#Decade of Success and Failure - Semi final edition | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

auburnfamilynews · 5 years ago

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Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Gave it some time, here are some thoughts.

Isn’t it funny? Two weeks ago, we were all gloom and doom, sky is falling, chicken littles.

Gus Malzahn wasn’t going to be the guy, but there was nobody prepared to fork over the cash for the buyout. Everyone that figured Yella Fella would pony up a solid $25M to send Gus off to Arkansas or somewhere found out that rich businessmen get rich by not paying that kind of money on a gamble.

Then, there we were. Gus is still on the sideline, coaching against Alabama in a game that he absolutely could win, especially without Tua under center for the Tide.

So what happened?

Gus not only tricked the greatest coach of all time into blowing a gasket, but he tricked all of the Auburn fans that wanted him gone as well.

Auburn beat Alabama 48-45 in the 84th Iron Bowl, which turned out to be the most insane edition of the storied rivalry. At a high level, here are some of the things that stood out:

The win puts Auburn at 9-3 for the regular season, which turned out to be one of the toughest in school history. The Tigers’ only losses came by 11 at Florida, 3 at LSU, and 7 vs Georgia. Before the year began, if we’d said that Auburn would go 2-1 against Oregon, A&M, and Florida, and 1-2 against LSU, Georgia, and Alabama, you’d probably take that. We did it. Successful year. Auburn now has a chance to reach ten wins in a bowl game, which will likely take place on New Year’s Day in a sunny Florida location.

Alabama’s season is ruined. Imagine being so spoiled as to think that your season is ruined at 10-2, with both losses coming by fewer than ten total points. There will be no Playoff appearance for the Tide in 2019, which means they miss the Playoff for the first time since its inception. MUST BE TOUGH. Cry me a river. While they’ve had incredible longevity over the last decade, this is a bit of a different feel. The last three good teams that Alabama played put up 44, 46, and 48 points on Nick Saban’s vaunted defense. In 2020, they stand to lose the vast majority of their skill players, offensive line, and a ton of their defensive stalwarts as well...

You know, these kinds of defensive stalwarts...

...who knows what kind of coaching turnover happens in the meantime for them as well. The point is, the #decline seems a little more founded in reality than hope.

Gus Malzahn once again showed that he’s THE guy that can get Saban’s gourd. Nobody else has that ability. Sure, Dabo’s beaten him a couple times, but those were straight up one-on-one slugfests where Clemson was just better. Auburn was better in 2013 with the Kick Six, and they were better last night too, but when you roll out something new (pop pass/punter substitution trick) and it causes Saban to bitch about the rules, you know you’re doing something right. You’re putting mileage on that engine, and that’s a good thing.

As for the game itself, what a wild ride. We had 48 combined points in the second quarter, two pick sixes (including one that went for 100 yards), and so many elements that harkened back to the Kick Six and must’ve given Saban a feeling like he was Buckner walking back into Shea.

Let’s dive in.

Same energy. pic.twitter.com/937LkobgoJ

— SB Nation (@SBNation) December 1, 2019

I saw so many people (Auburn fans even) talking about how rushing the field was dumb. If it annoys Alabama then it can’t possibly be a bad idea.

Also, doing anything to entertain of the MVP of the 2017 Iron Bowl is fine by me.

Bama just put this this L in a little rice it’ll be okay in a couple days

— Kerryon Johnson (@AyeyoKEJO) December 1, 2019

Auburn University! Where LEGENDS are made!!! WAR EAGLE!!! pic.twitter.com/4fCEL3fvyi

— Coach T-Will (@T_WILL4REAL) December 1, 2019

One point of contention earlier in the year was the fan support at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Auburn didn’t get to play any big games at home until Georgia, and while the crowd was unreal for that affair, we had to endure the “It was cold” excuses from the students after Ole Miss. Last night paid any sort of fan support debt in full.

Jordan Hare Stadium was ROCKIN tonight! BEST GAME EVER! #WarEagle #ironbowl pic.twitter.com/u7NvI8Qhn8

— Dana Spurlin (@dspurlin_tift) December 1, 2019

If you're wondering why Jordan-Hare Stadium was screaming "It's great to be an Auburn Tiger," it's because the Alabama section started a "Roll Tide" chant while Daniel Thomas was still down on the field injured.

— Nathan King (@byNathanKing) November 30, 2019

In the past, the Iron Bowl has always been a rivalry game that seems pretty clean on the field. Most of these guys grew up together, played against or with each other when they were younger, and so the bad blood on the field is kept to a minimum. It’s usually the idiots in the stands that can’t handle the tension and do things like “destroy historic landmarks”.

Yesterday, though, we got to see some real chippy play from both sides. Seth Williams got tagged with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty (he is from Tuscaloosa, after all), and Boobee Whitlow was on the receiving end of a penalty after a helmet slap too.

All that an emotional ballgame means is that when it’s all said and done, you end up with a heck of a celebration... even if it is super goofy.

#WarEagle x #RidefortheBrand pic.twitter.com/JaVkHJEFnw

— Auburn Football (@AuburnFootball) December 1, 2019

Gus has reason to be excited. His offensive line — much-maligned throughout the season — did something incredible when you put it up against what we’d seen earlier this year —

Auburn's O-Line did not allow a single sack today and only allowed 4 tackles for a loss. AUsome job, young men.

— Auburn Elvis (@AuburnElvis) December 1, 2019

We got a superhuman effort from Derrick Brown with 3.5 TFLs, we got 114 yards from Boobee Whitlow, a turnover free game from Bo Nix, and we got the effort you’d expect from our opposing kicking game voodoo.

if you told me Auburn mic'd the uprights for this game and hooked them up to the stadium speakers I would 100% believe you https://t.co/gAigjBOdCW

— BUM CHILLUPS (@edsbs) December 1, 2019

Alabama’s missed field goal at the end of the Iron Bowl pic.twitter.com/YF6QE3UN6u

— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) December 1, 2019

I took a video of Alabama’s missed field goal WAR DAMN EAGLE EVERYBODY!!!!! pic.twitter.com/YUiS5igudU

— Graham Brooks (@The_GBrooks) December 1, 2019

For real, though... Auburn somehow escaped that game with injuries galore. Anthony Schwartz played exactly one snap before going out with an ankle injury, and we saw tons of dudes laid out on the carpet at various times throughout the game. Honestly, with the receivers that Alabama put on the field (Waddle was their FOURTH OPTION), there’s no reason that the Tide should ever lose with Tua, Namath, Mac Jones, you, or me at quarterback. Auburn somehow also forced Alabama to only use Najee Harris in a semi-meaningless way. He got 146 yards on 27 carries, and scored, but in the grand scheme of the game, did his performance really matter? It didn’t.

