A Cool Conceptual Photo Project I Was Lucky To Be A Part Of

My friend Scott Erb recently compiled a video of his shots from The Red Room project from his home in Worcester, Massachusetts. Basically he wanted to see how many different ways he could possibly arrange a small red room with minimal props and bring out a unique look and atmosphere with each subject. He brought me in to take some shots earlier this year and I was simply flattered at how good they came out. I’m so un-photogenic and he really brought out the best in me.

I won’t go into some of the other beautiful folks he photographed as well. You should just see them for yourself and reach out to Scott and let him know how awesome he is.

http://www.aredroomproject.wordpress.com

http://www.erbphoto.com/

My Village

I guess I know enough about myself to know where I find the most peace of mind, the most productivity and the most curiosity and interest in life on a day to day basis. I’ve lived in quite a few different places within Massachusetts and beyond and I have to say that the common denominators of happy day to day living were associated with what I like to call village living.

Moving from apartment to apartment thoughout Boston, I seemed to always gravitate to places that were within a few blocks of the MBTA. I went to school downtown and some of the jobs I had were downtown as well. Doing the early morning routine has never been easy for me, but I’ve also realized that in order to squeeze the most juice out of every single day, I needed to take a few hours here and there. So, getting up early to workout or get writing done was the best way for me to gain momentum in a given direction.

The MBTA isn’t a glorious public transport system by any means, but you can get pretty much anywhere within the city limits by train and bus in about an hour and a half. This sounds like a hassle to people who prefer driving, but part of my city living was being productive while on train rides. Whether it was reading a book or two a week on my commute or writing or researching jobs or grad schools, I was always able to zone out and get stuff done to and from work.

When I got my first real, full time, salaried job in Newton, I made my initial move out of the city to a semi-suburb. Newton is pretty cool and has a decent amount to do, but I opted to buy a car.

The following years, I progressively moved away from my public transportation lifestyle. I moved home to Worcester twice because of a failed relocation to Chicago and some financial difficulty. I found myself living 40 miles from work and commuting up to 4 hours a day in my car for a job that wasn’t much better paying than any of the ones I had in the city. I gravitated towards this because I thought I was making positive career choices.

In hindsight, I wouldn’t have wound up in the job I love now if I hadn’t made these steps, but I’m also realizing that to play to my natural tendency to walk places and take public transportation, that I’ll want to live in a place where my work and home are close enough for me to not have to travel and distance by car between them.

People I look up to who have things that I want for myself like a house, a dog and a back yard have told me time and time again that the more I grow up, the less that living in a city will appeal to me, especially when I decide to get married and have a family. I still wonder if I can have the things I want in life and still live my village lifestyle.

What do you value location and lifestyle wise? What kind of sacrifices have you made to have one over the other? How do you see yourself having a balance of both?

If You Can’t Take The Heat, Get Out Of The Kitchen, Or Start Enjoying It

“No sympathy for the devil. Keep that in mind; buy the ticket, take the ride.”~Hunter S. Thompson

This post is a direct response to Carlos Miceli’s post about the Media Attention Whore phenomenon and all of the subsequent comments that I’ve been able to read thus far.

I sympathize with both sides of the argument against and for whoring yourself through new media for whatever end goal you have.

I’ve seen  posts lately about how some folks don’t like the idea of “branding” themselves and ideas like this are the run-off of that concept. Why are we rebelling against personal branding? It’s a NEW opportunity that is revolutionizing the way that individuals can become successful business people without having the credentials of rich parents, an ivy league eduction or a 4.0 GPA.

What are contrarians to the personal branding and Media Attention Whore movement suggesting as an alternative to working your ass off night and day to create good content and promoting it like there is no tomorrow? How do you think you’ll get noticed otherwise? Simply on the merit of your personality and intentions?

I also agree that if your personal brand is shit and you don’t have any real substance or innovative nature behind what you’re pedaling, you’ll likely fail or fade away.

I try to never wish failure upon people. I try very hard not to hold people’s bad decisions against them… there’s usually a reason why people act the way they do and if they’re wrong, the decent ones try to fix their messes and learn from mistakes.

Especially if you’re trying to make a name for yourself through social media I think there’s a unique on/off switch to dealing with folks who you don’t agree with. If you think they’re decent people and producers of good ideas, try reaching out to them. Bring them back into your community and try to understand them. If they’re not receptive to that, don’t waste your time dwelling on how they’re behaving. There’s little chance their actions or ideas will affect you in the long run.

Besides, when the gods of wine and MTV tally up all your karma points, do you really want a bunch of perceived spitefulness to be held against you?

For the persons branding him or herself… do your thing! Take it to the wall! However, if you’re cutting corners and thinking the people who really matter won’t notice, you’re sorely mistaken.

We’re all accountable for our own actions. Might as well have most of those actions me made out of good will and supporting one another rather than undercutting the very medium that is getting so many of us ahead in the first place.

 

The World Is Not Enough (Or Is It?)

