Productivity (Taking My Own Advice)

So a while back I made a video about being productive. You can see it here if you're interested. In any case, I've been feeling really "blah" this weekend and it's exactly what I needed to hear.

I've got a big pile of clothes that is really three sub-piles of clothes: one needs to be ironed, one needs to be cleaned, and one needs to be just put away... and probably ironed first at this point. I am going to go attack that as soon as I finish this blog. The best thing is that I can watch a movie or something while I iron, so it's only half-work. That doesn't count as multi-tasking in my book because I won't care if I follow what's happening in the movie!

I have some paperwork to do for what I want to do next year. Mostly, this involves e-mailing people I'm supposed to be in contact with... I've been a little un-responsive recently and I feel guilty about it. I shouldn't feel guilty, of course; if my body is telling me that what it needs the least is to talk to these people, it's probably right. This was not pure laziness--it was stress telling me to take a break. But regardless, I will e-mail them once I get some clothes going.

I have to talk to some people about summer jobs I applied for. I meant to do that today and now it'll be after business hours so I'd get a manager but probably not a hiring manager. I have to put it on my list of stuff to do tomorrow.

I took on a reading challenge earlier in the semester and I'm pretty far behind on it... I got really far ahead over spring break and lost the time to read afterward; now that I have it back, I ought to read some. I bet that's not going to happen tonight except just before I go to bed, but it's a step.

Speaking of bed, I need to reinstate my bedtime routine. It helps a lot and I've gotten out of the habit and it's not helping my stress at all. Hopefully this routine of blogging will do some good in that regard.

So I think I've got my evening organized! Laundry--e-mails--write list for tomorrow--laundry. For tomorrow, class and contact employers. Oh! That's my list for tomorrow. Already out of order! Dang it. Well, I have to be flexible. That's the key to any success.

And with that I think I'll be off, rather than procrastinating by writing a bunch of more stuff you probably wouldn't care to read anyway ;)

Hope you guys can have as effective an evening as I am about to have, even if that means relaxing! If that's what you need, do it.

BAWLODIS (Blog A Whole Lot Of Days In Summer)

Hey! So someone recently posted a comment to my YouTube profile saying, "Why doesn't your blog exist?" and I thought to myself, You know what? I've been meaning to tend to that.

And then I remembered what wonderful good blogging did for me last summer when I did it every day for two months straight. I'm not sure I want to commit entirely to that again... of course, things could change in the next few days. That's what I love about this being my blog, though. If I change my mind... it's all on me.

In any case, the next great thing about blogging is that it gives me a chance to be a lot more personal. Most of my vlogs have at least some sort of point and are very rarely just life-updates, and I really liked being able to bring that part of my life to the internet through my blog. There will be a lot of changes to my life this summer, and I'm looking forward to being able to share them; unfortunately, very little is set in stone and I don't want to announce anything until I'm certain, so forgive me if I tend to dance around certain points. I am only withholding information because I take care not to tell you untruths.

So basically, this is going to be the beginning of my summer blogging project again. Probably my first goal will be to re-commit to exercise... maybe with more time promised to me in the future I will be able to commit to it. I mean, I have been walking for a very long time and distance every day this semester and now that student teaching is almost over I'll need to keep it up or I will probably slay someone.

I guess I'll end this blog by saying that the biggest benefit is that I get to post these without lots of editing or drafting and re-drafting. I like having a place where I can do that. Ha.

We need to talk.

I'm a little upset right now, but I am going to try to be as level-headed as possible in writing this.

There are a few people complaining in my video comments about the legitimacy of the gold medalist for this week's fizzylimpics awards. This gets under my skin for a few reasons, the first of which is that at the end of the day, this competition doesn't matter. At the end of the day, what does a shout-out from a little guy with 3800 subscribers, most of whom don't even watch his videos, and the remainder of whom generally watch with passivity, actually mean, in the grand scheme of things? The award for winning was a shout-out from me. That is the same award that the silver gets, the same that the bronze gets, the same as half the people who didn't even win get. It's not like I'm giving money to people who don't deserve it. The only people getting anything physical are the people who entered all four competitions--not even the gold medalists get that.

I also know every video that broke the rules. To be honest, it was a significant chunk of the entries. I am as big of a rule-monger as anyone in a lot of things, and it was quite tempting to disqualify everyone who broke the rules and give a sarcastic "sorry." However, I reminded myself that my goal, my only goal in this competition, was to share good content and provide a venue with which to do so. That's why I would give a medal to someone who uploaded it a month before the competition, or to singers who did covers, or to videos that went over four minutes, or to people who sent theirs in after the due date, just to name a few. They made good content and deserved to have it shared.

