RoleyShow

So What Does It Look Like?Wrapping up the week here, and I want to share something with you that I’ve started doing this week that I think has positively affected my outlook, no matter how kooky it sounds.I have this little barrel chair in my studio. It was given to me by my grandmother years ago. I remember spinning around and around on it in her house until they had to put a wooden block on the track to get me to stop. I’ve recovered it, and today it’s my reading/thinking/sulking chair. I sit down in this chair at the beginning of every day, and I’ve been giving some thought to the endgame. What does the endgame look like? What is my ideal result? There’s really nothing new about this. It’s called creative visualization. Shakti Gawain wrote a book about this years ago, and it’s “the art of using mental imagery and affirmation to produce positive changes in your life. It is successfully used in the fields of health, business, creative arts, and sports, and in fact, can have an impact in every area of your life.” Of course, back in my younger and angrier days, something like this would have been met with a roll of the eyes. I really can’t do that anymore because the simple act of visualizing what the end of this looks like every morning for just five minutes or so has changed my outlook on things. I feel better about rolling this rock up the hill every day. I’m doing good work here. I’m expressing myself creatively, I’m finding material relevant to the things I like talking about, I’m spending less time on the things I don’t want to spend time on, and at the end of the day, the work is getting done. I’m still spending only about an hour a day on this work, and as of right now, I’m a week ahead of schedule and still going. More to the point, I have fun because I’m literally creating something every day right now, and it does wonders for my morale. It all starts with just sitting in that beloved chair every day and thinking every day that I’m going to win. I’m going to get what I want out of this work, this time, this life.Now, I haven’t gotten so far as to see the beach in my backyard, but give me a couple of months on that. Let’s see how this goes for a minute before I get ahead of myself.I’d like you to give this a try. There’s no chanting, no mantras, no sitting cross-legged on a mat and contemplating your belly button, think to yourself, “What does the end of this look like to me?” What does success look like to you? Maybe, once you sort that out and see it every day, and you know what step you’re on now, maybe the steps in the middle become clearer. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Cut Yourself a BreakOf course, it’s easy to get stuck. We all do. I certainly have. But that’s where “What’s Next?” comes into play. It’s the act of leaning into what’s causing you the trouble. You identify it, and you work to resolve it. That’s not just helpful in the creative arena, you know. Indeed, nothing hard ever gets better unless you commit to this. Otherwise, you’re spinning your wheels, and nothing gets done.There will be times when you’re going to fail, though, so let me pass on this piece of wisdom gained from years of doing the exact opposite: Cut yourself a break. No home-run king ever hit it out of the park every time, don’t kid yourself. Perfectionism is a fast track to a permanent failure, which is just giving up. Don’t get discouraged. Just take a beat. Show yourself some compassion, relax, and lean back in when you’re ready.Finally, don’t be a battering ram. That’s a good way to give yourself a headache. If it doesn’t work today, it might work tomorrow. Put it away for the day and try again tomorrow. Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up for the days you missed. Celebrate the days you succeeded because that will help you tomorrow when you go at it again.

Yesterday I told you that as creators, I think that social media is becoming our worst enemy due to the weaponization of the platforms for engagement and the appropriation of content by aggregators and other entities for their use and engagement. As such, I suggested that there might be a way to reassert control over your creative assets, and that’s what I want to talk about today.You see, I think we’ve got to get back to housing our assets in our own spaces, places that we control. Our own ship, as it were. Years ago, I had a small limited run podcast series called “The Peaceful Pirate,” in which I talked about building your own ship. That ship is your website, your base of operations. In one episode, I mentioned the need to go fishing every day, and by that, I meant sending out bait to all the appropriate places—links to social media, contributing to forums, and things of that nature. I believe you still need to do that. What I don’t think you need to do is give your content to social media. Please give them the breadcrumbs to come to your content instead.Some of you might think this is a difference without a distinction, but I don't see it this way. In one scenario, you’re laying it all out there somewhere else for someone to take it. in the other, they’re coming to you. Even in the eventuality that someone steals a photo from your site, for example, you have some recourse as long as your terms spell that out. Even if you don’t care so much about that, then I’d remind you that they had to come to your site, which was the whole point all along. For lack of a better way to put it, you caught the fish, and now that you know you caught one, you can catch another. The Value PropositionChase Jarvis on how to get people to come to your site:Note that I disagree with his suggestion to post your content directly on social. I still think you should link to your content at your place. That said, give them every reason in the world to do that by adding value to the topic, the conversation, and the platform. You have to build trust as someone who knows what they’re talking about, someone who has a talent for the topic, and above all, someone who is an adherent to Wheaton’s Law. What About Clubhouse?Steve Pratt at Pacific Content:First and foremost, whether you’re a creator or a brand, you need to answer this question: what’s the job you’re hiring audio to do?Once you know the answer, you can determine what to make, where it should live (podcasting, Clubhouse, radio, etc), and how to use it. There are lots of great uses — and some not so great uses — for Clubhouse. Here are a few ways to think about when and where it makes sense.As a general rule, if your value prop is that you’re the “blank” of “blank” (Like the ‘Medium of Podcasts’, for example), you’re already in the hole because to remember you, I have to think of someone else first.This is a real-time panel. That’s all Clubhouse is. Even then, I think of forums and Usenet threads back in the day. The shiny bit is that’s its audio. Now, one thing I think it’s got in its favor is that you no longer have to determine if someone is being sarcastic in a post. Unless you can’t listen for context cues, that’s going to be pretty easy to discern. Based on what I am seeing, Clubhouse is not going to be any threat to podcasting. I’m glad to see they’re doing well, but let’s check back in a month or so.I do have one thing to ask about, how’s their moderation game? I haven’t gone poking around, but I wonder what happens with Proud Q. Gunsalot comes poking around with his bullshit. I’m taking a wait and see approach on that. In Praise of BatchingOver at Jasmine Star’s website, they’re talking about batching your content. Hallelujah.I set two or three days per month to create all of my video content… But let me tell you friend, these marathon recording sessions don’t happen without WEEKS of advanced planning.*Yes, it’s true: when you have a plan to work smarter, you don’t have to work harder!*Last week I talked about doing a bunch of stuff on an hour a day, and I thought I was being smart. What if I could work out all the stuff I wanted to do for a month in 2-3 days and get it all out?(You could plan all the other shit you keep crying about making, Roley…)

On Instagram AggregatorsSo, today on the show I'm going to go over some ground that I've seen trod upon many times already, but I'm not really sure side I fall on. The question is whether or not instagram is good for photographers. To be sure, I follow a lot of photographers on instagram, but there's something else I have found myself following lately, and here's where I have the issue. I'll call them photo aggregators. My beloved state of Maine, for example. I follow DownEast Magazine, which is to my mind the authority on the State of Maine. Their photography...hell, just their iconic magazine covers, are extraordinary. But then there are accounts like For the Love of Maine, which is an aggregator of Maine photography that they repost from other users. Yes, they credit those users, but who's getting the likes here? I find myself wondering what the clickthrough rate is from liking a photo on those accounts to following the person who actually took the photo, and realistically it can't be very high. It's not just Maine, though. Hell, there's Nantucket and Cape Cod aggregators, Black and White photo aggregators, there's minimal photography photos...I bet if you went to instagram and listed whatever your strangest geekdom is, there's probably an aggregator for it. So I have to ask the question if posting your work on Instagram is worth it if it's going to be appropriated by someone FOR THE GRAM.I suppose it comes down to a personal choice. Personally, if I post a photo of my work on Instagram and someone picks it up and reposts it, I would hope that person has approached me and asked for permission. I don't see that happening in a lot of these cases, but you never know. I would really be pissed off if someone took a photo of mine without permission and removed a watermark and I'd ask for them to remove it, but I'm not sure if I do anything other than shame them publicly if that were to happen. If that's happened on Instagram I haven't seen it.To be honest, I think there's a wider question to be asked about whether we need social media anymore If it's going to be weaponized against the creative specifically, and the general public as a whole. Would it surprise you that I'm leaning against removing myself from Instagram and Facebook completely? Maybe it shouldn't. I'm sensing a little shift in the earth here and I'm going to talk more about this on another show, but one thing I really want to address is the free as in beer mindset that a lot of social media marketers and those nebulous 'influencers' seem to operate on. That model depends on the ability of a person to work for 'exposure', for likes, for engagement, and for that person to be ok with ceding control of their work in the hopes that they can turn that exposure into dollars. I am less and less sure that ceding that control is worth it. I'm not saying that you don't put your work out there, of course you should. However, I think you need to be able to control how it's put out there, and I think there's only one way you do that. We'll talk about that in more detail next time. See what I did there? Monochrome In-Camera? YES, PLEASEThe more and more I shoot the more I prefer shooting in Black and White. There’s something about it that grabs me. One of the problems I’ve had time and time again was shooting something I thought would be amazing in Black and White only to bring it home and realize it was a great idea, but not a great shot. The reason I failed is simple: I’m shooting in color, I see in color, and I’m guessing about monochrome in my head. Turns out you can change that. I shoot with a Canon t5i, and here’s how you can change the Picture Style so your screen shows you a preview in Black and White (note: This is for the screen ONLY, your viewfinder will still show the world in glorious color). Also, my Canon camera has a touch screen function, but yours may not. For that reason, I’m going to give you the manual instructions. Adapt these instructions as appropriate.Press the MENU button, and then use the right-arrow button to the right of the LCD screen to scroll through the menu pages until you find Picture Style. Use the down-arrow button to highlight the line, and press the SET buttonUse the down arrow button to highlight Monochrome. Press the SET button again to select it, then press the MENU button to exit the menu.Obviously, you may shoot with another brand, but I’m sure many later model DSLR cameras have this ability. Consult your user manual or online knowledge base for instructions on how to do this for your camera. If you can get this right in-camera, you’ll have less to do in post.Oh, by the way: if you shoot in RAW, you can convert to color in the edit if you want. You’re not committing to monochrome by changing the screen. For All My iPhoneographersOf course, you know that the best camera is the one you have with you, and nine times out of ten, it’s the one on your phone. With that in mind, I’d like to give you some ideas about how to take your phone game to the next level. These tips will be for the native iPhone camera app, but I want to remind you that there are several apps out there that give you a lot more control. I personally recommend the Moment app, but you don’t need to buy an app to up your game. All you need is some knowledge.As human beings, we’re not stationary creatures. Even when you think. You’re standing perfectly; still, you’re not. In fact, if you were a Christmas Tree Stand, you’d be on the rug, and the house would be on fire. This is why sometimes when you take a picture on your iPhone, you go to the trouble of framing the shot, you try to stay perfectly still, yet the thing comes out blurry and out of focus. So next time, tap and HOLD on the subject of our picture. This will invoke the Auto Exposure/’Auto Focus Lock, and the camera will stay locked on to the subject no matter how much you move around. Then make sure you frame your shot and take that photo. The RPS ArchivesThe Royal Photographic Society has made their archives from March of 1853 to 2018 available for free online. Just let that sink in. That’s 165 years of history, captured in photos. Mindblowing. The Society covered the art and technical aspects of photography and the developments in those spaces, major events, and reported the activities of the Society itself. Even if you’re not a photography geek you might be a history geek, and this should be up your alley either way. I know more than a few Civil War Historians that might find this interesting, and I hope there’s something in there to get their mouths watering. I’m going down this rabbit hole as soon as possible, I encourage you to do the same.

One Small MomentToday I want to talk to some specific friends who I won't name, but I'm fairly sure that this will apply to way more of just them.First things first, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by giving you a bunch of platitudes. In my experience, they're nothing but empty calories. Filler and no substance, they're designed to make the person giving them feel better, not the person who needs help. In some cases, people who need help end up feeling worse. I'm one of those people, so I absolutely understand the feeling. So, no bullshit from me. Cool? Moving on.Let me describe my lack of bona fides right upfront. I'm a guy with a high school education and one year of college because I let my dick do the thinking up to the point that I ended up homeless and friendless. I tried to follow in my Dad's footsteps and join the military and washed right out after six months because I have a mouth bigger than my brain. I come from a family that describing as dysfunctional is exceedingly generous. My dad had anger issues, my mother was a narcissist manipulator, as is my brother. He's got a criminal record and is probably on his way back to prison for at least 12 years as I write this. I'm the voice of reason in my family, and as I have said repeatedly, this should scare the fuck out of you. I got married at 24, and I had three kids by the age of 30. I've been dirt poor most of that time. At this stage of my life, I believe that I am an undiagnosed case of autism from the 1970s because my kids--all of them--are on the spectrum. I didn't have a bad childhood if you looked at it from one angle, but I had a horrible one if you looked at it from the inside out. I inherited my Dad's anger issues and my mother's narcissism. I was a horrible husband for years until my wife walked out on me in 2005. It made me face myself in a way I had not seen before, and I couldn't take it. I had a nervous breakdown. My wife thought I was worth saving, and I am forever grateful for it. I promised I would work on my issues, and I have. Three times in my life, I thought I was at the end of my rope. Not from a thought of suicide ideation, just that there was nowhere else to turn. No one else to ask for help. No one else I could lean on. Just Roley.That moment right there is the point. The entire lesson. One small moment when your brain says, "Well, you're really fucked now, aren't you?" There is only one answer to that question, and that answer is yes because if you answer no, you ain't there yet. Trust me on this. You have to answer yes. This is the moment where you're accountable to no one but you, and you cannot lie to yourself. You can TRY. It ain't gonna work. Not for long.Let's not bullshit ourselves. There is a lot of work in repairing a life that you fucked up on your own. You climb up out of a hole for years before you ever see daylight. I was a shut-in for two years because I thought it better that the world forgets about me. I tried to make a living from home in 2006-2007, but this world we live in hadn't come to pass yet, and I was living a fantasy. It made me feel worse that I couldn't provide for my family, but I could barely function as a human at that point. So I decided to do the only work I was capable of: Working on myself. I read every self-help book and mental health book I could lay my hands on. I dug deep into myself to try to figure out why I was the person I was, how I became that way, and the answer was straightforward. First, I thought I was absolutely normal. My behavior, though abhorrent, was how I was raised. My parents treated each other and us kids horribly, but it wasn't physically abusive save for a couple of times I'll keep to myself. I grew up in the same environment I perpetuated. I was continuing a cycle. Secondly, to accept that fact and to change meant work I wasn't ready to take on. But human psychology is a lot like a car in that regard; you can do the work now, or you can do it later, but it's going to cost you a lot more. In my case, it almost cost me everything. It was the third of those three times that I faced myself in the mirror and heard that voice, and this was the time I said yes.For two-thirds of my life, my story is a story of failure, of self-hatred, of being a bad example. But from the age of 35 to 50, it's a story of repair and redemption. I'll put my humble path to today up against anyone's and dare them to do the work I've done to heal myself and come out who I am today. I'm still married to the same woman for over 25 years now. I've got three amazing kids who I adore. Up until May of this year, I had what I consider to be a dream job until COVID ate it, but I'm still with the same company, and I'm going to bust whatever amount of ass it takes to get my job back or demonstrate the skills I learned there to someone else who's willing to take me. I have a sense of self-worth and purpose that I've never had before, and I'm not taking being a call center tech support agent for the rest of my life. It is a means to an end, and it is not my life's work. I know what that is. It's helping you in the best way I know how: By being not the example of how to fix it, but from showing you by my example, it CAN BE FIXED that you can go from being a person full of anger and self-loathing and cruel behavior to being a person of kindness and compassion and love for people. That you can go from being a person who has no prospects to a person who can go to a job every day that fulfills them personally and professionally. That you can go from being a person who hasn't got their shit together at all to a person that can get morning to night without falling apart at the seams. This is my road, and my lane, but it's big enough for you, and I want you on this road with me. Some of you are gifted and talented beyond description, but the world doesn't know it yet because you have these problems. I know. I get it. I also see who you are, and the world deserves to see you as well. I had no one else to turn to at that last moment, so I did what I had to do. Myself. I'm asking you to take a walk with me because I don't want you to have to do it on your own. I may not know your way home, but I can get you as far as Anchorhead. You can get transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you're going.I had to get one joke in there somehow. Did Joe Know About This?On the heels of the news of Joe Budden maybe-kinda-sorta-moving his show to Patreon (which is weird since it looks like it’s being hosted on Libsyn now), Spotify has announced plans for multiple business models for podcasts, possibly to include ad-supported subscriptions and a la carte options. These may be discussed at a live stream event later in February.Asked if Spotify thought customers would be willing to pay for podcasts, Ek on the earnings call responded that he believed there were several new models that could be explored.“I think we’re in the early days of seeing the long-term evolvement of how we can monetize audio on the internet. I’ve said this before, but I don’t believe that it’s a one-size-fits-all,” he said. “I believe, in fact, that we will have all business models, and that’s the future for all media companies — that you will have ad-supported subscriptions and à la carte sort of in the same space, of all media companies in the future.”“And you should definitely expect Spotify to follow that strategy and that pattern,” Ek added, more definitively.The answer seemed to indicate that Spotify is considering some of the ideas in that recent survey — of getting consumers to pay for some podcasts, instead of accessing them all for free or having them bundled into their music subscription.I wonder if Budden was aware of this and balked. Would there be a revenue split between Spotify and the creators, and what’s the ratio? Now that I think of it, isn’t that what they’ve been crying about re: Apple?For more than a year, Spotify has been making noise about Apple’s unchecked power over the App Store, and in March 2019, it filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission. Spotify claims Apple’s practice of taking 30 percent of an app’s revenue is unjustified, and says the company operates as a monopoly on iOS.Suddenly, I find this Budden/Spotify deal more intriguing. Wait, You Can Make Money Doing That?  Julie Miller from Vanity Fair writes about Hollywood coming over to the Pod Side for ‘fun and profit’:…entertainment types began orbiting the audio space about two years ago in earnest, as the number of Americans listening to podcasts every month headed toward the 100 million it is today. It was also around 2018 that agencies like CAA began incorporating audio deals into their development packages. One insider estimates that many celebrities could get a six-figure guarantee per year, with the biggest actors receiving between $1 million and $3 million to launch an unscripted podcast. Scripted projects offer less up-front money but can be adapted into TV shows, films, books, and so on.For the record, I am Steve Jobs, “Podcasts are Amateur Hour" Years Old. For years, podcasting was seen as less-than, so when I see stories like this, the little imp of the perverse in the back of my head tosses a bone at every true media elitist who, strangely, has a podcast now.. How About Not Doing That?Chris Curran over at PES has a question about your thin mouth:When I’m doing my fine-tuned editing on a podcast episode I use TwistedWave or Sound Forge because they allow me to VERY QUICKLY zoom in, highlight very small things like single mouthclicks, and delete them. When I try to make the same kind of edit in a DAW (Reaper and others) it takes forever. What say you?For the most part, my workflow tends to remove mouth clicks, or at the very least minimize them. If they still show up through my noise gate, I highlight and remove them. I can’t say this happens often because I like to make sure I keep some water near me while I’m recording. The single biggest thing you can do to prevent mouth clicks is to keep hydrated. Remember, you can’t fix it in Post if it never happens in the first place.  