For the first time all year, against a good opponent, I had confidence that the offense was going to do something. Driving late to take the lead for good, I didn’t really feel nervous in thinking that we’d need some other miracle to take place for us to win. We went right down the field and got a Classic Gus Wildcat call for the game-winning touchdown. It just so happened to clown a Bama defender and make a meme out of Xavier McKinney.

And how about the final play? Being at the game, it was wild to watch. Jaylen Waddle was out there about 40 yards deep the whole time, and he had no idea he needed to run off until the final moment, but he didn’t get off the field before the flag was there to greet him at the sideline. Bama’s hero all game long was the guy that got flagged in the end. It’s poetic. What’s also poetic is Gus’ ability to needle at Saban by doing something completely legal. Saban’s literally just mad that he couldn’t use it first. The way he described the entire ordeal as “unfair” makes it seem as though Auburn put some sort of a cloak on Arryn Sipposs and smuggled him into the formation. Instead, they trotted him out with the rest of the offense, stuck him at receiver, and five-star corner Patrick Surtain decided to cover him.

Maybe Saban should’ve known that Auburn wasn’t going to go for it when a failure has the Tide already in field goal range. Maybe his years of football knowledge should’ve taken over. They didn’t. He panicked. His staff panicked. His players panicked. The process failed, and the best collection of talent in the country folded when it mattered most.

Gus Malzahn bamboozled Nick Saban. He ‘boozled him hard, and that’s going to be the most satisfying thing to come out of this Iron Bowl. Auburn scored 48 points, but the number of Nick’s gray hairs that’ll resist Just For Men’s latest formula are far more numerous.

War Eagle, everyone. #WeBeatBama.

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2019/12/1/20991010/about-last-night-15-auburn-48-5-alabama-45

#IFTTT #Blogger #auburn #auburn fast #wareagle #AuburnFamilyNews #war eagle #sec #football news #aubu

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battlegeekplus · 7 years ago

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Battle Geek Plus: 6 Years Later

Hey guys, Ryan here.

It’s been 6 years since we’ve launched Battle Geek Plus into the wild. On October 1, 2011, we launched the official BGP website with 10 videos on our old YouTube Channel and now defunct blip account. Around March of 2012, we lost our adsense account and decided to move to our current channel in August of 2012. Alot of people think we started in 2012 due to our channel stating that in our about page, but we really started in 2011 and I wanted to clear up that confusion.

After six years, we have over 5000 subscribers and over 700 videos, so where do we stand now?

Battle Geek Plus is not my first foray as an internet content producer. I’ve been through the ups and downs of internet success and failures, but I have entertained millions of people worldwide in various different ways.

I want to talk about not only the origins of Battle Geek Plus, but a bit into my background and to do that, we at least need to go all the way back to my childhood and teen years, most specifically 1997-1999. This is reflection on my nearly 2 decades of content creation.

As a kid, I always loved being creative. I did everything from write stories, draw pictures, make comic books about video game characters, etc. None of these things I was particularly good at, but I had so much fun doing them anyways. From an early age, I always *had* to be making stuff and being creative.

In 1997 as a teenager in high school, I got into making webpages about various subjects like video games and Sailor Moon. In 1999. had achieved my first *real* success, a Dragon Ball Z website called “Vegeta Insane” dedicated to the character of Vegeta under my old nickname “Castor Troy” from the Nicolas Cage movie, Face/Off. You can still find remnants of my DBZ work by looking up “Castor Troy DBZ” on google.

Since Dragon Ball Z was exploding through Cartoon Network and even topped the search engines over Britney Spears in 1999, I garnered a massive audience of fans and it was the first time I felt I received real recognition for the silly ideas in my head. Later in 1999, I made my first AMV (Anime Music Video) and that literally skyrocketed my traffic to the point where I had to leave free website hosting services like Geocities and accepted a hosting deal with the prestigious planetnamek.com, which was the biggest Dragon Ball Z site on the web at the time.

In 2000, I rebranded Vegeta Insane as “Ginga GIRI GIRI” in order to cover all of Dragon Ball other than just Vegeta. Sadly the Internet Advertising Crash of 2000 happened which forced me to move Ginga GIRI GIRI off planetnamek. The early 2000′s was a pretty horrible time to have a website. Many of the free providers like Geocities were enforcing a 1GB bandwidth limit for their webpages per day. Homestead, Angelfire, Tripod, and Fortune City would literally plaster your pages with ads, and many people we knew who had hosting and servers didn’t wanna touch us. Those who hosted us would literally kick us off within a few months so our site URL was always changing.

In 2001, my site partner Mike aka Dr. Bond decided to finally get us a dedicated server that he was paying out of his own pocket and by 2002 they gave us our final bandwidth warning and shut us down. We finally decided to close the doors on the DBZ web as I moved onto AMVs.

Working on Vegeta Insane and Ginga GIRI GIRI not only let me express my creativity and love for Dragon Ball, the skills I learned making those sites landed me jobs in both the web and graphic design fields, allowed me to have a casual business relationship with FUNimation that we still maintain to this day (They put me on the DBZ Resurrection F Blu Ray Extras!), and helped me develop a large audience and make more friends than I could ever dream of.

In the early 2000′s, AMVs were starting the take off, especially digitally edited ones on computers as opposed to 2 VCRs. I wasn’t an early generation AMV editor like Bobby “C-Ko” Beaver, Maboroshi Studios, Kusoyaro Productions, Kevin Caldwell, etc, but I was lucky enough to catch the AMV ride on the advent of the digital age and the massive influx of AMV contests at conventions. A friend of mine convinced me to enter AMV contests at conventions and over the years AMVs provided me a ton of great opportunities that I would have never dreamed of. I’ve won over 2 dozen awards, coordinated several Multi-Editor Projects, was a guest at conventions, spoke on panels, had an AMV play in the Nokia Theater (now the Microsoft Theater) where the winners of American Idol were announced, ended up working in the film industry as a paid professional editor, entertained packed rooms of 6000+ people, and made tons of fans and close friends that I still remain in contact with to this day.

In 2005, the AMV community wasn’t prepared for the advent of a new and upcoming website:

YouTube.

