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Let’s lose 20 pounds and be less creative!

THE STORY SO FAR

• I'm best known for the series Everything is a Remix.

• I'm pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons.

• I'm seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life.

• I'm thinking about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule any of these statements.

Howdy folks!

I’ve written a new AI piece for the fantastic site Freethink, which is part of the Big Think media juggernaut. It’s called “Why artists shouldn’t fear AI.” It’s an adaptation of the last Everything is a Remix episode, Artificial Creativity, but it’s substantially revised and in some ways it’s a deeper exploration of the topic. (And in case you didn’t hear, the complete edit of Everything is a Remix 2023 is back online!)

I’m now on the new, decentralized social app Blue Sky. (Thanks Sebastian!) It’s still invite-only, but if you happen to be on there, come follow me. Otherwise, you can join the waitlist.

And one last thing before we proceed, I have a question for you: where do you compose ideas and do your thinking? It only takes a moment to respond and it’s anonymous.

Last week’s results looked like this. Clear winner: you folks like to learn by watching. Thank you to everyone who voted, and thank you also for your many helpful comments.

I’m choosing to be less creative

I wouldn't say I'm slaughtering my sacred cows lately, but I'm certainly worshipping them less. A new and somewhat shocking decision I finding myself making lately is choosing to be less creative.

Old Kirby would have found this choice radical, weird and probably sad. But creativity is a monumentally inefficient undertaking. It requires loads of exploration, experimentation and failure. I've done an incredible amount of all these over the years. A minority of this work has been published, the rest sits on my hard drive. Much of it is junk, but some of it isn’t.

I abandoned loads of ideas that got stuck, and I was always in a rush to get on to the next thing. After dropping a major video, which was the product of months of work, I didn’t do anything further with that material and just zipped along to the next thing. I have loads and loads and loads of research that never got used for anything.

Any kind of knowledge work is about exploration and exploitation. I’ve done a lot of exploring, and not much exploitation.

I don't need to chart new realms. I've already explored plenty. I’m looking to exploit my existing body of creative work and research: simplify, popularize, augment, transform, and commercialize. There’s still plenty of creative effort required, but it’s a more modest variety. The results of some of these efforts are starting to appear in the redesign of the Everything is a Remix website, which is currently underway.

Let’s lose 20 pounds!

Like many of you I’m sure, the last few years have not been kind to my waistline or my health. There was of course the COVID years, but for me, the major culprit was parenthood. Prior to having a baby, I’d finally gotten my diet and exercise pretty dialed-in after having yo-yoing weight my entire adult life.

The lack of sleep and relentless work of co-parenting sapped my willpower and resulted in me taking lots of shortcuts and craving ease wherever I could find it. I cannot deal with figuring out how to not eat pizza right now. I gained over 20 pounds, going from 190 to 212—or maybe more. I stopped checking the scale after a while.

The intensity of parenting has eased-up as we approach the mid-point of Kirby Junior’s second year and I now have the strength to get my health back in order and keep it that way. My goal is to get back down to 190 pounds. I’m 6’2” and this feels like a good weight for my frame, but I’ll reevaluate my goals once I get there.

This isn’t a short-term plan to drop some pounds, I’m changing how I eat forever. The approach I’ve chosen is pretty simple. It’s the Harvard Medical School plan plus the Mediterranean diet, which seems the consensus choice for overall best diet. (The Japanese diet is probably equivalent or even a bit better, but that’s hard for Western people like me to pull off.)

Red meat, flour, processed stuff, and sugary treats have been cut way back. Dairy and potatoes, both beloved staples of mine, have also been reduced. You can see the Harvard food pyramid here, which is my template.

My lifestyle is decently active. I love to get Little Kirby plenty of play and outside activity so when I eat well, the pounds zip off. I’ve already lost about 12 pounds—though I got a little assist from catching COVID, which knocked out my appetite for a few days. I’m already over half way to my destination.

The major difference I’m experiencing already is that I just feel better on my frame. I feel bouncier, quicker, and less achey. Basically, I’ve rewound my age about five years.

This is all still a work in progress. When life gets more stressful, my willpower lapses and my old habits score some wins. After a truly wretched recent day, I Doordashed Wendy’s and watched NBA playoffs. It was both glorious and immediately regrettable.

But I know my old ways just aren’t sustainable, and after getting off track, I just turn ‘round and head back in the right direction.

If your weight’s been creeping up over the years, losing some pounds really does make a big difference, not just to your long-term health but to how you feel right now. If you think this could help you, the Harvard plan and the Mediterranean diet work. Join me.

I'm also drinking salt for some fuckin' reason. Is this bullshit? I dunno but I have to say, I feel like it improves my energy. Maybe it's just the placebo effect but nowadays, I’ll take that placebo, thanks.

Happy post-Mother’s Day to all the moms! Have great week everyone!
Kirby

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The Latest From Kirby

Making binging work for you

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Howdy folks!

I have a burning question for you all: who are you? Let me know, what is your profession or area of interest? Replying only takes moments and it’s anonymous.

Here’s the results from last week’s poll. The unlikely winner: good ol’ paper! I was a little surprised by Apple Notes performance too. But as you can see, there’s not a lot of consensus here.

I found it hilarious how many people thought I was asking about a physical location. My Twitter friend Ronnie recently remarked on “the curse of knowledge,” a fallacy where we assume people know what we know, and here it is at work again.

On the topic of health from last week, Sheri mentioned Peter Attia’s Outlive and I also recommend this book. This Andrew Huberman interview is a good introduction. (Huberman’s podcast, by the way, is why I’m now drinking salt for some fuckin’ reason.)

And thank you to Jordan at Bodygym, who sent me a Bodygym kit! I’m definitely interested in gaining some strength because all the lifting of fatherhood has given me perpetual lower back pain. Jordan’s done a great job with his product and marketing and I look forward to chatting with him about how he did it.

To binge is human

I’m not blessed with a great memory. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not a talent. And yet somehow, I’m a very good researcher and have produced work at an academic standard.

How did I do this? Repetition. And by repetition, I mean repetition, repeating the same thing repeatedly over and over and okay I’ll stop.

I make plenty of highlights on my Kindle, but I’m not great at synthesizing the highlights into notes. (By the way, the cool kids are now using Readwise, which just launched an exciting-looking reader app.)

Rather than further processing what I’ve read, which frankly would be better, I tend to barrel ahead and consume more. To binge is human. But I’ve made this tendency work for me.

The crude but effective method I relied on was, of course, repetition. Y’know, repeating the same thing over and okay seriously I’m done. I consumed multiple books, articles, videos and docs about the same topic, and followed many different creators from the same realm. Sometimes I would even read the same book twice, and then re-read my highlights of that book several more times. (My most read book of recent years is Thinking in Systems. Few books have been as transformative for me. This is Not a Conspiracy Theory was deeply influenced by it.)

Repetition is your friend when learning. This method might not be efficient but it’s simple and effective. It’s good enough for most of us. But lately I stumbled upon an even better way to make binging and repetition work for me.