It might just be the time of year, but I find myself getting discouraged easily. It’s compounded by the fact that we’re coming up on a year since my job sent me home and everything that’s happened since then. The simple fact of the matter is I’m not where I want to be at almost any category of life you care to name. I’m currently making about half of what I was pre-May 2020, I’m struggling with staying in a creative mindset, I’m not necessarily hopeful that I will be able to realize a key hope of mine to regain the position I was previously in, and I’m not finding anything equivalent out there that I can do despite the experience. It leaves me in a pretty depressing place, and I’m not sure what my next move is. So when this happens, I try to move out of the mindset of what I can’t do to figure out what I can accomplish. I believe it starts with talking about the things I am passionate about. Demonstrating some knowledge. Possibly not being so unassuming about it?A lot of the past year had to do with how my friends stayed creative and productive during the pandemic, and now I may be best served by turning this camera inward. Let’s see what happens.After I wrote the above, I fired up my Feedly reader, and Seth Godin’s post today is very timely indeed.So, let’s consult the imp in the back of my head that wants to know what the bleep I’m going to do to turn YET into DONE. I think first we have to define what DONE is, and I’m finding that a little hard to do at the moment. It’s a Jackson Pollack splatter of thought about what I don’t want to be doing anymore, and very little thought about what it is I would rather be doing, and whether I can do it for a living. Nothing new here, this has pretty much been the case for a few years now. I need to put these thoughts together. I don’t want to take phone calls anymore. I do want a job in a creative field. I want what I create to be able to help people. I want to be able to live comfortably on the fruits of that effort, which means not only the bills are paid, but that the wife and I are not worried about health insurance, and that the kids are taken care of.So, maybe that’s what done is. If that’s true, then the next question—my favorite—is ‘What’s Next?”. What I’m about to write is the first time I’ve ever written this answer: I don’t know. I don’t know what the first step is, and if I don’t know what the first step is, I can’t figure the next one. Marie Forleo likes to say “Everything is Figureoutable”. I sure hope so, because being stuck in this place is a goddamn exhausting place to be.Of course, as I said at the beginning, it could just be that it’s January and it’s cold, and that I hate everything right now. It feels like more than that, but maybe it always does and I’m not remembering it. Oh, You Didn’t Know?Joe Budden, who up until a few months ago had an exclusive deal with Spotify, is moving his podcast to Patreon. The Verge has some comments from Budden:He says he proved the model, along with the potential of his audience, but didn’t want Spotify to use his fans and reach to prove the platform’s own worth and make money. “For many years, the record labels and the system that I come from tricked us into thinking they were doing us a favor by capitalizing off our talent and basically loaning us money, and that’s been the standard the entire time,” Budden says, adding that he already knows how that system worked out for creators. When Budden announced his split from the tech company, he said Spotify was “pillaging” his audience and only cared about how his show contributed to Spotify overall, not about his actual podcast.Budden was a recording artist before he was a podcaster. If he’s aware that the record labels played games, I can’t believe he didn’t see the obvious. Streaming Services aren’t exactly known for treating artists differently, for a start, but let’s address what I think is the elephant in the room, which is the question of whether or not what you had was actually a podcast, because I think that question is fundamental to the problem Budden experienced. A podcast is not exclusive to a platform, and I’ll argue that point until I’m blue in the face. If I can’t subscribe to your show on a different platform than Spotify, then you don’t have a podcast, you have a show on Spotify. Spotify might have a big user base, but that user base is all you have. Spotify’s Q4 2020 earnings state that they have 345 million active monthly users, and that only 25 percent of those users listen to podcasts on the platform. That’s around 86.5 Million, and trust me, they’re not all listening to Joe Budden. Yes, he’s got a lot of downloads, but what he’s got on Spotify is all he’s going to get by staying there. Patreon is a huge and smart play, I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes 3x on listeners and money at the very least.(Note to self, get back on Patreon, it’s about to blow up.) The Clothes Suck AnywayAh, exposure. SO great for paying bills, only the complete opposite of paying bills.One of my favorite Twitter accounts is @forexposure_txt, and they receive posts every day from creatives who receive requests, demands, and straight-up meltdowns from people who believe it’s ok not to pay a creative for their work. However, in some cases, there’s the odd post about a company that lifts a picture, alters it, and uses it on their social media without attribution. Take, for example, Meg of Margate, a photographer who discovered a fashion brand called Ted Baker (no link, I’m not enabling this behavior) lifted a photo, photoshopped it, and post it on their Instagram “for engagement”. When called on it, they offered Meg a 200 dollar gift card from their store, which she declined. They then stated they didn’t have the budget to pay photographers, so they deleted the image.Fine, but let’s be clear about what really happened here. A fashion brand that declared revenue of 617 million pounds in 2019 used a picture that didn’t own to drive traffic to their brand. They got likes and engagement for hours on that post. Then they told the photographer, sorry we can’t afford it, and just deleted the post. Ted Baker made money off that stolen picture, and they probably will have no liability for screwing a creative because it costs money to take people to court.If this doesn’t make you angry, it should.This seems like a good place to link to one of my favorite talks by Mike Montiero, “Fuck You, Pay Me.” More Instagram StuffInstagram is now conducting a test to remove the ability to share feed posts within Stories:You would assume that a lot of Stories updates are re-shared feed posts. The fact that Instagram is willing to reduce this seems like a positive sign for its development focus - but it might also indicate that people are viewing Stories less as a result of such shares, which has prompted Instagram to take action.I can tell you that many of my stories are photos from other accounts that I think are amazing, and I do that to encourage my followers to follow them. If you remove the ability for me to do that, then I have to resort to a third party program—Repost—to post them to my feed, and I don’t want to do that. My feed should be for my pictures. I hope what they’re driving at is removing the ability to share one’s own feed posts as Stories, and I would completely understand why they feel it’s redundant. That’s not how I read this story. In other Instagram news, it looks like IG and Twitter might be burying the hatchet soon and allowing integrations again:That's an even bigger integration. As noted by Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram hasn't provided direct Twitter integration since it disabled Twitter card preview support back in 2012, which makes it annoyingly difficult to share content between the two apps. Now, it seems they're mending bridges, which could facilitate not just tweets in Stories stickers, but wholly new integration options which would enable direct sharing of Instagram posts to Twitter as well, fully integrated and formatted in-line.That's not part of this proposal, and it may not ever be. But it would definitely be handy - and with Twitter seemingly now more open to such, it could pave the way for improved connection.If true, this would look a lot cleaner than the screenshots we’re all doing right now anyway. Honestly, this horse has been out of the barn so long it’s dying of exposure. Shot of The Day 

Hey, you sick twisted freaks, It's Roley, how ya doin', welcome to the show.I've been doing something the past couple of weeks that has been really productive, and I'd like to share it with you today.  So let me ask you a question:  Is there an hour a day that you've been pretty much screwing off instead of doing your creative work?  What if you instead locked in for that hour and dedicated it to "the plan," or whatever you want to call it?  How much do you think you could get done in an hour without interruption?My answer should be pretty evident; I did 13 podcasts last month.  I edited two albums of photos.  I deep cleaned the ever-living hell out of my studio.  I did a few screen simulations for things I have yet to edit.  I took a class on shooting video.  I edited a video for a friend's podcast.   This month, I plan to keep that momentum up and hopefully add a few more things.  I did it with an hour of dedicated, uninterrupted time every day.   Because I was able to do it with an hour a day, I was able to do it without the burnout I've previously felt by grinding for hours, I was able to take care of other things outside of the creative as well, and most importantly I was able to get the sleep I've been sorely lacking.  Once I've finished my hour, I take stock of where I am and plan out what I need to do next.  Since most of what I do is cyclical, I have a checklist for that.  If I take on additional work or have a new project, I'll plan those outside the dedicated time.  Usually, in the morning, when I'm going over admin stuff before I hit the day job.  Admittedly, this took a little getting used to because I'm used to just powering through a mountain of work, but what I have begun to realize about myself is that after a while, there's a point of diminishing returns about what I do.   Constraining the amount of time I get down to writing, for example, makes me focus on the task for a certain time, and I think it improves the product.  I'll be using this process in the future, and I plan on folding it into a larger idea of workflow that I'll share with you once I have it ironed out.   For now, I think we'll call this an experiment in Project Management, but one that appears to be working out.If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  Now, I've mentioned this at the end of the podcast since the beginning of the year, but I haven't really gone into a lot of detail about what you can find at the BMAC site.   Over at Buy Me A Coffee, I have three tiers:  Free content, content for supporters of my work, and membership content.  I'll always put up free content at the site because I realize some people can't part with a buck right now, but I still want you to have something.   Supporters get a weekly dispatch, a sample of my photographic work, and what I call 'One Sheets,' which are one-page tutorials on how to do something.  For example, January's one sheet had to do with how I process voices for audio.   Members will get all the Supporter content, a special podcast, and any video tutorials I do.   You can support my work for as little as a dollar, and memberships are 5 bucks a month or 50 dollars a year.  There are two other ways you can support my work. The first is by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the photography link in the menu.  The photos I've posted there are available for purchase, and more photos will be posted there as we go.   The second is by hiring me to edit your podcast, provide show notes, or write for you, and you can check my rates by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the services link.The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  Stay Solid, people, see you next time...buhbye. 

Happy Lensday, kids! It's Roley, how ya doin', welcome to the show.Today, I want to talk a little about street photography and the hit and miss nature.  If you're keeping an eye on my Buy Me A Coffee page, you know I've been heading down to the Virginia Beach Oceanfront about once a month to take pictures of life on the beach because I want to capture the side of a beach town that you don't get to see.  Having done that for a couple of months now, I can see a few things I need to improve.   The first thing is the variety of shots I should be taking.  Most of the shots of people are off doing the things you usually see people doing, like walking a dog, riding a skateboard, or riding a bike.  I think a few shots stand out; one that springs to mind is of a young lady looking out the door of a cafe at something off the frame.   However, there's really not a lot of variety because, in the age of COVID, there aren't many people out and about.  Even in the dead of winter, there is at least some action.  Something else I feel a little guilty about is shooting the homeless.  There's a significant homeless population down there, and I have a pretty good idea of when and where I can catch them.  I feel a little uneasy about photographing them, but that is part of the story I want to tell, so I need to figure that out.   I am sure I need to make this happen is a change in my lens choice.  For the most part, I've been using my kit 18-55mm lens for this, but it's possible I need to use a longer lens for this.  So, I'm thinking about using my 55-250 lens and taking my 24mm lens for wider shots of the street and architecture, things like that.  Varying the times of day, I get down there may also help because I'm usually finding myself down there at midday.  I need some early morning and early evening shots, especially in the winter.  Of course, as we get into the summer months, night time shots with all the colors and lights will be part of the game, but then the streets will (hopefully) be full of activity.  Right now, the name of the game is the seedy part of the beach in the offseason.  I've been making a point to make all the winter shots in black and white, and when we move into spring and summer, we'll change to color.  That's just an artistic choice to help tell the story, but it's something I might need to rethink as we go forward.  I've also been wondering about portrait shots of people down there, but I'm not sure how to go about that without pissing people off.  Cameras do tend to make people nervous now and then.The most important thing I want to pass on to you is that nothing I've mentioned in this podcast is a dealbreaker for whether or not I continue.  Even if this project is largely a 'failure,' I can't consider it one.  Street Photography is something I have wanted to experiment with, and anytime I can take the camera out of the bag, I've already won because I'm learning every time I do it.   That's the big lesson out of this.  Just shoot.   Consider what you have, and iterate every time you head out.  Everything is practice.  You can't take the good shots unless you take a mountain of bad ones, and trust me, I've taken some bad photos, but I've got some outstanding ones out of this that I'm proud to share with all of you.  If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  Now, I've mentioned this at the end of the podcast since the beginning of the year, but I haven't really gone into a lot of detail about what you can find at the BMAC site.   Over at Buy Me A Coffee, I have three tiers:  Free content, content for supporters of my work, and membership content.  I'll always put up free content at the site because I realize some people can't part with a buck right now, but I still want you to have something.   Supporters get a weekly dispatch, a sample of my photographic work, and what I call 'One Sheets,' which are one-page tutorials on how to do something.  For example, January's one sheet had to do with how I process voices for audio.   Members will get all the Supporter content, a special podcast, and any video tutorials I do.   You can support my work for as little as a dollar, and memberships are 5 bucks a month or 50 dollars a year.  There are two other ways you can support my work. The first is by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the photography link in the menu.  The photos I've posted there are available for purchase, and more photos will be posted there as we go.   The second is by hiring me to edit your podcast, provide show notes, or write for you, and you can check my rates by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the services link.The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  Stay Solid, people, see you next time...buhbye. 

