If you’ve been listening to the podcast or following me on any of the social medias, you would know that right around Christmastime we purchased our first, and hopefully only, new home. If you’ve ever purchased a home, you will know how much that whole process SUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKSSSSSSSSSS!!! That’s not even counting the whole packing up everything, moving, unpacking, and cleaning the old house out with the miniscule hope of getting back any part of your deposit. There’s just so many different verifications and meetings and reverifications and documents and reverifications and processes and reverifications followed by a marathon session of signing so many documents that you start forgetting how to actually spell your name. Have I mentioned it sucks? Just checking… But we did it, and in mid December we moved in to our brand new, never before lived in, home in a gorgeous neighborhood.
(more…)I Just Can’t Sell Myself
Recently I have mentioned that I’ve been looking into starting a career in voice over. Between my time behind a mic podcasting, and the handful of times I’ve been asked to do character reads for friends’ podcasts, I’ve found that I really enjoy the work. At the same time I’m also much more actively looking into working as a podcast editor. As much as it is the part of podcasting that most people truly hate, I actually like doing it. I enjoy getting to see the transformation from raw audio into a finished product. Unfortunately for me, both of these ventures are forcing me to do something I’ve never been particularly good at. I don’t know how to sell myself.
One of the things about me, and in turn the Odd Dad Out Podcast, is that I have always been better at promoting others above myself. It’s just sort of a thing about me. When I enjoy something, I tend to talk about it, at great length, whether you want me to or not. The thing is, I wouldn’t really say that I’m an especially great salesman. That line in and of itself is kind of a bad omen for my future in business. But the thing that I am, without a doubt, is passionate. I am passionate about music. I am passionate about podcasting. I am passionate about my friends. And I am especially passionate about sharing the things I love in a way that nobody can deny. I may not necessarily be able to sell you on my things, but you will surely know that I stand behind it 100 thousand percent. Somehow I have to find a way to take that passion about others and turn it inward to be able to promote myself.
It just feels strange to me to tell others about how great I am. I’ve always been more of a shower rather than teller. I have always felt that my work should speak for me. Unfortunately, when you are trying to get work in the first place, you’ve gotta do some talking to get them interested in seeing what you can do. That’s the number one area I have to work on, and I know it’s going to be a doozy. Aside from my time on mic for podcasting, I’m not the best at talking to people. Now, anybody who knows me would probably say differently, but it’s very different rambling on with co-workers about things in my life and talking to prospective clients about how I will be the best man for the job they need done.
Of course, I’m still very much in the baby stages of both of my business ventures. I know that it will probably drive me nuts trying to learn to sell myself and my services to people. But I know that if I don’t learn to get out there and show the world what I can really do, I’m going to fail. And after 33 years, for the first time in my life, I think I really know what I want to do when I grow up. Of course it’d take me this long to figure this out. After all, it did take me 30 years to figure out my favorite color.
Adam’s Rants: I’m Not THAT Young
I have, what I think is, a common situation with my wife. I am older than she is. Specifically, I’m about 4 years older than she is. I could be completely wrong about this, but I think that it is fairly “normal” for the man in a relationship to be slightly older if the couple aren’t essentially the same age. Anyway, I mention this because I have been cursed with eternal youth and to this day still get carded any time I have to purchase anything that may require ID (primarily alcohol.) My wife on the other hand never gets carded for anything. It’s not like she looks like she’s older than me or something. She doesn’t. She doesn’t really even look her age, at least to me. But she does look like she’s older than 21. Come on! We have 4 kids! Our oldest is a 3rd grader. Mathematically we would have to be over 21. My wife gets horribly upset when she decides to buy wine and she doesn’t get carded for it. I on the other hand get carded every single time, and I’m 4 years older than she is.
Odd Dad Out: Sunshine Summit 2018
It was such a blast getting to be part of the Sunshine Summit 2018. Technical difficulties aside, it was a great time and thank you again to Heather Welch from Sunshine & PowerCuts for allowing me to be a part of this awesome event.
Blogging Blogging Blogging…
So why don’t I do it? I’d love to have some really upstanding answer. I’d love to be able to say, ” My children are too important to spend all of their young lives in front of a computer.” Or maybe, “My obligations as a father are simply too crucial to escape.” But really the truth of the matter is, I’m just kind of lazy.