I’m reading lots of about business, productivity and mindset. These books are often padded, have way too many examples and are overall just super mediocre reads. But they do contain good stuff and I want that information. I’m finding Blinkist to be an excellent way to just get the good stuff. Often I’ll listen to these summaries when I’m out with little Kirby. My attention will fluctuate so I listen to interesting summaries multiple times. 

I’ve started a playlist here of some of the blinks that merit multiple listens. You can listen to these for free. I’m pretty sure anyway. I’ve never used this feature before so if your phone explodes and melts your face Raiders-style, don’t blame me.

When a Blink is especially good, I’ll read the full book—or at least parts of it. I used to consider it a badge of honor to read every page, but I don’t have time for that shit anymore.

Another cool service I found via Annie Duke is LIT Video Books. These are like abridged versions of popular nonfiction books (about an hour long) presented as little documentaries featuring the author. This is a new-ish service and they’re offering great deals right now. With this link, you’ll get 50% off, which works out to $5 per month. (You’ll get the discount code when you checkout.)

The repetition stack I’ve got right now is this.

• Listen to the summary on Blinkist

• If it merits it, repeat the summary once, twice or more

• Get the book if I want more depth

• Watch the videobook to get the ideas yet again, this time in video format

In the case of Allan Dib’s The 1-Page Marketing Plan, a nice concise marketing primer, I watched the video book first, then bought the book, and have listened to the Blinkist summary a couple times.

Listening to podcast interviews with authors is another good way to double up on their ideas.

That’s my formula, but there’s an infinite number of ways to do this. The more senses you can incorporate the better. Listen, read, watch. Feel and taste if you can!

That’s it for this week folks! Again, I wanna know more about you! Take a minute to tell me more here.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYONE!
k

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Networking is friendship

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Howdy folks! Happy long weekend to those of you who just had one!

This week is a longer message about loneliness and isolation and how I’m using business to address these problems for myself.

But first, here’s my weekly request of you: go to this form and tell me something. Take that however you like. The line is open. You write it, I’ll read it. It’s anonymous. Say whatever you like.

Last week I asked about what you all do. The top spot was developer, followed by designer. This is what I figured, though I didn’t know which order those would be in. Third place was business owners and fourth place was teachers. There’s also a fair amount of writers and filmmakers among you.

Also among my readers are a potter, a parole officer, a rabbinical student and even a magician/educator. These replies were anonymous so I have no idea whatsoever who that could be.

Networking is friendship

I’m naturally an introvert. I like to work, create, and ingest media. I can go way overboard with all these.

Those are the interests that emerged when I was a teen. But by my early-thirties, I’d done a good job of building a social life for myself. I lived in Toronto during this era and had a strong network of friends. We made comedy videos together, we played ultimate frisbee in Trinity Bellwoods Park, we had a regular book club where we took turns hosting and preparing meals from different cultures. My sister, niece and nephew were out in the suburbs and I could see them and take the kids to Canada’s Wonderland.

I worked freelance jobs as a graphic designer and had a fine middle-class income. But the work was dull and I yearned for something else. Nonetheless, this was the sweetest phase of my single adult life.

I met Nora in New York in 2006 and we decided we would live together in NYC. As much as I loved my life in Toronto, I wanted to find my thing, to get good. The best of the best congregate in New York and I was excited to go. I left Canada in 2007 which meant leaving behind my friends and family.

Life in New York was more about what you did, it was about work. This is where I ultimately launched Everything is a Remix and it was the period of my greatest professional success. I found my thing and I got good. But I also became more and more isolated. After I established myself as an ideas person, my main interest became pursuing knowledge as far as I could. After years of cramming this activity into evenings and weekend, I was in the fortunate position to go full throttle so I did.

Having a life just wasn’t that important. I had friends in New York and I’m still in touch with many of them, but we weren’t tight, these are the kind of friends you see every few months, rather than daily or weekly. During my time in the US, it’s mostly just been me and Nora. Most of my time was spent in the realm of media and technology.

This sort of tech-media dominated lifestyle used to be limited to a small minority of us, but for most people now it’s just life. The Covid years accelerated this trend and pushed everybody inward. Isolation and loneliness are now cultural defaults, you have to work to overcome them.

Three things have happened that to turn the tide on this for me.

The first was moving to San Diego. I didn’t expect this to help, but it did. I’ve been lucky to move to a tight-knit community and I’ve made lots of friends among my neighbors.

The second thing is being a parent. If your neighbors have a toddler and you have a toddler, you will hang out with them. Kids give everybody a reason. Me and little Kirby walk the hood first thing in the morning and again in the evening. We see all the neighbors and he plays with his friends. He throws balls, climbs fences, splashes in puddles, rides wiggle cars.

The third thing has been talking to a bunch of you folks. When I started doing Zoom conversations with some of you a couple months ago, I didn’t think it had anything to do with trying to reconnect with life again. I thought it was about researching and networking. And it was about that, but not first and foremost. 

I’ve spoken with entrepreneurs like Jeff Vinokur, Jay Acunzo, Adam Quirk and Jordan Terry. I’ve spoken with ideas people like Matt Klein. Most of these conversations have been with teachers. I’m interested in opportunities in education so I’ve spoken with Jeremy, Ted, Eamon, Smriti, Sandi, Joey, Peter, Joseph, John, Jason, Paul, Chris, Ben and his awesome students, and there are more to come.

These conversations have been a revelation. It’s been amazing to connect with people whose lives I’ve already been part of for many years. I’ve gotten to experience just how wonderful my fans are. I’ve somehow attracted awesome people to me. 

I have an agenda in these conversations. I’m seeking knowledge, I’m seeking opportunities, problems I can solve, notes I can take, areas where I can help. I’m trying to make money, preferably a lot of it and preferably fucking fast because I’m getting old.

But none of that is the point. I’m not thirsty. I don’t actually care if anybody I speak with can benefit me. I just love the conversations and I’m now a better listener and more present than I used to be, probably because I’m not itching to get back to chasing some intellectual Moby-Dick.

Alright, what does all this have to do with business?

In order to work hard and focus, I need purpose. You need purpose. The essential objective of business is money but money is not purpose. Nonetheless, I am indeed finding purpose in business.

Business is reconnecting me with life. It’s connecting me with people. Businesses exist to serve people. To serve people you need to be communicating with them deeply. You need to understand their problems and empathize with them. That’s my major interest right now: listening and finding ways to serve that fit my talents.

Out of these talks has arisen an actual promising business opportunity. It’s the sort of discovery I could have researched until I was blue-in-the-face and never would have found. I could have looked right at it and not seen it. I needed to talk to people to understand it. Here’s the broad strokes.

It turns out I’m popular with international schools (click the link if you want to know more about what that is). These schools are global, they’re growing, and the area where I can contribute is mandatory, not elective. I’m going to be creating workshops for international students and teachers. I’m working on a pilot presentation and I even booked my first paid workshop in the fall. (Thank you Eamon!) If you’re an IB teacher I haven’t talked with, reply to this email, I’d love to chat. (And thank you to Jeremy who was the first to bring this to my attention.)