Welcome to February, shipmates1. I hope you had an excellent January.  I think I did.  I managed to put out 12 or 13 episodes of this podcast in January, and I managed to get my first supporter at Buy Me A Coffee. Over the course of the month, I received some great validation that I have helped people move forward with what they want to do.  One particular podcaster that I helped a while ago called me his Obi-Wan and mentioned that he wouldn't be podcasting were it not for some mentorship along the way from me.  I have to tell you, as a person that doesn't really need much in the way of validation, I was legit choked up by that.  More than money or recognition or any of those things, the simple act of validation that I'm doing the right thing for people is more than enough for me, and I will continue to move forward and do the right thing for all of you.  That's why we're doing this, that's why I'm here.  And so, we move forward.Moving forward has been on my mind lately, to be truthful.   In my case, moving forward means I'm leaving things I used to do behind.   I'm not focusing on the comedy, so folks that came here for the comedy may be surprised.   That's not to say that humor is not a part of what I'm doing here; some aspect of the haha will always be woven into this podcast because I can't be serious all the damn time, nor would I want to be.  The fact remains that if you move to serve another audience, the existing one may be disappointed.    This is the choice we face not just as creatives but also as humans.  When we focus on something else, we lose focus on what we were doing before.  However, there is one other thing we tend to do as humans, and that's feeling guilty about the process.  I'm going to suggest that we stop feeling guilty about it because the part that we're failing to grasp is that nothing we will ever make or do will please everybody.   Look at the most recent iterations of The Doctor, the Star Wars Prequels, or the most recent trilogy.  Hell, some people think Pink Floyd sucked when Syd Barrett left the band, and he was only on ONE ALBUM.   The point is that it's impossible to please everyone, but it is possible to displease a lot more people by not creating anything at all.   So, stop creating for everyone.  Create for someone.  Even if that someone is just you.  If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  Now, I've mentioned this at the end of the podcast since the beginning of the year, but I haven't really gone into a lot of detail about what you can find at the BMAC site.   Over at Buy Me A Coffee, I have three tiers:  Free content, content for supporters of my work, and membership content.  I'll always put up free content at the site because I realize some people can't part with a buck right now, but I still want you to have something.   Supporters get a weekly dispatch, a sample of my photographic work, and what I call 'One Sheets,' which are one-page tutorials on how to do something.  For example, January's one sheet had to do with how I process voices for audio.   Members will get all the Supporter content, a special podcast, and any video tutorials I do.   You can support my work for as little as a dollar, and memberships are 5 bucks a month or 50 dollars a year.  There are two other ways you can support my work. The first is by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the photography link in the menu.  The photos I've posted there are available for purchase, and more photos will be posted there as we go.   The second is by hiring me to edit your podcast, provide show notes, or write for you, and you can check my rates by going to krisroley.com and clicking on the services link.The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  Stay Solid, people, see you next time...buhbye. 

As we close out the month of January, Here's what I hope you've managed to do, and trust me when I tell you this is just as much for me as it is for you.  I hope you've made a list of the things you'd like to get accomplished this year, although I hope you've made two lists—one list with COVID, one without.  I hope you've made a budget.  I want to recommend a website and app called YNAB -- You Need A Budget.  It actually helps make sense of the one thing that causes us the most stress in our lives.  Subscribe to the YouTube Channel.  I'll put it in the show notes.  Try the budget app out for the 34-day free trial.  No, I'm not making any money from this. I like to tell you about the tools I use and whether I find this useful.   I believe this is useful.I hope you've begun setting boundaries in your life.  Not just about what we've talked about previously, but also about time.  I hope you're carving out time--scratch that--I hope you're scheduling time to create, to reflect, and to review. These are the three most important times you need in your life.  Schedule this time and don't negotiate about it.  Your creation time is what you need to move your life as a creative forward, your reflection time is so you can be grounded in the rest of your life, and your review time is so you can review what you've accomplished and what your next steps are.  If I can get nothing else through to you in this episode, make sure you get this one.  Please consider this year one other period of time, and that's time to learn.  Whether that's through YouTube, Creative Live, Masterclass, LinkedIn Learning, or just good old fashioned book learning, it might be a good idea to sit down at some point during the week and learn something that will help you in your craft or life.  I hope you get some sleep, goddamn it.  You're no good to anyone as a zombie.  It's supposedly cool to bust your ass three ways from Sunday for the grind, but if all you're doing is work, there's no time for the rest of your life.   If I have one regret in my life, it's not getting this lesson earlier.  I hope you're on the way to realizing what you're worth, and when you do, don't negotiate it.  I'm not just talking about work.  Be willing to walk.  Finally, I hope you're willing and able to change your plans.   Nobody gets exactly what they want how they want it 100 percent of the time.  Shit happens.  Control what you can, and roll with what you can't.   Improvisation, when done well, relies upon two words:  'Yes, And.'   Add that to my two favorite words, 'What's Next', and you have the two things that have changed my life for the better in the past thirty years.  Use them and see If it works for you.   I wish you a better year than the one we've all had.  We could really use it.   

If you know me pretty well, you know I have a crapload of bags.  I have briefcases, leather bags, canvas bags. I love bags.  But finding a camera bag that works for me has been a real struggle, and I know why that is: I pack bags like I'm Felix the Cat.  If I even think I need it, it goes in the bag.   The simple fact of the matter is I don't need to take every piece of gear I own with me, but I do need a bag big enough for a few things, and I need a bag small enough to sling over my shoulder and go.   It all comes down to what gear I'm taking with me for what reason.I have found a bag that works for me, and it's the Rugged Sling Bag by Moment.  Now, before I go any further, I'm not being paid for this, I bought my bag like everyone else, and I have not been asked by anyone to review this bag.The bag is made out of sailcloth material on the outside, which is water and fade resistant.   It's got nice YKK zippers that protect your gear from the environment.   The inside of the bag is a bright orange, so it makes finding things inside the bag pretty easy, which I have come to appreciate when taking shots at night.   There are two straps on the bottom of the bag for a tripod or a jacket.   The bag's straps are attached to 'wings' that wrap around your back to fit better, and the buckles have magnets to help you fasten them quickly and easily.   There's also a stabilization cross strap to keep your bag sturdy and distributed evenly.  As far as the pockets are concerned, I like the organization.  There's a front external pocket for wallet, keys, phone...the stuff you need quickly.  There's a zipper pocket there with expandable pockets for other items on the inside of the front cover.  I think Moment meant these pockets to be used for Moment lenses, and while they do fit there, I use them for my Akaso Brave 7 and batteries, and a few cables I use more often.   The main compartment had room for your main gear and a pocket for a tablet that will easily accommodate an 11 inch iPad Pro in the Smart Keyboard folio case.  This bag is well constructed, easy to keep clean, and easy to use.  Most importantly, it's a bag you're going to be able to use for a long time because of the build quality, which is something I look for in a bag.  I want something that is going to last years, and in my view, spending a bit more once for something that will last several years is better than spending a small amount every year or two on a new bag.   This bag will be with me for a long time, and if you're interested in a great bag for your gear, I recommend the Moment Rugged Sling Bag.   I'll put an Amazon affiliate link in the show notes for it, so if you do buy the bag using that link, I will make a commission from the sale.LINK: Moment 10L Camera Sling Bag

I had a bizarre dream once that I'd like to share with you.   I had gotten off a plane in Kathmandu, Nepal.  I was heading for the Himalayas in search of a wise man, an ascetic who had shunned all life's luxuries and niceties.  I found him adorned in nothing but a loincloth meditating by a lake at the foot of the mountains. I waited patiently for him to awaken, and as he fixed his gaze on me, I solemnly intoned the words I wanted him to hear.  "Phil Collins..." I said.  He silently nodded and did the drum break from In The Air Tonight.   I thanked him and made my way back to the airport, and flew home, fulfilled.  I think you could walk up to anyone with your phone and play them 30 seconds of any Genesis or Phil Collins song--even instrumental sections where he's not singing--and very few people would not identify the song you're playing as a Phil Collins or Genesis song.  Why?  Because that gated drum sound is unmistakable.  His playing style is immediately recognizable.  The production of his music is specifically tailored to his voice and that drum.  You can't miss it.  Like you can easily identify a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, a pair of Nike sneakers, or an Apple iPhone.  It's the whole image and design of a thing that sets it apart from everything else in its area.  For us, the working and aspiring creative, it's the thing we want to attain.  Our particular flavor of crazy that we put on what we do makes it undeniably ours.  Our gated drum.   As frustrating as this might be, it's not something you can just come up with in a day and slap on there and say, "THIS IS A ROLEY ORIGINAL."  Believe me, I've tried, and it doesn't work that way.  No, this is something that comes with level grinding.  The doing of the work.  The unyielding practice of the daily craft.  The showing up and giving of yourself to the Creative Powers That Be.  The gurus would love you to believe in shortcuts, but there aren't any that don't involve the passing of coins to them so that they enrich themselves and establish credibility they may not deserve at the expense of your hard work.  The truth is, the longer you practice your craft, the way to set yourself apart will come with skill and talent.  You'll find it, not unlike the way you find missing change in your sofa.  You'll come across it as a happy surprise, and then put it in your pocket to use.  So, have you found that pocket change?  Any ideas?   Use the hashtag #bluepocketchange and share it with me.  There may be a surprise in store for people who share.  If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  Stay Solid, people, see you next time...buhbye.  

Kris and Matt Reconvene the No Segue Machine and talk DC Riot, Matt's versions of Heaven Hell Purgatory and Limbo, Sci-Fi series, The Waffle House, and more.Matt's drink for January is the Manhattan Railroad, and it will railroad you.  Oh yes.  Yes, it will. 

As the kids say these days, I don't know who needs to hear this, but fuck all the isms and fuck all the ologies.   Unless you're a complete sack of jello, of course.  If you are a sack of jello, please at me because I need to know how you got offended by this.  There is exactly one ISM you need.   Here's how it works.  Say your last name.  I'll wait.  Now add ISM to the end of it.   There it is.   Now you've named it, what the fuck do you do with it?  Well, the straight answer to that is whatever the fuck you want, but let's drill down a bit.  Again, excepting the jello--and what flavor are you anyway--you did survive up to this point with some core beliefs.  You've got some right and wrong concept unless you're related to me directly, and I hope you've got some discipline and ethics, and maybe a goal or two.  If you don't, maybe it's time to write that shit down.See, it's my firm belief that most people know exactly who they are and what they need to do to be who they want to be.  But they don't want to do the work, and hey, guilty as charged.   I can be just as lazy and procrastinating, and problem avoiding as any three of you combined.  Trust.   But I also have the self-awareness to know where that leads.  It begs the question: What exactly are we afraid of?  Well, I wish I knew.   I can't decide if we're afraid of trying and failing or trying and succeeding.  We are terrified of trying, that's for sure.  So we read all manner of self-help books and attend scores of seminars and webinars, and listen to a plethora of gurus to tell us the thing we should already know.  We have the ability to think for ourselves and control the path of our lives, and all we have to do is start DOING it.  Unless you're a psychopath, you have an inner compass.  You know which way North is.  Stop listening to other people that think they know what's good for you, and YOU know what's good for you.  You know what you believe, and you know what your values are, know what your priorities are, and know what you need to do.   We--myself included--need to stop being a chickenshit and stop believing in something other than ourselves, NEEDING something outside of ourselves to get shit done.   Cut the lines.   Get your ass off the dock.  Sail. 

Hey, I don't know who needs to hear this but just because you have a camera and like photography, you don't ever have to go pro no matter how many times your friends tell you.  Look, your reasons are your own.  I certainly have mine, and chiefly among them is that I love photography and don't ever want to put myself in a position where I hate it.  One of the reasons I like talking about several different platforms that I'm interested in is that I don't spend all of my time on just one.  I can work or play in the photography space for a little while, and when I get to a natural stopping point with a project, I can move to writing, podcasting, or anything else.  Now, would I love to have this effort at new media become a full-time business?  Yes, I would.   I would also like to hire or contract people who are better at photography than I am.   I would also like to know some people manage to squeeze 27 hours' worth of work into a 24 hour day.  I'm not very good at time management.  If I were, I wouldn't have to take so many breaks in podcasting, would I?   I think a pro needs to be mindful of deadlines, both personal and professional, and perform against them.  I used to think that my photos don't cut the mustard, but when I've had people buy photos from me, it's hard to keep believing that.   I think I'm good enough to be paid for what I do; I still think I have a long way to go before calling myself a professional photographer and being comfortable with it.  I don't know if you can call that a true case of impostor syndrome, but I like to think it's keeping myself humble.  I'm good.  Not sure I'm good enough.I know what I don't want to do with my photography, I can tell you that for sure.  I do not want to do marriage or portrait photography, where I have to work closely with people.  I like street photography and a slice of life photography as an art form, and I've found myself gravitating towards taking pictures of life by the ocean as a theme.  I want to continue doing that and finding my style that way.  I suppose that I will have to take pictures of willing subjects as part of that style at some point.  I'll cross that bridge when I get there.  All in all, I would love to stay in love with photography, as I remain in love with the other things I do because I get to do them all and do them how and when I want.  Yes, I'd love to make money doing it, but I'm having fun being able to practice all my craft until then. 

This may or may not be a really long one today, kids.  It's a pretty straightforward point if I don't end up confusing you with my half-baked, meaningless babble.  I have a friend that had a character he invented--I think it was for a short story if I recall correctly--who had a saying.  Who we are now is not who we're going to be at the end.  I was reminded of this recently when I re-watched "The Time of The Doctor," which is Matt Smith's last episode of Doctor Who.  He says, “...We all change when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s ok, that’s good, as long as you keep moving, as long as you remember all the people that you used to be..."And you're saying to yourself right now, "Roley, C'mon.  Timelord Regeneration as Life Lesson?"  Sure.  Why not!  People find reasons to do things on the side of a freakin bottle of Heinz 57 if they're looking for it.  Usually, as I said a couple of Mondays ago, I try to capture where I am at the end of a year and set out some goals for the coming year.  I said back then that I haven't done that this year because at the moment, any goals I set are likely based on the best-case scenario of us being able to go places and do things that won't get us killed, and if I get myself killed, who I am right now IS who I'm going to be at the end of my life—it kind of defeats the point.  The capturing of who I am and where I am at the end of a year is so I can remember all the people I've been.  Where I want to be next year is up in the air, but the end has never been in doubt.  I have a very definite idea of who and what I want to be at the end, and every year I make sure that's written down somewhere I can refer back to.  The path to that person isn't a straight line--none of life is--but that's the reason for the yearly review.  It's a quality calibration, to use a call center term.  I say all of this to ask you a simple question:  Have you got a picture of the kind of person you want to be at the end?   It might be a bit easier for me to see because I'm 50, and I'm over the hill and starting to pick up speed.   You might be in your 20s and are just starting the climb, and I'm telling you to sit down with a notebook and start thinking about it because the greatest piece of motivation anyone can have is an idea of your highest self.  Your transformed person.  Your...uh...final regeneration?Sure.  We'll run with that.  Why not.  So, what is your final form?   Use the hashtag #blueregeneration and share it with me.  There may be a surprise in store for people who share.  If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social mediasssss.  Stay Solid, people, see you next time...buhbye. 