Now AMVs existed in a legal gray area where we were protected by fair use as our AMV work was transformative in nature, so the anime companies would usually turn a blind eye to them. However, the music industry was not so forgiving as we usually used full, unedited songs as we mashed up anime footage to the rhythm of the songs. Anime Music Videos.org, one of the biggest resources for AMVs on the web was hit by a cease and desist letter by the record label of Creed, Seether, and Evanescence forcing the .org to remove all videos containing songs with those bands, regardless of the lead singer of Evanescence being a huge fan of AMVs to her work.

People were also uploading our AMVs to YouTube without our permission, usually gaining thousands upon million of views, so we had to begrudgingly join YouTube in order to combat these unauthorized uploads. I started my first YouTube account in 2005 and gained millions of views for my AMV uploads.

After google purchased YouTube in 2006, things began to change as YouTube began rolling out “Copyright Violations” which was what Content ID was called back in the day. I remember getting my first copyright violation in 2007 and was forced to delete one of my AMVs from my channel. A year later in 2008, I got my first copyright strike from TOEI animation. Throughout the years, my videos would constantly get both copyright violations and strikes, but never hitting the 3 strikes needed to terminate my account. Sadly, in 2011, my first YouTube account finally bit the dust as TOEI finally gave me my third strike. I’ve tried to appeal various times, but to no avail.

Also in 2011, my interest and passion towards AMVs was dwindling down because I had wanted to finally start moving onto filmmaking and directing. I tried to convince myself to pursue filmmaking and do AMVs on the side, but I realized I couldn’t do both, so I had made the decision to finally retire from AMVs in 2012 and go out with my final video “Naruto Ball Z Shippuden: Heroes Come Back” which was a crossover between Dragon Ball Z and Naruto Shippuden. It went on to win over a dozen awards, including Best of Show at Sakura Con in Washington and my home con of Anime Expo. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to go out with a bang.

Even though I’ve been on YouTube since 2005, I was still very unaware of how the algorithm worked and what audiences liked, I was a huge fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd, The Nostalgia Critic (who was on blip at the time), Angry Joe, Mega64, etc. Back then, YouTube was just a dumping ground for my AMVs and never thought it was something people could make a living off of.

In early 2011, Josh had created the original Battle Geek Plus as “Wild Project Battle Geek Plus” which was a parody of Japanese sounding titles. He only recorded 5 episodes and asked me for feedback on them. He also said he was going to be moving to California from Indiana and asked if I wanted to be involved with BGP. My initial reaction was we were going to continue the current “Wild Project Battle Geek Plus” show and I would be a supporting character.

When Josh and his girlfriend (now wife) Heather came to California to do apartment hunting, we had dinner and Josh explained he wanted to do a reboot of the Battle Geek Plus brand from scratch, so I proposed that we follow the structure of The Nostalgia Critic’s site: thatguywiththeglasses.com where we would have a site featuring videos.

When Josh and Heather finally made the move to California in Summer of 2011, I had just won a $1500 prize from the Anime Expo 2011 AMV Contest and used that to buy our first DSLR camera, the Canon T2i which was highly recommended by our friends. We filmed several videos over the summer and finally launched the BGP site on October 1, 2011.

Our initial audience was just our family and friends at first, but we had our first semi-viral hit in Nov 2011 with our “Batman Arkham City Addiction” skit which got over 10,000 views overnight. I was still very unaware of how successful content creators released videos on YouTube since the only thing I knew from The Nostalgia Critic was to release a video weekly.

As the weeks went by into 2012, our videos were only averaging 60-100 views even after the success of Batman Arkham City Addiction. By 2011, the YouTube Algorithm had changed to cater to longer videos and the majority of our skits were on the short side. Sometimes we would get 500-1000 views if we got lucky, but the traffic was never consistent.

In early 2012, we got an email from former MMA fighter Bas Rutten who saw our “Boss Booten” parody videos and complimented us. Bas was awesome enough to send us free shirts and even invited us to hang out at the beach with him. This was our first real celebrity encounter from doing Battle Geek Plus.

In March of 2012, there was an exploit going around YouTube called “clickbombing” where people would use programs to massively click ads on videos to raise the revenue and would end up getting your adsense account shut down. This happened to quite a few YouTubers, most famously Markiplier’s first channel. I remember checking our adsense account and noticed we had earned several thousand dollars from a Skyrim parody video. Hours later, when I tried to log into our adsense account again, I got the dreaded “Your adsense account has been suspended” message. I’ve tried to appeal several times, but was denied each time. We stayed on the old channel to at least try to get more of an audience until August of 2012.

It was really difficult having to start again from scratch because out of our 2000+ subscribers we earned from the old channel, only about 200 of them followed us to the new one and less than 50 watched our reuploaded videos.

In 2013, I tried to apply to attend E3 with the Battle Geek Plus website and YouTube channel, but was denied. A friend of mine from the AMV community put us in touch with Team Kaizen Games who were able to get us into our first E3 and we’ve been great friends with them ever since. At E3, we were able to meet alot of developers and even had dinner with developers and executives from Eidos Montreal and Square-Enix.

Later in 2013, Screwattack used to feature user content on their front page and advertised several of our videos which brought us some good traffic. I had also decided to send some of our videos to the newly developed Smosh Gaming Alliance and they praised and awarded several of our videos on their channel.

The biggest prize of all in 2013 would be when Capcom was hosting a Ducktales Sing-Along contest for their Ducktales Remastered release, so I went to Disneyland and filmed a video there dressed as Scrooge McDuck. Not only did I win the contest, I was featured on the Ducktales Remastered Homepage and I was given one of the rare Ducktales Remastered Press Kits. Thanks to the Screwattack, Smosh, and Capcom promotions, we earned about 1500 subscribers about a year into our new channel.

However, because I didn’t have an adsense account anymore and I couldn’t monetize any of these new opportunities. I got a partnership with Maker for a 50/50 split which was a big mistake. Luckily I was able to break away from Maker in 2015 and joined the much better Screenwave Media MCN.

2014 was one of the toughest years of my life as I was fired from my previous full time job in 2013 and after getting nothing from applying to every job I could, I went with a temp agency that placed me at jobs only lasting from one week to one month. It was stressful for me that year because I never knew how long my jobs would last and if I would be able to pay the rent.

However, 2014 was also probably the most important year for BGP for the following reasons:

- We made our first business deal with PDP and Nintendo at E3 2014 to promote their Wired Fight Pads for the Wii U.