Who knows where this will go but it has the qualities I’m seeking: scale, growth and stability. And it’s well-suited to my talents and interests. It’s a worthy contender and I found it by just having fun, pleasant conversation with lots of people.

Final thing.

Something happened a few times in these calls that I’ll admit caught me off guard: people told me they love me. Gotta say, this made me freeze. Remember, I’m an introvert. But I’ve started to just say “I love you” right back and it feels right and true. You guys have been connected to me for years and now I’m connecting back.

As usual, it’s me on the other end of these emails.

I love you all,
Kirby

P.S. Buy my shit you cheap asshole.

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The Ideas That Made Me

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

GREETINGS EARTHLINGS!

For this week’s question I’m going back to basics: where are you from and what’s your first language? It only takes seconds to respond, it’s anonymous and it helps me understand who you all are. Also, I command you to do it. (Form closes end of day Tuesday.)

Last week’s question was a beauty. I asked you all to just “tell me something” and you did! The responses were both feely and fascinating. I’ll elaborate after I’ve processed them more, but here’s a message that touched my dad heart.

My high-schooler has been touched by the grammar fairy and usually has no trouble writing well. They were having trouble on a school project. I told them to search for similar things to learn how others have presented the info. "But I can't just repeat what other people have already said." Of course not, but you can take inspiration and add your own interpretation… remember that Everything is a Remix thing? And the shirt I bought you? "Oh yeah."

The Ideas That Made Me

Lots of you are listening to my collection of book summaries. You can read or listen to these for free on Blinkist.

Paul Vahur wrote back and said he thought the collection was missing an important book, David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I couldn’t agree more. Getting Things Done is an essential book and if you haven’t read it you should.

This got me thinking, “What are the essential ideas of my life?” What ideas have become little background applications that chug along in my brain year after year?

Below is what I came up with. This is not a list of the most important ideas or the best ideas, these are the ideas that resonated with me the most deeply and changed how I think and live. With every video I’ve ever made, I tried to do the same thing in some small way. And in a different way, this remains what I aspire to do.

These are mostly listed in the order I encountered them. The links below lead to Amazon, and most of these can be found as summaries in my Blinkist collection.

Fun Fact #1: I was 34 when I started to get into nonfiction books and ideas. Before then, I was mostly into movies, music, fiction and blogs. A few years after getting into nonfiction Everything is a Remix was brewing and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Getting Things Done, David Allen
I discovered this book in 2006
I think Getting Things Done is the first powerful work system I ever came across. I don’t think I had any formal methods at all before this. In particular, Allen’s framing of capture was a big deal for me. I actually need to re-read this book because I’m sure it’s full of stuff that I do everyday and have forgotten I got them from Allen. (I likely found this through Merlin Mann, who was an outspoken acolyte at the time.)

Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Discovered in 2006
Flow gave a name to something I blissfully experienced but never knew what it was or had any idea how to recreate the magic. “Flow” is a psychological state of heightened experience where you are performing at the outer boundaries of your abilities, where the activity is not too easy and not too hard. The entire book isn’t required to get the idea. The summary, which is in my Blinkist collection, will be plenty for most of you.

Fun Fact #2: If you can pronounce “Csikszentmihalyi” you are officially a card-carrying member of the intelligentsia. 

The Waste Book or Commonplace Book, Various
Discovered in 2010
The “waste book” (Newton’s term) or “commonplace book” (Ben Franklin’s term) is simply your notes. It’s simply snippets of things you’ve encountered or thought: ideas, bits of writing, memorable phrases—anything that created a little spark in your mind and potentially can be used later. Tiago Forte popularized this idea most recently by calling it a “second brain.” This is actually something I was practicing for a few years before I had any idea it was a thing people did. I explain the wastebook process I used back then here. This is still a great way to work; you can do awesome shit with just that. (I think I might have discovered this idea through Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From but I’m not totally sure. That book was a big influence on Everything is a Remix.)

Mindfulness, Various
Discovered in 2010
This is something I found in a variety of ways and through no particular practitioner. Mindfulness is basically just being aware of the present moment and your emotional state. Meditation is a key component. It’s simple and endlessly difficult. I am actually bad at practicing mindfulness. I mostly don’t do it. But I always return to it. And being bad at mindfulness is far, far, far better than not knowing mindfulness exists.

Fun Fact #3: I haven’t meditated in… years! I’m gonna break that streak this week.

Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg
Discovered in 2012
Nonviolent communication is a type of communication focused on expressing feelings and communicating needs. In our personal interactions, we all have a tendency to make generalized, exaggerated declarations and then defend those statements. For instance, “You’re being inconsiderate because you never put your dishes in the dishwasher.” If this is instead expressed as something like, “I feel hurt when you don’t put your dishes in the dishwasher because I have a need to have my time respected. When you don’t put the dishes away, I have to do it for you.” It might sound kinda goofy but this shit works. This is trickier to grasp than mindfulness because it’s surprisingly hard to identify emotions and needs. And like mindfulness, it’s endlessly challenging to do and keep doing. An unusual quality of this book is that I remember finding the writing kinda hippy-dippy and corny. Whatever. Deal with it, it’s worth it.

Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows
Discovered in 2012
This is a titanic book for me. It’s the most accessible introduction to systems thinking and systemic thought. It’s what really gave some detail and features to the vague, amorphous concept of the system.Thinking in Systems is what spawned my series This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. If there’s a single idea that still needs storytelling development, though, it’s systems. If you’re a storyteller and want a challenge, this is a worthy one. Thinking in Systems is great but I think somebody out there can do better and bring these ideas to more people.

Hunt Gather Parent, Michaeleen Doucleff
Discovered in 2020
I’ve not read a lot of parenting books and I make no claims to be well-read, but this one resonated with both me and Nora deeply. It basically synthesizes traditional knowledge about parenting, mostly through Mayan cultures. To me, the modern Western style, typified by “helicopter parenting,” seemed excessively managerial. I think children need as much freedom and autonomy as is age-appropriate. A lot of parenting I saw seemed to both underestimate what children can do (no chores or responsibilities) and overestimate what children can do (exhaustive negotiations about things they aren’t yet mature enough to make decisions about). This book helped to clarify and systematize my values and to validate the best parts of my own upbringing.

Fun Fact #4: One thing I’m certain of about parenting is there’s a million ways to do it. Anything can work, including helicopter parenting.

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), Various
Discovered in 2019
This is related to the “waste book” concept. Personal Knowledge Management is essentially a systemization of this concept into a varying set of methods and tools. There’s no consensus way to do it. Zettelkasten, or Smart Notes, is the formative system. Tiago Forte uses PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive). PKM is a social creation that belongs to nobody in particular. Forte has great storytelling on this topic, but my favorite methodology is Nick Milo’s. Nick doesn’t yet have a single, definitive work, but I would start with his Obsidian for Beginners series.

Fact #5: I’ve said the word “system” 11 times in this email! I mean 12! Systems are my thing. Make that 13.