This business of creativity that we're engaged in has its challenges, that's for sure.  And Last year was definitely a challenge for all of us.  Now we're in 2021, and for sure, the coronavirus hasn't gone away yet.  In fact, if the past is prologue, then by the time you hear this podcast, we might be in the middle of a spike from people being stupid on Christmas and New Years'.  At my day job, I've been told that we'll be at home until the end of March, so that will make it a full year that I will have been at home.  Of course, part of it was without a job, but the principle is the same.   And this got me to thinking, well, why?  Well, speaking in the general sense, we're all a bunch of fuckers, that's why.  It's easy to blame the virus for things, and certainly, the virus is to blame to a point.  Because we've had the chance to mitigate this, and we could have been working our way towards normal months ago.  This fall and winter rise in cases didn't have to happen.  But of course, we had Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years', and as the bunch of fuckers we are, we went out and partied and caught the damn thing.  "Oh, but that's just the Holidays, Roley," you say. "We got the vaccine!  Things will sort themselves out."  Really?  Because I'm looking at Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, and Memorial Day happening before everyone can reasonably get at least the first shot, and I know that we're a bunch of fuckers who won't stay the fuck home.  Then there's you stupid brain dead motherfuckers who've equated wearing a mask and doing the simplest goddamn shit in the world--really the bare ass minimum--to help keep people safe with an assault on your personal freedom.   I mean, sweet feathery light floating Jesus, you people are really wired incorrectly.  I'm long past asking you to stop and think because clear thinking is not your jam.   If you were able to apply a modicum of logic to this situation, the suggestion that the Governor of Michigan or Virginia is the same as a murderous dictator because they asked you to wear a mask would never come out of your fetid rotting face hole.  Of course, I know where this comes from.  It comes from being told for over 70 years by quack philosophers like Ayn Rand and conservative talk radio hosts in the 80s and beyond that selfishness is a virtue.  From supposed news sources and idiotic bloggers and conspiracy theorists that have mastered the art of keeping you in the echo chamber. And of course, from your having never been taught to think critically, ask questions, or to do anything other than blindly agree with those that agree with you.  Now, of course, it no longer has anything to do with right or wrong.  It has to do with much more shallow things than that.  I honestly don't know how the cause and effect of this escapes you, frankly.  It seems pretty obvious to anyone that isn't an imbecile.  If the virus is still unchecked, and you hang out for long periods of time in close quarters with people not taking any precautions whatsoever, you're playing Russian roulette.  And one day, you're going to son that chamber and lose.  But it's not going to be just you now.  No, it's just possible that the wife and kids get it, your co-workers, the checkout lady at the grocery store who's working three jobs to support her kids because she's doing it herself, but no.  You just have to hit that gym or get that craft beer or...y'know, just fuck you.  Seriously.  Fuck ALL the way off, as far as you can fuck off, then fuck farther off, for eternity.   Because it's you stupid brain dead motherfuckers that are costing people jobs, homes, and lives because you think personal freedom gives you the right to be dickheads.  It does not.  Do you want to get back to normal life? Not wear masks and be able to hit the bar and fail miserably to get laid like you did every other weekend of your life before the pandemic?  THEN GET WITH THE FUCKING PROGRAM.  I promise you. You'll be crying in your beer on Saturday night again in practically no time, douchebag.  

I have something I want you to marinate on for a second.  Take this and weigh it.  Every time you take a picture, you have the opportunity to share with people how you see things in a way no one else can.   But to do this, you need to start seeing things the way a photographer does.  You need to train your eye to see things to shoot.  The advent of digital cameras and smartphones is absolutely wonderful, and it allows everyone to take thousands of pictures of anything and everything. Still, there is one thing it took away:  The scarcity mindset.  The kind of mindset you cultivate when you know you only have 12 or 24 exposures on a roll of film.  You've got to be pretty sure that the shot you take is a good one, and the way to be really sure that you're taking that good shot is by developing a photographer's eye for things.  One of the things I used to do with my old Pentax back in the day was I would frame things up and work out the composition.  I didn't have any film in my camera; I just raised the camera to my eye and went through the motions of framing and composition of the shot. As time went on, I stopped taking the camera with me.  I would look around and compose the shot in my head.  Today, I use the Moment app on my iPhone to compose shots I think I like.  Sometimes I take the picture, sometimes not.  The eye's training is the thing, and the great thing about this practice is that you don't have to go anywhere special to do this.  All you need to do is look around.  Find the shots that look interesting to you in whatever environment you find yourself in.   Use a camera app to frame the shots, but you don't necessarily have to take the picture.  Just work on developing your eye.  Look for depth in a shot.   Is there something in the foreground?  Is there something in the background?   Is there an action taking place that you can capture?   What about an interesting light and shadow?  Are there people in the shot doing something?  Does the scene tell a story that would be lost if you didn't capture it?  And by the way, if you're instinct doesn't scream at you to grab the camera and get the shot on that last one, we need to talk about that.  We'll do that another day.  For now, though, take some time to be aware of your space and find the shots.  Train your eye.  Learn how to share how you see things the way no one else can.   

This week, I'm thinking about the concept of boldness.  Taking chances.  I don't know about you, but I've not exactly been keen to step up and do something out of the ordinary, and I've been wondering why.  Is it because of the past year?  Is it because I've set expectations of what I should or shouldn't do?  Am I assuming you have expectations of what I do?  Am I just scared?  Maybe a little of all three if I'm honest with myself.   That said, back on episode 372 of this fine bit of poddlement I talked about a period of self-reflection on turning 50 and what I was and wasn't willing to deal with anymore.   The more I think about it, the more I'm not willing to be afraid of taking chances with what I do.  More to the point, I'm dropping some baggage related to it.  For years, I've had this battle in my head about being one thing all the time or being Roley, who is not one thing all the time.  I got reminded of this the other night listening to an album that should have never been made.  Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.   There are many stories about this album being a fuck you to fans or a way to get out of a record contract, but let's put that all aside for a moment.  At its core, Metal Machine Music is an experiment.   It's discordant, and it's screechy, it's industrial, it's grating.  All of that is true.  But do you have any doubt that much of the guitar work we see today, or some of the most popular bands in the past 40 years, have listened to this at least once?  I guarantee you Trent Reznor has.  I think one of the most critical failures in rock music in its 65-year history gave birth to ideas we didn't see until much later, and that's the triumph of it.  But the real message is in the liner notes of the album.  He writes, “Most of you won’t like this, and I don’t blame you at all. It’s not meant for you.”   He's right. It wasn't.  It was an experiment and an exercise in indulgence.  It's the sonic act of music folding back on itself and collapsing, of electricity copulating and feedback exploding until all you hear is a wall of fuck you, clear as day.It's the creative act of a mad scientist, and it's fucking brilliant.  Want another example?  Look at David Bowie.   Any version, because there are so many versions of David Bowie and so many different music styles you can find with him, is the point.  Bob Dylan, too.   They made the albums they wanted to make for the most part, and if you didn't like the new one, you knew that the next one was going to be different.  You didn't like the African vibe on Paul Simon's Graceland?  Cool.  Check out The Rhythm of The Saints, and it's Latin influence.  David Byrne ANY GODDAMN THING.Bjork left Planet Earth and does what she wants, and people dig it, or they don't.  They decided that they could be bold.  They took chances.  Some didn't work.  Some didn't work at the time.  Some are home runs from the gate.   All of it was an idea they couldn't wait to work on.If we're looking for permission to be ourselves and do the thing we want and be unafraid and unapologetic, I think Lou Reed gave it to us decades ago.   Do the thing.  Be bold.  Take chances, and stop caring what people think.  So!  If you had no fear, what is your bold creative project?   Use the hashtag #boldcreate2021 and share it with me.  There may be a surprise in store for people who share.  

Something new for your earholes.  Cinema VeriTardy, where I watch all the movies I've never watched and provide a real-time commentary track.  In the first episode, I watch The Room (2003) Starring The Golden Gate Bridge.  It should star the Golden Gate Bridge as many G.D. times they show it.  This movie might have lost money, but whoever they bought the stock footage from made out pretty well.  It also stars a football in what has to be the best acting job in this movie.  This movie is brought to you by whiplash lawyers, for the amount of time it took the actors to go from zero to WTF in any random scene. Enjoy!  

As you're listening to this, we're about 2 weeks from what will hopefully be an uneventful inauguration here in the US.  Joe Biden will become President of the United States, and Donald Trump will hopefully go away.  I doubt it, but I'm hopeful.  As we end this terrible chapter in American History, I look around, and it's just mind-boggling.  The amount of damage done, the number of things we have to fix now.  Hundreds of thousands dead.  Millions out of work, So many slipping into poverty because of what's happened this year.  But all of this needs to serve as a reminder of something we all should know and act accordingly.  There is no one coming to help us. There is a lot of talk, and a lot of hand-wringing and many pearls clutching, but no action.  We can't count on some stimulus, unemployment assistance, the next administration, or even the basic things any person should have at this point.  No one's going to save us.   So, we're gonna have to save ourselves.  Well, what does that mean?Well, I'm not quite sure, but I think it probably has the most to do with money as with all things.  Who has it, and what they do with it.   A stimulus, you see, is designed to put money in our hands so we can spend it.  It's not to stimulate US; it's to stimulate the economy.  To keep the economic engine turning.  To keep businesses in business.  To keep profits up and shareholders happy.  They give us a stimulus so we can SPEND it.   Give the upper-class stimulus, and they SAVE it because they can. They also get tax cuts so they can keep more of what they already own.  But there's no economic boost to giving the upper-class money; they don't do anything with it.  So, if you really think about this for a second, you should come to a straightforward but profound conclusion, and it's that if WE stop, everything stops.   It's also why we're not talking seriously about UBI or a higher stimulus than 600 bucks right now.  It's just enough to keep the fish on the hook but keep us in line with the folks' best interests up there.The first step to this, I think, is recognizing that we're still fish on the hook.     We need to slip the hook, and then...and this is key...we don't retake the lure.   We do that by leveraging the actual purchasing power we as the working middle class have, and all we have to do is what our grandparents did.  Not our parents...they took the lure.  Our Grandparents--at least mine--grew up in The Great Depression.   They learned self-sufficiency.  They learned frugality.  And when they bought something, they damn sure that the thing they bought was going to last them years if not decades.   Of course, this is when things were built to last a long time.  These days you can get the stuff that lasts a long time, but it costs more.  The Great Value version is cheap, sure, but it breaks quickly and easily.   This means you buy another one, maybe a new one every year.   Look at your phone, especially you Apple folks.  Do you need a new phone every year or two?   And yeah, I get it.  I've done that too.  But understand this, because it's important.  The consumer culture of cheap, fast, and now only hurts US.  Not them.  They get hurt when we stop buying when we don't STIMULATE the economy.  When we save our money when we own things that don't break in a year.  When we stop buying so much shit we don't really need.When we stop, everything stops.  And they'll lure us with sales and zero percent financing and all sorts of sparkles and sports endorsements and such, and we need to resist it.  We need to become, for lack of a better term, minimalists.  I actually despise this term because there's a hip and now connotation to it, but I really can't think of a better one.   I suspect that the working class, when it finally realizes that they've been shit on by both parties for 40 some odd years, realizes that they can have their voice heard by simply keeping their wallet in their pocket, things will start happening.   It's a pie in the sky hope, admittedly.  It's asking for a profound culture change, which puts people well outside what makes them comfortable.   I believe I see the logical result of the culture continuing the way it is, and I find it unacceptable to leave it to my kids to fix.   It's very much Man in the Mirror time, and that's as it should be right now.  If we can commit to a change in our consumer lifestyle for a certain amount of time, say 18 months, I believe the next Congressional elections and the legislation that comes out of it will look very different from what we see today. 

Happy Lensday, kids!   That's right. I said Lensday.  Photography is what we're going to talk about on Wednesdays!   This could be a tip, an opinion, a review if I have something to review, but it's gonna be a talk about photography.   Today though, we're going to talk about how Photography and I got together in the first place.   Now, I need to make it clear that I'm not a pro.  I've been paid for my photography by some very nice people that have asked me to do a couple of things for them, but I'm not a pro in the sense that photography is all I do.  If it were, I'd be a photojournalist and still make no money, but I'd love what I do.Of course, my parents had a Polaroid, but I wasn't allowed to touch it because the film was not cheap back in those days for a One-Step, and you didn't get a lot of it in a package.   My first 'real' film camera was a Pentax that my friend Lawrence lent me for a Photography 101 class I took in school.  It was taught by a guy named Ed Gibbs.  Great guy and he's the guy that originally planted the bug in my brain.  He was also a big ol' tattle tale, which in hindsight was a good thing.  Y'see, Ed's wife, worked with my Dad at a defense contractor.  So, when I came in with what I thought was a FANTASTIC shot of my Siamese Cat, he told me it was out of focus.  I told him it wasn't; it was great.  He said, "Kris, we've had this back and forth a couple of times on your photos.  I can see that you're sincere when you say this photo is great.  So I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I think you need glasses."   At the time, I was furious about this because I spent a lot of time on this photo.  The lighting, exposure, and amount of patience it takes to get a cat to cooperate for 5-10 seconds were a feat.  I didn't expect to get told I needed glasses by someone who didn't know me well.  When my Dad came home later that evening, he brought it up and asked me why I never mentioned this before, and I told him I thought I was seeing fine until a couple of hours ago.  Words blurring on a page to me while I read them I thought was just eye fatigue, and I suffered through it.  I saw other things just fine, and I never had any trouble with road signs or anything like that.  Still, I went to the eye doctor.  It turns out I had double astigmatism, and I got a pair of glasses.  I have to tell you what a moment that was to see things as clearly and as sharp as a lot of you do.  The first thing I did was grab the camera.  I passed that class.   I went on to be quite the shutterbug for years until I got married and had kids.  Like photography and playing the guitar and drums, the old hobbies I enjoyed went by the wayside because I worked so much.  Eventually, the camera I bought with my own money became obsolete, replaced by digital cameras that had me shudder every time I looked at the price.  So photography got lost by the wayside for several years.In 2013, I got a job doing tech support for a company that makes printers and cameras.  As time went on, that itch to grab a camera started growing.  My company allowed us to check out cameras to use, so I grabbed one and went shooting for a weekend, and I was hooked again.  I went pawn shopping and found a Canon T5i with two lenses for cheap, and I still use that camera today.  In fact, I bought a Canon T6 for my wife, and we go shooting on Saturday Mornings.  I can tell you that photography has done wonders for our marriage.   We did not have a shared hobby for 24 years until I bought her a camera, and now we look forward to that time together.   Together being the operative word.  As time has gone on, I find myself gravitating towards certain kinds of photography.  I love black and white photography, and I prefer to edit my photos that way.  In some cases, I'll desaturate most of the color except one and let that one pop.   Since my favorite color is blue, that's generally what you'll see remain in my photos.  I love patterns.  Geometry.  I love abstract or minimal photography.   However, I find that what I love the most is what I will call seagull photography.  The beach and the ocean have been part of my life since the day I was born, and the one time I left it, I realized I couldn't live without it.  I would love to go to different coastal towns around the country and the world and take photos of the beach and ocean life.  I've started branching out into street photography to make this work, and I find that walking around with a DSLR causes people to get nervous.   I tend to use my smartphone and lenses by a great company called Moment to capture those photos.   That brings up a touchy subject among professional photographers.  Chase Jarvis said once--I think it was Chase--that the best camera in the world is the one you have with you.   Whatever that may be.  Most everyone has a camera on their phone now, and there are great apps like Moment or Obscura or Halide that give you more control over some settings and let you take great photos.  Not pictures, mind you...PHOTOS.   If you have an eye for composition and can take advantage of lighting, and really dig into these apps and learn what they can really do, you can take photos that are indistinguishable from DSLR photos these days.  Use the tool you prefer to get the job done.  And here on Lensdays, we're going to talk about how to do that.  

