(and what you need to interject a little life into your life)

One of my long-time friends emailed me and said – “hey, I’ve got this cabin up in Hayward and I’ve got room for you. Do you want to do the Birkie?”

[The Birkie is a 50k cross country ski race]

I thought about it briefly. Looked at the dates. Nothing on the calendar (unusual). Thought, “hey, can’t be as hard as a marathon and I like the idea of staying in shape.”

Obviously I would need to get clearance from the home front. I asked my wife if she was cool with it. Well…she said yes, but a week or so later her comments made me think she didn’t fully understand what I was getting myself into when she originally said yes.

Anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is this – I agreed to do it because I believed I could do it.

I wrote my friend, said “yeah, I’m in” and I committed to it. Registered online just before the rates went up.

And then as I talked about it with my friends and family, they got all negative and doubty on me – “What? Are you crazy? Shouldn’t you start with something shorter? You don’t even ski!”

Then, last night, while the kids were practicing ski jumping, one friend who has done the Birkie 6 times talked about how he didn’t finish the first 2 times and how hilly it was.

(Hmm. . .ok, starting to sound like more of a challenge).

My wife still questions me about it now as do others.

My point is still this – I believe I can do it – I committed to do it – I am going to do it. End of story.

My advice to those you may be discouraging is this – don’t get all dark on people who are going after something, believe in it, are capable of it – regardless of how crazy you think it is.

My advice to those of you who think you can do something big, outrageous, and maybe even crazy? Go for it.

There’s a reason some experts recommend that you not share your dreams with everyone - they’ll just tell you how impossible they are! (to be clear, though - it’s not like I’ve been dreaming about the Birkie!)

Anyway, I’ve got 107 (+/-) days to get ready. Just got my XC ski poles today so I can practice with the inline skates. . .I’ll keep you posted.

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I’ll make the first post of 2008 a great one!

I had a chance to sit down with Peter Mathews and ask him a ton of questions about his project, Far From Haggersville.

We cover everything from the themes of the story as well as the various ways that Peter is giving you to interact with this creative project. We also discuss dreams, the challenges of being an independent musician and film maker, and his recommendations for overcoming those challenges.

You can download the complete interview with Peter Mathews here.

You can open the interview with Peter Mathews in iTunes here.

The complete conversation is just under 20 minutes, including music clips and some sound clips from the short films that are a part of the project. A full download of the MustardCast is about 18mb.

You can learn more about Peter Mathews and Far From Haggersville at www.haggersville.com.

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Ha! And you thought I was gone forever, didn’t you? Oh ye of little faith. . .

I had a new dishwasher installed a couple weeks ago (apparently the model we replaced has started on fire in numerous homes - cool). The new one’s a Bosch, because, as we know, I’m a Germanphile (and it was rated well by Consumer Reports). The cool thing about our dishwasher is that the guy installing it is an aspiring musician. Of course, I had a lot of questions for him.

It’s not everyday I get to meet people who are really going after it. This guy is working to build out a recording studio, has an album finished and wants to keep going. He’s cranking away at his day job to support his musical dreams. Impressive.

You can listen to Patrick Bodell’s music at www.patrickbodell.com.

We may even connect and do some recording together.

Nice surprise in a dishwasher install I would say. (and, weeks later, I have clean dishes too!)

PS If you haven’t yet purchased Peter Mathew’s “Far From Haggersville,” go to www.haggersville.com and do it now!

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On the road for work. Parked at brother-in-law’s in suburban Chicago and grabbed a taxi to the airport. Interesting driver. Syrian medical doctor. Came to America to pursue the dream. Got married, nasty divorce and now his ex-wife is basically ruining any chance he has at grabbing the dream. (Screwing up his American residency.)

Obviously, I cannot know both sides of the story. (I’m sure he helped screw up the marriage too.)

What a crazy position I was in. I have the entire world in comparison to what he has. He is well educated, moved for a better life (took a huge risk, I imagine), and is at the bottom of the American food chain (or, perhaps better said, working a position far below his abilities).

He feels robbed, lied to by the American media, by Baywatch. . .(he brought that up, not me.)

His skin color continues to weigh him down in America – a land he animatedly referred to as 100% racist. (I politely disagreed with the full 100%, but do not deny that we have problems.)

He’ll likely be deported at his next immigration court date (April 13) because his visa is expired and because of some legal complications surrounding his ex-wife.