From Strength to Strength, by Arthur Brooks
Discovered in 2022
This is the most recent book to change my life. It’s about the transition that takes place somewhere in midlife, where we lose some mental speed and agility and have to change direction in order to suit our strengths. My email about resentment and disappointment resonated with a lot of you. I’m still sending out replies to that one. (If you missed that email, search your email for “Everything is a Remix now sustainably fueled by disappointment and resentment.”) If that message connected with you, you should read this book.

Fun fact #6: Strength (along with length) is a word I have never ever gotten used to spelling. I still type it wrong constantly.

Fun fact #7: I asked ChatGPT what words end with “gth” and it helpfully suggested width, growth, fifth, eighth, twelfth, breath, depth and yes, highsmith. Thanks superintelligence!

Everything is a Remix, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, et al, by Me
Started creating Everything is a Remix in 2009
Started creating This is Not a Conspiracy Theory in 2012
Fuck false modesty: by miles and miles and miles, the biggest influences on my life are my own stuff. Visit this newly renovated page to ogle them all. As I’ve collected them and tidied them up lately, I’ve watched some again and I’m immensely proud of the entire lot. A couple underrated ones are the Rogan Vs. Jones series, which I happened to press play on then got sucked into watching the entire 90 minutes, and The End: In Praise of Credits, which has a new level of meaning cuz, y’know, I’ve ended making videos. Every single one of these is something I wished existed and now it exists. The influence that they’ve had on my life is immeasurable, vastly beyond anything I merely read. Nothing will change you more than the thing you create yourself.

Use this link to save 50% on This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.(Offer expires June 16th!)

Things I’m into at the moment

• Blinkist
  Audio book summaries are one of my main media sources right now. You can listen to the books in my shared space for free. 

• LIT Video Books
  These are mini-doc versions of popular nonfiction. Really great deal right now.

• Tana
  I’m experimenting with merging notes and project management and it’s looking very promising. For PKM nerds, Tana is kinda like a combination of Roam and Notion. It’s still early and in beta so you need to get on the waitlist. (Sorry I have no invites!)

• Fathom
  Using this for Zoom call transcriptions and AI summaries. Works amazingly well, with only the occasional gaffe.

• Drinking fuckin’ salt for some reason

What are your essential ideas? Reply and tell me.

That’s it for this week folks! Be sure to let me know where you’re from and what’s your first language. Have a great week you and talk to you all next Monday!

Hugs and kisses,

k

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The Joys of Angry Rumination

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

I don’t know how many people perceive me as angry, but anger is like my thing. I love it. It’s my trusty go-to. I’m pretty good at managing it and directing it, so I’m not sure how many of even my closest friends know how much anger I lug around. To be clear, I definitely experience far more happiness than anger. By a lot. But I regularly experience episodes of concealed rage. It’s a problem I have.

I’m gonna talk about my anger problem this week. I’m sure many of you have the same thing—maybe worse, maybe not so bad. Or perhaps you have a similar experience but with a different emotion, like sadness, guilt, fear or anxiety. Maybe the person you beat-up in your imagination isn’t another person, it’s you. 

Many men, especially men of my era and earlier, had anger demonstrated to us. We were subjected to anger, we were even expected to be angry at certain times. If you don’t display appropriate anger, that’s not masculine.

I understand my anger decently. Anger and violence were pervasive dangers of my childhood. Brutal, fearful boys reigned the schoolyards in the time and place I grew up. I suspect the abuse they took from their fathers flowed down to the rest of us.

Anger is so embedded in men, some of us don’t even recognize anger as an actual emotion. I repeatedly hear “strong” angry men describe others (generally women) as “emotional.” They can’t even see that it’s them who are the most emotional people around by far.

But hey, let’s give anger its props.

Anger is one of the secret ingredients of creativity. I don’t know how you create without at least some anger. I remember watching the Mr. Rogers doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor and thinking “Wow, Mr. Rodgers waspissed off.” He had plenty of anger and it drove him to create something bold and different. Fred Rodgers had an edge.

The edge gives you direction, it gives you something to push against, something to defy. What you don’t want to be is every bit as important as what you do want to be.

I used my anger as creative fuel. Lots of my early comedy stuff was inspired by the anger I had over being subjected to homophobia. (I’m actually straight, but homophobes are quite unconcerned about your real sexual orientation.) Everything is a Remix was a swing at artistic narcissism and superiority. I fought against conspiracy theories because I was attracted to the intellectual combat. 

I’ve always liked good provocation, the kind of controversy that has a purpose and spurs an interesting debate. This sort of conflict helps us all attain higher understanding.

But like everybody less, I’m also a sucker for bad provocation. Stupid arguments can be even more engaging and addictive than substantive ones. The triumphs of performative assholes like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the sports pundit Stephen A. Smith are due to them making the biggest, ugliest arguments around.

This is the problem with living with anger. It’s indiscriminate. We don’t just get angry over good provocation, we also get angry over bad provocation—and probably even more so. Cheap shots enrage us most of all. Engaging arguments are often the most worthless.

One of my most embarrassing pastimes is angry rumination. I like to dwell on an argument or insult then improv out imaginary arguments, one after the other. It’s like I’m workshopping different comebacks to the points of my opponent—who is an asshole and fucking idiot, by the way. I seek the ultimate comeback, the kind of righteous zinger that reduces my adversary to wracking sobs of shame.

I get especially angry when I think people are wrong, stupid, or domineering. And I have to admit, it really pisses me off when men think I’m not masculine and therefore weak or pathetic. The anger I experience over that, by the way, is strong, manly and virile and really very impressive.

Sometimes I only ruminate briefly, but especially toxic stuff can loop for weeks or even months. The arguments do sometimes evolve and improve through this angry looping. But ultimately, I don’t think angry rumination is about that. It’s too reactive and repetitive. The topics I ruminate on are the least worthy of extended examination. I’d be better off thinking nothing at all.

I’ve been ruminating a lot lately and it’s over a ridiculous situation. I made the mistake of giving my number to an eccentric and probably alcoholic neighbor. He started sending me weird texts which I mostly ignored. I think this eventually irked him, so out of the blue, he hurled a series of crazy cheap shots my way. For instance, this was in reference to me pushing my toddler son in a stroller: “you push your baby in the cart is it groceries I ain't criticizing but bro it ain't that heavy.”

That hits several of my sore spots: it’s wrong, stupid and he’s calling me weak and “not masculine.” (Y’know, I don’t even care about being masculine. Maybe it's the contempt behind remarks like these that bothers me. Maybe it bothers me because I think it’s wrong—I actually am plenty masculine.)

And does he have children or know anything about them? Of course not!

Anyway, I blocked him and moved on but his stupid insults somehow festered. So I’ve been having an imaginary argument with him since. This is someone who didn’t say anything meaningful and I don’t care about at all. 

Most disturbingly, I’ve found myself flipping back-and-forth between taking care of my son and a furious, imaginary and entirely worthless argument. I drift off into some incensed fantasy, snap out of it, and see my toddler son staring back at me on the change table. I’m flipping back-and-forth between tenderness and fury and I think my one-and-a-half year-old son senses me repeatedly floating off into some weird, tightened trance.

