Ninja vs Penguin

Ninja October 23rd, 2008

I met a young woman named Nicole last nite. What got me excited was seeing the passion in her eyes when she spoke. I wanted to say, “Go for it! Just go for it, and live out your dreams!!” But I didn’t want to interrupt her as she was talking so quickly and just pouring her heart out. This quote is for you, Nicole.

good luck out there.  i think as long as you’re doing exactly what the fuck you want to be doing and not a note or word differently, life will be good.
- Ben Folds in an email to The Dresden Dolls

Much love,
Ninja

Related links
+ How to do what you love
+ How and Why to Be Unreasonable by Timothy Ferriss

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Penguin October 16th, 2008

I’ve been really stressed out since coming back from LA. Part of it was because I had an essay due on Tuesday. I started working on it but didn’t make much headway.

Class came and it still wasn’t done. But before that, I decided that I was going to hand it in late. Wednesday came and gone and although I made a little more progress, I don’t even have what can be called a first draft.

Right before I typed this, I played a little Tetris DS before sleeping. CPU lvl 5 thoroughly kicked my butt. And that’s when I realized what was really stressing me out. I was afraid to fail.

Not in the grade sense of the word, but fail myself. I set myself up to be amazing. I have to get the A. I have to try really hard. And in that, I lost sight of everything and stressed myself out. I had frozen in panic.

So instead of moving forward and just doing it, I ended up doing nothing.

This is the same lesson we sometimes have to learn as filmmakers or artists. We’re so caught up in needing our work to be perfect, in being amazing, that we set ourselves up to fail by not meeting those expectations. And we’ve been trained for 18+ years of our lives that it’s NOT okay to fail. When in reality, it is.

It’s okay to fail.

I look back at some of the stuff I put out and I know it’s not the best. But there was something authentic about it. Instead of just talking about doing something, I did it. And that’s a success.

Doing nothing is the failure.

Shoot that short film, write that book, draw what you enjoy, do something, anything! Because not doing anything would be a tragedy.

Now I can sleep.

-Penguin

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Tags: Motivation, Tetris, Thoughts

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Penguin September 23rd, 2008

This past Saturday, I went to the Gunks to do some outdoor climbing. The first route we did was a 5.8. This was the first time I toproped outside and was decidedly nervous.

The first part of the climb was pretty easy. But then I got to the overhang in the pic above. This was about 50ft up. I reached blindly over the edge and felt around for a good hold. I settled on a small crack, crimped, and threw my left hand up, grasping for whatever I could find. I then kicked my right foot up on the edge and pulled myself up. Afterwards, I just stood there on these tiny jibs, mentally and physically tired. My toes trembled with adrenaline. But I made it.

The rest of the climb wasn’t too difficult, but there were moments I wanted to say, “No, I can’t do it. It’s too scary, I’m too tired, it’s too high, my shoes are slipping off, I want to come down.” But I didn’t. I pushed and got to the top.

When I got back down, my ankles were still quivering from the adrenaline and the feeling was amazing.

So much of what you do is mental. Writing, getting your film made, finishing that painting, or just trying something knew. And when everything inside you is telling you, “You can’t do it”, you have to tell yourself, “No. I’m going to try.” And you may climb over the crag or you may fall, but what separates the winners from everyone else is going for it.

What do you need to go for? What steps do you need to take to make it happen?

-Penguin

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Tags: Climbing, Filmmaking, Gunks, Motivation, Thoughts, Toprope

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Penguin March 25th, 2008

John August has a nice post on Rethinking Motivation:

In film school, we were taught to look at character motivation as the combination of two questions:

1. What does the character want.
2. What does the character need.

He redefines it as: “Why is the character doing what he’s doing?” “you need to be careful not to stop at the first easy answer”.

I think this is a great way to look at motivation and replaces one of the core questions in Where’s Your Story. Even if the audience doesn’t know why the character is doing what they’re doing. It’s definitely important for you, as the writer, to know why.

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