I’ve often asked myself (and God) why I was born into the (relative) wealth I was. A relatively easy life. A life that I’m so quick to complain about.

I’m trying to stop asking that question and simply give my life the best return on investment possible.

[time passes]

I finished Lawler Kang’s book, Passion at Work on the plane. In the last chapter he talks once again about all the “x-factors” that happen – things you cannot plan for – the unexpected – both good and bad. He also talks about avoiding the “victim” status. How it’s a dangerous trap that will steer you away from realizing your goals.

I wonder if I could avoid feeling the victim if I experienced the unexpected life of my cab driver.

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Dreaming about a thing in order to do it properly is right; but dreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong.

This quote is from a Christian preacher, Oswald Chambers, who lived into the early 1900s. The guy is intense. Real. No-nonsense.

I told my daughter last night to shower. 10 minutes later she was still clearly not in the shower. Why? She had chosen to do other things. She lost focus.

And she irritated me immensely!

But she also made me think about God. I wondered if God was irritated with me because He has told me to do things and I just get distracted with all sorts of other things, lose focus, and end up dreaming about doing those things instead of actually doing them.

Actually, I don’t really see God as getting irritated. Maybe more frustrated. Sort of like. “Look, John, I told you what to do – it’s right there. I’ve made you for this, got it all ready to go, now do it!” And then I see Him looking at me with compassion as I sit frustrated or depressed about not doing what I want to be doing because I am wondering “how will I be able to do this?” and “can this really be what I’m supposed to be doing?”

Basically, we don’t have faith. We don’t believe in the possibility of those dreams. (My daughter just didn’t care about getting showered, so clearly the similarities stop somewhere.)

So, for us to put our dreams into action, we have to first believe they are possible. Without that, we’ll never get anywhere.

Do you believe your dreams are possible?

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This is one of my favorite quotes from Jim Collins’ books. He is talking about business. I’m talking about life.

One of my friends and I talked about this a bit recently. He is between jobs and trying to figure out the right next step. One step would involve going back to school to get an advanced degree in a discipline that he says he “could get excited about.”

But he’s got something else that burns within him already – music. My question to him was

“are you settling for good, when you should be shooting for great?”

Damn it’s hard to be a good guy (or gal) and try to make a living as a musician (artist, writer – fill in your own creative passion here).

Over my career, I made a lot of choices that led to more money, more resume clout, and more bragging rights. But none of those choices led me closer to my passions.

A lot of those moves led me to jobs where I was good – even really good – but never great.

Like Collins, I believe passion is one key ingredient that enables us to achieve greatness. Sure, we have to be skilled, work hard, etc., but without passion we’re just posers, faking our way through life. I realize that may sound a bit harsh.

I cannot tell my friend what he is passionate about. Nor can I tell him how to feed a family while working towards his passions. That’s the struggle for most of us creative types - finding that balance of moving in the right direction and taking care of our responsibilities at the same time.

I don’t really have the answers to this. Just a hypothesis. And I’m still trying to prove that myself. It’s really a lifelong experiment.

Without encouraging you to take harmful risks, allow me to suggest that shooting for great, while likely involving some risk and surely some challenges, is worth it.

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At a Christmas party this weekend, I had the pleasure to talk with a writer (non-fiction) who was making the final edits on a book that will be coming out in 2007. It was an excellent discussion and I was very interested in the topic as well. The author was extremely humble about his expertise and the success of landing the publishing deal.

I’m not going to mention the author nor the topic because of a unique dilemma the author is facing.

He’s a tenure track professor.

It turns out that maybe 90 percent of this Ph.D’s day-to-day job responsibilities revolve around research that is unrelated to the topic of his book. To be clear, the book IS related to his area of expertise, but a different, niche facet.

He faces an interesting problem - to keep his head down, get tenure, and THEN work on trying to gain more exposure for the ideas in his book, or to say, “look, this is my passion, I’ve got to go after it!” and risk potentially negative consequences at his workplace - the consequences of a faculty and board who may not see the true value of this published work.

I know, I’m being a bit vague here. I don’t want to compromise his situation.

What would you do? Risk potentially losing tenure by trying to share with the world concepts that could impact lives, sharing concepts you are most passionate about? Or would you “play it safe,” not heavily promote your work, and hope for a clean path to the magic land of tenure?