I’m not headed to a tidy resolution here, folks. But let me say this.

One of the most impactful things I’ve ever done was an email to you all that I wrote about resentment and disappointment. It was about when shit doesn’t work out, or in my case, didn’t last forever like it should have. It produced a flood of replies and people are still talking to me about it. I’m still trying to reply to all the emails because they were heartfelt and thoughtful.

In many ways, that message I sent is spoiled ranting and I knew that when I wrote it. But it was also real. It was where I was at and had been for a while. And the point of writing it was to let go. I wanted to acknowledge the ugly, self-pitying chapter I was in and close it.

By the way, folks, that worked. I’m not saying I’m fixed, but I’m much improved. Try it for yourself. You don’t have to write something public. Start a journal. Talk to your future self.

I used to think talking about my problems would reveal something horrible and repellent about me. I thought it’d just worsen my problems, it’d make them more real, it’d create a vortex that’d suck me in. The opposite is true. Talking about your problems, writing about your problems, is a way to create distance between you and the feelings. It’s a way to get some elevation. It’s like staggering out of a dense forest—scratched-up, exhausted, squinting—then hiking up a grassy hill, looking around, and seeing where you are.

I don’t have any great wisdom to share yet. Right now I’m just trying to get out of the forest. I think I’m almost there. And when I get up that hill, I’ll tell you what I see.

Love,
K

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The Latest From Kirby

Why I removed Kanye West from Everything is a Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Happy Monday everybody! Happy Day After Father’s Day, Dads!

Friends, I am rounding up a posse! If you want to volunteer to help out with this new endeavor I’m undertaking, please fill out this short form.

What do I need help with? Basically anything and everything, small contributions and large. A few realms that spring to mind are digital marketing, SEO, email marketing, website stuff, and analytics. If you don’t think you have any applicable skills, you can test out products and give feedback. All are welcome!

A few recent things from me

• I did an interview with Jess Larson for his business podcast Innovation and Leadership.

• For anybody who watched Across the Spider-Verse or will be watching it soon (like me and Nora), be sure to revisit my creative breakdown of the original film, Into the Spider-Verse.

• And I have a new video coming soon! It’s about AI and copyright and it was produced for Bloomberg Law. I’m guessing it’ll be out in a week or two.

Anger Revisited

Last week’s newsletter was about my issues with anger and my habit of dwelling on stupid bullshit. I received lots of wonderful feedback from people who relate, but there were also a couple valuable suggestions on how to manage anger and other destructive emotions.

A nice suggestion from Zeb is to try feeling sadness towards whoever angered you. I would guess that the people who anger me, anger lots of other people too. They might piss off multiple people per day. Their lashing is probably a tactic they developed to cope with how difficult their lives have been. If I could watch the life story of my neighbor who’s been sending me insulting texts, I bet I’d feel sorry for him.

And Adam sent along a couple specific techniques that are useful for anger or negative habits: the Swish Pattern from Neurolinguistic Programming and Emotional Freedom Technique or “tapping.” There’s loads of YouTube videos and other content about both of those.

Why I removed Kanye West from Everything is a Remix

Kanye West is as canceled as canceled gets. He might still be a giant celebrity, maybe he can even make lots of money somehow, but he is utterly exiled and it’s hard to imagine how he returns. I don’t foresee his mind becoming more ordered in the future. 

On his way down, West left a string of humiliations in his wake, both for himself and anyone he touched. His final stop on the bus ride to oblivion was an interview with Alex Jones on Infowars. It was a dumb, depressing spectacle in which Jones was actually forced to distance himself from West’s anti-semitism. (Jones typically just ignores anti-semitism and moves on, but he couldn’t pull that off with a guest this high profile.)

In my little world, Kanye West has the odd distinction of crossing over between my two major projects, Everything is a Remix and This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. West’s music was in the original Remix and he was featured in the final segment of the new Everything is a Remix Part 1. West wasn’t in This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, but he would have been if I’d made it later. Jones was in it and I also did a whole mini-series about Jones and his most outspoken champion, Joe Rogan.

Generally speaking, folks, you wanna be featured in Everything is a Remix, not This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.

A number of people have noticed that Kanye isn’t in the final edit of the new Everything is a Remix. But this is not quite what it appears. I didn't remove West because of his long series of anti-semitic remarks, which were stupid, wrong, and sad. My reasons were much more mundane. I removed West for format reasons. Let me explain.

The original version of Everything is a Remix had post-credit segments, which were inspired by Steve Jobs’ “one last thing” bits where he’d announce the biggest product after the presentation seemed over. I did one about Tarantino which was very popular, but my favorite is the one about multiple discovery. Actually, that’s one of my favorite scenes of mine, period.

In the Remix reboot in 2021, I wanted to honor the series’ original format and continue doing these post-credit sequences. Kanye West was the first post-credit segment in the new Everything is Remix. But after seeing how that played, I felt like it didn’t fit on contemporary YouTube. It was hard to make that segment but most people didn’t see it. I decided to not do one in Part 2 and see what happened.

Aaaaand… crickets. Nobody cared. So I nixed them after that. (This video about Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was initially going to be the post-credits segment for the new Part 2). 

When the new Everything is a Remix was completed, the Kanye segment was the odd man out: it was the only post-credits segment in the series. It wasn’t consistent with the rest of the videos, so I cut it from the final all-in-one version, which is the version most people see. 

But Kanye should be in Everything is a Remix and if the series ever gets a maintenance upgrade in the years to come, I’ll put him back in. West is a master remixer, arguably the GOAT. His music endures, with or without him.

Kanye West should be seen as someone with an ailment. Exile is probably the only place suited for a media juggernaut with fairly serious mental illness. But I don’t see any purpose in the rest of us depriving ourselves of the joy of hearing his music, or worse yet, editing him out of musical history. West’s music was beautiful when he made it, and in many ways, so was he. That segment in Everything is a Remix Part 1 honors what he did and who he was. I’m proud of it. Go watch it again.

Things I’m into right now

• Turning off badges
  Badge notifications are those red circles that appear on your phone’s app icons and show you how many whatevers need your attention. They suck, turn them off, it’s better. (Here’s how on iPhone.)

• Weighing myself everyday
  An extremely clever trick I used on myself during past weight gains is I would stop weighing myself. Nothing bad is happening if I don’t see it, right? But if I know I’m up a couple pounds, I’ll reign things in to get back on track.

• Tana
  Tana continues to be my productivity hub and I’m also starting to do journalling-type things in it, which is new for me. I track my daily weight in Tana.

• Blinkist
  I mostly listen to book summaries while out strolling with Little K. You can listen to the books in my shared space for free.

• Spark email
  Loving the Mac email client Spark. Way nicer than gMail or Apple Mail and has some of the best features of Hey. It’s a keeper.

• The School of Thought
  My teacher friend Jason mentioned The School of Thought and I’ve been very impressed with what they’re doing, like this Critical Thinking Cards Deck. I’ll be stealing lots of tricks from them.

