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Because I love to share songs stuck in my head: Cee Lo Green: Fuck You (if you can’t tell this song isn’t very safe for work, but at least it’s upbeat.) Is it the catchy beat, the hate over lost love theme, the uber cool typography video? I don’t know why I love this song so much but I do. (h/t Meggiepoo for introducing me to such an awesome song.) This weekend ends my first professional theatre job and returns me to regular blogging status. With a nice deck party after the show I don’t know if I’ll get anything out this upcoming week but you can enjoy all the places I wrote outside of this blog til then:
Update: Looks like the date auction made the news: Have you seen The Evolution of Dance? I first discovered this video while I was working on New Persuasion at TMG- at the time it was the most viewed video on YouTube of all time. Now it’s 5th. What’s the #1 all-time video on YouTube now? Justin Bieber. If you look at the YouTube charts a year or two ago, the most viewed videos were case-studies in viral video instant fame. Now the 7 of the top 10 most viewed videos of all time are music videos. Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus should be thrilled- they each have two videos in the top 10. What does that say about YouTube? What does it say about us? As YouTube Becomes More Mainstream It Has Evolved From Broadcasting Yourself To Broadcast Archive When YouTube was first launched it would change how people could create and distribute videos to a wide audience. Every viral video story involved a relative unknown gaining fame and celebrity through a single video on the site. Would we know Liam Kyle Sullivan, David DeVore Jr., or Harry Davies-Carr (and his brother Charlie) if their exploits weren’t spread through the magic of YouTube? Now that businesses, musicians, and other personalities are embracing YouTube as a legitimate channel for their official content, real-life celebrities has shown these amateurs who is really king in the big scheme of things. I would think we would know who Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus are without YouTube but now their songs are number one on the radio charts AND the YouTube charts. As YouTube grows a sort of inflation on video views has set in. A million views on YouTube isn’t a big deal anymore. I mean look at some of the stuff on YouTube that has a million hits. So what should we use to measure the “effectiveness” of today’s viral videos? Total views are still important but are only now a piece of a bigger pie. Certainly how a video can integrate itself into current news/pop culture is also a factor. Auto-Tune the News only has a couple million of views per video but has received wide-spread recognition in blogs and media. We’re either going to need to develop more advanced metrics like reach or go off more anecdotal evidence. Whatever it ends up being I doubt we’ll see another true viral video reach the #1 spot on YouTube- well as long Lady Gaga is still making music we won’t.
It was only two days after I posted about how I’m trying to get through Noises Off! in one piece that I had the worst day ever stage managing. It was the Sunday matinee and I was doing everything wrong. I forgot to reset a door handle and set a prop before the show and I heard it from the actors during the intermission. Usually I would be on top of stuff like that but the night before there was a talk back after the show and I didn’t do my regular post-show routine. I felt absolutely terrible after the first act that I almost missed a cue in the second act. I was letting my emotions get to me and lost all confidence in myself. I hate it when I make mistakes and with theatre you don’t have a second chance. All I could do is finish the show and make sure I didn’t screw anything else up. I second guessed every cue for the rest of the show but everything else went fine and to my surprise the applause was louder than the night before. Then something really weird happened. As I turned on the booth lights to start cleaning up the back row of the theatre got up to leave and saw me through the booth window and stopped in the aisle and gave me a round of applause. Through the glass the strangers told me it was a great show and with that they left with big smiles on their faces. I couldn’t help but crack a little smile of my own after that. As I put an end to my show this weekend I know that I’m totally burnt out with theatre and I’m going on a big break before I accept another job. I originally returned to theatre a year ago to make new friends and meet new people and while I’ve certainly done that this past year but I need to take some time for myself now. Stage managing is a thankless job and you take a lot of abuse in getting it done. It takes a lot of inner strength to get it done knowing that you can’t depend on your cast, director, or producer to always tell you that you are doing a good job. Right now I feel that I’ve used a lot of that strength up over the past few shows and it’s time to recharge. How do you get through the thankless parts of your life?  