I told him to tell the world about his book, to secure speaking spots at relevant conferences, and start following his passions – now.

Are you “playing it safe” in your own life?

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I’m happy to say that I’ve finally got this ready for you and I hope you enjoy it.

Play or Download MustardCast #2
Play MustardCast #2, interview with Charlotte Otter, in iTunes

Download the .mp3 file of MustardCast #2, interview with Charlotte Otter (16.4mb)

This is a 18-minute discussion with Charlotte Otter, a wonderful writer you can visit at Charlotte’s Web.

Here are the questions we discussed:

• What would be your dream writing gig?
• Are you going after that?
• Do you have a plan to make that happen?
• You’re a mom of 3 and wife of a busy husband – how do you do it?
• Is blogging helpful to writers or should they stick to their “serious” writing?
• What do you need as a creative person from your spouse to help you go after your dreams?
• What discourages you the most?
• You’ve done corporate, done journalism – how have you handled the adjustment to staying home with the kids? Discuss that decision and any struggles.

Charlotte also shared some tips and a short story:

• Recommended Books by Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, and The Right to Write.
• How to Exit Gracefully from a Hammock by Charlotte Otter. (112 Kb PDF)

Update: Added link to Charlotte’s short story.

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When I was in high school I worked at a place called Donutland – yes, that’s right – Donutland. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

I don’t really want or need to go into detail about that. Let’s leave it at this - it was a short stint.

[sidebar – For you non-Americans, I’m not sure you all even know what a doughnut is. I’m hoping this wikipedia entry on donuts can help.]

I was visiting my inlaws one weekend and my mother-in-law had some donuts available for our breakfast. It turns out, those donuts were made by my old bosses (Bob and Bonnie) who have since left the retail donut business and gone wholesale.

In retail, you produce what you think the market will purchase. In Donutland’s case, they filled their donut cases as full as they thought they needed to be to sell a day’s worth of donuts – but they never knew exactly how many they would sell each day.

In their new wholesale business model, Bob and Bonnie only produce after they have received orders. So there is no wasted production. The sale is made before they even have a finished product. Granted, they have proven themselves to the market prior to orders.

Applying Retail vs. Wholesale Mentalities to the Pursuit of Dreams
When it comes to pursing our passions (and especially for creative people) some believe the wholesale route is the way to make it. That is, you create a sample (demo tape or maybe a few chapters) and hope to find a market (publishers or record companies) to buy before actually creating it all. In the retail model, you would simply create and hope to find someone to buy it after it’s created.

In business, I like the wholesale model because it mitigates risk. It’s safe, you know how much to produce and you already have the orders before you invest in the production.

In Life and Pursing Passions, I like The Retail Model
In life and pursuing passions, I’m leaning the other direction. Sometimes I think we let the market dictate whether we do what we are good and passionate about.

That would be the position of the so-called realist.

I’m a bit of a realist, but a realist who dreams and has faith in the purpose behind your gifts and passions.

I don’t believe you should let the existing market (or the markets you are aware of) be the sole dictator of whether you pursue your passions. Sometimes markets open up that were never possible in the past. You could not have known or predicted them. I believe the Internet has afforded many of us creative folks that opportunity.

Five years ago, maybe seven, I told one of my good musician friends that “the Internet is going to open possibilities for independent musicians like never before.” He disagreed and pointed to the entrenched music distribution model, record labels, etc. I believe he even said, “That will never change.”

iTunes blew that theory out of the water and continues to. Brilliant. (See the link under my blogroll for a catalog of online music distributors.)

Furthermore, just the other week, in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Buck from REM (I think it was Peter) commented on how broken the traditional system of music distribution is. Interestingly enough, that article was on how artists are leveraging the Internet to create hits without the corporatized, sanitized, and sterilized format of traditional radio (I should point out that, obviously, the lyrics of most popular music aren’t exactly “sanitized”).

Beyond iTunes, the music genome project (www.pandora.com) is another great example of how the music market is evolving.

Keep Creating, Keep Your Eyes Open and Be Ready

I’m going to explore and expand on some of this more in the future, but for now let me simply encourage you who are creative to do your best to keep creating – work out your craft, your niche in whatever art form you excel at and enjoy.

And keep your eyes open. Markets move.

When a market specific to your craft and your unique approach hits, will you be ready?

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