Building an Army

Building an Army

It didn’t just happen.

I submitted a piece of writing to an agent the other day. He wrote back the next day and said he wasn’t interested in representing it. I asked him why. He said because he didn’t connect with the writing. I said fuck you. Just kidding. I took the lump.

Huffington Post never responds when I submit articles. Mostly because they aren’t titled, “3 Steps to Regaining Your Inner Happiness.” Instead, they are, “What To Do Before You Go To Bed And When You Wake Up In The Morning So You Don’t Freak Out About Life.” Too long I guess. Too not bullshitty. My worst writing is better than anything they publish on a regular basis. Yet, it is they who do not respond to me. Even though I keep slinging them nuggets that would have their audience commenting with things like, “that was so raw,” and, “I haven’t read something that real in a while.”

Those are the comments I’d be getting for them. At least those would be the ones I remembered. Because they are my fucking favorite. Huff Post doesn’t want the real real. They want the half real. The kind that makes it seem like someone is getting in touch with the truth. Not the kind that shows when someone has lived inside a cave and fought a bear to death before putting on Philip Glass piano and visualizing the opening scene to their psycho-thriller. American Psycho meets Fight Club. Nah, that shit is a little too close to home and there aren’t 3 steps that will get you out of that rut.

And those grimy Huffy bastards can just go ahead with their lives pretending they are on the cutting edge of some bullshit and helping people pretend to deal with things by packaging it so nicely.

3 Steps To Happiness:

1)   Eat Better

2)   Exercise More

3)   Learn Something New

The end.

May I now be a part of your exclusive network please?

I respect the agent that denied me. It was a pitch for a physical book. And there are a lot of great book writing authors out there. In this regard, I am still a baby.

But blogging, now that shit I take personally. Because I’ve been lighting up the internet since I first published 5 years ago. I’ve got mileage and experience and can go to bed knowing that when I write from the heart a lot of people will read it and relate and feel something equally as special as what I felt when I sat down to write it.

Right now I’m just writing. I started earlier with some bullshit about not getting acknowledgment for the work that I put in. But it felt too righteous or disconnected, not sure which one. Both the same perhaps. Four different paragraphs I started and each one gave me the same feeling of fakeness and crap mixed together for a smoothie.

It didn’t ‘just happen.’

          Garbage.

It is nice, this life I’ve built.

Generic.

The most common thing people say to me when they hear about something I’m doing is, “Must be nice.” Must be nice like it fell into my lap because I have a good smile.

Pretentious.

Sometimes people tell me that it must be nice to be able to do all the things that I do. It must be nice. Such a backhanded little whimper.

 Can’t say whimper. Sounds like whine. That’s sexist. Hillary.

I’ve made 650 videos in the last 3 years. Is that like some kind of fuckin typo? No. Just me doing something repeatedly to the point where I’ve reinvented the wheel so many times I’m back to the first iteration thinking it’s an innovation.

And now, the coveted TV commercial. I mean it’s not Don Draper and Coca-Cola, but it’s a pretty pro step with a real paycheck.

And it got me thinking … because I posted tonight about signing a contract for our first ever TV commercial … and it just so happened to be a month after we opened our new studio … and I’m thinking, if you’re on the outside and you look at this shit you’re like fuck, all I have to do is open a business and I’m the real deal and I’ll have a TV commercial pretty soon and then a record deal with Yeezy and then I’ll be on a 2 year waitlist for a new Tesla that may or may not ever be made. I knew a woman that thought this once. Open the storefront and the respect and credibility will follow. I actually knew a guy like this too. The same person, only different.

And what I really should have posted was, “After spending 2 years making 61 YouTube videos on a $50 Flip camera for my old yoga studio I got hired by BIC and Tough Mudder to make a video trailer. Because even though I was making silly, low-budget videos, I was making something. I was improving. Then a few friends hired me to make trailers for their businesses. So I reinvested in better equipment, to make better videos, because the inevitable outcome of repetition is refinement. And then a good friend offered me a job working with kids where I would go on to make 515 videos over the next 3 years. I accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge and constantly updated my equipment every time I needed something for a new project. I basically got put through film school by making projects every single day. I learned my own style through repetition like people used to do back in the old days when there was no other shortcut. I taught myself how to edit, how to have a style, and how to work with light. Then other companies started hiring me because I got good enough and fast enough that it was a no-brainer for them. And now I’m here, with an expensive ass camera and an idea about how I like to create things and a better idea of what it takes to get them done. And I’ve signed a contract with a restaurant to produce their next TV spot. 30 seconds. And it won’t stop now. I’ll decide to make the jump to a new piece of equipment and I’ll hesitate because it’ll be half our savings but then I’ll remember that thinking like that keeps people small and the better ones are the ones that think along the lines of life being a structure that we engineer and it matches everything you feed it like a fundraiser and the harder you’re willing to push the limits the higher you will rise because at a certain height there are so few people that it just starts to flow, kind of like space.”

I always want to know how things work. Like if someone got a new job I wouldn’t care so much about them getting a new job but rather how much they were going to be making, who hired them, what the responsibilities were going to be, the company’s annual revenue, etc. It’s how I formulate the framework for how I interpret the world. Like a little system that helps me understand what is what.

And yet, Huffington Post still doesn’t care about me, or this article, or presumably anything that comes out of my mouth. But the day will come … when one of the other big dogs publishes something I wrote, and then Huffers will want me, and I’ll casually tell them to go fuck themselves. But then I’ll say that I was just kidding because that’s a shit ton of likes to the Kale & Cigarettes FB page.

I am building an army of experience.

It doesn’t just happen.

True.

One Reply to “Building an Army”

  1. I still remember one of your early efforts about saving money buying lunch at Whole Foods by packaging the brown rice separately from the rest of the food. It was real, and useful. Probably saved enough money to buy you lunch, too!

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