- We applied for the thatguywiththeglasses.com (Now Channel Awesome) talent pickup and were accepted out of 1200+ applicants.

We were still a small channel at 1500 subscribers and only getting 10-60 views a day regardless of the Screwattack, Smosh, and Capcom promotions from the previous year, but we were able to make our first real business deal and get a chance to work with one of my idols, The Nostalgia Critic months within each other.

However, all of this was short lived as 5 days later after our acceptance into Channel Awesome, I was let go from my current job which added alot of stress to my life. Unfortunately, we were still months away from our debut on the site, so my main goal was to not starve/be homeless/etc. to finally see our videos get posted on Channel Awesome.

Throughout most of 2014, I started to feel tightness in my chest and muscles throughout my body, regardless of keeping up my workout regime consistently. In October of 2014, I had finally felt my first full on panic attack which literally felt like I was having a heart attack. I called 911 and was immediately rushed into the ER. I was informed by the doctors that it was a panic attack and not a heart attack and there hasn’t been a day since October of 2014 where I haven’t felt tightness and numbness in my body due to stress. I’m taking medications now, but the main culprit of all of this was the stress I was feeling not being able to keep a job and wondering if I was going to still keep a roof over my head.

In 2015, I wanted to finally do a big crossover with all of the other Channel Awesome Producers which was the Capcom Bidding War. While the video didn’t get the reception I expected, it was hands down, the most beneficial video I ever did for the channel as it helped me get in contact with the rest of my Channel Awesome producers, it helped land us cameos in the TMNT 2014 and Hocus Pocus Nostalgia Critic reviews, and tons of other cameos with the other producers. I still remember how excited I was when I got my first email response from Doug Walker himself only a few hours after I emailed him saying that he was totally cool with cameo-ing in the Capcom Bidding War and getting his footage days later.

Shortly after E3 2015, Josh sat us all down and tried to explain why our channel wasn’t growing as fast as we wanted it to. It was mostly because we weren’t focused and were trying to release a different video every week. I always thought just as long as you had a consistent schedule, that’s all what mattered, but our schedule would be a different type of video each week and audiences weren’t always into different videos. Josh also explained we were a small 4 person team trying to make enough shows to become our own network.

For example, one week would be a sketch, the next week would be a Kung Kwon Todd video, then the week after that would be a Jimmy Buckrider video, etc. Even though we were posting consistently week after week, our content wasn’t one consistent show that our audience was expecting every week.

Josh saw that one of our old Let’s Play videos got a decent response, so he suggested we stick to doing a Let’s Play video every week and we called the show just plain “Battle Geek Plus” which was eventually re-branded to “Battle Geek Plus: We Play Games”.

The reception to “Battle Geek Plus: We Play Games” was modest, but nothing spectacular. I had alot of difficulty editing the show mostly because we agreed to keep episodes 15 minutes or shorter, but we had over 30+ of footage each time and it was *very* difficult to cut that all down to 15 minutes. Also, “Battle Geek Plus: We Play Games” was on a much tighter deadline since we could barely have episodes done ahead of time due to our different schedules.

In 2016, our main gaming review show, “Awesome Video Game Memories” was beginning to pick up some steam and Josh was also pushing us to have a podcast for many years. Seeing the feedback eventually made us decide to focus on “Awesome Video Game Memories” as our flagship weekly show and we also released our first “Waxing Pixels” podcast episode that year as well.

Josh also recommended that we start playing games live on twitch and I started streaming daily, but burned out heavily midway into 2017 trying to balance streaming and producing edited content.

After the reception to the Capcom Bidding War, I was pretty discouraged from doing another big crossover with my fellow Channel Awesome producers which is why we didn’t do one in 2016. I decided to bite the bullet and wanted to create a documentary based on our own experiences with the Nintendo vs. Sega war. I came up with an outline, a script, and asked Doug Walker if he wanted to be part of it and he immediately agreed.

I was incredibly afraid to release a big video on this scale due to the reception of the Capcom Bidding War, but to my surprise, the Nintendo vs. Sega video with the Nostalgia Critic not only received a massively overwhelming positive response, which was a complete 180 from the Capcom Bidding War. It became our most successful video to date which still gets us views to this day.

Now that it’s been 6 years since we began Battle Geek Plus and 20+ years since I started doing internet content in general, where do I stand now and what are my reflections of all of this?

I would have to say my internet content “career” in general has been alot like Kevin Smith’s (my favorite director).

DBZ Websites: Clerks AMVs: Chasing Amy Battle Geek Plus: Tusk

DBZ websites were my first initial claim to fame which got me millions of views throughout the years, AMVs while a much smaller community, was my most well received work critically, and Battle Geek Plus was my more experimental phase with mixed results, but nowhere near as well received as the previous 2 efforts.

I left the DBZ web site community mostly because of bandwidth problems in the early 2000′s, but I brought back my DBZ site in 2010 as an archive of all my work at http://www.3gkai.com

Alot of people have criticised me personally on why I left AMVs when I was at the top of my game and the main reason was to pursue filmmaking. Like “Why did you give up all that fame and fortune to do YouTube videos in an already saturated market?”. My declining interest in anime and amvs was already beginning to become apparent as far back as 2006 after the big YouTube boom with members of the AMV community quitting altogether to pursue other things and it was hard to stay motivated without the community I was used to. I was also going through that phase in 2006 where I was entering my last 2 years of college and had to wonder “What am I gonna do with my life?”. When I was managing the 4th Video Game AMV Project in 2007, I *really* felt the massive dissonance of working on that as opposed to the 3rd Video Game AMV Project in 2005 where we had a more dedicated and motivated group. An archive of the 5 Video Game AMV Projects I helped coordinate is at: http://www.vg-projects.com

2005 was the year I felt was the last really big year in AMVs in terms of community, innovation, and general camaraderie before the YouTube boom and every one I knew moving onto different things. After seeing AVGN, The Nostalgia Critic, and many other webshows, that was the path I wanted to start moving towards.

I still put every bit of energy into all of the AMVs I did from 2006-2012 and announced my retirement when my Naruto Ball Z: Shippuden video won the Best of Show at Sakura Con 2012.

When doing Battle Geek Plus, my absolute favorite part of any AVGN, Nostalgia Critic, or Angry Joe video were the sketch parts, so I wanted to mostly focus on different types of sketches with wacky characters based on video games.

Unfortunately, when we entered the webshow scene in 2011, the YouTube algorithm had already changed to cater to longer videos and reviews were still king, so we were kind of doomed from the very start in a way.

