Today I learned that there is a matthirsch.com … it has been up for around two years or so, and now I wish I would have bought that domain name too a while back.
Then I got to thinking about hmatt.it and the italian hmatt people who make videos.. I’ve probably mentioned them before, but I have been using ‘hmatt’ since 2001! Oh names..
branding branding branding.
Sometimes I’ll stare at the ceiling and ask myself why I am trying to accomplish so much.
I think about how much easier my life would be if I was like so many of my acting friends who just want to be an actor. This feat in itself takes years or a whole lifetime to achieve. Yet, I find myself looking at so many terrible movies and videos out there and wondering how I could better contribute to this world.
I love acting, but most of the scripts or breakdowns I see are parts that I have little interest in playing. I know at some level I may start seeing more quality stuff, but instead of waiting for that magical day I want to make it happen.
There are lots of stories of people making their own stuff and becoming famous and more importantly showing their ideas to the world and having it becoming profitable. I’m not going to kid myself, financial compensation is important. I have debt I’d like to abolish, and I yearn for the day when I can afford a constant supply of healthy foods instead of always being on the prowl for bargains or $1 store meals. There are lots of experiences that money can help buy too. Plus, to make my own stuff means I’m the entire production crew and have to come up with props and kraft services myself.. Whew!
I just looked at my recent finances and realized there were certain bills that I hadn’t been counting on in my budget. I have goals that I want to reach (free from debt and owning an electric car). Acting isn’t a way for me to get rich quick, or even ‘get by’ apparently (at this time at least).
I try to think positive things over and over to lift my spirits. I try to remain positive amidst all the doubt and simmering bouts of worry and anxiety. I am grateful that there are people I can look to to see that positive things CAN happen, and WILL happen if I am genuine in pursuing my goals. Yes, there are goals that I’ve dropped- but there are other life goals that I can’t picture living without… a way to share my talents with the world and make this place a better place.
I’m only a week into the new year, but I have faith that I by this time next year all my anxieties will dissipate. All those negative voices in my head will be silenced. All insulting comments by others will fall on deaf ears.
Yes, my life would be different if all I wanted to do was act in whatever came my way.. but that isn’t me. I have standards that I will uphold and values that will be sustained.
I am unique. I can’t ever compare myself to someone else. Everyone is on their own journey and every one has their own separate path on how to get there. I will enjoy the path I have chosen and most importantly love the journey.
When I find myself looking at the ceiling, I can remind myself that I am choosing to do so much because it is who I am. I have chosen to do more than be just an actor waiting for a break because nobody else has my unique set of gifts and can showcase them like me.
I’m not afraid to make a new path and go places where no one I know has ever gone. I’m ready for the adventure and challenges therein-
follow me.
Yesterday I had 12 people come over and everyone taped 3 words. I know some aren’t perfect, and I’m preparing to hear people say we didn’t do the ASL or Spanish word correctly. The thing is though, we followed as best as we could from the dictionaries we had.
Today I began the time-consuming process of editing the videos together. Fortunately, they are very short and I don’t have to worry about sound issues or mis-matched shots or multiple takes… any of the usual editing stuff.
These videos had their own problems. Namely, I didn’t have a ‘theme song’ set up yet. I quickly made an intro with a simple animation from Keynote, then had to ‘guess’ the timing when playing the music in Garageband. I’m grateful that my four year old computer can handle so much work! I’m always keeping him busy!
After doing this process over several times I finally found a pattern that seemed to flow well and was quick and simple. I referred to a video of old logos to give me inspiration. It will be nice someday to pass this type of thing off to someone who likes to do it. I don’t mind too much because I’m like learning stuff, but there is a lot research that I might have to research to make things go the way I’d like them too. Right now I can’t used Motion because my graphics card isn’t fast enough. This is a good thing though because I don’t want to learn the ropes of a program that I’d barely use.
Another part I didn’t anticipate was that if I shoot against a green screen I’d have to find a royalty free picture for every video! Yikes! I’m not ready to do all of that (although I tried for a few of the videos).