Now I’m not talking about the kind of lazy where I don’t get out of bed until noon. My younger boys are 2 and 4. That is NOT an option. What I mean is much more a sort of master procrastinator, lazy. But even that is sort of a stretch. Besides the fact that I am in fact quite busy wrangling my boys during the day, and the fact that I do put my children before other things in my life, a lot of it just comes from not wanting to do it.
A big part of my ability to continue do my podcast has been my ability to improvise just about everything I do on the show. I don’t want to write it all out. That’s why I do my show the way I do. But here’s the thing; it’s REALLY good for the show for me to write. Google and other search hubs cannot search audio. It doesn’t matter what I say on my podcast, google cannot hear it. In order for anything I produce to be searchable, it has to be in print on a webpage. And the more things there are on that webpage in print for the little robots to search for, the more likely they are to direct things to your (my) webpage.
So, with all that in mind, I am going to try to write more. Maybe I’ll just ramble like this and get thoughts out that I don’t express in the show. Maybe I’ll just take my stories from the show and write them out. I don’t know. What I do know is that I need to be writing more, or at all. What I also know is that it is highly likely I’m just writing this to myself and nobody will read it besides the crawler bots from Google. Hello Google bots…
Adam’s Rants- The Objectification Objective
The Objectification Objective
Here’s the twist. I’m not complaining about objectification. In it’s own way, objectification is a personal goal of every person on Earth. You’d be hard pressed to find a person that wouldn’t want “somebody” to stare at them thinking, “I want a piece of that.” No, not everyone, but at least that special someone. Even in that capacity it is still objectifying someone. Why do women wear sexy clothes, so others will look at them. You may get the excuse of ” it makes me feel better about myself.” Well you don’t feel better if nobody is looking. You don’t wear the wonder bra for your personality. On the same token, a man will go to the gym, and primp and groom, and show off just so women will look at him and fantasize about sex. People don’t stare at brains. Objectification isn’t all bad. There’s an entire industry based on it. It’s called “modeling.” The point is that everyone wants to be seen as a sexual object to somebody at some point. Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t bullshit about it.
Am I a Nerd or a Geek?
Am I a Nerd or a Geek?
So, if you actually know me, or have listened to my show for very long, you may have figured out that I am kind of a nerd. Or am I a geek? That is the question at hand isn’t it.
Not that it’s an idea that has plagued me or anything, but once a thought pops into my head it is difficult to kick it until I think it through. Such is the case now. I’ve always said that I am kind of a nerd. I was good in school. I picked up a few college credits early. I aced every class with hardly any effort. By most interpretations, I would be called a nerd. I’ve also been a video game fan, and comic fan, and movie fan… I guess I’m not really helping the nerd argument here.
Nowadays there is quite a dividing line between what is a “Nerd” and what is a “Geek.” Honestly I never really knew or cared that there was a difference. But, since the thought popped into my head, I just had to look it up. I had to see where I actually fall in the whole nerd-geek spectrum. So, I looked into it and according to Urban Dictionary a “nerd” is somebody who is smart but not very social. They don’t talk much and have few friends. They are generally nice but lack the social skills to go out and make friends. This sounds a lot like me. “Geeks,” on the other hand, socialize but it is usually based around some passionate obsession. Comic books, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and other such groups come to mind.
Honestly I’m not really digging these definitions. I found a couple infographic things to try to make more sense of it, but they just made things more complicated.
To break this one down for me, I personally can go either way with coffee or soda, maybe more toward coffee. But then I live in t-shirts and sneakers and have played guitar for 17 years. But I also am both a cat and dog lover. So I’m leaning more geek on this one.
So in this one I do have a particular interest in academics, but my knowledge also has that mundane to encyclopedia thing going. I am absolutely introverted and generally socially challenged despite being quite long winded and hosting a comedy podcast. On the nerd side, I absolutely have a wide range of generally impractical skills just because of my interest in everything, but that blends into both having an interest in movies and games. I’m absolutely a fan of new gadgets. They are like new shiny toys. I don’t even know how to call it on this one. I’m once again pretty split on where I fall.
So what have I learned here? Apparently my chronic indecisiveness extends even to this most superficial element of my personality. It’s bad enough that I can’t pick out what I want to eat at a restaurant easily, but now I can’t even figure out if I’m a nerd or a geek. But really does it matter? Yes it’s both a very profound and utterly stupid question. I don’t require a personal definition of what I am. I don’t have to fit into one particular category. Honestly I feel better not being one or the other. Nobody should be just one thing, or obsess over labels. You be you and I’ll be me, in all my smart-assed indecisive geeky nerdom.
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