Happy Monday, friends, it's Roley, how ya doin', welcome to the show.  Welcome to the First Monday of 2021.  I felt like we all needed to hear that. We're now 2021.   If you hear this, that means you made it.   Maybe we all need an award for making it through 2020, yeah?  The Bluejacket Creative Award for Chronological Perseverance.  It's all yours, kids.  (Note to self, actually make an award for this, maybe?)Of course, there's quite a ways to go before we can look at the nightmare that was 2020 and put it behind us because the things made 2020 the toxic hell stew it was are very much still with us.  For the next couple of weeks, we still have...you know...that guy, we still have a pandemic on our hands, a lot of us still are unemployed or underemployed, and so on.  We're still under a weird next normal that has us staying away from people we love, working from home, and trying to keep to the minimum contact with people outside our bubble.  That said, I'd like to ask you a question that I'd like you to ask yourself?  How did you account for your time in 2020?  Did you take that time to do something for or about yourself?  I started writing again, I started podcasting again, my wife and I continued to find places where we could play with cameras, I reached out to some fine folks in my community and brought their stories to you. While I lost my job in 2020, I reaffirm that having good relationships and maintaining bridges is worth its weight in gold.  I was rehired by the company that let me go, and while I am not in the position I left, I have every intention of earning my seat back because I know what I'm capable of, and so does my employer.So that leaves 2021.  What's the plan?   Well, I don't know.   Usually, as the year closes, I take stock of what I did in the previous year and figure out my goals for the coming one.  I didn't do that this year because I have no way of knowing if I'll be able actually to meet any of them.  So I don't know where I'm going this year. While I find myself restless about it and have questions and want to start throwing things up against the fridge to see what sticks, I'm also coming around to the idea that maybe what I should be doing is quietly preparing, and waiting for a door to open.  That doesn't mean sit around and do nothing; it means preparing.  It means keeping the skills up.  It means maintaining your connections.  It means staying active and creative.  It means reading and learning and engaging productively with people.  It means not consuming the empty calories of our culture and instead focusing on the things that bring you some value and the things you do that bring value to others.  It means trying to improve your life and the life of the people around you.  Finally, it means waiting for the thing that knocks on your door and remembering that whatever opportunity knocks on the door, a person that's ready to work is what will be answering that door.  Ask yourself how you accounted for 2020 and what you will do to account for 2021.  Please write it down.  Please share it with me on social media with the hashtag #bluecreate2021.  There may be a surprise in store for people who share.  I'm working on that right now.  

I have long said that the day I turned 40 was the best day of my life, because my give a crap broke.   And it's true that my give a crap broke that day, and a lot of stuff that I had been just maniacal and neurotic and worried about just literally disappeared overnight.   It was like this huge weight came off me, and I felt amazing, and it absolutely had nothing to do with the tequila.  Incidentally, I discovered I really like a good aged tequila that day as well, but NOT REALLY THE POINT. This summer I turned 50, and while a similar thing did not happen overnight, this was a slow burn of self reflection because it's 2020 and what the hell else is there to do?   After this slow burn of a Summer, I realized a couple things that I think can tie directly in to the creative mindset.  More specifically, they can hinder a creative mindset, and I've let these things affect me over the years.  I suspect you have as well, so I'll share them with you.   The first is that I let Other People's Drama invade my space WAY too often, and I need to not be down with OPD.   No, you're thinking of the other thing.   OPD means allowing other people's negativity into your life, and if you're anything like me, it can really screw you up.  Negativity affects me profoundly, and I know WHY it affects me that way, it's connected to how I grew up, and it's a trigger for me.  And yet, despite doing the work and having the self awareness to recognize it I somehow manage to fail at keeping OPD out of my space, and even worse, there are times I invite it in, because apparently my brain is a masochist.   So Job Number 1 is to stop letting Other People's Drama into my space, and to remove the sources of OPD that I can't convince to cut it out. Job Number 2 is closely related to Job One, but there's a slight difference.  In Job 2, these are people that have a problem that has a solution.  It's a clear solution, it may even be an easy solution.  This group of people may have come to you seeking a solution, or some advice.  The thing is, they have every reason in the world why they CAN'T...which is to say WON'T.    It's cliche', but it's true:  You either want the problem or you want the solution, and every time you say "Yeah, but...", "But, see...", or "The Thing is...", or even "Whahahappenwuz..."  You're just making it clear you don't want to solve the problem.  That's fine.  I'm not even going to judge you for it, we've all been that person.   At some point though, I am going to stop talking to you about this, and I'm not going to want to hear about it.  See Job One.  ON a related note, if at some point some variation of "Why does this keep happening?"  Emanates from a person's vocal cords, I may need to be physically restrained from explaining it, using the widest range of colors on my palette.  We all have to do shit we don't want to do, and we're not happy about it.  I thought I was gonna be the next Howard Stern.  Life Sucks, sack up and fucking deal with it.    So we're clear, I'm not a Snow White angel about this either.  Of course I bitch and moan about it sometimes.  I'm a human being, last I checked.   But you know what, I'm going to deal with my stuff because the sooner I can deal with it, the sooner I can say, "Hey, I did the crappy thing I needed to do, and now I'm gonna go do the thing I WANT to do, so leave me alone for a little while."   That's the deal, that's how it works, and after a lot of thought about this over the Summer, I've realized that If there are people in your life that don't get that, or don't support that, or want to argue with you about that, then you don't need those people in your life.  See. Job. One. The third thing that I've dug up about myself over this Dystopian Timeline is that while I've done a lot of work over the past fifteen years or so to extract a sizable stick from my backside, I think I've overcorrected.  Now, I'm not without a sense of humor about myself.  Let's be honest:  for the new folks around here, my full first name is Kristen.  It's generally considered to be a girl's name.  You MUST cultivate a sense of humor in my circumstance or life will generally suck from jump street.  However, there are two things that I think I've allowed to happen by walking a half marathon to avoid an argument.  The first is that there is a small group of people that I grew up with that still see me through the chaos filter of my youth yet insist I recognize that they are not the people THEY used to be.  It's not a lot of people, and in at least one case I just ejected them outright a few years ago.  I am not the person I was, and here's some real talk:  If I was that same person, they'd be talking to a headstone.  Your humble poddler has done a cubic assload of work over the years to put himself right with the universe.  None of it was easy, every bit was worth it, and every earned mile of it is on my face like a battle scar.  You don't want to recognize game?  Fine.  Vaya Con Dios. The second part of that is just letting people think they can just be shitty humans to my face.  This isn't being negative, or just bringing drama.  I know this is my fault.  This is me setting the expectation over the years that I'll take insults like it's a bowl of Life cereal and I'm Mikey.   I'm not going to go deep into the weeds on this, but when I stop to reflect on this, It's stunning how much I believe I let people get away with because I didn't want to be the asshole I used to be.  I overcorrected, I can see that I did now, and it's time I got back in balance with that.   Telling people to step off is not the same as being a dick.   So you may ask yourself "What in the bloody hell does any of this have to do with creativity?"  I think cultivating the space to have creative freedom means weeding out the things that take up too much of your mental RAM.   It might be completely other things for you, or maybe you just need to clean out your Asshole Cache.   The end result is that you're focusing on the crap, and not on the creative.   It's almost like this trick someone taught me.  Are you pissed off?  Stand on one leg.  If you're focused on the anger, you'll lose your balance.  If you're focused on the balance, you'll lose the anger.   It works for me, and the number of broken pencils, keyboards, and noses it's saved over decades is incalculable.  This won't happen tomorrow.  It's taken me months of reflection to work these things out for myself, and to do the work towards what the solutions are for me.  It's also taken me months to do this in a sober and deliberate manner, and not in a fit of pique that causes more damage than it solves because that's just replacing one stressor with another.   Will we ever clear all the space?  Not likely, but that is not an excuse to start identifying what stops you from being able to sit down and get to the work you want to do.  So start.  Now.   If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it, Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  Also, if you find this episode, or any of this podcast to be of value to you, how about being me a coffee?  You can go to buymeacoffee.com/krisroley, and...well...buy me a coffee.  The website HQ for all this madness is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest, and connect with me on all the social mediassssss.

 I think we've built up a little bit of a relationship here, ya think?  Not to the point where I think you can trust me, but enough to know that I'm going to tell you what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear.   I think we've gotten to know each other at least that well.  So, I want to tell you something that some of you need to hear. This is not a competition.  It has never been.  It never will be.  This creative pursuit that we share is not a contest. It's not a zero-sum game where there are winners and losers.  It's just there.  It is what it is, as cliche as that saying has become lately. You're not going to be the next Joe Rogan or Roman Mars.  You're not going to be the next James Patterson or Neil Gaiman.   We're not the next Sue Bryce or Annie Leibowitz or Ansel Adams. We won't be the next Casey Neistat or Peter McKinnon.   As Brother Dave Gardner used to say, "Take that one, friends.  Weigh it."    I know how this goes because I've done it.  We see the one we like, and we want to be like them.  Sure!  But here's the thing: That's easy.  That's the cheap way, the coward's way.   That's the way of people who are in it for the likes and the LOLs and the money.   I mean, you can crank out some content, don't get me wrong.  You can crank out all kinds of content that sound like someone else, stuff that's trending, and stuff that you find on YouTube that has a bajillion views on it, so you know it's gonna work for you as well.  Do you know what you're not creating?  Anything that lets people know you YOU are. If you've listened to me for any length of time, you know a few things about me.  You know I've been married for 26 years.  You know I've got three kids.  You know my parents are gone, and I've spent a lot of time examining that relationship and realizing exactly how dysfunctional it really was.  You know I have a psycho brother.  You know I tried to be in the military when I was 18, and that ended quickly.  You know I think Pink Floyd is the greatest band ever and that Roger Waters is amazing.  You know I've spent time in radio, in call centers, and at the age of 47, stumbled into a new career path as a multimedia specialist that opened many new possibilities for me.  You know coronavirus ate my job this year, and that I've been looking for work in multimedia with not a lot of success because I need qualifications I don't have.  You know that Kim and I try to shoot photography on Saturday Mornings, and it's done more for our marriage in 25 years than anything else I could name, and you know all this because *I* told you on this show or anything connected to it.  Casey fucking Neistat didn't tell you that.  Joe fucking Rogan didn't tell you that.  I shouldn't say that, I suppose.  I actually respect Casey Neistat. Study those that have succeeded, absolutely.  Gain every bit of knowledge you can from those who have done it, absolutely.   But take that knowledge and create something that is unapologetically, unmistakably, and authentically yours.  You might not be as successful, but you'll be able to point to it later and say, I made that.  That was me.   I promise you, that is WAY more fulfilling.  

A series of decisions led to this, the strangest of all days.  But, you know what?  In a way, I'm kind of grateful for it.

Matt Labarge returns for our monthly visit, and we discuss Fights in Parliament,  Fall Foliage Destinations in Virginia, Dark Comedies, and Self-Help.  ATT:  No Poddlement next week.   Two reasons:  I'm attending Adobe MAX next week, and I've strained my voice somehow and I need to rest my voice.   All my closest friends' prayers have finally been answered, I have to be quiet for a week or so.   See you Tuesday after next. LINKSThe Caning of Charles SumnerFistfights in parliament.   Triadic Logic Kris' TikTok. (You have my condolences.). Upsahl: People I Don't Like. https://youtu.be/GYLcu5tFjUUMcAfee's Nob High Bridge Trail State Park Burke's Garden Creative Zen Micro WinAMP Burn Notice Gilbert GottfriedBobcat GoldthwaitDanny DeVito 10 Best Dark Comedies According to iMDB Voyagers (ABC) Pilot Episode The Librarians (Trailer) Roley Episode 60:  The Unhelper   (re: self-help books)Tim Minchin - Storm Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce 

Last Saturday, I had the second in my series of talks with Matt Labarge.  He's going to be a recurring guest on this podcast for a few reasons, not the least of which is he's a fun guy to talk with.  During our conversation, I mentioned a character from my old podcast named Oliver Townes.  Oliver came about because of the explosion of self-help and productivity books that has happened in recent years.  For my part, I read all the books in this genre that I could for almost two years to research this character.  And while there are a lot of cruel jokes and roasts I could make about all of those so-called experts, that's not what this podcast is about.  This podcast is about getting you set towards True North from a creative standpoint with the knowledge and wisdom that comes from practice, not theory.  So, I have something to say about "Productivity."As the saying goes, I don't know who needs to hear this, but the root word of productivity is PRODUCE.   I KNOW, RIGHT?   I mean, this shouldn't be rocket science, but we lost that part somewhere and the guru books don't help. Especially if you're riddled with self-doubt and ADD not unlike the host of this here poddlement.Generally, here's the scenario:  You and I know that if we don't write it down, it generally doesn't happen.  If it's not in the calendar, it's not going to happen.  If it's literally not in front of my face, it's not going to happen. So we grab a copy of the eleventyith Edition Getting Shit Done and we read it and say YEAH.  I NEED TO MAKE A TO DO LIST.  I NEED TO WRITE ALL THIS STUFF DOWN AND I'LL REMEMBER.  So we put everything we think we need to do, or stuff that is due some time, or things that every relative down to your third cousin twice removed asked you to do, and then you stare at this Mount Kilimanjaro you just created and you have a seizure.Or, let's say your gears don't lock up looking at the monster you just created.  You completely embrace the To-Do List, and as it grows to roughly the size of Toledo you're checking things off the list so it stays about...the size of Toledo.   But you're dedicated!  It's admirable, it really is.  It's just...you're getting shit done, but when you look at the finished results column, Mr. and Ms. Creative...there's nothing there.  Because you're busy doing shit.So I have to ask you all a question:  If the root word of Productivity is PRODUCE, what are you producing?  Are you doing shit, or are you making shit?  There's a big difference.Yes, you've still got to do the dishes.  Yes, you've got to clean the bathroom.  YES, YOU STILL HAVE TO DO YOUR BEST TO MAKE SURE YOUR LIVING SPACE DOES NOT BECOME A BIOHAZARD EVENT.   But we're creatives, and we need to create.  Or, as a friend of mine says, "Fucking Ship It."So let's stop calling what we need productivity, and let's start calling it effectiveness.  Effectiveness, in this context, means results.   How effective is that to-do list related to having a tangible result at the end of the day?  If it's not, maybe we need to have a little rethink, and let me anticipate the next question because I've asked it myself.  NO, rethinking how you tackle your day and get shit done does not mean you failed.  It means that you have found one way that doesn't work for you, and that's the bottom line.  As creatives, we need to find that magic method that works for us.   For me, that starts with turning all the inputs off in the morning.  My morning work period is sacrosanct.  My wife comes in and starts her call center shift at 10:30 because of COVID, but for the first 2.5 hours of that time, I don't have anyone in the room with me.   The 'productivity' part of my day starts prior to 8 when I turn off all the ways people can reach me, pull up my calendar, and plan my day.  Yes, I have a to-do list but it's not trying to declare itself a sovereign nation.   Any 'someday's' I have numbered no more than five at any given time.  My list is that day only, and it's usually about the same.  I have two podcasts to write, I have a Saturday Show to edit, I have graphics and audiograms to produce, and I mine my tickler file for what I want to talk about next.   Somewhere, I want to get a vlog of some kind worked in here, but I'm not trying to overdo it.  That's where my effectiveness drops, as I mentioned in a previous podcast.  Do you know how I judge if it was an effective day?  If I have something to show for it at the end.   A d let's be clear.  A project is more than one step.  I'm not talking about finishing a project.  But did you write that script? Edit that file?  DID YOU VERB YOUR NOUN?  The Noun's the Thing. 

