So why do I keep making these videos? It’s been 12 weeks now, a video every day, and I sometimes ask myself why.
But the first reason is that I committed to doing it.
I simply said that I am going to make a video every day and release it.
And so just doing it itself is a discipline for me.
I don’t know if that really counts, though, because I could commit to doing anything.
It didn’t have to be this.
Why specifically this? Well, the first reason for specifically making and releasing videos is that I want to practice speaking publicly.
Because the thought of putting this camera and microphone up in my face pointing at my living room here and my face and talking about it, talking about things, and having this be published on the wide, wide internet: that to me is a very unfamiliar territory, and it does not seem like a normal and automatic thing for me to do.
The idea of this camera lens here being like a window for the entire world, you could say.
Anybody could choose to see me talking about stuff.
And normally, when I’m in my living room, there is nobody seeing me talk about stuff.
So just getting used to being able to talk about things publicly, and get used to opening up: that is a big part of what this is about for me, this training.
Especially as I’m talking about some of these things are relatively personal topics, and I’m training myself to be more open about sharing these things, because I believe that it could be helpful.
The second reason is that by talking about these ideas, I am exploring these ideas.
I mean, sometimes I don’t really know where I’m gonna finish when I start talking.
And sometimes I end up in a new place with a new thought that I hadn’t considered before I began.
So just by talking about things, and especially out loud, it helps me to think clearly about this topic, or about any of these topics.
If you cannot explain something to somebody, then there’s a good chance that you don’t really understand it.
Explaining a topic is a great way to understand it more deeply yourself.
And this connects to what might be called the third reason, which is to train myself as somebody who is able to talk about things.
Kind of like #1, but #1: just getting used to speaking publicly and having this window on me and my life open to the world.
But #3 is this idea of improving, training my ability to talk about things, to become a better speaker, to become a better communicator, to be able to discuss these topics in ways that are both understandable and hopefully even sometimes inspirational, is my ideal, to inspire ideas in other people, and help to communicate some of the way that I see the world and what I believe in.
And these ideas are ideas that can be, I hope, built into future work.
The things that I talk about: these are almost like simple notes, preliminary notes, for something that I can in the future put together into more complete material, bigger projects, bigger content.
And these are the preliminary building blocks that I’m setting up every day that may be useful in the future, to be used in something more complete.
And of course, really a big part of what made me start this is that, you know, why am I speaking publicly? I want to connect with other people.
I want to build a community.
I want to reach other people that are interested in some of these topics, people that care about these things and like to discuss them.
And so I want to reach some of these people so that we can have some great conversations about some of this material, some of these topics, and we can help each other explore this stuff more deeply.
And that’s really why I feel it- that’s really what pushed me to actually get out there and publish this, because there’s nothing like actually reaching out and having other people actually hear what you’re saying to make an actual connection between people.
rather than me simply recording notes on my own that I might use later.
So I’m always happy to have that kind of discussion about these topics, and I’m hoping that each of these daily videos could be some kind of a spark for some kind of conversation and further investigation.
And last of all, I hope that possibly, perhaps even a few of these might be actually helpful to somebody.
I may say something that can maybe help somebody to have a shift in perspective, look at things a little differently, have some new idea to apply to their own lives, something that could make even a small change in improving somebody else’s life.
And if I can do that, then I would be very pleased at the results of my efforts.
So for all those reasons, and maybe some others that I haven’t clearly thought of yet, I have been doing this, and I look forward to continuing to do this.
When I started, I said I would give myself the option to stop once I reach 1001 days.
Well, still got a while to go.