Attaining the Crest of the Curve

Sorrento 2007

Yesterday was my best day of the week and it shouldn't be. I was groggy from having stayed up till half past three and was up again at eight. I've often wondered if I do my best work, whether editing videos or writing, when sleepy or when pushing myself into the morning's wee hours.

I stayed up Thursday into Friday morning to finish my video, The Amalfi Coast from the Emerald Grotto to Amalfi. It was exactly a week since I finished my last video, A Visit to L'Isole di Capri.  Both come from videography I did on my 2008 walking tour of Naples and the Amalfi Coast, the best videographed of all my foreign travels. These two latest videos are the longest I've done since I started posting to Facebook on December 7 and to YouTube on January 4. My first YouTube video, Training To Fight 2, featuring Arron, was 2 minutes, 5 seconds long.

I'm starting to feel competent using iMovie. I started relearning Final Cut Pro ten days ago. FCP has features I want to use e.g. alpha channels, more control over audio, and animation but I can do a lot with iMovie I discovered its undocumented features. Most operations are as set but I've found out that most these defaults are easily modified. I can, for instance, start a project using a theme. When I cancel the theme I can modify its defaults i.e. beginning and closing titles, default transitions without losing what I've already edited into the video. The theme's special transitions then become available to me. Titles can be modified using Apple's built-in Fonts panel, not the Fonts panel that came with iMovie. I can choose from my computer's entire font collection, add shadow, outline and color, far beyond what Apple made available in iMovie's own font panel. David Pogue's O'Reilly manual has been invaluable. It is truly "the book that should have come in the box."

I went into photography and videography two years ago not only to explore my latent artistic bent, nor only to find another way to earn a living but, most important, to pursue necessary personal growth changes. I am back to 1969 when I paused medical school after getting overwhelmed by what I was doing. I was overwhelmed by what I was. I've made many adjustments but at core are still essential adjustments. I need to learn my own work ethic.

Learning to use iMovie has proved once again an old dictum. To succeed with a new skill one must go through and complete the learning curve. If one stopped short of achieving the crest of the curve, he would just have wasted his time. The goal each time is mastery. One needs focus and perseverance. I am learning the importance of attaining the crest of the curve.

Posted via email from Duende Arts

Dan Andrews Location-Independent Lifestyle

Kalanchoe in the Window

Early this morning, while waiting for my video to export, I checked my email. Someone had started following me on Tweeter and this person's location was the Philippines. I followed the link to Dan Andrews's site, Tropical MBA, and watched several of his "Lifestyle Business Podcasts."

Since signing up with Tweeter everyday I get notice that someone was following me. Most of these are businesses trying to create themselves on the Internet. They have something to say but after a couple of weeks I lost interest. Business has never interested me. This is why I remain poor. I don't have the patience to study business situations nor the boldness to pursue strictly business algorithms. My older sister gets nonplussed when confronted with the simplest mechanical problem. My Waterloo is business.

Despite my allergic reaction to business ideas, Dan's ideas persevered. It may be it's just the lateness of the hour. It was three this morning. I had wasted yesterday afternoon but after I finished watching The Time Traveler's Wife last night I took advantage of the return of creative energy and finished editing my Amalfi Coast video. But I don't think so. We become persuaded by ideas we'd already been primed to accept. Truth is simply what aligns with what we already believe.

Andrews and his buddy, Ian, are traveling in SE Asia. They are in Manila as of last notice. They both love to travel but not as much as they love travel when mixing business with pleasure. Location Independent Lifestyle is doing business where you enjoy spending time. It is doing business and earning money without being tied down to a location. It is creating business opportunities where you like to be.

Dan Andrews's idea to combine business with lifestyle is precisely what I've formulated over the last 20 to 30 years. I remember when the idea first occurred to me. I had just come back from Barre where a nine-day meditation retreat shocked me out of complacency. By sitting with physical and mental pain instead of running away, the quality of mind shatters through its normal states of operation. One experiences breakthrough moments. I experienced happiness for the first time in my life.

Coming back home I wondered how I could have time to continue meditating and deepening the practice. I knew happiness was real because I had experienced it beyond reasonableness and doubt. I experienced happiness under the most counter-intuitive circumstances. I didn't have a job, was not earning money, and the relationship on which I had laid great store had just broken up. Happiness did not depend on material accomplishments, on money or any of the usual methods we think we'd achieve it.

My money supply was very limited. I was not ready to stop earning money. I knew I would have to go back to work, save money so I could stop working permanently. The only opportunity that came up meant returning to doing medicine. I took it but set limits. I began working just one day every other week. Through the next 13 years I built up my work week to three days a week. My boss persuaded me to take advantage of the company's IRA plan. The diversion granted me two very important gains. I salvaged my professional self-confidence and I saved enough money to live on for a while.

When I took a leave of absence from clinical work two years ago, I had decided I wanted to work creating digital media. I became excited with video editing in 2006 when I took a week-long seminar on Final Cut Pro. This became the nidus for my vague plans. Four years after that seminar I have at last started creating videos good enough to post on the Internet. I've learned to take photographs of acceptably good quality. I am far from the quality I need to have to venture into business based on the skills I've learned but I have more of an idea of where I am if I still don't know exactly where I am going.

Dan Andrews is making his dream of freedom in my hometown, in my own backyard. He has the advantage of looking American and of having had an American childhood. Both attributes still count for something in developing countries. They count for a great deal in the Philippines where people are still struggling to find their own self-worth after centuries under Western powers. Moreover I have an attribute that goes counter to progress so that in effect I am working with three disadvantages.

Nevertheless listening to Dan last night I was reminded again of some of the ingredients for the success I've begun to envision for myself. His website blog and podcasts are the latest in a series of encounters just in the past week pointing me to a resolution of impediments. Creativity is easy enough in certain states of mind. How one thinks is the key.

Posted via email from Duende Arts

Costiera amalfitana - The Amalfi Coast from the Emerald Grotto to Amalfi.mov

Video of trip from Sorrento to the Emerald Grotto then by launch to Amalfi, 2008.