I really want make my current company massively successful, travel the world and pay down my student debt so I can be free to live REALLY well some day. Those are big goals that I feel like day to day work will make happen. Meeting a nice girlfriend, getting in shape, learning another language and reading Ulysses are on that list too, but they’re not necessarily at the top.

I feel like if I had a 5-10 year plan with this student debt crap where I could pay it all down and really develop my career and business interests then I’d be very well positioned in my early 30’s to do what I feel like I’ve always wanted to do– live and work abroad in a foreign city, study languages and live a complex, dynamic life.

The thing is, I have a pretty damn good life now. A rather spectacular life actually! The world is basically mine to do with as I please.

I just need to make a plan on pursing what I want from the world and then I’ll have it. Am I afraid to commit to that plan? Am I too young to go all in on a location specific thing like buying a house/condo to generate equity towards paying off my student debt and yadda yadda yadda?

Is my ongoing rebellion from owning physical things telling me something? Should I avoid buying a home or is it just a strong reaction to the thought?

They call me James… James Ryan Moreau, the confuzzled sailor with good intentions and too many great ideas.

The Stuff Is Still Here-And It’s Staring At Me

So I’ve managed to organize all of the shit that I wanted to get rid of by piling it up into three distinct piles in my kitchen, living room and bedroom. I say “organize” but really mean “listlessly move everything about.” Although, they’re all conveniently stacked so that if I were to douse them in lighter fluid and toss a match, they’d go up in flames nicely. I was always an excellent pyromaniac on camping trips.

Imagine if I just DESTROYED everything I owned that I didn’t need? Hell, that would be so fricken hip and progressive, except yeah, I GET that there are plenty of people in this world who go without and I am not one of them. I hate waste. I go without nothing… well maybe I go without a few of those intangibles at the moment, but that’s for another blog post entirely. I’d really like to get these things to people to need them or at least want them.

I also want to really want things again. I want to desire objects and spacial awareness that I haven’t appreciated in a while. However, I want to desire things for the right reason. I want to have a better structure to place my things in and have the perspective to really enjoy them there.

The next time I write about the war against my stuff, there will be marked progress. Maybe marked progress in other areas too. Who knows!

Until then, ahoj.

A Little Promo Of Something I Have Nothing To Do With

I’m a big fan of these guy’s work. I’ve donated a little bit of money to see if this project can be made. The shorts come off as goofy and funny (they are!) but there’s a lot of smart social commentary going on that I haven’t seen too much elsewhere.

I’d love to see this film get made. So, check out their webpage http://internetscelebrities.com/ and look up their stuff on Youtube under Internets Celebrities… or just go straight to their channel. I hope you like it!

Thoughts On My Move – Post Mortem

I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin mid-week last week and promptly signed a sub-lease I had found last minute. The actual apartment was no more than 5 minutes off the highway, but as I looked down the major thoroughfare I couldn’t really see anything resembling a downtown city within eyesight.

Thoroughly weary from the 1100 mile trip that I drove alone, I signed over the next 10 months of my life to this apartment complex after I saw the gorgeous loft I’d be living in.

After a sigh of satisfaction to be at my final destination du jour, I chugged the final redbull left over from the trek and emptied the entire U-Haul solo. About midway through I realize a) I’m in better shape than I thought because I doubt most people would be able to lift some of this shit up over their heads, hoof it up a flight of stairs and into an apartment and b) that there was a very busy freeway right outside my patio window… hmmm…

About 15 minute after I got my last articles into the apartment my new coworker Ryan Paugh showed up amused that I beasted the entire truckload myself and horrified that I had signed the lease to this apartment so far from town. While I am inclined to not be confrontational with people, Ryan convinced me that I should absolutely confront the property management company and see what I can do about getting out of my lease or subletting so that I can move closer to town.

Living 7 miles from a downtown area doesn’t seem like any distance at all coming from Boston. You can go 15 miles in any direction and be relatively close to the action. However in Madison, the lifestyle that I want and that I expected is simply better suited in a downtown location.

Being reinforced by everyone I’ve met so far, I am taking actions to get my apartment subleased. I don’t know how long it will take, but I feel good that I’m at least making strides to better my situation.

In the meantime, I’ll say these things about moving half way across the country:

• People are nicer out here, the drivers are nothing like Massholes and the pace is slower overall. These things are not rumors.
• Cost of living is CHEAP! You’re not in a major metropolis, but there is a little bit of everything you’d ever want from a city and it’s simply not as expensive to eat, drink and get housing. I’m a fan of that.
• As a conscientious objector to my dumb ass decision to move into a place sight unseen, I’ve decided to only unpack what I absolutely need. So there are boxes piled everywhere in the loft and I’m doing just fine with what I brought out to use.
• The previous point makes me realize I have too much shit and that if I can live with a good 2/3 of my stuff in boxes, I really don’t need that 2/3 of materials in my life. Food for thought…

Anyways, my general update is this- I love my new job, my coworkers have been incredibly generous in showing me the ropes, getting me acclimated and being generally good people and Madison looks like the sort of place I could spend a whole lot of time in for the foreseeable future.

