Crafty Weekend, Coming Up

This weekend is going to rule. Our area of the world is getting slammed with the X-class Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that our nearest star spat out. Solar flares are generally the cause of the borealis–both auroral and australial. In layman’s terms, the northern and southern lights. You know … those eerily green and red dancing lights that we all lament over when we see the amazing pics on Flickr or wherever? Yah. Tonight, I get to try to see one live for the first time.

 

That’s *after* I make over 100 tie dye bottles. That’s right–114, to be precise. “What?! *WHY*?!?” Cuz. I can. It’s all about choices, baby! 20 different hues of blue. 18 greens. blacks, greys, reds, yellows, oranges, browns … khaki, moss green, cerulean blue, baby pink, #2 pencil yellow (yes–that is an actual color on dharmatrading.com) … I’m going on a dyeing KICK. Halloween is right around the corner. Pumpkin and ghost tie dyes are gonna be a huge hit. 🙂

 

And to what will I be listening while doing all of this? Why U2’s new CD, of course! Songs of Innocence was a *huge* surprise announcement at the end of the Apple event on Tuesday. More than that, U2 ARE GIVING IT AWAY UNTIL OCTOBER 13. 500 million subscribers to iTunes, and all of us get it gratis. We pay nothing. We are the recipients of a gift.

 

Yet some people are squaking up a storm about how it’s “clogging up [their] phone.” Someone actually tweeted “Who the f*** put U2 on my phone?” Honestly? Who complains about free music? I don’t care if U2 isn’t your cup of tea; the fact that they’re literally giving away an entire CD speaks volumes about their character and generosity. And unless your name is Bob Lefsetz, you *should* be able to find something positive to say about that alone. But no … there are plenty of nay-sayers. Bob is one of the most vocal among them, but whatever. He’s bitter about something. Probably had to take a tablespoon of Goldenseal (don’t ask … just trust …). But I digress.

 

One of Bob’s points is that U2 are too old to be relevant anymore. “Yes, older people build the tools, but it’s young people who utilize them.” It’s stupidity like this that makes me want to bash my head against a wall. And … what experience do all these younglings have that gives them the right to tell U2–or any older band–that they’re no longer relevant? OHHHH … wait a sec. That’s just Bob’s opinion, right? Because ACTUAL musicians appreciate the groundwork that was laid for them. They stand in awe of their predecessors … especially when it’s abundantly apparent that it’s merited, as is the case with U2.

 

Whatever. One article by one grumpy gus does not  a career ruin. Well, at least not U2’s career. Bob’s may be dead in the water, with all his ability to assess talent and relevance.

 

And on a more positive note, I’m gonna get started on those dye bottles and make some wearable art. Pictures to come!

Creativity and How To Earn It

So I’ve been in a rut the last … meh. I dunno. Few months? Years? By education and experience, I’m a technical writer. That’s what it says on my several thousand dollar piece of paper that I earned several years ago. Over the course of the last 4 or 5 years, I’ve noticed that I’m not a fan of “2nd person imperative/3rd person indicative” writing. It leaves 0 room for creativity (unless you want to count the little trade secret of how every writer has his/her “signature” in every document they write. Don’t ask, cuz they’ll never tell what it is.), and it gets rather … tedious. I have a good eye for detail, so it lends itself well to my writing out things like procedures, instructions … we’re talking 100+ steps on how to make a peanut butter sandwich. That’s how I knew I could find a niche in tech writing.

 

Aaaaaand so what? At the end of the day, it doesn’t make me happy. When it’s all said and done, I get bored *super* easily with it. So when this new job came along that *isn’t* tech writing-based, I was super stoked. Beyond excited. Hyped/amped/revved … and so on and so forth. I started late last year, jumped right into it with some white papers (hey, they’re not procedures … anything different is good), and that’s about it. I asked my manager when he would have some time to review what he feels are my specific roles and responsibilities, and that just never happened. So I’ve gone department to department to department (ad nauseum), asking what I can do to help. I have a strong writing and editing background, so I can proofread, format, edit, and whatever else needed. And for a while, there was work coming in.

It’s stopped, and now I’m back to being bored. I *literally* have nothing to do at work. And it sucks. Most people would think, “Dude! You’ve got it easy! You can just surf and do whatever you want?! Don’t look that gift-horse in the mouth!” Except it’s not that simple. By moral code, I have a difficult time knowing that I’m getting paid and not producing anything worthwhile or useful to my employer. So … there’s that dilemma. Yah, I have surfed. To CNN. To Fox News (gotta keep a balance, right)? To some hockey-related websites, football sites, related message boards … and truthfully, it’s not as fun as you’d think. Well, okay … it’s not as fun for me. I’m sure I fall squarely into the overwhelmingly vast minority on this one. That’s fine. I get it.