• I continue to drink fuckin’ salt for some reason

See you next week everybody!

k

P.S. Remember to go fill out that form if you’re interested in helping me out with my next thing.

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The Latest From Kirby

How your brain tricks you into starting projects you won’t finish

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Hi everybody!

Folks, I am collecting testimonials for Everything is a Remix! If Everything is a Remix matters to you, if it changed your life, head over here and tell me about it. Some of these will be used on the Remix site. Name and photo are required.

How to stop starting

I have a problem with starting. I don’t mean that I can’t get started. I mean starting too quickly and starting too much. This can produce small problems like buying software or gadgets I barely use. Or it can produce big problems like unfinished projects or worst of all, projects that are way more crazy-making than they should have been. 

And you’ve got the same problem. Why do I know this? Because what I’m talking about is a human bias called the action bias. The purpose of the brain isn’t just to think thoughts. Its purpose is to make things happen. Your brain wants you to do it: set that goal, buy that course, start that project. But it’s not so good at helping you achieve that goal, learn that material, or finish that project. 

The action bias tricks you into thinking you’re getting something done. But all you’ve really done is begin… and that’s the easy part. Impulsive starts will waste your time and resources. And if you fall prey to the action bias frequently enough, you’ll find yourself demoralized and doubting you can achieve much of anything.

I got burnt by the action bias in an unusually epic way. In 2012, I was finishing the original Everything is a Remix series, which was a big success. I was hot and I wanted to capitalize. I wanted to launch something and I wanted to do it fast. I launched a KickStarter for a new series, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. I had almost no clue what it was or what I was going to deliver or how long it would take or how much it would all cost. (How many successful KickStarters have ultimately cost the creator money? I’m guessing plenty.)

This is Not a Conspiracy Theory worked out. I made the thing I wanted to make, I got to the place I wanted to go. But it took eight years and the process was far more painful than it needed to be. The premature launch made a hard project even harder because I later wasted time wracking my brains trying to solve problems that couldn’t be solved. If I’d pumped the brakes at the beginning and thought things through a bit more, I could have saved myself substantial time and a lot of misery.

It often requires more energy and more discipline to not act. To wait, think things through and then act is actually harder. It’s way easier to just let it rip and make something—anything—happen. 

By slowing down, making sure you want to make the move you’re making and figuring out how to do it the best way you know how, you’re setting the stage for a more efficient and less painful project. You’ll start less but finish more.

I have to say: this problem is a shadow of what it once was for me. The major thing that has helped has been awareness. My snap decisions stung me enough times that I got wise. I didn’t know anything about the action bias, I just learned through repeated mistakes.

I’ve developed some tricks too. For instance, I create little holds for ideas and review them repeatedly. Like if there’s a new product I want to sell, I place it in a hold list and revisit it occasionally over the course of weeks or months. Most of the time I’ll eventually decide I’m not that interested in selling whatever it is. But if something survives all those revisits, I know it’s worth a shot.

The practice of mindfulness has also helped with this. I’ll again admit, I’m pretty bad at mindfulness, but even doing mindfulness badly can still really improve your life. (There’s a few mindfulness book summaries in my Blinkist playlist, which is free to read or listen to. There’s also loads of other fantastic stuff in there.)

The action bias is one of those things that you never banish. It’ll always return with inventive new ways to trick you. But with time, you can develop some good defense.

Things I’m into right now

• The YouTube Channel of Dr Dan Wilson
  Check out his new video about Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaxxer who’s running for US president. If you don’t have time for the full video, this short excerpt is a jaw-dropper.

• The Thinking Shop
  Loving the critical thinking tools at The Thinking Shop.

• Yep, still drinkin’ fuckin’ salt

Talk to you next Monday everybody!
k

P.S. Remember, if you love Everything is a Remix, come tell the world about it!

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The Latest From Kirby

New video, vacation, and a gift for those who need it

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Happy Monday everybody! 

I have a new video! It’s about copyright and AI. This was a commission for Bloomberg. GO WATCH IT. NOW!

Summer vacation

Summer is here! Unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, in which case, winter is here! Yay winter! 

I’m about to head all the way across this fabulous content, back to my home, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Little Kirby is going to meet his grandparents and his two Ferguson aunts for the first time!

This newsletter is also going to go on vacation! It will resume bright and early September 4th, which will be the relaunch of the new Everything is a Remix site. Several exciting new and improved products will be making their premiere. If you miss me for the next couple months, I would check out any previous messages you might have missed. Just search for “Kirby Ferguson” in your email.

A gift for those who need it

I have an offer for those of you of limited means right now. If you cannot afford my downloadable products, I’d still like you to have them. If you’re a little down on your luck, I hope these tools might help you jumpstart something new and generate some excitement in your life. Fill out this form and I’ll hook you up. You’ll get the current toolkits and the upgrades when they’re released. I hope these small gifts might help you the same way that many of you have helped me in recent months. Good luck!

And for the rest you, it’s a great time to save on these toolkits! Get them now at the lowest possible price, then get the upgrades when they come out this fall!

Stories From You

This will be a longer message because I want to share some of your stories. These are messages of connection, struggle and even triumph – albeit, maybe not quite the expected kind.

This first one comes from Fülöp in Hungary. This is something I could never have imagined happening starting out. That I could touch someone from a different culture, on the other side of the planet, and that it would start through… a TED Talk? Did not see that coming.

Dear Kirby,

We have never met and we most likely never will, but I want to tell you a small story.

I found your TED Talk in my early twenties. I was a resentful, sad, pessimistic person from Hungary. I was spending more and more time online, and TED Talks were like a warm blanket of curiosity satiating information. I vividly remember seeing yours for the first time. It was packed with humor, interest and an enthusiasm that was unusual in my life. I spent the next hour rewatching it, and trying to find every example that you talked about.

It was fun. Actual, childlike, joyous fun. And then it was over and I felt happier. The world wasn’t as dark and the shadows didn’t feel as scary. I went outside and enjoyed the sunlight, while listening to the music you mentioned.

When you announced the KickStarter project, I was one of the first people to sign up. I barely had money, but I felt like I could help bring to life something important. It felt momentous. And then you started work and every now and then, there would be an update. A new video, narrated by your friendly voice and edited to absolute perfection. I would rewatch all the episodes, when a new one came out, so I could be up-to-date. I felt all the same joy and elation, as watching that TED Talk, all those years ago.

I have found a path in life that brings me happiness. I am surrounded by people that I love and cherish. My work is fulfilling and fun. And I believe that you had a small part in making that happen, by being yourself, and allowing a young man (albeit, older and older by the day) to come along for the ride.

I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for doing so. And I wish you all the happiness that you can handle.

Thank you, Kirby.

Fülöp Tardos

(Shared with permission)

This next message is from an indie musician who had their peak success in the 2000s. I was a fan before we met during the heyday of Everything is a Remix. Their transition is similar to mine — still raw, still a work-in-progress, still hurting but finding purpose and joy  in small, simple things.

I underwent a similar transition over the last few years. I’m in the final stages (ha ha) of my shift from a touring and recording artist (my equivalent to you making “Everything is a Remix”) into something else. Right now it’s more teaching, producing, and composing musicals.

