@ Hotel cafe in Hollywood
In 2011 I was in a creative slump. I moved to Los Angeles a few years prior and was occasionally playing at clubs as a mediocre one man looping guitar/sampler guy. I was going through an identity crisis without the band, friends, and family that carried me and my massive ego through my twenties.
In between walking the dog around Hollywood and working part time as a LEGO engineer, I started a blog called Daily Cafe + Video with the intention of writing regularly about video and music. As a semi-professional digital marketer, my goal was to better understand the dissemination of media, social platforms, online communities, analytics, and design. I sat down daily (with a cup of coffee) for 1-2 hours and searched through various video sites to aggregate and write about what inspired me that day. Most of the time, it included music. Occasionally it didn't. Looking back I realize that if the blog was about other artists, then I didn't actually have to spend all of my time trying to create something interesting.
I posted for 422 days before I decided to let it go. The weight was lifted.
The upside of letting go unfolded a fortunate series of events:
- The blog led to a conversation with my soon to be future co-founder of a social voting startup.
- That startup adventure lasted 3.5 years and overlapped with trips back to Denver. I became a unicorn and met a delightful circus pixie.
- Things got serious with the pixie. I moved home. We had a baby.
- The collapse of a startup and a new baby forced me to reevaluate professional opportunities which led to a career in consumer facing product design.
Basically a butterfly flapped its wings from the old me messing with a blog to the new me who wears yoga pants and tinkers happily in a basement with a toddler, an angsty aerialist, and synthesizers.
Now, 7 years later, I'm starting this process again because I'm interested where this next experiment will take me. I'll have more details to come, but my plan is to document a new creative journey.
I hope you join me.