How do we restore trust in not only the media, but in the process of exchanging reliable information on a mass scale without perverting the message or quality of content along the way?
Explore a photo gallery of a recent photo shoot with Little Skull Photography here in Sarasota themed around the idea of censorship and blind faith.
This article is a modified version of a post I made in my journal a while back. If you enjoy it, please share it with a friend who might need to hear the same words.
It’s how I make my living, and it’s the best compliment you could ever pay me.
The last six years have been the most difficult years of my life.
At 32, I am already acutely aware of life’s finite nature, and I often find myself questioning the purpose of my entire existence.
I’ve always been a deep thinker, but sometimes you need time to pass in order to clearly see the points on your path towards purpose. To be able to look back and realize how many of those little moments ended up becoming the beginning of something much bigger.
Exploring those thoughts is what prompted me to start this blog, and has allowed me to learn more about myself than I ever wanted to know. It has been the best therapy anyone could ever ask for and recently, it allowed me to understand how much certain events have changed the entire trajectory of my life. A picture that only became clear to me ten years after its full effect had been felt.
Long after the decision to drop out of college or the nights I wasted drinking and gambling the pain away in a pool hall as opposed to dealing with the pain directly.
Long after my first move to Florida, or any of the other seemingly random decisions which have lead me to my current path.
A path that was riddled with impulsive behavior, squandered success, missed opportunities, marriage, divorce, financial hardships, and five cross-state moves.
I’ve worked as a lifeguard, spent almost 10 years as a “sales-slave”, almost subjected myself to a career as an empty suit, and even spent some time as a kitchen bitch. Add in some questionable character decision, and well, let’s just say that the university of life has taught me some pretty interesting lessons.
A lost soul searching for purpose.
Most people look at this set of “experiences” and use it to define who they think I am, or what they think I am capable of.
They see a college dropout who had a few good years in insurance sales, and hasn’t been able to keep a job since. They see a smart kid with some potential, but they fail to see the real me.
They don’t see the tenacity it takes for a 20 year old to move 1,000 miles from home, with nothing more than $100 bucks in his pocket and a desire to change the world. They do not see the unending desire to do, to be, someone… something… special.
Related: 7 Reasons Why You Will Never Do Anything Amazing With Your Life
They don’t take the time to get to know the guy who failed in life at 27 and had to move back home to mommy’s basement for 2 years while getting back on his feet.
They don’t appreciate the humility and desperation I felt after learning about my ex-wife’s affair, the struggles with addiction, and the lack of communication which ultimately led to our divorce.
They do not understand the amount of time I spent alone, lost, and depressed. They can never know what it feels like to come that close to ending it all.
Which is why I share these personal posts publicly
Because I feel like not enough of us walk around willing to be weak. Willing to show off the pain in order to allow others an opportunity to find strength in that weakness.
As if we were not allowed to share these parts of ourselves with the world. As if we might become too powerful if we all realized that we are all fractured in one way or another.
If we could relinquish the fear of what others think of us, or how we might be judged, and then came together as a powerful Frankenstein of individuality. A collective of miscellaneous parts, all with the same purpose.
But the popular world we live in forces us to hide these parts of ourselves, from everyone. As if the world saw them only as ugly scars instead of looking at them as a beautiful part of what defines each of us as individuals.
For me, these experiences are what give me the strength to stand here in front of you, naked, but not afraid!
Which leads me to the purpose of this post
One of my more popular articles over the last few years deals with the concept of finding your real world superpower.
If I could have picked my superpower, it would have been the ability to fly, or control time. Instead I was given the ability to leverage my art and my words in a way that allows me to instantly share my unique thoughts and ideas with millions of people all around the world.
Which in its own way, is kind of like traveling through time…
It’s a power which leaves me feeling inexplicably driven to produce. To create and devour information.
Like a human version of Google, I aim to ingest as many thoughts and ideas as I can, in order to more clearly form my own opinions. Because the more I test my so called “crazy thoughts”, the more I realize that they might not be that crazy after all.
As if the more I share, the more I realize that we are all the same. And in that quest, I have found my purpose.
In the idea that I might be able to openly explore the struggles in my life in an attempt to help you find direction in yours. In the idea that I might inspire even one other person towards their path, and that they might in-turn, do the same for someone else.
So I’m not sure where this path will lead me over the next few years, but I’ll keep pushing forward in order to see it through to the end. If only for the fear of turning around, only to find that I was closer to completion than I am in retreat.
Learn everything you need to know about where we have been and where we are headed here at Raymmar.com.
An in depth article that explains how a single blog post changed my life, and why you should start building your own personal online brand.
After blowing the first Unhireable Podcast, I’ve decided to release the individual segments as separate videos.
This first one is a deep dive into what people think it means to be Unhireable.
