Bill Duke is a serious dude who doesn’t mince many words. His interviews for the Film Courage channel on YouTube have been must-watch material for me since day one. This one in particular has a lot of good stuff in it, but in particular, this attitude stands out…

When the Boogieman has his foot on your throat, you have two choices – give up or bit his toe.

Now, that’s a terrible paraphrasing, but it works for me. The point is, when something seems like it has you down for the count there’s always a choice – give up or fight back. Notice that there’s no guarantee that it will do any good or that there’s even a vague chance it’ll lead to saving yourself or victory. It’s more about how you choose to live than about that. Are you ready to cave or willing to fight even when it’s absolutely hopeless?

Back when I used to play pick-up basketball, my only valuable skills were: 1) a natural tendency to be in the way – which meant I was pretty good at defense, and 2) I was too dumb to stop running. You might score a bunch of point on me, but I was going to run with you all day until I dropped. There’s times when I see that in my life now – that really the only reason I’m still walking around is because I was too stubborn or dumb to lay down. I don’t pretend that makes me brave or brilliant – it just happens to be my tendency and it’s served me well.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve derived a lot of inspiration from the work of Casey Neistat. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock or trapped underneath a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Siera since the Dubya administration, Casey Neistat is a YouTuber of serious renown who lives in New York City. He has a serious gift for storytelling, a unique style, and a serious “don’t give an eff” attitude that has served him well.

As much as I’ve been inspired and influenced by his videos, it’s been his studio that has given me a serious case of envy since day one. It’s handmade, funky, and as described in the video below, “wildly functional”.

This video is just over five years old, so there’s been some serious changes made in that time – however, the overall aesthetic remains the same. As soon as I saw where this guy worked, it made me start thinking about my living and workspace. Neistat personalizes almost everything he has: engraving his name on devices, customizing his sunglasses with spray paint, etc. But he also builds most of the parts of his studio himself, including his camera bench and rig, work stations, boxing speed bag, and his camera storage room (not in this video).

I used to watch all the Jesse James chopper specials and Monster Garage shows that I could. There was something about watching someone make individual frames and tanks from scratch rather than grab parts off a shelf, weld some stuff onto it, and call it custom. Having never been terribly good with things like carpentry or metalworking, it’s something that I’m intensely curious about. Watching Neistat’s vlogs appealed to that part of me.

Which all leads into how I’ve been working to make my work space a little more customized. Back when I set up my standing desk, I wanted a paper lantern on either side of my desk for overhead lights, grabbing that shamelessly from Casey Neistat’s camera bench. The one thing that I didn’t like was that each lantern had its own on/off switch – I wanted one switch in a convenient place to turn on both lights. One catch… I also wanted it to be a hidden switch.

The switch itself was easy – I found a large button switch that’s intended for Christmas tree lights that sits on the floor and turns the lights on and off by stepping on the switch. Perfect. I plugged both lights into it and we’re in business… except I didn’t like it sitting on the desk. Two years later, and I was still looking at that ugly thing on my desk this morning when I got fed up enough to do something about it. A little glue, some cable hooks, and there we go… a hidden light switch under my desk.

Next up…?

One of the beautiful things I’ve realized recently is that 2018 has been a rebirth of sorts for me writing poetry. Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time writing song lyrics. Perhaps for some people, poetry and lyrics are the same thing or at least close to it, but that’s never been the case for me. There’s a been a touch of crossover – every so often a couple lines from a poem (or a fragment that never grew into a poem) will find themselves into a song, but that’s hardly the rule.

When I’m writing a song, it’s usually aimed in a certain direction, working around a particular idea, or trying to fit the mood and/or phrasing of some music. When I write poetry, there’s a decent chance I have no idea what I’m writing about until I’m either well into the poem or finished with it.

I keep my poems stored on my hard drive in folders by year. So far, I’m on pace to write more than I have in the last three years respectively, which is a big deal for me. So yeah, I have that going for me.

Part of this I attribute to one of my goals for this year – to double the number of books that I read last year. I’ve given up on resolutions because they’ve never worked for me. Too much change that isn’t attached to anything at all really. Goals? I can work on those.