Later today, I will publish the 5th post on my new website, reallifeleveling.com.

The site went live April 1, and I already have 5 posts up by the 13th.  I know that’s not necessarily a lot, but for me it’s probably a record (livejournal excluded).  I know many (both?) of you are thinking, “Really…?  You really needed another website to not update?”  No, I don’t really need another dead website, but I need at least one good one.

I’ve already decided that I don’t mind if reallifeleveling.com fails miserably.  I can think of many reasons why it might fail:

  1. There is no market for my content (personal development for gamers, btw)
  2. I have made my topic too broad (I could have stuck with just one game, for example)
  3. I have made my topic too narrow (I mean, how many gamers are there really?)
  4. Poor execution
  5. Mediocre writing
  6. The site blows up too early and I don’t know how to handle it
  7. The site blows up and I hate all the attention
  8. The site blows up but I can’t monetize it
  9. The site literally blows up in some kind of fiery explosion
  10. I can’t attract enough traffic
  11. I can’t attract the right traffic
  12. I can’t attract any traffic
  13. Lack of a good way to implement SEO
  14. I provide content in an outdated medium (writing instead of podcasts or videos)

Etc., etc.  I will not accept, however, the failure of my new blog simply because I didn’t work hard enough on it.  I’m tired of having a list of “good ideas” that would be “totally easy to execute” and make me “at least a moderate amount of money.”  In reality, it’s all bullshit unless I actually do something.  This is something.

I am currently trying to get better at Starcraft 2.  And the drums.  And guitar.  And singing.  And writing.  And World of Warcraft.  And Magic.  And teaching.  And earning money.  And manifesting intentions.  And losing weight.  And a hundred other things.

Maybe, however, I should work on getting better at getting better.

In each of the areas above, I am, in the grand scheme of things, pretty mediocre (except for the Blizzard games, where I know I am a noob).  I’ve been mediocre at a lot of things for a long time.  I don’t know what it feels like to be world class.  I don’t know how to get from a 7 to a 10.  I don’t even know what a 10 looks like.

Some people, on the other hand, seem to have mastered the art of being excellent.  It doesn’t matter what field they enter, they somehow rise to the top.  Consider the following people and their world class accomplishments:

  • Steve Martin – stand up comedian, actor, writer, banjo player
  • Tim Ferriss – New York Times best selling author, CEO of a multi-million dollar drug supplement company
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger – body builder, actor, politician
  • Felicia Day – actress, writer, web content producer, child prodigy on the violin
  • Will Smith – actor, musician
  • Josh Waitzkin – chess player, martial artist, writer

I’m sure there are others as well, but those are all I can think of off the top of my head (other than more actor/musicians or actor/politicians or athletes/commentators).  Google is being surprisingly unhelpful.

I suspect that once I discover how to be excellent in one area, I can use the same general method to become excellent in several other areas.  At least that’s what I assume the above people were able to do, especially the ones who had success in wildly different fields (Ferriss, Schwarzenegger, and Waitzkin).  The first hurdle is now to become excellent in anything at all.

When I had an active livejournal, I used to recap the previous year on or about January 1.  I’ve missed that deadline, but I don’t feel like it’s too late to take a brief look back.

For reference, 2004 was the year of the highway, 2005 was the year of the random-ass job, 2006 was the year of awakening, and 2007-2009 were the years I didn’t keep a livejournal. 2010?  Let’s see…

The Year of the Girlfriend

For the first time in my whole life, I dated the same person explicitly from January 1 to December 31 without interruption. It didn’t feel like a year, which seems like a good thing.  I don’t mean to slight my relationship by not writing a lot about it here, but the internets doesn’t seem like the best place to share all of those details.  Also, I don’t want to get accused of being mushy on a personal blog again.  We’ll just say that things are going well.

The Year of World of Warcraft

I leveled 2 separate characters from 1 to 80, and completed most of the “What a Long Strange Trip” achievement on one of them. Oddly enough, neither of those characters were the one I leveled to 85 in December.  Was playing this much World of Warcraft a waste of time?  Maybe.  My two biggest problems with WoW are 1) it gives me a sense of accomplishment even though I’m not really accomplishing anything; and 2) I’m not playing with real life friends, which was my main reason for starting in the first place.  3 people do not a guild make.  I should probably have spent a lot of that time playing music.

The Year of the Big Stage

In 2010, Business Time played both Buster’s and Cheapside Pavilion, two of the largest stages I have played on in my life.  Whether those gigs were profitable (or even well attended) is another matter, but at least it was fun to seem like a big deal.  To our credit, we played both stages multiple times, and will (in theory) be invited back this year.

The Year I Bought a Taylor

I bought a new guitar this year.  Just noting that for posterity’s sake.

The Year I Lost 15 Pounds Again

I started 2010 at around 175 and ended at a slimmer 160.  I’m now down to 155, which was my weight when I started college.    I still want to lose a little more weight (or move it around, at least), but I’m not exactly sure how to do that.  Also, I like ice cream!

The Year I Went Gluten Free

The 30 day experiment I wrote about earlier was a huge success, so I have decided to eat a gluten free diet for the foreseeable future.  I already miss beer, but my digestive system feels a lot better.  I’m not sure what I’ll do if I end up at Oktoberfest, but that’s a long ways off in the distance.