I also don't think people realize how much time and effort I put into this competition. I had to stay up late several nights finding judges, giving them spreadsheets to judge with, compiling the list of videos to send them, and then compiling their answers and trying to come up with a gold from there. I could have spent my time doing lots of other things--things way more important to my life--but I thought someone needed to share this content. That makes comments calling me out extra-painful; it just seems ungrateful to me to say that with all this work, all this effort to be friendly and forgiving, someone would have the audacity to compare me to a corrupt politician.

All I really wanted to create was a light and friendly competition. I hope that we can keep it that way.

Fizzylimpics Official Rules and Suggestions!

So you're interested in entering the competition, eh?

First of all, thank you! Hopefully through these video competitions, we will help share a lot of really good content and become a little stronger as a community. This isn't really about winning as much as sharing videos--but, of course, prizes will be awarded, because what is a competition without them?

However, there are a few things we have to get out of the way before getting this competition going.

A few rules that will apply to EVERY VIDEO in order to be eligible for competition:

1. It must stay within the time limit of 4 minutes. The judges and I would love to watch hours and hours of footage, but realistically, most of us are still in school and/or have real lives we need to keep up with in the meantime!
2. The video must be posted as a video response to the official Fizzylimpics video in which the contest is announced--we have to be able to find it for you to win!
3. The video must be uploaded to YouTube no more than eight and no fewer than two days prior to the announcement of winners--we'd love to see new content and to have time to watch it!
4. The video must abide by US copyright law and creative commons licensing. Please only use content you are allowed to use--the more original, the better!
5. Only one entry per category per channel--make it your best!
6. By entering the competition, you grant me (fizzylimon) the right to use your video for monetary gain, ie, I will use clips of the winning videos in the prize announcement, and there will be ads on that video.

On to category-specific rules and suggestions:

Vlogging (submissions accepted 1/27 - 2/2): Contestants will be judged based on subject matter, delivery, pacing, editing, and production value. Don't worry if you don't have good equipment--the judges will take that into consideration if you have really good content! There will also be special awards given for standout pieces, such as "best first vlog," "best snapshot of a collab channel," or anything the judges are inspired to award.

Sketch comedy (submissions accepted 2/3 - 2/9): Contestants will be judged based on the premise of the sketch, acting, pacing, editing, and production value. Most of all, though, the judges care about the lols. If there are lols, you can consider your video a success! Much like vlogging, there will be special awards given for standout pieces.

Music (submissions accepted 2/10 - 2/16): Contestants will be judged both on the quality of the music and of the music video. In terms of music, the judges will be looking for lyrics, orchestration, balance, intonation, and most of all musical interest. For the video, whether you want to tell a story visually or use the "making-of" video style à la Pomplamoose, try to make the video something interesting we'd want to watch. As with the other categories, special awards will be given for things with exceptional characteristics.

Animation (Submissions accepted 2/17 - 2/23): As the most open-ended form there is, frankly, I don't have much to say of guidance here. If it is an animation similar to a sketch comedy, it will be treated much like a sketch comedy but with special attention paid to the visual aspect of animation. If it is something like kinetic typography, the judges will look for the text's relation to the music and its visual appeal. Stop-motion, flash, hand-drawn cartoon, you name it, this category can have it all.

Enter in more than one competition and you could be eligible for a special award! Enter in all four and you get a special tetrathlete award, which has yet to be determined!

So I hope you guys are as excited as I am to see this happen... because it will be awesome!

Update!

So if you get this before I post the video linking to it, congratulations, you dedicated blogospheric Limonshirian! And if you get this from my video... well... I suppose it's time to get to the bulk of the substance in this post.

According to the "my videos" page, the last time I posted a video was November 8, 2010. Holy smokes, that was a long time ago. Curiously enough, that video was on improper use of the word "random" and has inspired several people to let me know every time they adjust their syntax to incorporate a more accurate synonym for "random." It made me feel both that I knew what I was talking about and that people actually agree with me. That was pretty uplifting and humbling!

Anyway, this video was posted just two days before I took (and passed) my hearing for my senior recital. Essentially, this entailed my playing through specific, indicative portions of my senior recital for a panel of faculty members who decide whether or not they want to allow me to represent the school by performing my recital on stage. For those of you who don't know, every music undergraduate at my university has to give a senior recital of about 40 or 50 minutes, and performance majors have to give a junior recital as well. It's basically the biggest rite of passage for any music student, equivalent to a senior thesis or other such project.