Before we get started, I want to make it absolutely clear that when you're starting out, your audience is going to forgive your audio quality is not exactly up to par if your message is on point.  That said, as you start to get serious about podcasting, you're going to want to work on your craft.  In this case, it means getting into some post-production to mitigate any of the backgrounders noise, removing filler words, and improving the sound of your voice.  I'm going to go through the steps I am currently using to tweak my voice in Adobe Audition.  In my workflow, there are four steps.  First, I equalize the sound.  I do this by going to the Effects Menu, then Filter and EQ, then select the Parametric Equalizer.  I use the Loudness Maximizer from the Presets menu and I make no changes, just click Apply.  Next, we need to normalize the sound.  Go back to the effects menu, select Amplitude and Compression, and select Normalize (process).   Place a check in the box for Normalize to, and select the radio button for percentage.  I find that easier.  I like to normalize it around 95 percent, but I decided, in the end, to do 94.9 because that's a radio station around here, and I can remember that.  Then, place a check in Normalize all channels equally, and click apply.  Then we need to add in a noise gate and a little compression.  We do that by going to effects, then Amplitude and Compression, and select Dynamics.  We'll do the noise gate first.  The basic function of a noise gate is to eliminate sounds below a given threshold and allows sounds that cross that threshold through.  Very useful if your recording environment isn't optimal.   Place a check in the Autogate box, play your sound file, and use the mouse to rotate the threshold amount.  I'd start at about -40db, and move towards zero.  This is a little bit of trial and error because the closer you get to zero, you'll see the red indicator step over words. That means that those words won't be heard when you apply the gate.  You want just enough gating to leave your dialogue intact, but close the gate thereafter.  You can also adjust the release tuner to hold the gate open a bit longer before closing.  Play with this until it sounds right to you.  Next, place a check in the box for the Compressor.  A compressor is a way to adjust the dynamic between the quietest someone speaks compared to the loudest they speak.  In this case, the threshold is the point where the compressor kicks in and drags back anything louder than that.  The ratio is how severe the compression is.   Attack and release are how fast the compressor kicks in and then subsides.   Again, a lot of this is going to be trial and error, but the point is to set these so it's not harsh and sudden.  Once you have this to your liking, click apply.  Then, we're going to adjust the loudness.  In this case, I like to use the Match Loudness Function.  Go to Effects, and Match Loudness.  The Match Loudness panel will open over on the left-hand side.  Drag the file you're working on from the files panel to the Match Loudness Panel.  In the settings, set the Match To Drop down to the ITU-R selection.  Your target loudness should be -16 LUFS with a tolerance of .05, and a Max Peak True Level of -1.  Click Run and the file will process to the correct sound level.   Finally, SAVE THE FILE.  If there's an asterisk to the right of the file name, you need to save it before you lose your changes.  PLEASE DO THIS, DON'T COUNT ON ADOBE TO AUTOSAVE FOR YOU.  As a rule, I generally take my finished mix down the file and run it through Match Loudness again to make sure my finished product is at -16 LUFS.   You'll want to make sure that your finished podcast is at the same standard.  That way, in a perfect world, your listener won't have to turn up the volume to hear your podcast and then get their ears blown off by the next one.Now I know that this is a little weird to follow in audio but fear not.  I'll be posting a video on my YouTube Channel of this process, and a little something extra, using this very episode. 

Danny Valentini, better known on the web as RazorFox, is an award-winning artist and the creative mind behind "The Draconia Chronicles," a long-running webcomic following the lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides of a war between anthropomorphic Tigers and Dragons.  He dabbles in voice acting in his spare time, and he loves hitting the highways for a good road trip a couple of times a year! LINKSHenry Del Toro Memorial Videoshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6wec3tYeXI&t=101shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJP2wxcja1Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTuNOrifbIE AT&T Monopolyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T#Monopoly Sports Illustrated Sneakerphonehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZfbN02_9Jw Mazinger Z Introhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyRoF689VRE Raideen Introhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SloHs5O4S48 Dirty Pair Introhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6gyzMHelwE The Impact of Akira: The Film that Changed Everythinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVoEpRIaKg DANNYDraconia Chronicleshttps://www.draconiachronicles.com Draconia Chronicles Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/draconia RazorFox Twitterhttps://twitter.com/RazorFoxDV Draconia Chronicles Twitterhttps://twitter.com/draconiacomic Draconia Chronicles Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/razorfoxdv/ If you've found this helpful, I would appreciate it if you'd share this with someone you think could use it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, and I'd really appreciate a review of the podcast if you have the time.  The website is krisroley.com, and you can go there to see the latest and connect with me on all the social media.  Thank you! 

So, I want to share with you how my brain gets ahead of me sometimes because I think I caught myself before it was too late.  That said, I would love to know what you think.   Here goes.When it comes to podcasting, when it comes to most of my plans for world domination to be honest with you, I'm a mad scientist who sees a little bit of success and then starts adding bits and pieces to his monster until it's unrecognizable, or it's not sustainable.   You've seen this podcast go through a lot of changes over the years,   and one of the main reasons for that is I see this podcast as a reflection of where I am at a certain period of my life.  There have been the funny voices, there's been the point where I felt I wanted to document certain parts of my life as a testimonial to my kids, there's been the kind of mourning process when my parents died.   Presently, this podcast is dedicated to the creative.  How we're coping during this pandemic, to our individual processes, and the myriad ways we express ourselves.  From the filmmaker to the webcomic artist, to the live theater technician and voice talent, and more.  Over this past weekend, I was feeling very grateful for the feedback I've been receiving, and I was consumed with the idea that I could be giving more.  If the name of this podcast is The Bluejacket Creative, inherent in that name is the passing of knowledge.  While I've been passing on some ideas from my point of view and having some great conversations with other creatives, I was wondering about branching this out a bit more.   I was thinking of one or two more kinds of episodes, one a bit more motivational, inspirational, and one a bit more technical.  A tutorial for things I do, or things I find to pass on in the fields of podcasting, photography, blogging, videography, life...things like that.  I hadn't gotten so far as to map these out in my head as to a schedule, because that's when I took a step back and stopped myself.  You see, where I have historically fallen off the wagon with doing these podcasts is when I fall behind with the schedule I've kept for myself.  Right now, I'm doing two shows during the week and one interview show on the weekend   I've kept this up for I think about a month.  I'd like to keep going with it, but I know something is going to be happening soon.  Eventually, if I'm lucky, the majority of my day is going to be consumed by a day job.   In a perfect world, I'd be a full-time creator for a living, but we're just not there yet.   So if one-third of my life is sleeping and the other 8-10 hours is day job related, then I have only between 4-8 hours a day to work on the creative allowing for the fact that my life is crazy and there are just days when my time is not my own no matter what I do.  The creative spirit is willing you see, the practical nature of time may be the issue.  That said, I'd like to know:  Would you like to see more technical things discussed on this podcast?  The nuts and bolts of podcasting, editing, blogging, photography, productivity, and the like?   Let me know.  I'll work on a pilot episode of these to see how they go, and whether there need to be other things involved like a video component, or a downloadable, or something like that.  You can let me know your thoughts by hitting me up on the social media, usually, you can find me @krisroley on most platforms, but the easiest way to find what I'm on is to go to krisroley.com and click on the appropriate social media icon in the upper left corner of the front page, and comment on the post for this podcast. 

In the last episode of the poddlement, my interview with Anna Tozzi - Barbay, she mentioned that her son had decided he wanted to be a filmmaker like she is.  I found that fascinating, and I said that I have always wondered what it would be like to see the world from the POV of an autistic person.   As the father of autistic children, I can see what it's like to BE an autistic person, but when you stop to realize that they see and perceive the world very differently than we do...and that's where I stopped.  The fact is, we all see and perceive the world differently, don't we?  It doesn't matter if we have special needs or not, we all have in us different ingredients, and it's these ingredients that inform the way each of us sees the world.  So, when we see someone make a film, or hear a podcast or a song, or see a photograph, we are seeing an example of how that artist perceives the world around them.   This is a person's creative voice, and I use that term to differentiate it from a creative style.   Style is just the sparkly wrapper on top of the package, like a choice to shoot in Black and White, or my occasional choice to leave out every color but the blue I'm wearing or my wife's red hair.  I think voice is the overall idea an artist tries to convey.I say all of this to ask a question of all of you:  Have you given thought to what your voice is saying?  My friend Nicole, who you can hear back in episode 354 explores identity, power, and interconnectedness.  Amy Mahon from episode 351 also celebrates identity, but she also focuses her lens on things like the connection between trauma and creativity.  These things inform their work.  What's informing yours?  So I decided to turn that focus inward and ask myself what informs my work, and honestly, that's a hard nut to crack.  Self-awareness isn't easy, as I'm sure you probably know.  But if you look at my overall work and the things I gravitate to, I think you can see a pattern emerge.  Maybe.  You'll be a better judge as to whether I'm right than I am because it's hard to separate myself from myself because I'm in here with, y'know...all of this.  I think my overall work speaks to trying to make sense of the world around me.  I look for patterns in nature.  Organization.  Design.  Geometry.   The photography that I like isn't vivid, it's black and white and very sharp in focus even all the way in the far distance.  The music I like is almost theatrical, but if you look at people like Roger Waters, Neil Peart, even Matt Bellamy...their songwriting is trying to show us a little something about the world and asks us what we think about it.  They challenge us to do something about it.  I don't read a lot of fiction, because that isn't this world.  I read a lot of things that try to help me navigate this place.  Buddhism, Stoicism, I've read a gang of self-help books.  I listen to a lot of podcasts dedicated to philosophy, politics, debates, and tutorials.   I drown myself in how-to videos in my various pursuits.  I try to make sense out of the state of near chaos that I think surrounds me, and I think I try to take the things I've learned and try to pass it along because I know there's another younger version of me out there that needs to know what I know.  Even when I was doing the comedy podcast with a bazillion different voices, it had occurred to me that each voice (at least the main characters) were all one dimension of my personality, and the conflict between them was a way to make sense of it all.My friend Nix asked me a couple of days ago if there's a memoir in my future.  I haven't a clue.  I might be able to tell enough stories about me to fill a book, but here's the thing.  We never think we are all that interesting.  I certainly don't think I'm a draw.  I'm the most basic middle-aged white guy on the planet.   My street name is Alpine Chocolate.  Maybe that should be the name of this episode, and if I was doing a comedy podcast it would be.   

Born and raised in the shadow of D/FW Airport in Texas, Anna has been living in Virginia with her husband and two kids (and a plethora of pets) for the past ten years. Although she holds a master's degree in criminal justice, Anna found her true calling on stage when she began performing improv and sketch comedy in 2011. A Meisner-trained actress, Anna has been following her dream of becoming a filmmaker for the past few years. She's currently a member of Maverick Murder Mystery, where she's been a character actress for three years. When not writing scripts, working on her next big idea, or forcing her family to work on one of her short films, Anna is probably binging horror films or playing Dungeons & Dragons with her husband and friends, online, thanks to COVID.LINKS:Anna on Twitter Anna on IGAndy Narwhal Productions on IGAndy Narwhal on YouTubeHunter House Victorian Museum

Try as I might, I couldn't get the words to come out of my brain and through my fingertips onto the page.  In this episode, the words come from somewhere else. Like many of you, I sat down to watch the Presidential Debate on Tuesday.  Now, I don't know about you, but the first debate I remember was memorable because the two candidates on stage said literally nothing for half an hour.  It was the first debate between Ford and Carter on September 23, 1976.  The sound had gone out, and the two candidates just stood there at the podiums for 30 minutes waiting for the problem to be fixed.  I don't remember much about that debate other than that, because let's face it, I was six years old.   However, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that in all the years I have watched debates, that was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen happen...until Tuesday night. 

Part of this series of conversations I've been releasing in my podcast, as well as the regular weekday episodes have been about how we're doing right now during this time.  A career in the creative field right now is tenuous it seems, freelancing even more so.Another reason for this series is meant to be for those of us who are really starting out or don't have an idea of what to do, or people like me who have come to it later in life. We're beginners.  We need direction.  We need encouragement.  We need solidarity.  This is something that's been stuck in my head in one form or another for a little while, and there's a little bit of a thread here so I hope you'll bear with me.  Years ago I did a limited Run Podcast called The Peaceful Pirate, which led to a kind of manifesto, I guess you could call it.  The gist of it was that you didn't have to participate in the game everyone else is playing.  You can opt out.  You can try to live live on your own terms, doing what you love to do.  For the most part, that's still true.  Look around you, the creative economy has--almost by necessity--risen up and may overtake the third economic Age, the Information Age, within the next 20-25 years.   That's great, but in the rising popularity of the creative economy, there's been a shift on the playing field.  For cultural and political reasons the pirates have become the Navy, there are more new sailors than ever, which means we need to sail under a new covenant.   We celebrate the beginners.  We show them the ropes.  We encourage them.  We offer honesty but not cruelty.  We stand with them.  The passing of knowledge from people to people, from generation to generation has been with us almost as long as we've had the ability to communicate.   The cave paintings gave future tribes information in a rudimentary way, through storytelling.  How to hunt.   What berries and plants not to eat.  How the meat and fire join together.   When to plant, when to harvest.    That passing of information, of wisdom, became storytelling.  Then as language became more intricate we were able to tell more stories.  We carved the stories of pharoahs on the walls of their tombs and told the story of their reign as something to emulate, or avoid.   The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius was more of a personal diary to remind himself of things, but future generations benefit from his wisdom.   Gutenberg democratized the possession of what was considered the ultimate knowledge at the time,  and storytellers and academics have made good use of the written word as time passed from them to the current day.When you arrive at Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois you're generally handed a couple of things.  One of them is your ass.  But soon after you arrive, there's a book you receive.  This book is the basic handbook for naval recruits and its called The Bluejacket's Manual.   Fundamentally, everything a new recruit needs to know in order to succeed can be found in that book.  So much so, that when wartime made a shorter training period a necessity, new sailors were told to get to know that book well on the way to their fleet assignment.   Whereas the Pirates Code could vary from ship to ship or voyage to voyage, and could be occasionally fudged a bit here and there depending on the pirate, the bluejacket's manual is meant to be a standard for junior enlisted sailors across the board.   It's for learning the history, the rules, and the discipline needed to be a good sailor.   Wisdom is dispensed, expectations are set.   A possible future comes into view.So it is with a the person of any age who is starting a career as a creative.   Your area of focus may differ from someone else, but that's just a rating.  The foundation is the same, and we all need a place to start.   There are a million podcasts out there for the established creative, and almost none for the beginner.  I want be that podcast, and I want to be that person.    My name is Roley, and I am the Bluejacket Creative.Share this with someone who needs it, subscribe if you haven't already, and I'd love a review if you've got the time.   The website is krisroley.com, and you can contact me there as well as follow me on social media. 

