. . . The answer is “no.”
If you are too afraid to ask, you do not deserve a “yes.”
Monthly Archives: January 2012
Reward Yourself
A major accomplishment, surviving a challenge, or simply making it through a long week are excuses enough to celebrate. A nice dinner, outing with friends, or a full night sleep – whatever it takes to let off steam and conclude the trial. Treat yourself to punctuate the deed. You deserve it.
Vision = Faith
You cannot call yourself a visionary if you need to see it to believe it. At that point, you’re just a spectator. Can you really see the possibilities? Do you really believe in it? It takes a lot of dedication and persistence to reach a point where you can qualify the vision. To get that far, the goal needs to be clear and indisputable to all parties invested. You need to understand the vision and believe wholeheartedly in it. You need to have faith that you are on the right path.
You Always Have An Enemy
The human spirit does not lend itself well to complacency. Never assume everyone is on your side. Even with widely accepted “fact,” rebels always stand up. To many, the world is only a few thousand years old. To others, genocide has merit as a method for population control. You can never completely convince everyone to join your team. Even when you do, someone will wake up in denial and challenge you out of an intuitive aversion to conformity. To keep the species alive, it is our nature to challenge each other. To keep the universe in balance, the coin must have a flip side. There is no peace without war. No light without dark. No opinion without opponent. Accept the conflict. Embrace symbiotic relationships.
Protest
I keep my mouth shut and seldom declare my stance on tabled issues in public. I avoid stirring the pot for the sake of it and do what I can to preserve my nonpartisan relationships. But when it comes to legislation or executive decisions that may invariably keep my mouth shut against my will, I speak up.
I learned a lot from Hollywood in the five years that I studied and worked in Los Angeles. I respect and support the industry’s need to fight piracy. To produce and spread content on a sustainable scale requires considerable revenue chains that dare not waver. Due largely to the size of teams necessary to complete them, films will always be expensive to produce. Losing control of your content – and thereby losing the ability to recoup costs on your production – is a huge issue and must be curtailed.
That said, I do not respect Hollywood’s conservative grapple-hold on content in an antiquated scarcity model. While the studios contend that they make more by staggering the release of a film across all mediums, these rigid exhibition windows from theater to home regularly deprive hungry consumers of content they want to consume. The Hollywood release model is effectively inspiring piracy – not because people want to maliciously destroy the industry, but because people want to consume content and cannot do so when and where they want. Street vendors in the third world do not sell ripped DVDs as an attack on studios or because tickets are too expensive; they do it because Hollywood failed to make the content available in their market. Contemporary piracy stems more from accessibility issues than anything else. Hollywood is utterly failing to provide. By holding product close to the chest, the entertainment industry is failing to reach customers, scale brands at the contemporary pace necessary to survive, and collect the money of eager and willing fans. The media industry is killing itself. They need no help from pirates.
Out of desperation and a lazy aversion to change, entertainment turned to lobbyists to craft a bill that would effectively give our government the power to censor or shut down websites. There are constitutional ways to fight piracy; the Stop Online Piracy and Protect Intellectual Property Acts are not it. To learn more about the bills, I encourage you to watch this video.
Tomorrow between 5am and 5pm MST, I will join many Internet companies – including Wikipedia and Google – in protesting these bills by shutting down my site. You will not be able to read my blog.
Under the First Amendment, we have the right to contest any act abridging the freedom of speech. We have the freedom to protest and stand up for our rights. Do not dismiss protests as mass whining or vanity noise. Without protest and public forums for opinion, women would not have the right to vote and many of us would still own slaves. Do not take the freedom of expression lightly. Celebrate your voice at every possible turn. Use it when you can.
“No” Is Not An Acceptable Answer
I’ve been blessed with momentum in my life, due largely to the fact that my parents never really said “no” to me. They never told me a cardboard spaceship couldn’t break orbit; I had to learn that the hard way. They let me make my own mistakes at my own pace and on my own accord. At a young age, I was allowed to dream, face the limitations of my dreams, and solve my way around them on my own. Nothing stopped me – unless I accepted failure as a lesson. As I got older, I continued to push the ball forward. The momentum continued to the point where “no” was never an acceptable answer. I let nothing slow me down.
You are only as strong and resilient as your dreams. You only have one life; don’t take “no” for an answer.
Don’t Stop!
Spurts of energy and productivity are rare – whatever you do, do not waste them. Don’t stop until you drop. This may be antithetical to my advice on health and rest, but sleep is far more accessible than inspiration. You can always sleep; you cannot always break the personal sound barrier.
End Your Day Complete
You will sleep better having checked off just one last task on your list before calling it a day. If needed, finish it right before you hit the pillow – whatever it takes to clear your conscience before shutting down. I do not condemn the nights where a whirling mind delays sleep, but those nights are often preventable if you need the extra hours invested in your rest.
Catch Your Breath
It’s good for you. Without intermittent periods of reflection and rest, you will never keep up with the pace of your life. Some people turn to meditation and others to daydreaming; both serve the same purpose: recharge and reorient. Perhaps more important than rest, short quiet periods in your day help you process everything. When you break from mental stimulation and general busyness, you give your brain a moment to pass your experiences and newly formed lessons to memory. Catching your breath helps you sort through the data of your life and think more clearly thereafter.
Stop, take a breath, and zone out. Right now. When you can. And never feel guilty about it.
The Nervous Compass
When butterflies show up in your stomach, consider the consequences. If none of the genuine outcomes of your choice are fatal, then follow your nervous compass and go through with it. If something makes you nervous, it’s probably a good idea. High risk can bring about high reward. If nothing else, you will face your fears and add to your list of life experiences. Trust your nerves to point you in the right direction.
Craig Ormiston 