Following this recital hearing, I had to turn in a 15-page music history research paper on the topic of my choosing (mine being a cultural analysis of a lute textbook from 1610.) On the same day, I had to turn in a music education take-home final, which also ended up being about 15 pages long for me. This final involved things like writing a handout explaining to high school students how to practice, writing a playing test for every instrument in the band on a specific piece of music (including a rubric for a performance assessment and a written test on theory, history, etc.), and writing out how I would go about teaching intermediate players how to improve their rhythm.

After this, I gave my senior recital, of which there IS video and audio which I am trying to prepare to upload on YouTube, but technology is not working with me! In any case, it was largely a success, though there was a sort of meager audience showing due to it being the weekend before Thanksgiving break.

Clearly, then, it would follow that I went on Thanksgiving break, where I was in a party house with my Dad's side of the family, including his seven siblings, their spouses and families, and of course the family matriarch. The spread for Thanksgivingdinner, according to my aunt's facebook status, was "4 kinds of brie, cowboy caviar, TWO turkeys, stuffing & gravy, sweet potato casserole, mashed potato casserole, creamed onions, mandarin green beans ... salad, frozen cranberry yum, apple bread, baguette flatbreads, and FIVE pies." Yes. It was tasty.

While walking on the beach, we saw a great deal of erosion which had caused several former beach-front houses to become beach-behind houses; most of them were only 25 or so years old. It was pretty dismal to be walking down this already-empty beach with the overcast skies and run into that many condemned houses. It was also incredibly tempting to break into them and have general shenanigans... but I was able to contain myself.

In any case, it was exactly the break I needed from what had turned out to be a VERY stressful few weeks. Now, last week was where things got a little hard to explain; I had few classes and not a lot of work, but somehow my time disappeared! I wasn't even being lazy for the most part. I just found ways to occupy myself with things I should have been doing other than making videos. There was one day when there was just too much background noise in my house to record a proper video, so I couldn't do it, but that was only Friday. Saturday and Sunday I was at work all day--Saturday, in fact, I went straight from noon to 10PM with no breaks. So at least I made bank in time for Christmas.

So that brings us up to today, when I did upload a video. Or at least I'm hoping so. As I write this, it's encoding on my computer and I plan on uploading it as soon as it's done, provided when I watch it I don't find any editing mistakes. Of which there were many. Something about the audio didn't record at the same rate as the video (I've taken to re-dubbing the audio with my good studio microphone) and so that took a lot of effort... so please don't get too upset if the video and audio aren't always perfectly aligned! But that's neither here nor there. Hopefully, at least for a while, there will not be as large of a gap between videos. See you soon!

-Steve

Reducing Stress in 5 Steps!

Now I don't know about you guys, but I'm kind of an expert in being stressed out. Some of you may remember last October and November, and then again in March when anxiety problems got the best of me. I'm starting to feel a lot of the same symptoms again because of all of the crazy things that happen around midterm in my more-than-stupidly-busy schedule, but I'm so much more prepared this time because of my willingness to seek out help the last times it happened. I figured many people can relate, but don't exactly know where to start bettering their habits and moods, so I'm going to give a list of things I do to help with stress. I can promise you they work, too--this semester has had the most that is expected of me, and still I don't feel nearly as stressed as I did last fall or spring. So here goes!

1. Talk to people about your problems. Nothing puts things in perspective better than just hearing yourself articulate them, and the people who care about you can give you wonderful perspectives. Make sure that at least some of these people you actually meet with IRL--I know it's easy for us internet folk to stick to our computers in our room, but meeting with real people, hugging the stress out, all that cheesy stuff ACTUALLY WORKS!

2. Organize yourself. A little bit of planning, a little bit of a neater work environment, and attacking problems with a clear goal in mind can make a huge difference in the efficiency and effectiveness of getting lots of tasks done. This also means that you want to go at things one-at-a-time; you may think multitasking is efficient, but it's really just rationalized distraction! A good, focused, thoughtful approach to one task can get the task done better and faster.

3. Take breaks. I once timed my activities for the day and found out that I have a tendency to spend four to six hours a day being non-productively awake. However, upon further examination, I found out that several of those hours actually were productive, but in different ways--it takes time to wake up, to go to sleep (discussed later), to eat meals, etc., and those are important activities. After subtracting all of those, I found that I spent one hour being entirely unproductive (i.e., napping, on the internet, watching TV, etc.) I fully expected to convince myself that this hour needed to be filled with work because I have so much to do. This turned out to be the opposite of what actually happened--I realized that this hour is a pivotal one in which my brain recovers so as to be able to do the work it needs to do. So, let me reiterate: TAKE BREAKS. THEY ARE IMPORTANT.