Photo courtesy of Flickr user Chris Gin I’ve been blogging before it was called blogging. That’s a long time. During my time I’ve seen countless blogs fall by the wayside. Life gets in the way for a blogger and posts become infrequent and eventually stop. Sometimes blogs will unexpectedly end with a farewell post. I didn’t start seriously following blogs til I moved down to the DC area and I’ve seen quite a few of them shut down in the past year. There appears to be a sort of blog hump or wall that we all hit after a year or two of blogging. A point where some blogs keep on chuggin’ and some decide to call it quits. Why is there a blog hump? Well it’s different for some and perhaps for others they will never hit it but here are a few reasons based on what I’ve seen: You Lose Your Purpose Ask yourself why are you blogging? Why are you sharing your life with The Internet? There maybe a point you can’t answer that question and you find yourself lost and you get tired of blogging. Just like any new hobby or habit, you start to question whether it is worth your time and there comes a point that answer is, “no blogging isn’t worth my time anymore.” For some there comes a point where your purpose of blogging fulfills itself. I recently interviewed a blogger who wrote about her dating life and search for a significant other. Her blog is full of great dating stories and adventures. I asked her what would happen when she finds that special someone and she told me she probably would stop writing- she’d be out of things to say. Starting Over at 24 was a blog started after when a man’s first relationship ended after six years. The blog itself then ended after he found the next love of his life and his blog tale had a happy ending. Whether you are writing because you backpacking through Africa, training for a marathon, or just moved to a new city; if the reason you blog doesn’t grow and evolve as you do it’s doomed for an eventual conclusion. You Forget Who You Are Writing For It’s very hard to get caught up with page views, comment counts, and other metrics that says somebody is reading your work. You feel this euphoria that you have some sort of popularity and when your audience goes away you get tired of it all. When this happens you have to remember not only why you are writing but who you are writing for- is it your friends & family? your portfolio? yourself? When I started blogging in middle school I knew nobody read the stupid little Geocities page I kept up. Now maybe three people read me. If nobody reads me tomorrow I can always remember that I was putting my opinions on paper long before anybody tracked back to me because it was for myself. This blog started as a petty journal in my teenage years and has grown as a place for me to document and help shape my opinions and views of Social Media, life, during my on-going Quarter Life Crisis years. You Overextend Yourself If you want to start blogging by all means you should blog as soon as you can and get into the habit of it. However you should also think about your time commitment once the honeymoon period is over. I’ve seen lots of blogs post daily for two-three weeks then ramp down. I know the end is near when posts start reading, “I haven’t blogged in so long- I will soon!” Figure out a happy medium with your posting schedule- something you can easily maintain when life gets a tad busier than usual. Don’t feel like you have to write EVERY day- as long as you are writing great content that’s what matters. Do you think that there’s a blog hump? How have you overcome it?
Last month while feeling completely and utterly burnt out I sat down and wrote out a post that I didn’t get around to publishing. I let it sit in my draft folder as Noises Off! took over my entire life. A few weeks later I took another look at it and realized my attitudes and feelings have evolved and change. So that post becomes the second lost post on the blog. I still feel absolutely burnt out right now. I’m trying to balance a demanding day job and a demanding theatre job at the same time. I can see myself being stretched thin across both gigs, I really and truly want to do my best in everything I do but I sometimes I feel like I can’t please anybody. I questioned if I was being a good stage manager. I took every mistake I made on the stage to heart and I was beginning to feel like a failure. I was beginning to think that maybe I wasn’t cut out for professional theatre. Then as the run went on I stopped treating every note I got as a personal attack and just concentrated on doing a good job. Now I’m a little over halfway done with the run and I’ve regained the confidence I used to have working on my past productions. While things sometimes go wrong I have come to terms that nothing is every perfect and I work around problems under pretty tight conditions. Last weekend one of our props broke in between acts and right before it would be used for a critical part of the show. Did I fret? Nope I just fixed it with the magic of gaff tape and informed the actors of some changes. Sometimes you are going to make some rookie mistakes- especially when you are a rookie. The big thing is to learn from them and you’ll become a better player in the long run. It took me awhile to work through my hyper-sensitive, stress induced moments but now I’m cool as a cucumber again and like most periods of burn out I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Photo courtesy of Flickr user JCOlivera It doesn’t surprise me that most TV stars don’t watch television. Unlike stage actors or even film actors, regulars on a successful TV series are constantly filming with little downtime in between seasons. That leaves little time to enjoy the television they aren’t making. There’s also an interesting effect of doing what you love every day 9-5. It becomes less of a passion and more work. It is like a sweet tooth working in a candy store, no longer craving dessert