To get a diverse range of opinions, we went out to the Mall at UTC (and promptly got kicked out), stopped by the HuB to ask some entrepreneurs, sat down with the founder of Sarasota Day, and even interviewed a few randoms out on the street. All with the specific intent of finding out what people think it meant to be unhireable.
It’s part of a long term project we are working on here at Raymmar.com, and is an idea we will be exploring further in our future videos.
Were you surprised by any of the answers?
What do you think it means to be Unhireable?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
- NSFW – Language & other things your boss won’t want you to see while you’re at work.
- Skip to 1:16 to get past the blue disclaimer screen of death.
- Skip to 4:23 to get into the meat of the opening. (It’s actually a pretty good podcast once you get past the technical miscues.)
Tonight we tried to run our first live podcast. It didn’t go so well.
It’s kind of ironic actually. We pre-produced a funny intro video that showed us screwing up the live stream, and then actually screwed up the live stream. We thought it would be a funny way to open up our new live segment, but it turns out the joke was on us.
At the end of the day, we did run into some technical difficulties, but the truth is that we should have been more prepared.
In typical Raymmar fashion, I wanted to go all in, without really knowing the depth of the water I was jumping into. But don’t worry, I’m a good swimmer. Over time, I know this will all get better, and even though we screwed up, we did a lot of things right.
To be completely honest, my biggest concern was letting all of you down. Those of you who wanted to watch, but couldn’t. Those who set aside time to be there and then found a blank screen when you showed up. I want to personally apologize for that. This is all part of a learning process, and I appreciate your patience as we figure it all out.
And even though we did not “succeed,” we did learn a few lessons from fucking up our first live stream.
1: Test Everything… Twice
We thought we double checked everything, but in the end, it was something simple that did us in.
We tested the ability to broadcast live before the show and it worked perfectly. Then, in an effort to optimize the production process, I decided to use the auto broadcast feature on the encoding software we are using. Whoops.
After realizing that the broadcast had not begun on time, we tried again a few times manually, finally getting it to start streaming, but inadvertently starting the stream in a new feed instead of sending it to the previously scheduled event on YouTube. This created a new URL for our broadcast, which meant we actually did broadcast live last night, but unfortunately not many people saw it.
2: Give Yourself Twice the Time
If this is your first time trying to produce a show live, you should plan on spending twice the amount of time you think it is going to take you, if not more. There are all sorts of hidden hurdles that will jump out to derail you so make sure you give yourself enough time to navigate all of the obstacles that are bound to pop up.
Tyler and I worked our assess off in the weeks leading up to this live stream, trying to produce a few of the segments ahead of the show, but timing them up, cutting them just right, and packaging everything up for the live broadcast was more time consuming that we initially expected. And although we messed up big time, we did get a few things right, and I look forward to learning more on the way towards the bigger vision.
3: Keep It Simple Stupid!
We tried to complicate the show in an attempt to tell a better story. But at the end of the day, those complications cost us the quality we were looking for. Moving forward we will simplify the entire process to eliminate some of the moving parts.
Additionally, I feel like as I am typing these “lessons,” I am just repeating things to myself that I knew before we started. I guess I just thought we could pull it off, and to be honest, we almost did. Unfortunately, in the world of live broadcasts, “almost” is about as good as not-at-all.
4: Keep it Short
In retrospect, trying to do a full hour for our first live stream might have been a little too ambitious. We may need to take some time to build our audience before too many people devote an hour of their day to tune in live.
We definitely should have spent more time working on shorter segments, producing them ahead of time, and then getting a feel for how to string them all together over time. Instead we tried to cram a months worth of work into a week and a half. This leaves the podcast feeling a little scatter brained. Not to mention, the fact that I am the talent and the producer, which made it hard for me to direct my focus completely in one place.
Moving forward, we will stick to telling short stories, and then we will start a recap show where we talk about all of the content we have created since our last recap. Maybe we start this once a month, and slowly move towards a more regular show schedule.
5: Practice Practice Practice
We were under the gun to get all of the content produced ahead of time, and at the cost of doing one thing right, we did it all wrong. We left ourselves no time for a dry run, or dress rehearsal. We should have failed inside of test run, not on live airtime.
At the end of the day, I think we were just a little too ambitious here, and I think we learned some valuable lessons, even if we did screw some things up.
And if I am being completely honest, I think this makes for a way more interesting start up story.
For those who made it all the way down to this part of the article, then you might want to bounce around the first show below. We’re not going to make a big stink about it, but I am going to leave it up as a reminder of where we started.
We also think it might be a good faith gesture to our audience, to show that this is all part of a learning curve, and that we are planning on sharing everything on this journey with you. Even the shitty parts.
So stay tuned, I promise this will all get better as we go.
Until then, thanks for your patience.
Regards,
Welcome to the ground floor of the ray.do network. Learn more about our new podcast, and how you can get involved here at Raymmar.com
Being your own boss can be hard, but it can also provide the ultimate pay off.