Shows like Battle Geek Plus Adventures, Kung Kwon Todd, Jimmy Buckrider, Boss Booten, Totally Tubular Tim and many other of the wacky characters we made are shows I could *never* pitch to anyone convincingly, so I always made those shows for myself because *I* wanted to see how they would turn out. I do admit that I cringe watching alot of my older videos, but I actually started rewatching alot of the older videos while vodcasting them on our twitch channel and had a good time watching them again because I remember I loved the “new-ness”, the excitement, and remembering the happy person I was years ago working on them.

There are many times I felt that I wanted to turn back the clock and just begin with reviews right off the bat instead of sketches, but now I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world because of the great memories and excitement I had coming up with and working on them to see the finished products.

Every time I feel sad and frustrated due to the lack of views and growth, I always have to remind myself: I chose this path. I could have easily stayed on the top in the AMV community, but I would see AVGN, Nostalgia Critic, and many other webshows through the looking glass and say “I wish I could be like them.”. Now, my group and I are part of that.

Without the sketches and wacky characters me and the crew have created, Battle Geek Plus would not be where it is today. We certainly would have not been praised by Bas Rutten himself, get our first business deal with PDP and Nintendo, and get on Channel Awesome. Even though we were a much smaller channel back in the day, they all saw a potential in us through our work itself rather than the views and subscribers.

This is why my stance on views, subscribers, and especially *the numbers* have changed and they don’t mean to me as much as before.

Let’s be honest here. It’s not difficult to get views.

We can simply start making drama videos, calling out other youtubers, capitalizing on controversial topics, etc to easily get the clicks.

Or we can simply ride on the latest fads like Spider-Man vs. Elsa, and many of the other ones throughout the years like reply girls, Gangam Style, etc.

In all honesty, the content we make would have been far more relevant in 2007-2008. Who wants to see another “Mega Man 2 review” in 2017? Why not focus on all the newer games?

Because I wanna make the content that *I* want to make without trying to cater to the YouTube algorithm or trying to get those clicks. Yeah, people have done tons of Mega Man 2 and Super Mario Bros reviews before, but I wanted to explain my personal memories with them because they are my own and nobody else’s.

It’s *very* easy to manipulate the system in order to just get views, but I don’t want to do that. I tried reviewing newer games while they were still relevant in the past, but would always get far more traffic for videos covering older games.

I want to make content that I’m passionate about and want to be proud of. Audiences can EASILY see when you’re being dishonest and desperate for attention and relevance. I never want Battle Geek Plus to be the center of any drama or anything controversial. I simply came into this just wanting to express the weird ideas in my head rather than trying to be the next *big youtuber*.

I’ve been through the highs and lows of internet fame multiple times before and it’s *NEVER* easy to be in a big position no matter how much views, subs, and money you get. Everything on YouTube is dictated by advertisers and constantly changing algorithms. YouTube is honestly in a weird place right now where it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Back then, YouTube was a place where you could put your cat and family videos, hence why their old motto was “Broadcast Yourself”. But with the TV and Movie Studios constantly imposing their copyright rules, people abusing the system for clicks and views, YouTube is trying to move into being more of a corporate TV station rather than a place where people used to post videos for fun, so I’m very uncertain about the future of the platform.

I feel that I’m very fortunate to have gotten into content creation far before we were ever able to get paid for it. I never earned a dime for any of my DBZ websites or AMVs (except the $1500 prize money from Anime Expo 2011′s AMV Contest), but working on those led me to actual paid jobs and careers over the years. DBZ websites and AMVs were never about the money. It was always about just having fun and expressing myself.

When it came to YouTube and the promise of a monetary reward, I do admit I used to be really obsessed trying to make YouTube my living for a long time and even tried to make content catering to *their* rules with mixed results. I would feel discouraged and jealous at times saying “Why did that guy who filmed himself falling off a bike get far more traffic and a sponsor deal than the videos I spent hours on?”.

I’ve seen a ton of people trying to get into the YouTube game feeling all gung-ho at first and after the first few months or years without any progress, they immediately quit. It pains me to see people not live up to their potential because of the prospect of being able to become famous and make money was their major goal and not doing it for the fun. I had a friend who made really good comedy videos, but he quit due to the lack of views.

Personally, I’m just “wired” to make content and be creative. Playing games is fun and all, but I’ll go absolutely *nuts* if I don’t create something. I absolutely love the entire process of making content from the initial thought process to the finished product.

Do I still want to do videos for a living? Absolutely, but I’m not as concerned or obsessed as I was about it before. If it’s gonna happen, I’ll get there *my* way without catering to short lived trends, advertisers, and algorithms. I want to create a body of work that can still be evergreen no matter when you watch it. I want an archive and a library of work rather than quick videos nobody will watch in the future.

I’d rather do a review of Bubble Bobble than Destiny 2 any day of the week.

I got into DBZ Websites and AMVs just at the right time, but I entered the realm of webshows in 2011 which was already far past the prime date to grow. But, I don’t let that discourage me.

Battle Geek Plus is in a weird position on YouTube where we don’t get that many views on the initial releases of our videos, but over time, people begin finding alot of our older stuff. While the view count still isn’t huge for our archive, it shows that people are still finding our work regardless of it being years old.

I know we’ve slowed down alot in the variety of shows we do mostly for time reasons and my personal health. I really want to approach things from a more relaxed and chill perspective rather than trying to chase the shiny object that will get us the most views. I’m at the age where I really need to be more concerned about my health and don’t want to stress out over things like subscribers, views, and numbers that take away from me creating videos.

As we move into the final months of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, here are few things I have planned that I can disclose right now:

- There’s going to be a major step up in quality for the “Awesome Video Game Memories” series as we’re planning to make bigger, better, and more in-depth episodes. We’re also going to slowly incorporate alot of the classic Battle Geek Plus humor like we did in our Nintendo vs. Sega video in a way where it won’t disrupt the video. I know alot of people have been asking “When’s Kung Kwon Todd or *insert character here* coming back?” and even though our original characters haven’t been a main priority for a while, you’ll see them come back in many ways as we really step up the quality of the Awesome Video Game Memories series.

- We’re going to focus alot more on twitch streaming and also doing alot of special stuff to make our streams more fun and interactive. I burned out on streaming a few months ago, but now I feel that I’ve found a good pace for myself without feeling forced or mentally exhausted. The other BGP crew members are also planning on streaming on days that I won’t be streaming.

