A 2005 Case Study
In 2005 I created this playlist for myself and began doing it every morning for about a year, and on-and-off for another year after that. What were the results and impacts? Why did I quit doing it?
Let’s start with, “Where I was in April 2005?”
I was broke. I had started working full time on film in 2003. I had spent about 30k on a film project called Unspoken Things that was becoming a long drawn-out process. It had morphed from a short film into a 60-minute film, into a film that had dozens of new scenes added, new cast and a reworked storyline. Up until that point the longest edit job I had done on one of my videos was 42 hours. I had now spent over 2,000 hours editing and re-editing this film. I had so little money that I daydreamed of the day I could fill up my whole tank (I had a 2-door Honda Civic = not a big tank) and have a $20 dollar bill in my car just in case I had forgotten my wallet. I was also more depressed than I have been in my life at any other time.
When I started working on film in 2000 my website quickly became watched from around the world. My genre: headcam mountain biking videos and other outdoor activities. I had viewers and comments from people in every continent of the World. Googling myself resulted in 30 pages (300 websites) that mentioned me before it came up with any other possible matches, including ones about the news anchor Bob Schieffer. This was before YouTube was a thing. This was before GoPro was a thing. National Geographic took interest in a video I did on the 24 Hours of Moab and hired me to help make a segment for their Today show. Honda hired me to make them 3 videos for the launch of the Honda Pilot. I entered a music video competition for Box Car Racer on MCA Records - and won first prize. I was a natural. Next up: try one feature film and one documentary to see where I wanted to go next.
It had been a couple of years since I had received any external validation of my art. Unspoken Things consumed me. I didn’t make new videos for my website. I no longer felt like the Golden Child that, up until that point of my life, I had believed myself to be.
November of 2004 was my low point. I was years into Unspoken Things with nothing to show for it. The film consumed me. I had worked my experiences of loss into the script and was dwelling on unanswered pain and questions about the death of my cousin, and later, a mentor - both from suicide. The subject was tough for me. I even altered the death of one of them in the film to an accident instead of a suicide because I didn’t know how to take on the topic directly. It was dark; and a person, “goes where they look”. Further, I wanted to take film seriously and so I became serious. I watched hard films, I studied art films, I was careful not to fall into frivolity and lightness from Rom Coms and other seemingly-worthless Hollywood movies - that didn’t go well in the art film circles.
I had started getting a terrible image in my head, probably seeded from the loss of my cousin. When something major would go wrong I would see myself, having shot myself in the face. The image would flash into my consciousness, I would wince, and then it would go out again. Then it started happening at the smallest incidents, like the slightest of insults or being cutoff in traffic. I had no control of it. The lowest day came when I was sighting in my rifle for hunting season. The same rifle I had used in the movie. A rifle also being the method by which my cousin took his life. I can’t remember my thoughts exactly. Actually, I think my mind was unusually quiet. But it dwelled in darkness and I laid on my back directly in the snow, on the ground, with that rifle across my chest. I laid there a long time.
That scared me, and I knew I had to get control. I knew I had to counteract my mind.
Only a few years before I had a strong mind. I actively trained mental toughness. I practiced working with “the captain” (conscious mind) and “the crew” (unconscious mind) to be able to do backcountry endurance races that lasted over a hundred miles, and forty hours - without rest. I knew and was trained in the power of thought. How had it gotten away from me? And so I promised myself that every time that grotesque image came into my mind I would put on a huge shit-eating grin and repeat positive affirmations 10 times in a row. After a few weeks the mental flashes started to subside. They went from many times per day to once every few days. After a few months they appeared only weekly. Later it was further improved, but they still came periodically … and I was diligent to put on that grin as soon as one appeared. I did my affirmations each time, immediately. I combatted them.
5-months later, April 2005 found me trying to rebuild some mojo. This playlist was part of that process. I had to get strong again - mentally and physically.
What were the results?
I started the morning practice April of 2005.
In June 2005 I got a job outside of film making the most money I had ever made up to that point in my life.
October 16th 2005 I bought my first house.
Early 2006 I began editing for Serac Films in the night 10pm-2am, working with Michael Brown to try and infuse documentaries with narrative-style stories.
I was doing great at my job and got hired as en employee. I got promoted to a bigger role.
I was nominated for the Denver Community Leadership Forum and was able to deeply invest in that experience with the self confidence and moxie I had build over this timeframe. In turn, that deep investment created even more momentum.
I finished my film Unspoken Things.
Did the morning practice create all of this? It certainly played a role. It both helped sustain the commitment and acted as a lens, focusing my energy.
Why did I stop?
I am still evaluating that question and don’t have my thoughts together enough to share at this time. It is a different story for a different day, but in the end I took the next big step and, in doing so, lost this practice in favor of a more simple protocol. It seems like that should have been temporary, but that may be jumping to conclusions. It wasn’t until 2011 that my intentions returned to the same place as when I started this practice. That push lasted for 4 years. It seems to be restarting again in 2021.
Perhaps this type of practice is periodic in nature and should be allowed to go through cycles. Perhaps my failure to continue it has led to uneven results and cycles. Maybe as an older and wiser man I will know the answer to this question. Or maybe I can find an answer by looking at other times I applied strategies that worked and then stopped when the results started rolling in.