In this episode, I talk to John Roberts about live theater, toxic social media, politics, and how we're handling all of that, because of the coronavirus.LINKS:The Shure Super 55Audio Proscenium - TwitterAudio Proscenium - YouTube   

Today, I want to talk about freelancing.   Not any particular line of work but the subject in general.  Freelancing has enjoyed something of an uptrend lately; Lots of people were doing it before of course, but I suspect there are a lot more people doing it right now, partly out of necessity.   For some, it may be how food gets on the table.    I've been fortunate to get a few gigs here and there, and things are working out.   Did I wish I had a steady gig?  Yeah.  Do I wish I had, oh, I dunno, something with benefits?   DUH.   Am I just a little bit nervous that the Apocalypse is going to happen in a couple of weeks and it's all going to hit the fan?  OH YEAH, TRUST.   But right now is right now, and that's what I need to keep a focus on.    I hit the job boards every day and fill out a gang of applications, and then I hit Upwork and submit some proposals.   Upwork, for the uninitiated, is a freelance job board where people post what they need, and you can submit a proposal to fill that job.   If they select you, you have the gig and you get to work.  With any luck, you get paid.  I find myself wondering about the folks that are dipping their toe in these waters for the first time because I know how frustrating it was for me to pitch and pitch and pitch...and hear crickets.   Contrary to popular belief, the worst thing you can hear isn't "No", it's hearing nothing.I am not going to lie to you, it took what seemed like forever to get my first yes, and before that first yes was a number of bites on the hook that I couldn't reel in, but for me, the real frustration was in hearing nothing at all.  Not a yes, no, hi, boo, f you...not a thing.   If I'm being honest, I have to tell you that I found it hard not to take it personally.   Until I didn't.  The reality check is that nobody owes you anything when it comes to this.  They're--hopefully--paying decent money for the result they want, and if they decide you're not for them there's nothing that says they have to contact you to say "Thanks, but no."  it would be NICE, but they don't have to do it.   Once I got over that hill, it became not only easier to hear nothing, but hearing "No" became easier, and of course "Yes" is just THE BEST EVER.But let's get back to the crickets for a second.   It's a buzzkill, for sure, and that's where Mo comes along.    It's hard to keep going when you're not getting anything, but that's just momentum working against you.   The overused cliche is running uphill, but it's the most appropriate.    You've got to spend that extra energy and dedication to keep swinging.  Keep Pitching.  Keep saying to the world "I can make this for you", realize that you're going to have to take no and no-thing for an answer until that first person says "Yes", and then the most amazing thing will happen.  YOu'll be able to show the world that one person said yes, and you'll be able to show the world what you did with that yes, and someone will see that and add another yes to your pile.  That's when Mo comes around and starts working for you.   Yes means results, and results attract more Yes.  Now, I know that this sounds oversimplified, and honestly, it is.  But it has the benefit of actually being true!  Ask any best selling writer you can think of, and I'm sure they'll be able to tell you some of the most hilarious and mind-boggling rejection stories prior to that one moment that changed their lives.   How many actors and actresses, how many songwriters and musicians, how many artists were told they didn't have what it took, and that they'd never make it until they did.  We are on that same road, you and I.  We're on the highway to that town we'll never work in again until we find there's a house with our name on the door.    While we're on that highway, you might help someone tune in here...  Share this with someone who needs it, subscribe if you haven't already, and I'd love a review if you've got the time.   The website is krisroley.com, and you can contact me there as well as follow me on social media.

A question that is weighing on my mind lately is how much structure helps or hurts a creative.   I was talking with a friend who by all accounts has mad organizational skills, and she runs a filmmaking business.  There's a lot of structure in her day that is taken up doing the administrative work that you need to do in order to run a business the right way, and she's very good at that.  However, she tells me that she spends so much time doing the admin work and the proposal writing for grants and things, she laments not being able to spend the time actually creating as she would like.  For purposes of comparison, I don't have a licensed business, what I do is what I call a hobby on steroids.  It could be a business.  But I spend so much time in the creative side, I don't spend any time in the promotion side or administrative side.  SO, I wold be a polar opposite to my friend, as you can hear.  I'm sure that there's a third person out there that promotes like the dickens, but doesn't have anything created, and likes the idea of calling themselves a business.  Three legs on three separate stools, and every one of them is wobbly.  I'm about to say two words that I hate hearing, and I suspect a lot of us hate hearing.  Time Management.  We need to employ some of it.  Now, I know the urban myth of the creative is some person who's a night owl, who can't hold a deadline with both hands, a bucket and handles, who suffers and bleeds for his art, and haven't we grown up enough to understand that this is simply not the case most of the time?   I mean, I know one person who works all night creating clay yonis and selling gemstones on Etsy, but other that, most of us who are creatives are day-walkers, probably with jobs.   We have too much on our plate for any one day, so we need to plan what those days look like.  The problem is, we don't.  So, the thing that we hate doing is the one that gets put off until the Twelfth of Never.Since I happen to be home full time, I've been experimenting with a kind of time management, in that I block out three sections of time during the day for things.   I get up at 6am and have some quiet time to myself before the rest of the house gets up and gets moving.  I have a trial balloon of a project I'm trying for the first time this week that starts at 7 am, and once that's up and running I take the time between 7 am and 8 am to plan my day.   The morning period between 8 am and 12 pm is for new stuff.  For example, this episode was written during the morning period.   I'll post any blog articles I've got, drop any podcasts or videos that I've completed, and look at my idea pile for what I want to tackle next.  Then I take a lunch and get out of the studio.  If the weather is decent, I go outside and take a little walk.  Generally I take my earbuds with me, but I'm finding that this is one of those times during the day when I am by myself, and I'm finding the usual noises of being outdoors--I hesitate to call it silence--preferable.  It allows me to think more clearly on what I want to be doing, and not concentrate on what someone else is saying.  I come back to the studio around 1 pm, and for my afternoon work period I work on what I will call the 'big' project.  The priority item that I would like to get shipped sooner rather than later.   Right now, I have two such items, a podcast interview, and a video.  Both of things require attention.  The interview has a deadline.  The video doesn't, but I would like to get it done.  So any items that require voice, or shooting, or anything like that will happen at that time.  I work until 5 pm, then I shut everything down and get out of the office.  The third segment of my day happens between 7 pm and 9pm, and that's when I do my social media for the day.  I try to focus on certain hashtags.  This is not posting my own work, I did that earlier that morning.  This is social media outreach.  I follow and comment on accounts during that time.  At 9pm, I head upstairs, put the phone on the charger, and wind down.  Lately, I've been reading non fiction stuff before bed.  I'm out by about 11 pm if I'm doing it right.  Rinse, Lather, Repeat, as they say.  Now, there are days when I can't keep to the schedule, if I have a Doctor's Appointment, for example.   I just don't sweat those things when they happen, because I find that getting discouraged by my schedule is the first step to me not following the schedule.  As this is an experiment, I'll be tweaking this as we go to find what's optimal for me, but for right now, this seems to be working ok.    Time Management doesn't have to restrict your creativity, and it doesn't have to manage your time minute to minute.  If you just lay some minimal guidelines down as to what you're working on and when, you may find that it helps move you forward with everything. 

In the first of what I hope will be a recurring conversation, our resident philosopher Matt Labarge stops in for a wide-ranging discussion of topics including stoicism, social media, and alcohol.Matt Labarge is a man lost in his own mind trying to navigate the world.  He does not recommend following in his footsteps, but if you do cross paths, he enjoys sharing stories, and a drink if you're up for it.

I want to start this by suggesting each of us ask ourselves a question:   Am I OK?   I know that might sound simple and you might think that's ridiculous, but I'm dead serious.  I want you to ask yourself if you're OK, and I want you to be honest with yourself about the answer.   The reason I'm talking about this is pretty straightforward, I have had to ask myself this same question and my answer "I'm not sure".   I'm not OK, but I'm not in Dire Straits or anything like that.  I can only describe myself in being in some weird limbo state that allows some things to pass, and other things stick and drag me down a little bit for a little while.   I don't know if anyone can relate to this, maybe you can.   It wouldn't be the first time I've lost my audience by talking gibberish, and it certainly won't be the last.   Basically, I've spent the great majority of my time in the company of my family, or outdoors far away from everyone else.  The main human contact I've had is with people that share my last name.   I have been to see other people exactly three times in the five months we've been in this state.   The only time I can tell you I am in the company of other people for any length of time is on Sunday Mornings when we do the groceries.  I have not done any of the delivery side jobs since the shutdown because I think it's dangerous to do so.  I lost a job I absolutely loved at the end of May.  I've been looking ever since.  I've been doing freelance work, but it doesn't replace my income.  I wish it did.   Now, there are some among you that will tell me that I'm acting like, as one friend of mine has put it, a covidiot.  There are a few people in my life that believe that this thing has been blown out of proportion, that it's not as bad as the news has made it out to be, that it's a big hoax and I'm a sheep.  If that's what you believe, you're more than welcome to believe that. You do you.  What I'm not going to do at any point is argue with people about this, because that's time out of my life that I'm never getting back, and what I have seen out of the arguments I've read or been a witness to is that the anti-maskers are all about demanding respect for their rights, but not willing to respect the rights of others.   I'm not into recognizing your right to put me in a possibly bad situation, but I'm not going to change your mind and you're not changing mine, so let's just leave it.   I'm realizing that I'm probably going to have to break my promise to myself that I will never take another Customer Service / Tech Support phone call, and I hate it because the second I take that job, I feel like I've given up.   I have done a lot of things, but give up is not one of them.   Still, coming to that conclusion has not done wonders for my disposition.  It's depressing, to be honest.  I had a great job and I want to keep doing it.  I just have to figure out how, and I don't have so much of a plan as I have a bunch of ideas that barely string together to form a coherent thought.   As near as I can figure, what I need to do is post content every day and promote the heck out of it.  I need to reach out to people and ask if they need something I can provide, like podcast editing or Voice work, for example.  I think I'm going to create a storefront to sell my photos somewhere.  I'm going to write like the dickens and get it submitted places.  I would like to start making videos again, and that one seems to be the hardest button to button.  I suffer from what I'll call "Neistat Syndrome".  I just don't think my life is that damn interesting compared to people like Casey Neistat or Peter McKinnon, and while I know I'm comparing myself to two of the tippety-top YouTubers, It's still a thing I'm dealing with.  I need to think about the format.   In the end, I think I have what Michelle Obama says is a 'low key' depression, maybe?  I don't feel bad, I just feel resigned to certain things and disappointed.  I'm fifty years old, and that's a factor.   It's true that I have more time than my parents had, there is a limited amount of time on the game clock.  So I'll do what I always do.  Work, and try to pull off the seemingly impossible.   

Over this summer I've been trying to build up some content on the site and let people I know I'm open for business.   I say I've been trying.  I'm sure you well know that you can have good intentions to get things done and you get a good start, but then you poke your head out of your creative cubby hole and notice that there's housework that needs to be done, and there's errands to run, and then someone needs you to do something else, and so on.  So you do all of that and get back to the cubby hole only to find it's 9pm, and you wonder how in the hell did all that time get sucked away from you?   So you wind down and try to get a good night's sleep so you can get a good start again tomorrow, and you know what happens.   Rinse, Lather, Repeat.  If you're a creative that wants to go pro, the outside world trying to barge in is a real problem because your family members and friends may not realize that this is your job now, and it's also possible that you may not realize this is your job now.  It's also possible you might feel a bit guilty doing your creative things when you look around and see there's do much to be done.   I can tell you that I've dealt with all three of these issues, and in this time of isolation because of the pandemic when every day seems almost identical in a way I find myself wondering if there's a point to it.  It's easy to get discouraged.  It's tempting to quit.  We mustn't quit.If we want to be a professional creative, we have to show up.   We have to do the work if we want the reward, and we need to gently but firmly tell the outside world to step off while we work.  I would bet good money that the people in your life would get very upset if you came to their job and interrupted what they were doing, yet that is exactly what they are doing to you.   If you're like me you hate saying no, but the simple fact is we need to say it more often.  It's the only way our to do list will ever be a priority over someone else's.The other person who needs to hear that being a creative is your job, is you.   In the book, "The War of Art", Stephen Pressfield talks about The Resistance, which is the excuses your brain gives you as to why you shouldn't be doing the work.  We've all heard them.  The voice that tells you that you're not good enough, that someone else is doing it, that you really should be something else with your time, that you're missing the game, and so on.  The Resistance wants you to give up, and we just can't let it win.  Who's the judge of who is good enough?  Not the Resistance.  Who cares if someone else is doing it?  This creative work is the best use of my time, it's time someone else learns to do the laundry.   I can DVR the game, it's not that important anyway.  This is our job now.  We need to schedule it as such.  Block out time every day to do your job.  Right now, I'm working from 9am to 12 on writing, I take a lunch break, and I work from 1-5 on the project I'm shipping.   I don't answer the phone, I try to avoid picking it up to scroll through Twitter or Instagram but I have to tell you sometimes I fail at that.  I wear noise canceling headphones because I don't want to get distracted, and I have some instrumental music on.  I found some albums by Tycho a few years back and I think they're just about perfect for my work time.  I have made two rules about working in the studio:  I only work in the studio, and I only work in the studio if I know what I'm going to be doing.  Especially right now, it's very important to separate work and life.  I have not been very good at this in the past, because the studio is where my Mac is.  I just bought some new living room furniture over the summer, it would be a shame not to use it.  At the end of the day, I leave the office and I don't go back in.  Regarding the second rule, the last part of my night I write down what I did today and where I left off.  Then I write down what the next steps are on anything I'm working on.  Sometimes, I've  made a checklist for big projects, and I check off what I've done.  I check my calendar for anything I have to do the next day, and then on the next page, I write down tomorrow's plan.  That plan is my ticket into the office the next day, and yes I do think of the door as a checkpoint.  Other self-described 'gurus' say there ought to be some accountability built in to your process.  I agree to the extent that there ought to be some factor like a deadline to indicate some kind of measurement, but other than that I say we are grown-ass people who know what we should be doing.  I'm not really a big fan of life coaches, mentorships, or accountability partners, so I don't use them.  If you feel you need a person in your process to hold you accountable or give you direction, go for it.   My accountability is my ticket into the office, I have a deadline for the content I'm creating, and my reward for getting the job done is I go play in Instagram and Twitter for a block of time.  So, to recap, we're creatives now.  This is our job.  We need to tell everyone including ourselves, that we have work to do.  We need to schedule that time and not break it.  We need to have a plan for the day.   We need to separate work and life.  We need to recognize we're adults who have a job to do, and we need to do it.  