Fortunately, I remembered to focus on what is important. I wanted to get the first video done as a template so I and went with a basic color background. Some words will be easier to illustrate with pictures than others, and I can always change the background another time. Yay computers!
So after about 4 hours I had the first video edited and up on YouTube. I figured I’d start a few others and then do some other chores I’ve been putting off.
It will be such a challenge to maintain balance with productivity. I don’t want to spend my life fretting about things being perfect, but I also want to make some quality stuff. I still hold on to the belief that with quantity I will learn quality. I’ve seen a lot of my ideas get swept into the corner because I hadn’t felt it was ‘finished’.
I’m trying my best to learn how to ‘just do it’ and keep motivated. There are a lot of “what about…” types of people out there, and I would be paralyzed with all the work involved if I heeded every suggestion or comment from others. I hope I can start insulating my environment with others who share my values, the world can be such a battlefield when you are fighting for what you think is right.
Colleen asked me to write up something about post-edge life. I am such a context person that I wanted to write up a little backstory. I’ve already mentioned some of these things already, but here it is for those who haven’t read up!
——————–
Goals and Life.
——————–
I wrote down a few goals that I wanted to accomplish before I left Spain… talk to people I didn’t know in Spanish, explore wonderful areas, take some great photos, and spend time connecting with people.. the list went on and on. At times it seemed endless. Perhaps the hardest thing was to let go of my expectations. There were times when I didn’t know how things would work out.
I was able to do just about everything and more!
It was wonderful spending time away from all the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. There was time for many of life’s simple pleasures…
Feeling the whooshing wind while riding bikes through a friendly small town.
Stopping to look at the glistening city of Altea in all its spender, whether it was the sunlight dancing across the buildings or the cool hush of night.
Swimming in the sea as fish darted below and the plants tickled your feet.
Listening in the soft coo of the salty water as it splashed against the rocks.
Watching drops of the pouring rain splash into puddles.
Altea.
Toward the end of the trip I was eager to start my LA life once again. I felt fully recharged. I knew that I had accomplished my goals and much more. I was able to finally find the time to listen to how God wanted me on to share my talents.
Everyone needs time away. Time to suss out life and what it has to offer. A chance to begin a new chapter. A life awaits full of excitement and learning what our precious world has to offer.
Now a new year is upon us, and millions are making resolutions to change in the coming year.
My resolution is to focus.
When I was in Spain I was able to peel back life to the essentials and rediscover the wonder around us. I was able to focus on the things that mattered most and see the ultra progress on things that could have seemed impossible.
I’m looking forward to this year with the lessons from the summer. My time in Spain is a deep well of experiences from which to draw from- something to remind me what is most important about life- God and the amazing people and places that surround us all.
Now that I’m back, I’m putting my artistic talents into continuing work on a children’s show I do online. I’ve seen what groups of people can do when everyone gets a chance to share, so I’m trying to get as many people a part of it as possible. The main theme is learning and exploring this wonderful world.
At times the show, just like my life, can seem overwhelming… there are so many things I want to do. I often remind myself of how things will work out and how God will put people in your life to help you along the way.
Life is such an adventure! It is exciting to see what’s next!
New Year’s day is for sleeping.
Thus, I consider today the first day to focus.
I have a lot of things on my mind and I’m attempting to get them out of my head, and then start whittling them down. The first thing I tried to do was update my “fun things to do” list. Then I realized that I could sub-divide it into cost or time of day or places… et cetera.
Then I stopped, and asked myself what the purpose of this was. Yes it could make it easier to sort through, but then I’d be back to having a gigantic list of possible fun things to do. A better use of my time today is to work on the To Do list I already have. I’ve been doing this for the last week, but there are still a lot of duplicate entries which make the list bigger than it needs to be.
I have a whole section of my To Do’s that require me to write up MORE lists. I truly do have too many goals.
The biggest one is to work on my social life. I have friends that I deeply care about, but LA being what it is- they are often busy. The only solution is to spread out my love for my friends and find pockets of time that work for others too. A first idea with this was to set up more ‘group’ type events. Things like Pop Culture night. I’ve since re-discovered the problems of such weekly events. You have to remind people all the time and find stuff to watch.. I should get a buddy to help me out with all that- it is too difficult to do alone all the time.