For me, some of this change was motivated by age (I wanted different things out of life, my physical and mental well-being were suffering) and some of it was a response to the market (like you, not matching the “success” of an initial project). I think you put it well when you said, “trajectory is everything.” My trajectory was headed down for at least a decade, but I kept hanging on, to the detriment of all aspects of my life.

Initially the pandemic was a blessing. It got me off the hustle in a way that I didn't have the fortitude to do on my own. But then I also did something instructive/stupid in that I tried to make, release, and tour a record. The trajectory was unchanged, but I was changed by my time off. I was miserable in that album cycle. But it also finally gave me the strength to walk away from the identity and career I'd built over 25 years. 

In December 2021 I got a puppy. I did it because I have always wanted to do that. I did it because I knew it would make me change my life. I did it because I wanted something else to force me to make decisions with someone besides myself in mind. I live alone and am single (very happily) so taking on this responsibility was… clarifying.

I'm not totally past the resentment (or grief), so I especially appreciated that part of your email. I think success, however long ago, is confusing. I know I am very, very good at being a writer and performer. Reconciling that with the reality of it no longer working in my life has been one of the greatest challenges I've taken on. Good luck to you as you do the same!

E

And our final message is from a long-time fan who worked a bit on This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. This is a midlife transition that leads to triumph, although an unexpected one.

Kirby,  

I hope this longer than intended letter finds you well. You are a wellspring of inspiration for so many in the creative community. I had the good fortune to collaborate with you briefly on a chapter or two of This is Not a Conspiracy Theory and as someone who had early aspirations to be a filmmaker or special effects artist in my early 20s, being able to contribute to your production is certainly among the highlights of my career. You're a great storyteller.  

I started in 2004 translating my knowledge of CAD design into civil engineering marketing proposals and presentations. By 2007 I was regularly shooting video pieces and helicopter photo/video for strategic campaigns across the US.  

In 2008, the recession hit and I was overhead that was quickly dispensed of. After 8 years with the company, I decided that it was time to start my own business developing media for AEC companies (Architects, Engineers, and Construction). It was not exactly my passion but I had connections and momentum in that direction and decided to give it a shot. 

At the time, I had a partner who helped shoulder the cost of making that leap. I was extremely naive about business but in my 30s, I felt that being in the corporate system amounted to being in daycare and that I was far too old to be told what to do while having my profit robbed from my labor.  

My income was unstable at best. I had good months and bad months. The company that let me go was one of my clients. Then a former coworker that moved to another company looked me up for services. My reputation and network slowly expanded but after 14 years and working with the largest and most prestigious brands in that industry I was no better off financially for it.  

In 2012, I was fortunate enough to work with a company that invited me to work on a documentary project. The doc itself was nowhere near enough money to live on and in order to stay with the project and get the final credits, I decided to remain an independent contractor.  

I lost everything. My house. My relationship. My credit. Money. I had an irrational, Moby-Dick-like obsession with seeing the film and its 150 page historical companion book through to the finish line. I gave more than anyone asked or was reasonable to give. Most people would not have done what I did, but I did it. Today, I cannot say that I regret my decision.  

In January 2016, we premiered the documentary and went on to win numerous awards at festival. I was worse than broke but I did what I set out to do. I completed a film and designed a companion book which was probably as close to Ken Burns as I would ever get. It was not my original goal of directing or visual fx but I learned enough to know I probably wouldn't ever want those jobs. You need to be obsessed and work 16-20 hour days for 3-4 months at a time with a desire to prove you are the best. It was not the quality of life I ever wanted to create. In my 20s, after seeing the Matrix and other films that impacted me, I just thought it sounded cool. Vfx artists are notoriously underpaid and directors give their entire lives for film projects. In order to be that obsessed, it would have to be a story that I was passionate about the world needing to hear. Few stories impact me that way.  

Last October, after 14 years as a rogue corporate castaway, I entertained the idea of becoming an employee once more. What I didn't realize during those years of self-imposed poverty, strain, and unreasonable expectations was that I had developed a resume unlike anyone else's in the industry. Despite only having a high school level of education, my experience and successes blew away most of my competition.  

I always wanted to do something altruistic with a non-profit. Something that moved the needle in a meaningful way for the social changes I longed for. I had really high expectations. I have to say those 14 years in the employment desert beat that idealism out of me. I was now a master storyteller that did not care what ends my services were used for as long as they were used and I was compensated.  

In October, I was hired as a Lead Visual Designer at a huge, global company. I negotiated a pretty high salary based on my experience. It is the most anyone in this position has ever been paid but in the last 9 months, the marketing and sales team only want to work with me. The level of service I'm accustomed to offering my clients goes far beyond what other designers can deliver in the department. As of now, I'm slated to join the C-suite at the end of next year. I'm going to be in the top tier executive class of a giant company. It still blows my mind.

Anyway, this is not a brag. I just wanted to tell you that your experience and what you have created is invaluable to someone. I don't know how long I will do this but I am grateful for the second life this job has given me. All of my debts are paid, I'm saving more money than I ever had in my life while also not needing to worry about spending it either. I go out when I want, buy whatever I need for the family, and have fun with money left over every month. It's surreal. Next year I will use the surplus income to start testing new company ideas with the goal of beating my own salary so that I can quit again or at least be a highly paid consultant.  

In 2020, my father had a blood infection that infected two of his heart valves and his brain. I saved his life by dragging his belligerent ass to the hospital and nursing him back to health from home over the next 8 months during COVID. The reason I went back to work was to take care of him and my daughter as a single father.  

It all worked out beautifully. I know in the depths of my soul that if it worked out so well for me and all the stupid little shit I did that is insignificant to most, that it will happen for you too. You have created some amazing, thought-provoking, and far reaching content which very few people can do. You are special. Your gifts are needed in the world. If there is anything I can do to help you get to where you want to go, let me know. I will do whatever I can.  

I love what you have put into this world. Your heart is genuine. You are very thoughtful in a world that lacks thought more than ever.    

I appreciate you.  

All the best,  

Matt

Thank you to these people for sharing their stories here in the newsletter. And thank you to everyone who has told me your stories. I’ve read them all, you’ve influenced me and I think about you. I’ll be catching up on as many replies as I can over the summer.

And for all of you who just quietly read these message, thank you for being with me in these recent months. Happy 4th of July to the Americans, Happy Canada Day to the Canadians, happy other July holidays to the countries I’ve never lived in.

Kirby loves you all. Especially you. Bye!

K

P.S. YOU READ THE WHOLE EMAIL! Here take $5 off any apparel in the shop! Use the code GIMME5.

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

New stuff! My brand new guide to ChatGPT!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back! Happy autumn! (Or spring if you're in the southern hemisphere!)

I hope you all had an awesome summer. I sure did. Loads happened, I've got tales of disaster and triumph, and insights that will melt your brain all over your shirt. Apologies in advance for that.

But right now, all this must wait because I've got new stuff!

My new digital toolkit: Write Now With ChatGPT

Folks, I'm thrilled to announce that I have a new digital toolkit for sale: Write Now With ChatGPT.