- We’ve moved our Waxing Pixels Podcast to a live broadcast on Twitch with audio only versions being released on YouTube and itunes. We also plan to have special events and guests in future episodes.

- Since the Battle Geek Plus Universe is so huge and expansive, there will be a huge emphasis on our “Universe” with our new channel trailer and special videos and events that will reference that.

- I’ve already spoken with Doug Walker and there’s going to be *several* collaboration videos with the Nostalgia Critic next year as opposed to only one per year. I also plan to do more collaborations with my fellow Channel Awesome producers and other producers.

As they say, the journey is always far more important than the destination and doing webshows felt like the fresh start from the bottom I needed after being on the top in the DBZ and AMV communities for several years. I do admit there were times I felt discouraged about my lack of growth, but nowadays, I’m grateful for every little victory and opportunity I’ve had with Battle Geek Plus. Starting from the bottom again has really made me appreciate the hard work that me and the rest of the BGP crew puts into every aspect of our production and now it’s time for us to scale things up to *our* liking and not for any trends, advertisers, or algorithms.

I’m still excited for the show more than ever. Not in the “OMG new-ness” way back in 2011, but from a more refreshed and relaxed perspective. I want to work smarter and not harder. I still want to do this as my living, but I realize even if it never happens, I still have a massive body of work for over 2 decades or more that I’m going to be really proud of.

As for wondering if Battle Geek Plus has been successful or not? Well, I work with some of *the* greatest content producers on the internet, work with various gaming/tech/anime companies, and got the attention of a celebrity like Bas Rutten. We get to go to tons conventions and events, meet new people, and BARELY any of this has to do with views and subscribers as our work speaks for itself. Even though we have small fanbase, I’m always happy to chat with them on twitter, our comments, and twitch. Whether we have 10 or 10000 subscribers, I’m always willing to take time out of my day to tell them how I’m doing and ask about how they’re doing as well.

Right now, I work a really stable day job that I enjoy, doesn’t stress me out, and pays me well to still invest in the show. I live in a nice apartment that’s a short commute from my job, and I exercise regularly to keep my stress levels down. All of this is a major positive change from 2014.

Battle Geek Plus sits at over 5000 subscribers and while that’s still considered small, it’s far leap from when we struggled to even get our first 50. I’m here to continue the journey to grow as both a producer and person with the simple mission of expressing the wacky ideas I have in my head.

Here’s the links again to all of my old and current work:

3G Kai - Ginga Giri Giri Kai: My DBZ and AMV archive: http://www.3gkai.com/

Video Game AMV Projects: http://vg-projects.com/

Battle Geek Plus YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bgpawesome

Battle Geek Plus Website http://www.battlegeekplus.com/

Battle Geek Plus Twitch: http://www.twitch.com/battlegeekplus

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThatRyanMolina

BGP Twitter: https://twitter.com/BattleGeekPlus

Thanks for reading and stay awesome!

- Ryan

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gizedcom · 5 years ago

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Kashmir card in the West’s domestic politics

Joe Biden, the democratic candidate for US President elections 2020.

Last month, Joe Biden, the presumptive democratic rival to Donald Trump for the Presidential elections, released his manifesto for American Muslims titled “Agenda for Muslim American Communities”. However, the manifesto made more headlines in India than the United States after a separate paragraph was dedicated to Kashmir and Indian Muslims.

It read: “In Kashmir, the Indian government should take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people of Kashmir. Restrictions on dissent, such as preventing peaceful protests or shutting or slowing down the internet, weaken democracy.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, the newly appointed Labour Party leader in United Kingdom Sir Keir Starmer also reiterated his party’s official position on Kashmir: “Our position on Kashmir has not changed; we support and recognize previous United Nations’ resolutions on the rights of Kashmiri people”.

Earlier this year, the European Union was also mooting a resolution against Indian actions in Kashmir. However, the suspension on all activities in Brussels due to the outbreak of the pandemic put the resolution on the back burner.

Seen in totality, these developments underscore a wider discourse. After decades of hiatus from the international canvass, Kashmir has resurfaced on the world scene. Particularly, after the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status last year, calls for more scrutiny into government actions in Kashmir have proliferated.

While support for Kashmir has been commonplace among the Gulf countries, partly due to Pakistan’s influence, India’s decision to upend the status quo in J-K triggered reactions from Western capitals as well.

As early as August last year, veteran Democrat Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren criticized India’s decision to abrogate Article 370 with Mr. Sanders going as far as demanding a U.N. backed resolution.

Around the same time, the Labour Party in the U.K. passed a resolution that supported “international intervention in Kashmir and a call for U.N. led-referendum”. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel also called the situation in Kashmir as simply “unsustainable” after the government enforced a severe lockdown and a communications blockade in the valley.

For India, which has for years tried to de-internationalize Kashmir, these developments are particularly unnerving. To each of these statements or resolutions, the Indian government has reacted sharply, harping on the traditional choice of words that Jammu and Kashmir is India’s internal matter.

Occasionally, this defense has poured into tit-for-tat reactions as well.

One of the General Secretaries of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) responded to Mr. Sanders’ criticism by tweeting that India was being “compelled” to play a role in the U.S. presidential elections despite its efforts to be “neutral”.

In October 2019, the Foreign Relations Committee of U.S. Congress also chaired a hearing on Kashmir with several members of the Congress including Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar, while the subcommittee’s chair, Brad Sherman lead the charge against India.

This renewed interest in Kashmir in the West politics is not without a context. Over the years, the domestic politics in the U.K. and the U.S. has itself gone through colossal transformations which explain the many changes including the one on the question of Kashmir.

Rise of South Asian diaspora

Over the decades, thousands of Indians and Pakistanis settled in the West. This is particularly the case in the U.K.—in 1951, there were 30,000 Indians and 10,000 Pakistanis, representing a minuscule percentage among Britons. Fast forward to 2011, when the last census in the U.K. was conducted, that number has risen to 1.5 million and 1.2 million, a major vote bank.

It is estimated that 70 percent of the Pakistani expatriate population in the U.K. trace their roots to the undivided state of Jammu Kashmir; approximately a million people, who settled in Bradford after the construction of the Mangla Dam in 1960’s submerged large parts of Mirpur in Pakistan administered J-K.

So far seen as a politically inconsequential community, Pakistani Britons have started to assert themselves more strongly in Britain’s foreign affairs. In a recurrent pattern, the community tends to vote en masse for Labour.

