2 Grown Men And Their Quest For Their 5th Subscriber
Last week, Von and I did our first ever podcast (technically it’s a “vodcast” I believe) for Lift Heavy Run Long. I had SO much fun with it that I could hardly stand it. To be honest, our first episode was really rather sh*tty. The sound was bad, we both look like we are waiting for someone to flip the switch on our electric chairs, and we were totally winging it with our content, but that did not do anything but excite me all the more. It reminds a lot of the benefits of coming into the fitness world all fat and outta shape, smelling of beer sweats and chee-tos, versus coming from organized sports with an athletic background. When you are totally new at something, you can only go up from there. Fortunately, most of the time you don’t even realize how bad you suck until you begin to suck at it less and you review your past suckiness. Your gains are quantifiable and all the newness and shininess just gets you all warm and fuzzy. The experienced athlete, while being far superior initially, will make gains, but not in the leaps and bounds that the newby will, before said newby ultimately plateaus at some point (unless he is a total freak and just never stops). I feel as if the lack of knowledge that Von and I have as it pertains to the technical side of videography is what makes this so damn fun. It certainly makes it funny. It would be one thing if we got together and reviewed topics, rehearsed lines and questions, and data sifted through the information that we were going to discuss, but we don’t do any of that, like NONE. We press record and start shootin the sh*t. And I LOVE shootin the sh*t.
Last week we recorded an episode and when I reviewed it, I laughed hysterically. I laughed at the knowledge that the entire time I felt like I was going down in a fiery plane crash. I was so nervous that I thought I might black out. I told my brother that I felt like I was so petrified to look at the camera that I was turning my head away as if my mother were undressed behind the lense (don’t look..don’t look..don’t look). There was also a tremendous amount of adrenaline that was to be had, and that was really fun. It is wild that all of these emotions were swirling around for a video that was ultimately going to be viewed by a handful of people. With all that we learned from week one, it was almost overwhelming to find out exactly how much there is to be learned. I mean putting together quality stuff takes a LOT of knowledge and TONS of experience. Since I don’t like the work that goes into acquiring knowledge and I don’t like waiting for experience, I did the next logical thing….I bought STUFF. If you can’t bring knowledge and experience, at least bring some stuff to play with, so that is the direction we went. I got a mixer, a couple of mics, and a pair of stands. I don’t know how to use any of it, but I got it. This is totally the standard in my life. Turns out that stuff is relatively affordable. It also turns out that we sound relatively affordable, or probably more like cheap. We certainly did not knock it out of the park on our second try, and I don’t think we will be winning any people’s choice awards any time soon, but there were a few improvements. Either way, I can’t think of many times when I have laughed as intensely or as often as I have in the 2 short sessions that we have done this together. I love playing with social media so much, that it will be exciting to see if we can pick up a subscriber here or there, or grab an Instagram or Twitter follower. I love to see people come to our athletes Facebook page and interact with the group. I like to think that maybe we can help someone get a good wholesome laugh on an otherwise crappy day, or provide a little bit of hope to the person who is feeling run down. I believe that our motives are good, and we want good things for other people, so it is hard for me to see what we are doing as being anything other than successful. If fun is ANY measurement of success, then we have achieved it already.
The real fun comes with the future of what we would like to see happen. We are excited to line up some interesting guests and get to know a little about them. I think it will be fun to watch our totally different personality styles approach the athletes that we will come to know. There are a lot of interesting people out there, and I plan to get to know them. I am curious as to how many people are even remotely as weird as I am, but try to keep it a secret. I want to know if even some of the top performing athletes have moments of ridiculousness when it comes to self-image, or if they always feel like superior athletes. I want to know how seriously they take themselves and if they wish that were different. I really just want to laugh and have a good time. They say that life is not all fun and games, but I think they are full of sh*t. Have fun. Play games.
Peace, Love, and all things Beef related,
Beefcake