AlexJonathan.com

First things first, you are awesome. We know that. You know that. We do not have time to remind you of that fact. If you don’t know it, learn it. Or get the fuck out.

The Rules

1. Vehicles exist for two reasons. Taking people places is the second most important. The most important function is “mobile concert venue.” When in a car, truck or bus (especially bus), you are expected to behave accordingly. You are a rockstar. Rockstars aren’t worried if they don’t know every word, or what the person in the car next to them thinks. Keep your eyes on the road and your mind on the rock.
2. Voting is cool. Jury duty is cool. Not voting to avoid jury duty makes you a punkass.
3. Remove the words “guilty pleasure” from your vocabulary. This is a crutch you use to hide your true feelings for something society has decided is less awesome than you know it is. Screw that. Go burn yourself a copy of “Party in the USA” and invoke rule one all over society’s face.
4. Don’t be a dick.
5. The order of the rules is random. Rule four is the most important rule.
6. Sports are pretty great. You don’t have to like all sports, you don’t have to have a favorite sport, but if you don’t see the soul-cleansing appeal of thirty-thousand people in one room, losing their minds over something as inconsequential as a puck sliding into a net, forgetting for a second about their mortgage or their grade or a war in some far-off country, we have no use for you.
7. If you say that you hate all rap or country, you’re listening to the wrong rap and country. Or you’re really saying you don’t like people from the South or black people. Neither stance is acceptable.
8. Typography Matters.
9. Games are fun. If you haven’t played a game before, that’s a reason TO play, not an excuse not to.
10. You may go easy on new players (or players you find cute). You may not let them win.
11. Occasionally, make a decision, chief.
12. We respect our vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free brothers and sisters. While they have veto power over restaurant choices, their dietary decisions are not an excuse to force them to choose the dining establishment. See rule 11.
13. Smoking, drinking and gambling are cool (if that’s your thing) in moderation. Don’t get out of control.
14. Be creative. Take photos, write poems, fold paper, noodle around on a guitar. Do something.
15. Share your creativity. Post photos to Flickr, start a blog, open an Etsy shop, record a demo. Let people know about it, and be open to their constructive criticism.
16. Generally, pizza is awesome.
17. Do not underestimate the pretzel.
18. Some people suck. Lock your doors, guard your credit cards… but Barry Manilow got it wrong in Copacabana. Fall in love.

On Monday, I start my new job. A few days ago, a friend messaged me to ask what, exactly, this new job is. I haven’t been able to figure out how to explain it. So, I’ll warn you, this will be rambly. 

On Friday, I worked for an insurance subrogation company, moving data from client systems into the subro company’s database. It’s extraordinarily slow work, the type of thing that should really be done by computers at this point, but no one wants to sit down and figure out exactly how that would work.

When this upcoming week starts, I’ll be working in the same place, but as a Communication Specialist (working title). What that looks like, no one’s really sure, but the idea is that I’ll help with a bunch of the branding and creative issues as the company re-thinks who it is and how it presents itself. Which is only the most exciting thing in the world.

That’s half my job. The other half is working for a Sales Consultancy in Fishers, essentially as the catch-all creative. Projects that have been mentioned (or that I’ve already started on) include designing the next book release from the group, and expanding their video and podcasting efforts. 

It’s pretty much a perfect set-up, especially for someone with my attention span, and the fact that it’s actually happening has almost nothing to do with me. My plan for this week was to write a series of blogs. Only two wound up getting out of my head before I reailzed I didn’t know how to say what I was trying to say. 

I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by some incredibly awesome people, but the problem with recognizing the effects they’ve had on you is that so often those changes are subtle enough you don’t realizing it’s happening. It’s hard to have those big notable epiphanies when the changes are inch-by-inch.

So, a big thanks goes out to everyone who’s listened to me prattle on about pro wrestling or a new video game or becoming a “knowledge worker” or the script I was starting or the podcast I was starting or the board game I was developing. Very few of you ever told me to shut the hell up, and enabling my addiction to ideas let me get to a place where I can actually do something with them.

Yes, Merlin Mann singlehandedly destroyed by world in the best way with a single blog post (It was the initial impetus for these ‘thank-you blogs,’ and I’ll write a proper one soon) but I just wanted to get this out before Monday.

So… it shipped.

Thanks again.

I’m starting a pretty insanely awesome new job on Monday, as well as making some changes to the way I write/create online. This week, I’m taking some time to give shout-outs to a few of the people/things that helped me get to a point where this opportunity turned into a reality. This is part two.

A few years ago, for a reason I totally forgot, I went to Bob Saget’s Wikipedia entry. Once there, I learned perhaps the greatest piece of trivia ever: Bob Saget was the commissioner for an independent wrestling organization.

Any mention of that fact has been deleted from Wikipedia, but it was up long enough to introduce me to CHIKARA. This all happened at a point when I hadn’t paid any attention to wresting for a while, and CHIKARA’s combination of great in-ring action and awesome storytelling (wrestling ice cream, people) drew me back into the fold.

CHIKARA lacks a TV deal, so the easiest way to get involved in the action is through the Podcast-a-Go-Go, a ten minute weekly show featuring bits of recent matches. I can’t tell you how good it is, and how refreshing it was to find some kind of wrestling that amused me again.

This post isn’t about CHIKARA, though. At the end of the Go-Go, the hosts would rattle off a list of different Websites and projects, including Smart Wrestling Fan and A Wiggly World.

It turns out one of the driving forces behind the production (and occasional host) of the Go-Go, a man delightfully named Wiggly Wiggly, was up to a lot of other stuff. When I first started getting into CHIKARA, Wiggly was attempting to make a living podcasting.