 

So I’ve been in this rut. Work-wise, blog-wise, life-wise … it’s been a kind of downer. And I’m tired of it. I *have* to get out of it? The question is: how?

 

Right now, my wife is on a hike with one of my daughters. She and some friends are going to this waterfall that I would love to visit, but I have my standards when it comes to photography. I know exactly what shot I would want to get, and sadly, I don’t have the necessary filter right now. I will by Tuesday or Wednesday, but that doesn’t help today.

 

What that *did* help me with, on the other hand, is to come up with a list of things which I enjoy doing and feel that I do relatively well. Things like photography, writing, tie-dyeing, video game playing (when I actually sit down and play, anyway … and if I’m being honest with myself, it’s rather just an escape than any kind of creativity jump-starter) … these are highly marketable skills. Yes, tie-dyeing is a highly marketable skill. People will pay good money for well-patterned shirts.

 

Here’s what I realized today: I stayed home from this hike because a) I’m in this funk, b) I wanted to just sit around and watch something on Netflix, and c) I didn’t really want to trudge up this this waterfall if I didn’t have what it takes to get the picture I want to take. Yah, I could take a great shot of the valley below, or get some nice scenic pics … but I can also get those the next time they go up, at which point I’ll have my new filters (thank you, Amazon!).  So I’m at home, writing this blog post and listening to Dream Theater’s Awake CD.

 

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I don’t *want* to listen to other people’s music, or look at other people’s photos. I want to make my own mark. 20 years ago, I bet these guys in Dream Theater were sitting around thinking, “Man, there’s some excellent music out there, but I bet we could make excellent music too.” And so it is with me: I  *can* take excellent pictures. I *can* make excellent tie-dyed shirts, and they don’t have to be a peace sign, or a smiley face, or a mushroom. 2 years ago, when I had a booth at our town’s festival, I made a ladybug shirt that was just mind-blowing. I’m not saying that to brag: I’m saying that because at that point, NO ONE had actually dyed a ladybug. At least, not one that was posted online that I could find. And it took some work, yah … but the finished product was just amazing.

 

The couple of weekends ago, some friends of ours went on a drive with us to this tiny town in Northern Utah to get some pictures of the night sky, specifically of the galactic center, which after sunset was sitting at about 55-60 degree angle relative to the horizon. I captured a bunch of RAW images, brought them home, and started playing with the RAW editor in Photoshop. And by “started playing with,” I mean for the first time. Ever. I tinkered, looked up some Youtube vids, and did the best I could. And … yah, the images looked okay, but at 100%, something just looked off. Like, WAY off. I couldn’t figure out why all my pictures looked like Picasos.

 

I sent the RAW files to a buddy of mine who’s been shooting in RAW forever. He thought they looked great, with the settings he was using. That made me wonder why mine sucked, which led me to believe that it had to be something in the settings that I had screwed up. After re-opening and re-investigating, sure enough … fixed them, sharpened them, and now they look 100 times better.

 

Now … I told you all that about the picture not to brag, but to prove a point: creativity can be a product of a stream of consciousness that just flows out of you, but as a general rule, if you want to to look its best, you have to go back, re-evaluate, study, learn, fix, and accept that you can get better at anything you want, IF you put in the time.

 

To that end, I have some dye bottles to fill. Lots and lots and lots of bottles …  🙂

On Your Mark … Get Set …….. GO!

And we’re off on the 2014 blogathon! In an ideal world, I will update this every day with something amazingly cool–not just with music, but with stuff that I simply enjoy doing. This will involve game reviews, iPhone/iPad app/game reviews, tie-dye techniques that I use, shirts and other things I’ve made, music reviews, concert reviews, hockey-talk, my own personal missives on any of these subjects or others … I’m going all-out.

I don’t know if I’ll have a set agenda like some bloggers (read: CRYSTAL! She’s SO organized! I could only dream of reaching her level of awesomeness), but I do have a goal: EVERY DAY write something new.

Today marks the beginning. This is it. Get ready, world.

I’m sure I’ll post more later today. This is more of an announcement than anything else, and I needed to start somewhere.

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