Success!

Creativity Got You Here, So Don’t Stop

I’ve been spending a lot of time with fellow bloggers lately and I’m realizing that there’s a common denominator arising that concerns yet comforts me: people who work their butts off through blogging and social networking to get great jobs tend to blog to a lesser extent once they actually get these good job positions.

I wrote a ton of blog posts for several years over several different blogs. At times, everything I wrote was focused on establishing myself as an authority and other times I just wrote to tease out some stuff that was bothering me inside. I love to blog, but more importantly I love to write.

Now I’m in a job role that is completely immersed in social media and I interact with bloggers on a daily basis. There is a whole spectrum of blogger types that blog about virtually anything you can think of. The barriers that keep many people from blogging is that they think nobody will be interested in what they have to say and therefor don’t feel compelled to put their ideas out on the internet to be judged and criticized.

Then, bam; yr. hooked!

Whether a long road or a short road, bloggers who interact with an active community can easily get addicted to the ways that ideas flow and evolve from a single post. Suddenly writing isn’t a chore, it’s a true pleasure that you look forward to more and more each day. For me, blogging kept me going despite working a day job that wasn’t challenging me in the ways I wanted to be challenged. I had a vision that I’d be working in social media and be getting paid to write to some extent in the not so distant future.

After putting in countless hours of extra freelance work, blogging, pro-bono volunteer work and simply keeping on my hustle up, I landed an amazing job at Brazen Careerist that brought me 1100 miles from home to Madison, Wisconsin. I’m doing what I love, full time now and realize that as I got closer to this goal, knowing I was nearing the finish line, I was blogging less.

Not okay! You’ve got to keep on your writing grind no matter what. Even if you’re not blogging towards a specific topic, or if you’re inhumanly busy during the day, you’ve gotta keep flexing your creative muscles in some way. It is too easy to fall off on being creative because it’s extra energy that you don’t necessarily feel like you have. However, if you put the work in on something you’re passionate about, you’ll get from point A to point B. Once you’re at point B, point C awaits you!

Complacency = soul death.

So, I’ll continue to remind myself that I shan’t forget what brought me forth. I suggest you do the same. Keep creating folks

A Call-Out… Or More Like Admiration… Whatever!

I was pondering the video blog while walking carefully through the maze of boxes that is my soon-to-be former Worcester apartment and thought about how I’ll probably need to make one sooner than later due to my new job at Brazen Careerist. This in inevitable and I’m excited to teach myself how to not look goofy while blathering about whatever I have to blather about. I want my voice to sound like I’m an NPR radio associate and my looks to look… well, like me and not like someone less handsome and weird!

So, today I call out Jyo Minakawa! I don’t know Jyo personally and I’ve only briefly interacted with him through Twitter, blog comments and a post I wrote a while ago on my old blog. However, Jyo is the dude I want to get on camera and speak like. There are pleny of other hot shots in the social media biznass such as Loren Feldman and Gary Vaynerchuk who kill it to thrill it with their vlog mugs and eccentric behavior. But Jyo keeps it really real by just sitting down in front of his camera and telling a story that means something to him. Sometimes he doesn’t even seem like he knows what the moral of the story is, but he keeps telling it until it flushes itself out into something coherent and interesting.

I highly recomend that everyone check out Jyo’s blog Average Jyo- Surrounded by Superstars. Some of you may question why this is a “call out?” Well, Jyo hasn’t posed since May, so I’m calling him out for that in hopes he’ll start vlogging again about what the hell he’s been up to in the last 5 months! I’m sure it’s a good story too. Go check out his stuff, leave a comment and let him know we’re waiting for his next post!

As for my own vlogging… my mom insists I Skype with her, which I hate, which also means I need to need her how to Skype, which I hate even more. Cheers to technology!

Mid-September Goal Checkup

Remembering that Rebecca Thorman thinks I should be more specific about my goals (she’s right!) I’ve got some updates and add-on goals for myself!

-Fitness craze is going aight. Schedule has gotten busier and meals have gotten less organized, however my weight is steady and even dropping and I’m feeling pretty strong via pushups and pullups. However I’d like to lose at least 5 pounds next month. Hoping to find a reasonably priced Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai gym to relieve stress and give me an interesting excersie option when the weather gets cold. This should be interesting based on my following update…

-I know where I’ll be living now… Madison, Wisconsin! As most of you read, I got a great job in a great city and I’m moving! Quite a relief to have a solid long-term gig to be excited for. I need to find an apartment to live in sometime in the next week, so wish me luck on that end! I’ve found some that I really like so we’ll see! Need to get in touch and put some money down.

-Time management is rocking so far. I quit my job and I’m knocking things off of my to-do list left and right. The apartment is getting packed!

-I believe my sleep average has gotten up to 7 hours a night. When I get to Madison I want it to be 8 hours. Wishful thinking? We’ll see!

-Not spending much dough besides on moving expenses. Saving account should look better come Holiday time.

How is everyone else’s month going so far?