Unsurprisingly, the resolution passed by the Labour Party supporting the UN-led referendum on Kashmir in its yearly conference at Brighton in 2019 was initiated by British Pakistani leader Uzma Rasool and seconded by the Labour MP Naz Shah.

While the Pakistani diaspora might have tasted the first political fruits of its assertion in Brighton, it led to a counter mobilization by the Indian diaspora in favor of the Conservative party which has been less vocal on Kashmir during the 2020 British elections.

Whether or not the Indian diaspora made an impact on the overall electoral outcome in favor of Boris Johnson, there is no doubt that Kashmir is increasingly emerging as a fault line in UK’s electoral politics.

Democrats’ irk for Prime Minister Modi

In the U.S., the recent focus on Kashmir has not been an outcome of electoral compulsions but the growing influence of the left in the Democratic Party.

Traditionally, among the two dominant parties, the Democrats have held a more favorable view of India. In a 2017 report by Chicago Council, Democrats were more pro-India than Republicans by 14-16 percentage points. This appreciation for India among Democrats had largely sprung from Indian political traditions of democracy and secularism which mirrored the political ideals of American democrats.

However, the rise of BJP as India’s dominant party is not something that most Democrats view with great enthusiasm. Even the bullish Democratic President Barack Obama warned India against religious discrimination during his final Presidential visit to India in 2015.

For Paul Staniland, professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, the BJP’s radical agenda under Narendra Modi was a cause of concern. “There is great skepticism about the domestic policies of the Modi government among the Democrats, especially brought to the fore in 2019 and early 2020,” Mr. Staniland told The Kashmir Walla.

In turn, an ascendant wing among the Democrats led by Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar has led a vocal charge against the Modi government, likening him to Mr. Trump—who has also professed an anti-Muslim agenda.

Shortly after the revocation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, Mr. Modi appeared in a rally alongside Mr. Trump in Houston, where the Indian Prime Minister hinted at leveraging his popularity among American Hindus to help Mr. Trump politically.

During the rally, Mr. Modi also said “Ab ki baar Trump Sarkaar” – akin to his own campaign slogan in the general elections that saw him rise to power – that roughly translates into “This time, a Trump government”. The gesture did not go down well with the Democrats and prompted a clarification from the Indian foreign ministry that Mr. Modi did not intend to influence American elections.

Partly, the excessive emphasis on human rights abroad has also become even more urgent for the Democrats owing to Mr. Trump and identifying illiberalism in foreign countries as a failure of American global project. Thus, we see growing voices on Capitol Hill even on issues which hitherto were conveniently ignored by the American legislators.

The reappearance of Kashmir in Western discourse is thus not only a reaction to Indian illiberalism and revocation of Article 370 last year. Rather, it has its origins in the political dynamics of Western countries that range from an increasingly assertive diaspora in the U.K. to the rise of a more vocal Democratic camp at the Hill as a reaction to Mr. Trump’s Presidency.

It was just that the removal of Article 370 coincided with these political developments in Western countries and the revocation provided these tendencies a perfect conduit to flow through to it.

Consequently, the issue of Kashmir is unlikely to die down any time soon. In the U.K., it may emerge as a fault line in future elections as the South Asian diaspora grows even bigger. However, in the U.S., the November elections will define the trajectory of Kashmir as an agenda in the country.

If Joe Biden manages to win the elections, the anti-India voices in the U.S. administration are likely to swell with more Democratic appointments. If not, the Democrats like any other opposition party will continue to press Mr. Trump to act against India so as to assert America’s responsibility to defend human rights abroad.

Either way, Kashmir will continue to remain an agenda in the political developments of some countries.

The analysis originally appeared in our 13-19 July 2020 print edition.

…now, more than ever to give a voice to the voiceless. The press in Kashmir has operated under tremendous pressures of reporting from a conflict zone but since August 2019 we find ourselves in unchartered territory. The Kashmir Walla is among the oldest independent media outlets in Kashmir and has withstood successive lockdowns as well as attempts to suppress us, fighting back with authoritative ground reports based on facts.

We need your solidarity to keep our journalism going. Your contribution will empower us to keep you informed on stories that matter from Kashmir. Show your solidarity by joining our community. Kashmir thanks you.

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pricelessmomentblog · 6 years ago

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I’m 30

Every year, for the last twelve years, I’ve done a birthday post. These posts summarize what’s happened in my life over the last year, as well as my thoughts about the future.

This year was a big one for me, more than just rolling into a new decade. I got married. I signed a book deal. I spent ten days at a silent meditation retreat. My team and I developed a new course, which should be ready in September.

More than just these milestones, however, this year has taught me quite a few things, as well as shown me how much more I still have to learn.

Things I’ve Learned (and am Still Learning)

1. Anxiety and Perfectionism with High-Stakes Creative Projects

The major project for me this year was writing a book. I had wanted to write a book about ultralearning for a few years, and now finally felt like the right time.

I knew from the start that I wanted to do something different from my previous self-published ebooks. I wanted it to be driven more by stories other than my own, and be backed up by more scientific research and less my own experiences and opinions.

On the one hand, this is good. The higher standards have pushed me in a lot of ways to produce better writing, that I wouldn’t have gotten on its own.

The downside was also that I felt a lot of anxiety about my own performance at times. I often got stuck, either because I wasn’t sure what direction to take, or because my own fears about how the book would turn out meant it was easy to avoid working on it.

This was a new experience for me. In the past, whenever I’ve felt pressure on projects, they’ve tended to push me forward rather than hold me back. In the beginning of the MIT Challenge, when I was most uncertain about meeting the deadline, the pressure forced me to work very hard to make it. Similarly, when studying languages, any doubts I had about reaching the goals I had set made me want to work even harder.

I think the difference owes to the different dynamics of the tasks. With many learning goals, the solution to anxiety about performance is simply to do more practice. Same is true with a lot of business goals, where worries about meeting a target are best soothed by working harder at it.

In creative tasks, however, there’s a risk that making an early mistake in how you structure something, or choices about how to handle certain things, can become embedded into the structure later. In these situations, the result can be paralyzing because added anxiety forces you to stop and think rather than push forward bravely.

My previous ebooks and courses rarely felt this level of pressure, because in my mind, I was mostly writing to my own audience, with no real expectations of mainstream success. However, with an agent, advance, publisher expectations and my own internal ideas of what I wanted to accomplish, it was harder to de-escalate those expectations that led to feelings of perfectionism.