The Year I Stopped Living With My Family

Probably the most significant change in 2010 was that I no longer live with members of my family.  I spent 28 years living with parents and siblings (minus some time in college).  Though we definitely had some good times together, I think being away from my siblings will actually allow my relationships with (some of) them to get better.  It’s hard to balance roommate issues with family issues.  Also, living with Ryan and Leanna has given me a new perspective on how other people live, and it’s also caused my to take greater responsibility for how I choose to live.  I think it was a positive decision.

The Year Practice Died

For the first time in 28 years, people complained about my bands and I making too much noise.  Now that I see how common that is, I am actually surprised I didn’t have the cops called on me earlier in my life.  For years I took practicing for granted.  Now, I miss it.  Like Joni Mitchell sang, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”  I don’t know what my long term plans are, but I know they have to include a place to play drum set and practice with a band.

2011

What will 2011 bring?  How will I remember this year?  I can’t say for sure in January, but I feel like things are coming to a head on multiple fronts.  I’m currently treading water in almost every area of my life, and my arms are getting tired.  It’s time to get on a boat.  I will not be surprised if my January 1, 2012 is so different from January 1, 2011 that I can’t even see it from here.  We’ll see.

This post was originally titled “Something’s Gotta Give,” but Ryan suspects you get more spam on blog posts named after “real world things” (in this case, a movie).  Seeing as I’m writing about not having enough free time, I think it’s safe to assume I don’t have enough time to manage spam from peddlers of Russian Viagra.  Instead, you get a moderately clever title from my Catholic upbringing about giving things up.

I am the kind of person who thinks he can do everything, and I also think I can do everything at the same time.  I don’t want to play guitar; I want to play guitar, drums, bass, and piano.  But I don’t even want to just play guitar; I want to shred like Eddie Van Halen, play the blues like Clapton, and be an acoustic troubadour like Jeff Tweedy.  You could spend a lifetime trying to do any one of those things.

Recently, I have come up with even more ideas for things to do.  I want to go back to updating the blog for my drum students.  I want to start another blog for drum teachers.  I want to record a CD of original songs and market them on YouTube.  I want to write more inane ramblings on this blog.  I want to do a couple of World of Warcraft related things: level a Goblin to 85 in Cataclysm, actively participate in a 10-man guild with Roger and Mike, level a Horde and an Alliance guy through PvP to see which side really does win “all the time.”

The limiting factor, as always, is time.  I have 168 hours each week to get everything done:

  • 10 hours guitar practicing
  • 10 hours drum practicing
  • 42 hours sleeping
  • 6 hours working out
  • 3 hours vocal practicing
  • 14 hours blogging for drum teachers
  • 2 hours blogging for drum students
  • 21 hours working on my own songs
  • 15 hours teaching lessons
  • 12 hours working in the store
  • 2 hours writing for this blog

That’s 137 hours right there, leaving a mere 21 hours a week to eat, shower, transport myself anywhere, play shows, hang out with everyone who needs hanging out with, clean my house, play WoW, etc., etc. (And that’s not even considering how aggressive that sleep estimate is.)

So I have 2 options: optimize my time management to use every second of my day efficiently or give something up.  I suspect I will take a stab at  the first option, but eventually concede to the latter.  Now I just have to decide what gets the boot.

I’m off now to clean my office, do some laundry, and begin the process of soul searching.  Perhaps the process of de-cluttering my surroundings will help to de-clutter my mind.  If anyone has suggestions on how to handle this problem, feel free to let me know.

“I could see now that it was also a matter of determination to begin at the beginning and progress on from there” — Josh Ritter

As much as I hate to admit it, I am at the beginning.

Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter recently published a blog post about open mic nights, noting they’re the first step for any aspiring singer-songwriter.  In my head, I’m thinking, “yeah, the first step; I’ve already done that, so I obviously don’t need to go to any open mic nights.”  In my head, I’m halfway to internet stardom.

As it turns out, I’m not.  My friend Jason Huber and I went down to Common  Grounds two weeks ago to decimate their open mic night.  We are professionals.  We’ve played shows for money.  And so we played.  We were… fine.  To quote Josh Ritter again, we received “a smattering of applause, no more and no less than anyone else got.”  No one came up and asked for our autographs, no one asked if they could buy our CD, and  no one booked us for a show.

The following week I thought about trying again, this time playing solo.  In the end, I didn’t end up going because I didn’t feel ready.  I was defeated by the mere thought of an open mic night.  Clearly, I am back at the beginning.

I’ve spent this week coming to terms with reality.  I don’t have 3 songs I feel awesome about playing at an open mic night.  I don’t have a current CD to promote.  I don’t have a website devoted to my music.  My YouTube page has 1 subscriber (hi Dad!).  I don’t even know the name of one person in Lexington who books original acoustic music.

It’s okay though, because everyone starts at the beginning.  I was blown away by a YouTube video of Nataly Dawn (of Pomplamoose fame) going nuts because she had 200 subscribers(!!!).  Now she has 60,000 (Pomplamoose has 193,000).  She didn’t get to 60k overnight, but rather over 2 years of hard work.  That’s where I am – 2 years of hard work away from being someone of note.  Now that I’ve accepted my reality, let’s see if I am capable of the effort required to change it.

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