I should clarify. He was attempting to eek out a living giving away podcasts about professional wrestling, video games and (essentially) atheism, and doing it without the benefit of any prior celebrity. He was trying to get by on the donations from the audience that digs that stuff, which I know from experience is often unemployed young students. Not exactly a cash cow.

You could tell by listening to any of the work it wasn’t easy. It sounded terribly difficult at parts, and yet the work kept coming out, week after week, even when it seemed he wasn’t sure it would make it out.

Things have changed since I started listening. He’s left the pro wrestling podcast (which immediately went drastically downhill, though he still handles multiple duties on the CPAGG), drastically re-vamped the videogame podcast (which is 110x better, and you should totally listen to here), got married (after an on-podcast proposal), and got a job.

If you want to take a cynical approach, that last bit might indicate that the professional podcasting experiment failed (and Wiggly’s expressed some of these same sentiments), but I think that’s really myopic. It turns out it’s just insanely hard to make any kind of living podcasting, especially if you haven’t built an audience for yourself somewhere else. 

No, he didn’t get bought out by Viacom and offered studio space in L.A. to start a media revolution. But he did find a devoted audience and remains the only truly independent podcaster who creates content with a sound quality high enough it could be coming from NPR. He’s also built a pretty decent community around his projects, and the day We Talk Games pops up in iTunes is pretty much the best day of the month.

All of that exists only because he was willing to put himself on the line. That’s the takeaway for me. He took some big risks, made some big sacrifices, and created more than a few really awesome things in the process.

I’m so envious of that act, of trusting your ability to create to the point of putting a lot on the line to see exactly how far your skills can take you. 

Wiggly took those steps in a way that was really public for those of us following along. And by doing that, he held doors open to let us follow him in our own way.

If you’re interested in checking out more of Wiggly’s work (and you totally should), his main portal is at www.wigglysworld.com. I can’t recommend We Talk Games strongly enough. Crazy good stuff.

I’m starting a pretty insanely awesome new job on Monday, as well as making some changes to the way I write/create online. This week, I’m taking some time to give shout-outs to a few of the people/things that helped me get to a point where this opportunity turned into a reality. This is part one.

If you’re wired the way I am, being a Radio/TV/Film student at Indiana State University is a unique experience. The department, at least during my time there, was something of a mash-up of a few faculty members who were really motivated and excited to be there, and others who were just treating the whole experience as a job, or were pretty darn misogynistic and homophobic. The first group of people make education incredible. The second group made it fucking intolerable.

Susan Kray killed my desire to succeed in filmmaking. Despite the incredible work of Dr. Tenerelli, Dr. Clarkson, and John Ford (Facebook friend first name basis, what?!) she pretty much ruined the department for me as well. Dr. Kray managed to turn a screenwriting class into a formatting class, stripping out any aspect of creativity and turning it into a “guess what I’m thinking” contest where the final goal was to turn out product as close as possible to something that would star John Travolta and Jennifer Aniston (not in a good way).

If I remember correctly, that experience was pretty much the same for everyone. But we all reacted differently.

If Dr. Kray was the one who murdered my film career, Ronald Short was the one who got me through the funeral.

Ronnie is a ridiculously dedicated filmmaker, who just happens to be an ex-classmate, ex-roommate and ex-dart partner of mine, and we sat through the disaster that was Kray’s class together. And while I was busy throwing in the towel and coming up with ways to justify not caring about the class, Ron kept writing. Maybe more importantly, he kept caring about what he was writing.

The author/blogger Seth Godin has this whole thing about how important it is to “ship.” Whatever you’re doing creatively, writing, filmmaking, blowing glass, the most important part of the process is shipping. I’m notoriously bad at shipping, Ron excels.

 Ron’s definitely a person that, had I met him five years earlier or later, I’d be besties with. As it is, I consider him a good friend who’s opinion on pretty much everything creative I trust. The reason he’s on this list, though, is that is was impossible to be around someone with so much passion, so much drive for filmmaking without realizing you’d never be able to compete. 

My passion for filmmaking stopped at the point in the process right after the idea is hatched. I love scenarios, I love characters, I love dialogue… and I hate writing ninety minutes of it. 

It took seeing what that passion to ship movies actually looks like to realize it wasn’t what I really wanted to be doing.

Thanks, Ron.

If you’re interested in any of Mr. Short’s work (and you totally should be), follow him on Twitter or read his blog.

April 5th starts something new for me. 

My boring desk job in Muncie is morphing into a pretty exciting creative job in Muncie and Fishers, my checking account is turning into something a little less anemic, and it seems entirely plausible my RAZR is going to be upgraded to something that is used by people with grown-up jobs. And sitting a week away from this shift, it’s pretty much the most crazy/awesome thing ever.

The weirdest thing about it is how the whole thing has played out. I walked into an entry-level position in a field I knew nothing about, and sixish months later, I’m sliding into a job that seems pretty close to exactly what I would have drawn up for myself leaving grad school.

I feel like I’ve had so little to do with this process. Each step of the personal progression I’ve made over the past few years has been influenced by so many diverse groups of people (both people I know and, well, internet people, mostly) that it’s hard to tell where input has started and where my blatant aping of them ended. 

So, with the five work days left before this switch happens, I’m laying it all out there. Monday through Friday, I’ll be putting some words and pictures in this space, trying to pay back just a little of what I’ve taken gratis. It won’t be near enough, and it might come off as a lot of navel-gazing, but I feel like it’s (literally) the least I can do. 

And things start new on the 5th.