Nicole Bedford is a documentarian and media artist who uses video to explore textures of humanity in ways that inspire hope, justice, and introspection. Her work often follows ordinary people and touches on themes of identity, power, and interconnectedness. Nicole’s ultimate goal with any project is to foster compassion and community building by reconnecting viewers with their inner selves and with each other. When not creating, Nicole spends her time exploring nature, discussing complex topics over beers with friends, and performing bizarre and grotesque creatures with a Dungeons and Dragons improv troupe. IG: https://www.instagram.com/nicolebedfordfilms/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/NicoleBedfordFilms/ VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/nicolebedford WEBSITE: https://nicolebedford.ca 

You've decided to take the leap and step out on your own in this new iteration of the New Normal.  Fantastic.  You're creating, you're posting, and you're wondering why nobody's coming to see it.   You built it, but they're not coming.   Why?Well, let's start with a hard truth.  The only place "If you build it, they will come" works is in that movie.  I don't know how that got translated from a movie about a baseball field into creative work or entrepreneurialism, but it's the worst fantasy anyone can have when they're beginning this journey.   Think about it; If that saying were true, we'd live in a world without billboards, commercials, print ads, and infomercials.  I'm a child of the Eighties, and to say that my generation was a target demo is like saying a hurricane leaves things a little damp.   They made damn sure we knew they built it.   They went so far as to let us know they built it that there were several cartoons that were made solely because there was a toy they wanted to sell.  That's what I call effort.  I get it.  I'm just like a lot of creatives.  I love the creating part, I hate the promoting part.  Partly because the social media people have convinced me there are magic beans involved and I don't have them, and partly because I hate being THAT GUY.I was at a Christmas party for my wife's place of work about 10 years ago, and while the party itself was fine, I have very little memory of it that didn't involve a person who was clearly just there to hand out business cards and practically projectile vomit his resume at people.   Once someone mentioned that I was a podcaster, I had a friend for the rest of the night.   He was enough of a bad example that I swore that I wouldn't be THAT GUY, ever.   Instead, I think I've gone too far in the other direction, and if it's happened to me it must be happening to somebody else who is nervous about self-promotion.  So how do we, the nervous promoter, tell people we built something for them?  Here are a few things that helped me get over some of the anxiety.  First, to get to the point that you can sell yourself, you need to have good product.   In the case of the creative that's your writing, photos,  video, graphics, crafts, or whatever it is you are shipping.   There's a school of thought in creative work that amounts to "The heck with it, ship", and I don't think that serves you as well as you might think.  We used to live in a world where "Good Enough" was good enough.   I don't think we live there anymore, and all the promotion in the world isn't going to help if your product sucks.Second, it's helpful if you don't think of it like a sale.  Unless you actually have a product or a service ready to go you're not selling anything, and even then I wouldn't think of it as a sale.   I don't think I have ever sold anything in my life, and I never will.    What I have done is educate someone to the point that they have decided to buy something of mine, and that process has lessened my anxiety quite a bit.  Third, how you educate someone is just as important.  I'm a storyteller, so when I choose to promote something of mine I choose to take a prospect on a little journey.   I'm not just telling them what I made, I'm telling them what led me to make it, and if they're interested I might even tell them how I did it.   I'm not going to read them War and Peace, and if I get the feeling they're just being polite, I'll cut it short.  It's very important to get a good read on who you're talking to, because if you bore them to tears you've lost them.  Third, don't go low on any competitors you might have, people you've dealt with in the past personally or professionally, and not on yourself.  I have been a witness to a person promoting their podcast, and when another podcast name came up the promoter went negative and lost that person immediately.  Why?  They were related to the other podcaster.   If don't know who you're talking to, keep it civil.  As far as being self depricating, that can be funny at the right time.  But if it's all you do you're just going to sound depressing and that's a turnoff in any scenario.Promoting your creative work can be nerve wracking.  I know.  If you remember to make something that you can be proud of, educate people about it by telling a story, and not going negative, you might find promoting that work a little less frightening. Speaking of promoting,  you can help me promote this poddlement. I'd appreciate it if you'd share this podcast with someone, subscribe if you're not already, I'd love a review if you've got the time.   The website is krisroley.com, and you can contact me there as well as follow me on social media.  Stay Solid, people, see you next time.  buhbye.

I remember first hearing the phrase "The New Normal," mentioned by Tom Brokaw on 9/11.  The attack was only hours old, and we already realized that our lives would be different.  Since then, I've heard it used several times for many various reasons, but none ever really took on real life-changing meaning to me until March of 2020.  That's when I went home to work until I lost my job in May 2020 because of the pandemic.   It's still a bit difficult for me to say that the coronavirus took my job, and I'm still a little upset about it.  The New Normal in this context means a couple of things.   It means that businesses are going to operate differently.  Take the call center industry as an example.   In many cases, the most significant overhead a call center has is facility cost. If the pandemic has taught them anything, remote work has a positive effect on the bottom line.   Now a drawback to that is that you're going to starting seeing some bad actors in the industry paying less and scheduling people just under the threshold to have to pay benefits, and I foresee a lot of businesses moving towards an Independent contractor type of setup.  Another thing that's going to happen is that gig work, and freelance work will explode if it hasn't already.  One thing that would cause the number of freelancers to skyrocket would be the government passed some Universal Basic Income that guaranteed citizens had their basic needs met, but that's not going to happen in the current climate.  However, I think a lot of folks are saying to themselves, "Why not?"  When it comes to freelance work.   I'm seeing many online courses spring upon the subject by the self-proclaimed online gurus. While I'm not too fond of their existence, they're an excellent barometer of mainstream things.  The bottom line is that working from home is now a thing.  If the pandemic dried up and blew away tomorrow, I think the chances are still pretty high that you'll be working from home for a long time, if not permanently.   So if you're waiting for things to return to The Old Normal, that's not going to happen.   Welcome to life in 2020 and forward, and we need to get used to it.  Some of you are waiting for things to return to 'normal' so you can start something, and I would encourage you to drop that mindset.  I'm not going to give you the motivational speech about the best time to start; everybody does that.  I will be realistic with you and tell you straight up:  This is it, we have to deal with it.  It's not going to get better if you wait. It's not going to get more comfortable.  If you look at the news, you could come away from it with the opinion it could get worse.  I have my views on the matter, but I'm going to keep the politics out of this as best I can.  If it won't get better and could worsen, you're going to sit on your sit-upon and wait, wait, and wait.  I'm telling you not to wait any longer.  If you're creative, then create.  Please show us what you got.   Promote the heck out of it.   Let the world know you're open for business.  There might be limited opportunities to work in your field, but you're not going to know it if you aren't looking.  We didn't choose this New Normal.  We've never picked any of them in twenty years, but this one is different.  We can choose what we do now.   

Up front I want to give you a content warning, there is discussion of sexual assault during this episode, so if you feel that might not be something you or your kids might want to listen to, please skip this episode.Amy Mahon is a writer, photographer and theater artist living in Fort Lauderdale Florida. A former resident of Virginia, she moved back after graduating with a master of fine arts degree in film with an emphasis on screen writing. During quarantine she focuses her time on plants, hiking outdoors, and shooting portraits on film. She is a Board member of Broward County’s only certified rape crisis center, and focuses on anti-rape culture advocacy.   I've known Amy for a number of years as an online acquaintance, and even though she lived in this town we never got a chance to meet, so this is the first time we're having a conversation.  I think Amy's story is an interesting one, and when I decided to start having these conversations with people, she was immediately the first person on my list.   The reason for that is pretty simple, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that knows my story:  It's what you do with what life hands you that makes you and informs you, and it presents you the choice to be owned by it, or to make something from it.   

In this episode, I'm going to tell you where I've been, what's been happening, how it affects this podcast, and where we go from here.  Also, some Photography 101, and why podcasting is a marketing no-brainer.  TIME MARKERS:1:06  I've been trying to get a podcast done for months, and it's a bit harder than it used to be.  2:01  I talk about the job I've done for the past 4-5 years, how Coronavirus just ate it, and what I'm trying to do in the meantime.  The job search isn't exactly going like gangbusters.7:37  It occurs to me that I can make the money I would like to be making as a freelancer.  9:53  I'd like to start something with this show I've rarely if ever done:  Conversations with creatives.13:55  If you're new to photography, there's no shame in the Auto game.  However, getting out of Auto is a worthy goal.  Step One towards that goal is understanding the Exposure Triangle.15:51  I reveal what my first digital camera was, and if you listen carefully, you can hear my bones creak in the background.24:20 Working in Manual is a juggling act.  26:33 If you're starting or running a business, you should be podcasting as part of a marketing strategy.  I'm going to give you some reasons why.  30:00  The Kleenex Principle, and how it applies to your podcast.  32:45 The TLDR version of podcast marketing.   LINKS:  Getting To Know The Exposure Triangle.https://www.krisroley.com/photography/getting-to-know-the-exposure-triangle Daniel Peters' Exposure Triangle Cheat Cardhttps://www.hamburger-fotospots.de/kostenloser-download-foto-cheatcard-fuer-fotografen.html Podsights: Podcast Advertising Benchmark July 2020https://podsights.com/blog/benchmark-july-2020 Are you in the market for someone to do VoiceOver work, edit or produce a podcast, need some photography or video work done, or just have some questions that need answers, head over to https://www.krisroley.com/contact and I will be happy to talk with you.   Follow me on IG, TW, ad LinkedIn @krisroley.  Don't forget to like, share, and review this podcast, it helps get the show in front of more people.  

For the first time in many years, Loonradio joins Roley for a conversation about Apple,  Jobs, Mental Health, and Next Steps.  Follow Roley on Twitter @krisroleyFollow Roley on Instagram @krisroley 

Roy Hastings of the Pungo Auxiliary Police is worried about the 'Ronavirus. Twitch is a Berner.We go Looking For Love in Several Wrong Places, and Margaret's back. Finally, Death, Taxes, Florida.   Follow Roley on Twitter, Insta, and TikTok @krisroleyand hit krisroley.com for other new stuff. 

Over the past year, I’ve been working on trying to figure out my wiring. Specifically the part of my brain that can recall song lyrics immediately but forget anything I’m supposed to be doing, and how best to remind myself to do those things.---Follow Roley on Twitter, Instagram, and Medium.There might be new YouTube stuff coming. Remember, we warned you.The Patreon is Live, and free for the month of January so you can see what we're doing. Take a look around, and thanks for your consideration.Visit Roley. It's kinda neat. Show Less

In this episode, Roley talks about how he came to be fascinated with radio, a little of that history, and then we settle on the main topic: Back the the deep dark Seventies and Eighties, there were people who were paid--sometimes stupid amounts of money--to piss people off every weekday. As the times change, most of those people found themselves needing to pivot, or found themselves not on the radio anymore. They were the Shock Jocks, and one of the greatest died last week.LINKS:Boss RadioKHJ Boss Radio: A Look BackThe Real Don Steele Fractious Friday SignoffsBest Of Imus MontageWolfman Jack at WNBC---Follow Roley on Twitter, Instagram, and Medium.There might be new YouTube stuff coming. Remember, we warned you.The Patreon is Live, and free for the month of January so you can see what we're doing. Take a look around, and thanks for your consideration.Visit Roley. It's kinda neat. 

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/andrew-sullivan-what-we-know-about-trump-going-into-2020.htmlAndrew Sullivan: 'The two core lessons of the past few years are therefore: (1) Trumpism has a real base of support in the country with needs that must be addressed, and (2) Donald Trump is incapable of doing it and is such an unstable, malignant, destructive narcissist that he threatens our entire system of government. The reason this impeachment feels so awful is that it requires removing a figure to whom so many are so deeply bonded because he was the first politician to hear them in decades. It feels to them like impeachment is another insult from the political elite, added to the injury of the 21st century. They take it personally, which is why their emotions have flooded their brains. And this is understandable.'Fitzroy:  Needs that must be addressed—We needed a President that gave us the courage to be who we are in public:  We’re Here, We’re…you know…and We're In Your Face.  ('you know' being white, kinda racist, and not very bright. THIS REALLY PISSES BUBBA OFF.)  Bubba and Fitz go at it.  Bubba met his wife at Berkeley, Fitz steps in it.  Fitz locks out by saying that he’s completely against illegal immigration, but if they could see their way clear to let him have a couple guys to be lot attendants and wash the cars, he wouldn’t have to pay somebody else 12 bucks an hour to do it. SONG — FROTH — Patterns Follow Roley on Twitter, Instagram, and Medium.There might be new YouTube stuff coming. Remember, we warned you.The Patreon is Live, and free for the month of January so you can see what we're doing.  Take a look around, and thanks for your consideration.Visit Roley. It's kinda neat.

VBCity Council -- Tents on the Beach  https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/virginia-beach/no-tents-on-beach-virginia-beach/291-7751f5e3-115d-4bce-8003-8f0583ac6256Boise Idaho ordinance struck down by Appellate Court, not reviewed by SCOTUS -- https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/supreme-court-wont-review-homeless-camping-ban-in-idaho/Lots of veterans in this situation, and there are some mental health issues involved.  That's what happens when you ask someone to go and kill or be killed and then break your promise to take care of them when they come home.  I don't care about the semantics, you all can argue that point.  We broke our promise, and cut these folks loose to fend for themselves.  Nobody wants to hear this, but here is a hard truth: If we still had the draft, and it wasn't able to be gamed by the well to do to keep their kids from serving, I guarantee you we wouldn't be forgetting about the vets.  We've otherized the homeless.  They're not us, they're something else, and they're something else we'd rather not see.  So, if you could just make sure that we don't have to see them, then we don't have to admit they exist.  Out of sight, out of mind.   That's how you solve the homeless crisis in America!  Forget about it completely!  There are a lot of things that lead to homelessness, and provided the homeless person is motivated to get off the street a lot of those things are treatable or resolvable.  However, in order to solve the problems that led to a person's homelessness, you must first provide them with shelter and stability.  "bUt HoW arE we gONNa pAY FoR iT?"  Oh, shut up.  If you have to ask that question you're either not paying attention, or no explanation will suffice.   As of the time I'm writing this, Trump Golf Count says we've spent 114 million so Trump can go play golf 228 times since he took office, and that's the most out front in your face case of wasted taxpayer dollars out there.  I'm absolutely sure that we could pay for affordable transitional housing like the VCP Village in communities all over the country by directing the wasted dollars in the budget towards that project.  Without raising a dime in taxes.  Make it worth the various department's while to line out the waste and reallocate it, and if they come in under budget, reallocate the difference.  You could conceivably provide an incentive for government departments and agencies to do this, if you believe that having a fiduciary duty to the taxpayer is above and beyond a govt agencies job (it's not).  Of course, you can argue about the Trump Tax cut--and we should--because it turns out that GOP tax cuts are even more effective at losing money than actually lighting money on fire.  Basically, I want to compile a list of all the things Wall Street and Bajillionaires say is bad for the economy and do exactly those things, because I have a hunch they're either wrong, or they're lying.  "ChUrcHes AnD cHARitiES shOUld bE dOING ThiS!"  That's a cop out.  That's saying, "I'm sure someone else donates enough money to take care of this problem."  and every year you turn to your wife and say "Hey, Karen, are there more homeless people panhandling on the medians this year?"  Well, yes there are, and the reason for that is because Churches and Charites aren't the complete answer.  They're part of an answer, and they do good work.  But they can't do it all.  Nor should they.  https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1211004325155102720?s=21 Hostile ArchitectureMichael Karlik — City Council Chronicles https://councilchronicles.comVB City Council Meeting 12/10/2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1euRCr4IFQ  Starring Barbara!  (They almost all have Barbara.)