when he/she returns home. It’s been awhile since I’ve written over here- my life has been a bit of a jumble this summer between my new job and my show. All my time commitments have left me burnt around the edges. Last week a couple of co-workers brought up an interesting point: after working with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all day is it possible I’ve become burnt out from social media? It makes total sense: what was once your passion has become work. I felt that’s what happened to me with video. I’ve been producing videos since I was in middle school, and I was always making videos all throughout high school. However as a film student in college, it became less fun and more work. That’s why I became less of a the stereotypical film major, always shooting films, and more into extracurriculars like Student Government. It was something different than what I was learning in the classroom. When I got my job at TMG I was making videos for clients 9-5 and even though I was very good at what I did and I made awesome work for my clients- I felt less compelled to finish my personal projects on the side. I was video’d out. Now that I have an amazing job in Social Media, that spark I’ve always had for video is a bit stronger now. But did that come at the cost of my love for social media? I look at other bloggers around me, those that raised their profile through their blogging and as a result finding amazing jobs with PR/Social Media firms getting paid to do what they have been doing for free. Some of them have blogged less- and I can’t blame them. Maybe they too have become too busy to blog, or perhaps too tired to blog after spending all day in the blogosphere. There is also another crowd- those that are out there blogging, twittering, and social networking and looking for a coveted job in the industry. I wonder what will happen to them when they get that dream job. I am not saying they would be unhappy but is it possible that all those casual social media geeks would see their social media jobs as a blessing and a curse? After thinking about this I’ve decided that it’s not always the case. Finding work doing something you love is still rewarding but it is also a test. A test of your passion. A test of how much you really love what it is you are doing. In the end I still love social media- in fact I may have grown to love it more through working at NMS. Even though I may feel less inclined to check Facebook after work- I am learning new things working in the industry and in the end I am still sitting here at a Barnes & Noble in Clarendon, blogging to my heart’s content. Because after the 9-5 I still want to get out there in the blogosphere, a sign I think that my love for social media must be that strong. Has your job made you less interested in your hobbies? What will happen to you personal interests once you find that dream job? Hi August, it’s nice to see you again! I kinda fell off the map when Noises Off! started but that’s pretty much what always happens when I do a show. I’ll be back on here soon but til then check out what I’ve been doing around the interwebs.
Most of my blogging about the net last week was driven by my dream to take-on the Strasburger at BGR: The Burger Joint.
I guess I’m getting old. Or it’s tech week. It’s been a really tough week for me: during the day I’m working to meet deadlines at work while trying to balance all-night rehearsals and it isn’t even tech yet- that starts today. For those that know theatre next week will be absolute hell. It goes without saying I’m feeling a little burnt out. So I woke up this morning feeling a little on the brink, and when that happens there’s so many ways one could handle it: let hopelessness set in, get angry and complain, or suffer an emotional breakdown while brushing your teeth. I did something different today. I rolled over feeling stressed out, unappreciated, and just wanting to get to the weekend (full of 12 hour rehearsals.) Like any uber-connected blogger the first thing I did was reach for my iPod touch and check out the Twitter feeds. There I learned two things: there was an Earthquake I slept through & my co-worker Laura needed a coffee. My first thought was, “who cares about this Earthquake.” My thought after that was I should buy Laura a coffee. Before heading upstairs to the office I stopped by the local coffee shop and picked up a coffee for Laura and I- with two splenda and skim, just the way she asked for it. I really don’t know why I did it but it just felt right. Out of all the possible ways to cope with the stresses of my life I decided on an act of generosity for someone else.
I know the cup of coffee was sure to make her day but I didn’t realize how much it made my day as well. My friend Melanie told me when she worked at Banana Republic there were two options when customer treated her badly at work: get mad or use that experience and be super nice to the next customer. The latter made her feel better sooner. We all want to feel appreciated and loved, especially when we are having a bad day, week, or even month. It’s very empowering to use that negative energy to help someone else rather than spreading it to others. So that’s my big lesson for today, I hope next time you feel like the way I’ve felt this week you change your natural inclination, and perhaps you’ll feel a little bit better too. |
 
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This isn’t the post I wrote last month.
The great 
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