I’m not sure I have a solution to this issue yet, but I suspect as I go further, and the stakes become higher for projects I’m working on, it’s going to be a problem that will get worse if I don’t find a good workaround.

2. Switching From Solo to Team

In the past, I did nearly everything by myself. That meant, when I started a big project, I simply stopped doing a lot of other work. It might require some choices, but coordination was fairly easy because things simply had to be done in sequence.

Now, my business has grown and there are around a dozen people I work with regularly, including a few full-time employees. On the one hand, this is an amazing benefit. I can focus on the things I’m good at, and not need to worry about being great at the things I’m not.

On the other hand, individual productivity is different from team productivity. It’s no longer simply a matter of picking projects and working through them sequentially, but trying to time my involvement in multiple, concurrent projects. This is a lot trickier to do, and I’m still figuring it out.

One of the big mistakes I made this year was a failure to organize these schedules. In addition to writing my book, my team and I also developed a new course. The downside was that the busy periods for the book and course often coincided. This meant periods where it was difficult to decide where to focus because both were demanding my attention.

In the future, I’m going to have to be more careful about scheduling projects so that the intense times for projects don’t overlap so much.

What’s Next?

I still have a month to go before I hand in my manuscript for my book. After that, there will be at least a year of editing, finalizing, printing and marketing. So, in some senses, the major efforts of my next year or so have already been decided.

However, I expect that once the full-time writing stretch ends, my life is going to be a little more open, so there’s going to be more opportunities for new things. Here are some of the things I’ve been thinking about that I want to work on:

1. Flexible Habits

The busyness of the past year have pushed me to explore different ways of thinking about my habits and the ways I want to do things in my life.

In the past, if I wanted to set up a good habit—say going to the gym, meditating or learning Chinese—I’d simply put effort into making that my priority and including a chunk of time each day towards it. Going to the gym 3-4x per week for an hour or so has been a long-term habit for me for a decade or more.

However, lots of large, clunky habits can be difficult to fit into my schedule. This creates inconsistencies with how those habits are applied, and sometimes, can lead to them slipping.

These days, I’ve found a lot of success with setting up quite minimal habits. Things that are probably insufficient for my goals, but if done every day as a background activity, they also prevent things from getting too out of hand if the clunkier habits slip a little.

Six months ago, for instance, I set the habit of doing fifty push-ups a day. I’m happy to say that in that time period, I’ve only missed one day of the habit.

The habit works well because it works in almost any circumstances. I even did some after my wedding because I had forgotten to finish them in the morning. Going for a workout in the gym, in that case, would have become incredibly difficult.

The success of this habit and a few others I had started, have made me think more about establishing a few baseline habits for areas of life which are important to me, and can run in the background essentially forever, no matter how busy I am, where I am in the world or how I’m feeling.

2. Making Travel a Priority

I’ve traveled quite a bit, and in the past, travel has been something I’ve done in bursts, for long stretches of a time. I did one year in France in university. I did another year around the world, several years ago. Between those times, I’ve been on plenty of month-long or multi-week trips.

These days, long bursts of travel are harder to schedule. This is going to be even more true if my business grows or I have kids.

Yet, travel is something that’s important to me. Not as a vacation, but as a goal of expanding my understanding of the world, different cultures and ideas. I see travel, done properly, as being akin to reading books in offering windows into different aspects of life and the world. Just as reading is important to me, beyond just leisure, so is travel. The solution here is that I need to start planning for trips longer in advance, and fitting them into my schedule ahead of time. Waiting until I have some downtime was an approach I used to take, but as my work has expanded, those downtime moments evaporate much more rapidly.

3. New Ultralearning Projects

Although I don’t always write about it, I’m always spending time learning new things. The ultralearning projects I’ve done are something different, investing a focused burst of time to accomplish something big.   I like the ultralearning projects because they allow me to make progress on something I care about but haven’t been able to devote enough time to. They are also helpful for pushing through obstacles that make casual practice less enjoyable. A big motivation for my most recent portrait drawing challenge was that I was too bad at it to enjoy it in the beginning, yet it was a skill I thought I’d like to develop.

I’d like to do another ultralearning project, but I haven’t decided on exactly when or what topic.

Some ideas I’ve had include:

Trying to deeply learn some professional skill, with perhaps the side-goal of turning it into a functioning freelance business by the end.

Chess. In particular, I thought this might be interesting because the whole process could be live-streamed, unlike my previous projects which function with semi-regular updates.

Art or music. Painting, guitar, photography, animation or something similar might be interesting skills to work on. They also are easier to demonstrate, which makes them more fun as a project.

Something academic. There’s a lot of academic topics I’ve wanted to build skills in. Statistics, machine learning, quantum physics and neuroscience are all possibilities.

The only project I’ve contemplated seriously yet is trying to combine an extra push of language learning with the release of my book. I was thinking about possibly going to some of the countries where the book is being translated and released, and give some speeches about it and answer questions in those languages.

This last goal is a tricky one though, because if I limit myself just to rehearsing a prepared speech, this is something I can almost certainly do with enough practice in any of the languages. However, responding to live Q&A is quite difficult, even in languages I’m best at, so defining the scope of the challenge will be tricky.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been writing for a long time, so in many ways my writing here is a less a snapshot of my opinions, but an evolution from who I was when I was 17 until today.

In some ways, I feel like time has vindicated some of my philosophy. I managed to build a successful business, marry the woman of my dreams, have adventures and live a happy and comfortable life. Those things weren’t true when I started, so in some ways, it has felt good that some of my original ideas turned out to be good ones, even if that wasn’t clear at the time.

In other ways, though, my views on anything being the right “answer” for how to live life have become a lot more tenuous. I used to hold fairly rigid opinions about what was the right way to approach things. Now, I’ve come to see that there are many different ways one can approach life, quite different from how I approach mine, that are also valid. Different perspectives have their own benefits and disadvantages, but I’m less inclined to believe mine is the only way, or necessarily the best for everyone.

This fact itself puts me in an interesting place with my writing. On the one hand, I feel like I have some useful strategies and approaches to life to share. On the other, I’m more aware of the diversity of different ways to live and how those might involve doing the exact opposite of what I suggest for certain people in certain situations.

I guess I feel that the value of my writing is that, for those who feel that the approach resonates with them, that I can offer some thoughts on how to get more of it. For those taking a different path, there’s no problem with not following my approach.

Thanks for reading this past year, I look forward to sharing more with you in the next one!

I’m 30 syndicated from https://pricelessmomentweb.wordpress.com/

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