4. This one's a biggie: get adequate sleep, and if this is difficult for you, adhere to a strict bedtime routine. I have the blessing and the curse of being a light sleeper; it means I have trouble going to sleep at night, but it also means that when my alarm goes off in the morning I can pop right out of bed. This resulted in a lot of early-morning work and a lot of mid-afternoon burnout. My bedtime routine saved my life. It is as follows:

a. Shower (usually starting between 10:00 and 10:30). For me, this is a great way to put a barrier between work and sleep--I make sure to check everything I need to on my computer before I shower, shut off my computer, and do not turn it back on until I wake up the following morning.

b. Journal. I keep a journal where I literally just purge my brain of everything running through it. This has several benefits: 1) I often end up working out things that have been bothering me, which means I don't toil over them as I go to sleep; 2) Anything I worry about remembering to do the next day comes to light, and I can add it to my planner; 3) I usually end up deciding that every day was a good day, no matter what happened, and that makes me go to sleep content--and trust me, I've had some pretty bad days.

c. Read. After journaling, getting engrossed in a book seals the deal of just turning my brain off to worries. I like to do this laying in my bed, so that I'm already beginning to doze off. A word to the wise, though: psychologists say that your bed should only be used for sleep and sex. If you find yourself awake after 20 minutes, get out of bed and do something until you are tired enough to go to sleep. You want to classically condition yourself, essentially, to associate your bed only with what it's made for so that you can speed up the process of getting to sleep.

d. Sleep! It's that easy. I used to take forever to actually get to sleep, and now I hardly remember anything after I turn my light out and roll over. I generally need 7-8 hours to actually feel good the next day, but this can be different for everybody. I am dubious of anybody who says they can adequately run on six or fewer hours, though.

5. If something is really, really weighing on your mind, write a two lists: in one, write everything that worries about it; in the other, write what you can do about every point listed in the other. If the answer is "nothing," then what use is there in worrying about it? And if there is a solution, why not go and do something about it? The effort itself can relieve your stress.

And now I suppose I should get back to my 4,000 word research project due on Thursday. No wait! I shouldn't. It's bedtime!

Max

There's a guy in my music history class who's incredibly socially awkward and apparently quite bad with names. He was my partner for the first-day ice breaker exercise where we had to introduce ourselves to each other and then introduce each other to the class. I guess because of our connection through this exercise, he is extra-sure of himself, but strangely enough is entirely wrong: he thinks my name is Max.

Now, normally I would have corrected someone who has my name wrong early on in order to save them the embarrassment , but something stopped me this time.

It could have to do with the fact that when I was little, Max was among the top three coolest names in my head (the higher-up ones being Chris and Greg.) It could have to do with the fact that he's just so awkward that it's funny to have that moment with someone else when they get that look on their face like "What did he just call you?"

But honestly, I think it has more to do with the fact that when he calls me Max, I get to be, if only for a brief second, someone else. I get to be an idealized version of myself. I get to fabricate a life that helps me forget momentarily that I am human.

You see, Max wouldn't have the stresses that seem to be plaguing me. Max wouldn't worry that the money he's spending on the food he needs for the week would prevent him from buying the reeds he needs for the month. Max doesn't go to sleep at night feeling like the work that he's done that day is only a fraction of what he needs to have done when he wakes up. Max keeps in touch with his friends, no matter how much time it takes, because he realizes that they're more important than the facts he arbitrarily has to memorize. Max gets in the hour of exercise he needs to feel healthy. Max makes delicious meals quickly with fresh ingredients. Max is spontaneous and doesn't worry too much about the consequences of letting his hair down for a bit. Max is on top of all the paperwork he has to be doing. Max doesn't feel guilty for being the biggest expense to a family that's just run into some trouble. Max has a plan for next year and is taking steps toward it.

Unfortunately, Max isn't real. And the second someone says "Hey Steve!" they snap me back to reality, and I have to come to terms with the fact that I cannot say all that about myself. I have to accept the fact that I'm imperfect, that people expect more of me now than it's physically possible for me to supply. I have to face the world knowing that I'm entirely unprepared. Once I leave college, and most likely the country, I know that nothing I've done the last four years has actually prepared me for what I will experience, with the exception of how to do my job.

But maybe I'll take a page from Max's book and see it as an opportunity for adventure.