The next big thing is my acting career- and that begins with the kids show I’m doing. I’ve been telling people I meet that I am an actor and I have a kids show online. Now that the holidays are over (FINALLY) my life can get back on track and I can start progress on this. My goal is still 50 segments by March 1, and I KNOW I can do it.
First up- I’m going to get a bunch of ASL/SPANISH videos taped and then ready them for processing. Then onto bigger projects.
Okay, enough documenting my thoughts- now is the time for action!
Learning is my top strength, and since it is such a part of me I wonder why people WOULDN’T want to learn stuff.
I want to learn the best practices, learn the best way of doing things, and the best ways I can improve myself.
In this last week of 2010, I’ve decided that the past ways I learned weren’t as productive as possible. The cheapest way to learn is by reading a book. However, this is only isolated learning. Rarely do people share the enthusiasm I do when telling people what I’ve discovered- unless they were there to uncover it for themselves.
What I’m getting at here is that it is time for me to start taking classes. Yes, I COULD learn things by myself, but then I become a hermit. I try to re-convey the lesson to others- which is fun too, but I don’t get to experience the questions that others have that maybe I didn’t think up. Sometimes too I get so beligerent in my way of thinking that I don’t realize I’ve been pushing around falsely interpreted information. *shudders* If you know me, you’ve probably seen me be completely confident in made up facts. Most of the time I’m right, but it is rare that people call me out. This is because most people hate to do research themselves. My Dad was one of those, ‘I don’t know, look it up’ types- especially when it came to spelling of words.
I however, could research all the time if I wanted to- but I’m a bigger fan of experience and application of knowledge. That is where the real handiness of lessons are learned.
At church yesterday Hank suggested we make 2011 the ‘year of’ something.
For me, 2011 is the year of Focus. Or rather, the year TO focus.
I’ve tried accomplishing so many things myself that I get burnt out or have a trove of half-done projects that are still on my to do list.
I’ve thinned out my 700+ to do list to around 500 now. I still have some trimming to do. There’s no WAY I’d be able to get all those things done in the coming year. Some things I have to postpone indefinitely, some I can assign to a specific month.
I’ve been trying something new thought that I’m quite proud of- that is doing some thinning and re-arranging of the to do list, then doing on every so often. That way, after a day of thinking I have something to show for it instead of a plethra of text files of my thoughts.
[Note: 'plethora' is that fancy word meaning "An excess of" whereas 'plethra' means "A long measure of 100 Greek, or 101 English, feet; or a square measure of 10,000 Greek feet". Sometimes I'll use the later as an inside joke to myself. Then I feel like I'm being a clever exaggerator referring to stacking up a lot of something to equal that of 100 Greek feet. As you could guess, no one ever gets this.]
So anyway, I was looking at some video footage that I need to edit and found that constant problem of the video light flickering on my T2i when I zoom. I searched around and lo and behold- all I needed to do was disconnect the lens sensor. That’s it!
Amazing. Learning stuff is so awesome.
This morning my roommates and I went to IHOP for Christmas breakfast. When I was ordering my eggs we had a discussion on all the ways eggs could be made. I can only cook omelettes, scrambled or hole-in-the middle with bread.
Since I’m crafting my 2011 to do list, I thought it would be fun to learn how to cook various types of eggs. However, since there are at least over a 100 ways I’ll start with just 10.
1. Poached
2. Tuna Deviled Eggs
3. Sunny-side up
4. Fried Egg
5. Shirred Eggs with parsley p. 38 of The 1910 Hotel St. Francis Cookbook
6. Eggs Brésilienne p. 42
7. Shirred Eggs with Bananas p. 149
8. Eggs, Fedora p. 155
9. Eggs Suzette p. 221 (it has potatoes too)
10. Eggs, Conté p. 302
That book by the way is amazing. There is a meal-plan for a complete year! I can eat like it’s 1910!
I put “buy a teapot” on my to do list, but I’m super picky.
