My childhood was ruined

And yours will be too.

 

Consuming is easier than Producing

Consuming is a lot easier than producing. Right? Because I can read an entire book in less time than it takes me to write an entire book, even if my book is half the size. I can eat a meal quicker than I can make it. I can play a game faster than I can design it.

Producing is just hard. Okay, so it takes a lot more time, right? But is that the only reason it's hard? Like, watching a 20 second shot and filming a 20 second shot are both 20 seconds, but there's so much more to producing than just recording it down. I need to storyboard it, get costumes, actors, cameras, and a bunch of other stuff before I even film the scene. Then I have to record the same scene dozens of times. Then there's the editing process, sound effects, and, unless you're Christopher Nolan, GCI effects to add.

All of thise individual pieces take time, and it adds up. I think it's more than just the fact that it takes longer though. Well, if you want to make quality content. There's an episode of Monk (Mr. Monk Gets Married) where a person hides gold by melting it down and mixing it with ink, then writes in books to use the ink/gold, hiding the gold. That's a LOT of ink to get rid of, and a LOT of writing. So he just writes down random stuff. "June 12, 1856. Raining all morning. I had beef jerky for breakfast. There's a cloud in the sky that resembles President Pierce. This chair is squeaking. Something smells good. I love smoking 'tobaccy.' I just sneezed."

Anyone can write quantity, but it's quality that we're after. And, with the exception of Brandon Sanderson, people can't just write quality all of the time. They need to go back and re-write and revise and rework. I think that here is where the difficulty arises. When I produce, I want it to be quality stuff, not just a bunch of quantity. 

And so I think that that's the reason why producing is hard. Of course, I've heard people say that to get quality stuff you need a lot of quantity. Pretty sure I've heard that somewhere.

The post where I use speech to text to write everything.

So my Spring break is 2 weeks for the wine district. Last speaker was the first one and the seventh coming record will be the second 1. Because I'm a school teacher with a low-income. I decided to use these 2 weeks to work extra to make some extra money last week. I worked for.  Edible arrangements as a delivery driver in the subkind week. I'm going to be working as a substitute. Teacher for districts up near Phoenix, which are still on session next week.

Right now I'm using speech to text to write this on my pbone. I'm at my mother-in-law's house lying down on the couch and I thought I would write a blog post but I am too tired to actually type out all the words. So I thought that this would be a good way to get some ideas and thoughts out.

 Even though this speech to text messages up some words.  And the punctuation isn't the was just leave it as it is because AI think it's funny. It would be too much work for me right now to Go back and fix it.

You know, it stinks, as I just set out loud about 2 paragraphs worth of stuff, but my system wasn't recording it. It all so I have to go back and re-record it. My wife and I went out for a date last night and saw Kung Fu Panda 4. It was pretty good although it was sad that the fierce 5 wasn't in it. Maybe because I didn't want to pay the voice actors because it would be too expensive.  I know Angelina Jolie voices, tigress, Jackie Chan voices, monkey and Seth Rogen voices don't kick on. Oh I mean mantis, i don't know who voices crate and Viper. 

I'm doing Italian honduolingo and I have a 55 days straight right now. What won't?

I'm so tired because my little baby Kerry keeps waking up in the middle of the night and crying and I try to comfort her and then she falls asleep, but when I try to put her back in her crab she wakes up again and I'm trying to help how do I get some sleep? Anyway, I just really wish the cure. I would get some more sleep and actually sleep in the balls and nights stuff crying.  I'm tired.

Well, this was pretty interesting to see if the AI system doing speech to text was able to figure out everything I was saying and it looks like it was not, but Hey adds a little bit of humor to the text to the post, doesn't it?

We don't talk about Bruno. But why?

No no no, we don't talk about Bruno. But-

Okay, like, one major plot point in Encanto is when Mirabel finds the prophecy and her dad finds it, Dolores overhears. And because of her nature she can't help but tell everyone she can. Fine. Whatever. I can buy that. But then near the end of the film, Dolores, the one that can't keep a secret, is all like, Yeah I heard Bruno every day and never told anyone, it leaves you questioning. So can she or can't she keep a secret? 

And Bruno was literally just living in the walls of the house the entire time? Can the house keep a secret then, because casa surely knew, right? 

Anyway. Wait, could Bruno hear everyone singing about him? And why don't they want to talk about him? Because they thought he was evil? Heck, we think Hitler is evil but we still talk about him. The only evil guy that people don't like talking about is Volde- uh, I mean he-who-must-not-be-named. So why don't they talk about Bruno? Because they are ashamed that they ostracized him from society by judging him too harshly? 

By the way, totally head cannon, but I think that Bruno is Alberto's (Luca's friend in Luca) father. Green eyes? The time periods match up? Alberto uses the phrase "Silencio Bruno"? Coincidence? I think not!

Under the Surface

Pressure like a drip drip drip that'll never stop. Whoa. Pressure that will tip tip tip 'til you just go pop. Whoa.

Sometimes life is just so overwhelming.

There are dozens of different things, all needing your attention, but you don't have the energy for them. You feel like your life is crashing down and you're drowning and tired and have no energy any more.

You know you should/could be doing things, like updating your blog or writing a book. But then your prep comes and you waste it on YouTube instead of writing and then you feel guilty. Or you start writing a blog post but it turns into a ran about how tough life is right now instead of being about anything worthwhile, like the Book of Mormon Escape Room you created which was a hit with the young men and young women's quorums. 

And work is hard and home life is hard and you have too many things and you don't know what to do.

Book of Mormon Audiobook

I am continuing my recording of me reading the Book of Mormon. This time I created its own YouTube channel, so people can find it easier. I am going to be caught up every week to whatever Come Follow Me is that week. Hopefully be way ahead, too.

Here is the link: The Book of Mormon Audiobook

Apology Video

 

What was it? What was Alex going to say? What did he say, and then backed away from?

This was posted on my "Filler Episodes" post, which seemed from the idea of filler episodes from Alex's own "Filler Episodes" post. 

Looking back, Alex's post was all about how he didn't want his life to be full of filler episodes and how he wanted zero filler episodes in his life. My post was about how our lives are filled with filler episodes and how we need to embrace it. In other words, looking back, my post kind of seemed like an attack on his ideas.

I want to be clear: I loved Alex's idea. I wrote my post not to tear him or his ideas down, or to bash them, or to say "well, those ideas stink. My view is better." Because I don't want to tear his ideas down, I don't want to bash him, and his ideas are awesome. But maybe he perceived my post like that, and write a comment along the lines of "Andrew, what the heck? Why are you attacking my very passionate blog post? How could you tell me to 'get over it' if my days weren't productive? Not cool dude."

So I want to apologize if that's how my post came across.

I think both of our ideas co-exist. Alex was talking mainly about progression, and how he didn't want a single day of his life to be spent idle and having life pass him by. The entire idea of his post, I feel, could be summated in: Keep progressing, every day. Which I agree with. The gospel says we need to continually progress, and if we're not, we're actually regressing. So Alex was on point. My post was saying that we need to live our lives today, or else we'll find our yesterdays empty. Which is also what Alex say saying: if you don't work at living your lives today, you'll find your yesterdays empty, nothing more than filler episodes on what should have been a chance for you to grow.

TL;DR: I'm afraid that I offended by brother by one of my blog posts when it wasn't the intention and we actually have the same idea on the topic and I wanted to apologize.

Or maybe I'm looking WAY too deep into this.