Quitting The Internet & TV for The Month of October!!! /  by Craig Benzine

Yes, indeedy. Won’t be using the Internet or TV for the whole month so I’m writing this as a little good by.

There are some minor exceptions and I will drop in once in the middle of the month, depending on when I get my next video done. Here’s the rules:

-can check email for 10 minutes on Mondays and Fridays.
-can have 2 movie nights per week, but only one movie per movie night.
-can use Google Maps, but only for directions, not looking places up for reviews and such.
-I can upload my week daily videos for Patreon Patrons, but I can't look at them afterwards. Upload only.
-I will be uploading my next main channel video about exercise when it's finished, whenever that is. And I'll promote it on all the things, including here. But that's it. I won't check back in, read comments, etc.
-No music streaming or ebook downloading

So there ya have it. I’ll miss ya. Please don’t change TOO much.

Sincerely,

Craig

STUFF I READ YESTERDAY #1: NEW JOURNAL! /  by Craig Benzine

Hey Everybody. For some reason yesterday I started listing off things I found interesting and/or useful because I realized that I'm probably learning about tons of new things everyday and I forget about them.

So then I thought, what do I do with this list? I should keep a journal!

So then I thought, where do I find a digital journal because I don't know where my pen is, much less remember how to write the old fashioned way. Plus, then I can add to the journal where ever I am.

So then I thought, screw it, I'll just make blog posts on my website. So here we are. I don't know if I'll keep doing this but this is a journal entry about all the disparate stuff I read about yesterday that I don't want to forget about (at least all the stuff I remembered to log).

STUFF I READ ABOUT YESTERDAY

1) Digital Bath

No, 80s children, I'm not referring to the Deftones song. This was an idea I came across on a Medium article I can't find now because I neglected to save the link. But it's a simple idea that I want to make sure to try. Pick one day a week and turn off the internet. Turn off your phone, your internet on your computer, your netflix, all of it. Chyna and I are always talking about quitting the internet for a while to see what happens. Picking one day seems not too intrusive but also useful.

2) Cinemagram

Burnie Burns of RoostTeeth said he missed the art form of Cinemagram and wondered why it didn't catch on and posted this on twitter:

KX0D.gif

I too miss this art form for a single moving thing in a gif and didn't know that it was called Cinemagram. I'd like to figure out how to make good ones and maybe use them to promote videos or just for funsies.

3) Matt Hamlin

Learned about this guy and his YouTube channel UpIsNotJump from a post on Patreon's blog. He does videos about gaming but it's not just playing a game and commenting. It's more like a highly intricate, hilarious video essay about a game while using footage of him playing to compliment what he's saying. It's fast paced, smart, & hilarious. He's now someone I'm taking inspiration from.

4) Imgur posting

This is also a takeaway from that Matt Hamlin Patreon article about some of the strategies he used to promote his videos. One of them I never really thought of is posting gifs to Imgur and then posting that to Reddit as a sort of "trailer" for his videos. This is something I want to try. I'll post them to the Beardlovers Subreddit.

5) 7 Basic Plots

Another Patreon post about Michelle Czajkowski led me to this. Michelle is a comic artist who used to work for Dreamworks but broke out on her own to create her webcomic Ava's Demon. In the Patreon article she talks about the importance of research before creating what you want. And one of the things she researched to tell her story is Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots.

I'm always interested in learning the guidelines people use to write their stories and the patterns we can find in most well told stories. This is fascinating by itself but I also would like to write good stories myself so I try to internalize all these ideas. These 7 basic plots are good things to keep in mind when plotting out a story.

Another great one I always think about is Dan Harmon's blog post about the story circle which is based on Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I haven't read that book (I definitely need to read more in general) but that blog post is incredibly interesting, even if you don't agree with all of it. I happen to think it's pretty spot on.

WHAT I'M DOING TODAY

Might as well put a section in here about my goals for the day so I make sure I get them done and let you know what's coming. Things to do today:

1) Patreon week daily vlog post
2) Schedule Patreon livestream
3) Research and write as much as I can for upcoming video about quitting added sugar. (remember we did that?)
4) Schedule car maintenance. I mean I've just been putting it off too long.
5) Record The Good Stuff podcast episode with my pals Matt, Sam, & Justin. Did you know that exists? We basically pick news articles and talk about them each episode. For this episode we're talking about this incredibly interesting story about finding out why the dinosaurs went extinct and a story about a weird "not aurora" in the sky. And maybe other things yet to be planned out.

CONCLUSION

Wow, this feels like something I should have been doing for a long time. I actually couldn't remember Michelle Czajkowski or where her article was. I had to do quite a bit of digging. And this is just something I read yesterday. Damn. I just read too much crap to remember it all. Journaling the important bits seems necessary. Hopefully I can convince myself to keep doing it.

What to Expect in Your 30s /  by Craig Benzine

As a man exceedingly in his 30s, today I give you life advice about what to expect. (pssst, those already in or past your 30s, don't tell them that everyone's experience is different & it's silly to take advice from one person as gospel.)