Target and everybody else sells them, but they are all super tacky IMHO. When I buy one, it will be one of three things:
1) Classic Teapot. Okay, think of a teapot. That’s the one I want to get. The one you see in cartoons, or on robot heads.
2) Retro-futurisic. 1930s designs? Yes. Robot inspired? Yes.
www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/wagner-ware-magnalite-1930s-art-deco-tea-kettle-4133
www.flickr.com/photos/citywalker/2286947946/in/photostream/
or the steam-punk www.amazon.com/Alessi-9091-FM-Sapper-Kettle/dp/B001KPPXYM/ref=sr_1_178?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1293129428&sr=1-178
3) Super Cheap. Like $10. Something for now until I can get an awesome one.
I’d also prefer it to whistle, which unfortunately some cool looking ones don’t really do.
I was thinking thrift store, but tea stains always look so terrible. Plus I couldn’t stand having a coffee stained version. Yuck.
Also on my ‘to buy’ list is a tea set. Not that I’m going to have tea with Randy the Reindeer and Buttons the Bunny- I want it for tea and crumpets with friends. When the weather allows, also playing croquet.
I just read an article in Newsweek written by Michelle Rhee. If you’ve seen Waiting for Superman, you might remember this one-time D.C. school reformer.
She made some good points about how there’s no union for the kids, only for the teachers (pay and job security).
I’ve been trying to figure out a way to help. The school issue is so big, and I know I can’t solve it all myself, but I can’t just sit back.
I wonder if there is a way to teach kids to teach themselves. I mean, kids by nature want to learn, but often all those other things in the classroom get in the way.
Reading Rainbow was cancelled because PBS wanted to focus on other academic aspects. Whereas RR focused on why you should read. I remember watching episodes in our elementary library and wanting to check out the book.
I want to be able to affect kids lives that way. The Internet has so many wonderful things about it, but often I see these kids playing silly games or watching YouTube videos that don’t inspire them to do anything productive.
I’m busy creating a gameplan for my kids show meeting next Friday. There are so many issues to tackle, and I can’t do it alone. I hope that I am able to inspire others to help improve the education of kids today.
Ready. 2011 will be a great year.
I just woke up from a nap dream and it goes like this:
I was with a bunch of friends at some sort of hotel or vacation like space. We snuck over to a different area and there wasn’t anyone using this space so we looked around. What we found was magical! The rooms were like giant hamster rooms where people could be alone or congregate with ease. One could mistake their pristine new looks for that of a 60s space-age living quarters. In one sense they were like a college dorm, a place for people to study. In another sense there were rooms for watching movies on the ceiling.
I remember thinking that I wish I was a designer so I could make these rooms a reality.
When I woke up I realized that I, in effect, *had* created the rooms. Then I looked at the darkness of my room and thought- how can I make this, my space, a fun and enjoyable one. I’m not much of an interior designer, but I can still identify what I like and what would be fun.
This past week was a new experience at a wonderful home. A home like the one David, Michelle and I stumbled upon. I want a fun living space like that. I want to live with my friends and have an awesome time.
What is stopping me? Well, I don’t have the ideal place yet.. but apparently it is a very LA thing to do (to look at houses). I can explore and have a blast redesigning things..
I’ve been busy redesigning my life.
*
I have these pants that I really like, because they are all stylish and way comfortable. They have been washed so many times though, that the pockets are fraying. Michelle told me that I could probably take the pants to a seamstress and have them recreate them for me. Shock!
I guess that is all it takes to get things done, just take the designs to the people who can carry them out. There is a car part factory I saw on television once. They specialize in creating parts that aren’t made anymore. They even have this machine that they can enter in any computerized part and it will carve it out of metal! How awesome is that!
I’m such a fan of old-time retro-futuristic designs, but unfortunately no one makes anything like that anymore. I don’t know why. I think the 60s space age idea was pretty cool. It *can* be done, it just takes perseverance; perseverance and a way of connecting the dots and resources to get things to the right people.
Above all, it takes money. People who are good at that likely charge a lot, but you know what? I can find people who are good at these things and learn from them. Resourcefulness can be learned, and the rewards are 100-fold.
Now to brainstorm…
