner’s many, many scandals, explained‘ is a well done article, does our survival rely upon that information? Will it give us information that we can use to debate the Trump supporters in our life?

Great.

What about the 20 other Trump topics that were brought up today? Can we read those 25 articles, three explainer videos, four wrap-up hot takes from the late-night hosts, and listen to the four daily political podcasts and get their take on everything?

Then we do it again tomorrow? Nay, do it again this evening? When some other bat-shit crazy thing hits the fan?

Breaking up our attention for these hundreds and thousands of tiny interruptions over the course of weeks and months and years might make us tiny experts at a million things, but I believe it’s keeping us from deeper thinking and bigger conversations with important people already in our life.

Forever a Student

My 42nd birthday is approaching quickly. That’s 4+ decades of behaviors, instincts, ways of dealing with things that come up. For some things it takes four decades, for other things you learn real quick. For me, wisdom is one of those long journeys of understanding.

Wisdom doesn’t show up one day in the mail, easily openable and ready to use. Wisdom often comes to us through the things that interfere with our comfort – be it an untamed, untethered idea, the person who drives us bananas, or a sunset begging us to stop our productive rush, rush and just watch it.

Another way I like to approach it is in the moment I’m about to dismiss someone or something, I instead think: So you are my teacher today. What am I being asked to learn from you?

From ‘THE WISDOM OF THE THINGS WE DISMISS‘ by Caitie Whelan

My four year old MacBook Air was acting up recently. I got that spinning beachball while I was in the middle of some important work (so important I can’t remember what it was). I caught myself wanting to launch into the response that I’ve seemingly been programmed with since I was a young boy, even before we had personal computers.

A feeling of hopelessness, “why me?” This computer problem, in this split second, was bullshit. The worst thing ever. Not fair.

That happened in a second, and in the next second I flipped the script. I made myself laugh. I celebrated like I just scored my dream job, or a unexpected check showed up in the mail. I raised my arms, smiled, dug deep and laughed in the face of my “world ending” computer problems.

Yeah, weeks later my laptop is fine, the work got done, and no one died.

That day the spinning beach ball wasn’t my enemy, ruthlessly mocking me. It was my teacher, and I was the student.

Valuable to Whom?

Erin Bartram’s post, ‘The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind‘ hit me square between my vision orbs.

“But your work is so valuable,” people say. “It would be a shame not to find a way to publish it.”

Valuable to whom? To whom would the value of my labor accrue? And not to be too petty, but if it were so valuable, then why wouldn’t anyone pay me a stable living wage to do it?”

If it’s so valuable (or, “if I’m so smart”) then why can’t I pay rent with the knowledge/ wisdom/experience? If I had a week’s salary every time I asked this question after failing to land yet another job, well, I’d be pretty well off.

For each automated rejection email in my inbox, or every time I don’t even get an interview, or I’m told “oh, we’re not hiring for that position anymore” (after being told the company wants to fly me to their office for a few days), well… I just double down on my personal projects (like Skull Toaster) and go for a run.

Already Doing the Work

No one hired Fred Armisen or Carrie Brownstein to do ‘Portlandia,’ but the momentum of what they were doing led to eight seasons. Watch this video: http://new.livestream.com/92Y/Portlandia

Fred and Carrie became friends in 2003 and started doing a video series called ‘Thunder Ant’ in 2005. Yes, they had some connections between the two of them, but ‘Portlandia’ didn’t air on TV until 2011.

(Also of note: neither had those connections from just sitting on their asses.)

Fred and Carrie didn’t wait for someone to pick them to make a funny show. They picked themselves.

Fred and Carrie did this for four years before the idea was even brought to IFC. By that time they had an audience, they had characters; they were already doing the work.

Already doing the work.

As Frank Chimero is quoted in this blog post (in 2011):”Daft Punk got to record the Tron soundtrack because they’d already recorded the Tron soundtrack.” How true is that?

My friend Tom Mullen started Washed Up Emo in 2007, writing about his love for bands like Jimmy Eat World, Cap’n Jazz, Mineral and more. In 2011 he started a podcast (over 100 episodes since). And a DJ night. And he wrote a book called ‘Anthology of Emo‘ and it’s amazing.

What work are you doing, without a creative director, a producer, a boss, or a client?

What projects have you started? What are you teaching yourself on your own? What audience are you already leading by just doing what you do every day?

HOW TO DO COOL STUFF (AND EVENTUALLY GET PAID FOR IT)

I had a phone call recently with someone about dipping their toes into the freelance waters, and that led me to writing this. As someone who’s been without a full-time job since 2006, this is something I’ve dealt with over the years.

This is not a step by step guide. If it were like that, then there’s a map (nod to Seth Godin for that), and if there’s a map, it can be done by monkeys, and you’re smarter than that.

DUMB IT DOWN
Say you make websites. Cool. Now, figure out a way to explain that to people who don’t need websites, because there are a lot of people who don’t need websites. Why? Well, those people probably know someone who needs a website, and after meeting you and having a lovely conversation they’re more likely to recommend you over someone who just throws jargon and fancy job titles around.

Remember – this is for starting your freelance journey! You’re a small fish in the big pond, so you need to start off working with other small fish.

REFERRALS
Stay awesome friends with awesome people that you used to work with. No, not in a sneaky way so you can ask them for work, but because you like working with rad people, and they probably know rad people. Rad people do rad things, so you’ll want to always be around them. And that leads to rad things.

On the other side of the coin, don’t be friends with jerks. They probably know other jerks, and you don’t want to work with jerks.

SHARING IS CARING
Share what you know; the principles behind it, how you made it work for you. Show your work. Freely give this knowledge that took you thousands of hours to gain, because someday someone will see it, and say, “hey, I want that.” And then you can bill them for those skills.

Remember, not everyone who needs a website knows they need a “front end developer.” Convey what you do in language that is kind and relatable, as you’re new at this and chances are the people you’ll be working with are new at all this, too!

START TODAY
The sooner you start helping people, and establishing yourself as someone knows a thing or two, the better. Don’t wait to take a class, don’t wait to finish your degree, don’t want to get some brand new piece of equipment – start helping someone today. Go through your social media feeds and find a friend who has a problem and help them fix it. No, don’t work for free, but do something to help. Illustrate your knowledge in helpful, no-pressure ways and you’ll be amazed where it’ll get you.

This post originally posted on Patreon on March 14, 2016.

YOU NEVER KNOW WHO’S WATCHING

I love Billy Eichner. HE’S FANTASTIC.

On a visit to Seth Meyer’s show a year ago (the video clip is no longer available for some reason), Meyer’s explains that he and his fellow SNL friends watched Billy’s videos back in the day. Billy had no idea, but found out many years later.

Creating and publishing something for years without knowing if anyone is really paying attention is difficult. It’s easy to look at the standard metrics like pageviews, plays, or RTs, and base your success on that. For validation. But please, you are so much more than that!

Never lose sight of the real people behind those metrics, and then never refer to them as metrics, or eyeballs, or traffic. Ever. They are lovely people, and some of them have just never emailed you yet telling you how amazing you are.

Hard work isn’t a guaranteed ticket to stardom and appearing on late night TV shows, but you spend the time and do it the right way. Treat every video, every song, every appearance as if Amy Pohler might watching.

This post appeared on my Patreon on March 12, 2016, but I’m posting it here because I’m deleting those old posts. It also had this note saying “This post originally posted on Jul 21, 2015, but had been modified for Patreon.”