This guide is about getting real work done with ChatGPT. I do real work and show you how to do the same. These aren't chintzy little demos that don't prove anything. I don't blather on about how ChatGPT will help you do everything in five minutes or make a million dollars. I show you how to do actual writing by actually writing.

Write Now With ChatGPT is now on sale for half-off! It’s just $25 until September 13th at midnight. (No discount code required!)

This is an early access sale. If you have any feedback, if you spot any errors, if you think of any good improvements, email me at kirby@everythingisaremix.info. Any errors or shortcomings that can be fixed, will be fixed asap. (And of course, you'll get access to the updated file.)

Check out the product page to learn more and to buy now!

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Autumn is a season of change. I suppose all seasons are, really, but just work with me here. Leaves are falling, children are back in school, parents are back at work, projects are launching, credit card bills are coming due. Change is afoot and things are changing here in the humble world of Kirby Ferguson.

Changes to this newsletter

Welcome to The Midlife Remix. Some of you may have noticed a new title at the top of this email. Yes, this newsletter is now called The Midlife Remix and it will kinda sorta maybe have a more prominent theme going forward. It’ll primarily be about the middle age pivot, a journey I remain in the midst of now. (Spoiler: I’ve not fixed everything yet.) It’ll be about work, money, life, and change. And yeah, it’ll sometimes be eclectic and about whatever I want. Hm, maybe it’s not actually changing that much.

Also, this newsletter will now be sent out every two weeks. But if you want a weekly email newsletter from me, hey, I just happen to have one of those!

The Official Everything is a Remix Newsletter is here

This newsletter has long served as an Everything is a Remix newsletter, but it’s actually just my newsletter. It’s been about Everything is a Remix, it’s been about This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, and it’s been about whatever the fuck I’ve been doing this year. Everything is a Remix needs a dedicated newsletter and now it's got one.

The Everything is a Remix newsletter is entirely about Everything is a Remix and creativity. No more bullshit about my self-pity and anger or drinking fuckin’ salt for some reason. These emails are short and can be read in a minute or two. They're about creativity, productivity, media, technology and great ideas you should copy and use for yourself.

The new Everything is a Remix newsletter will launch on Wednesday, so if you subscribe now, you’ll receive the very first newsletter, which is sure to be a future collectors’ item.

Click here to subscribe and you'll get my brand new toolkit, Finish It Now for free!

Phew! To recap, I have three major new things:

• A new toolkit, Write Now With ChatGPT

• A new Everything is a Remix weekly newsletter

• A new FREE toolkit, Finish It Now, which you get when you subscribe the new newsletter

That is it for this week, folks! Everyone have an awesome week and I’ll see you again in a couple!

Kirby

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Welcome back, everybody!

The Everything is a Remix site has been redesigned! There are still issues, but I think it’s looking pretty good at this point. (It’s a SquareSpace site so I am limited.) Check it out and let me know what you think! Just reply to this email.

My Devastating, Disastrous, No Good Summer Vacation

Folks, I fucked up royally this summer. This was a new, different, and very much worse kind of failure than what I've experienced in the past. This was Father Failure.

Let me tell youall about it in an exhausting fashion!

I'm a bit cavalier with details and a bit forgetful with abstract information. These are just basic human brain flaws. Unless you've developed systems to compensate for these shortcomings, you're not great at any of this stuff either. And you might have these issues in one realm and not in another. For instance, in my work for clients, I run a pretty tight ship. But in my personal life, I'm fairly loosey-goosey.

I'm an optimist, I'm not very cautious, I'm not that into preparing, I just wanna go do the thing. And I assume everything will work out fine.

Mostly, it does. Except when it really really really doesn't.

We can’t click “continue”

I’ve lived in the US with Nora since 2007. This summer was the family’s first trip to Canada and my home province of Prince Edward Island. My parents still live there and we coordinated with my two sisters so the whole family (except for my niece and nephew) would be there at the same time. We hadn’t done this in—I don’t know how long. At least a decade.

We booked this vacation in early May for a July trip. We even bought travel insurance in case any of us got sick.

I thought small children do not need a passport to cross the Canadian border. I thought you just needed a birth certificate. If this were a movie, this is that moment where you think, "Oh, later on, this is gonna bite him in the ass hard."

I did a quick pass, a momentary Google, knowing I needed to do a serious pass later. Then I forgot all about that and thought the quick pass was the serious pass. I wasn’t worried about it because I assumed any issues with immigration could be sorted. After all, this is a baby and I'm Canadian and he's my son. The border should not be able to deny him entry.

And they didn’t. Instead, Air Canada did!

We’re all packed, we’re at the airport, we’re checking in, we give them Kirby Jr’s birth certificate and… bafflement. He needs a passport. If we don't put something in the passport field we can't click “continue.”

Attempts to negotiate through this were hopeless. The girls working the desk had no power. They just couldn't enter us into the system.

It quickly became clear there was no way out. I had to go take a knee while Nora took one last – and unsuccessful – swing.

No flight, no vacation. My family would not meet my son for the first time. We had to turn around and go home. 

In modern life, you sometimes get ground up in a system for no reason at all. In this scenario, my son was just an entity that couldn’t be entered into a computer system. That he’s a baby and doesn't yet have all the documentation the rest of us do never entered the conversation. Reality was irrelevant and ignored.

What difference would it have made if we boarded that plane? None. You just can't cuz, y'know, they can’t click “continue.” And if we can’t click “continue,” what can we do?

After getting home, I wrote this in my daily log: Devastating day. Couldn't board the plane this morning because KJ needs passport. Giant disaster. My fault.

And the money? Poof! Gone. Two grand. Down. The. Fucking. Drain.

And the traveler's insurance? Doesn’t cover that. To add insult to injury, if I'd simply canceled the trip beforehand, travel insurance would have covered that without question.

Walking the dog later that day, I ran into a friend, who was confused to see me. I was supposed to be gone. I told her what happened and she teared up, said "I am so sad for you guys" and hugged me twice.

The next day, we applied for a passport for little Kirby. His height: 2 feet, 10 inches.

Father Failure

Handing the Canadian border was my job. I’m the Canadian, I was supposed to do it, and I dropped the ball. Or I never thought to catch the ball.

Failing yourself is bad. I hate it, I’m sure you hate it too. When my casual ways backfired in the past, it was mostly me who paid the price – literally and figuratively. But when others pay the price for your fuck-up, that’s just worse. Guilt and shame get shoveled onto the mound of misery.

And failing yourself, your partner and your son, as well as your parents and your sisters is a special and exquisite type of failure. This was Father Failure. I stumbled into a new realm of suffering I didn’t know existed. 

Screwing up vacation was the first time I failed little Kirby. It was a catastrophe for the family, and Nora and I agreed that there was no silver lining.

But I now think there was a silver lining. It was a wake-up call. It cost a couple grand, but nobody got hurt. Nothing happened that couldn’t be undone. There’s an infinite array of far worse possibilities. Sometimes a smackdown is needed to wise up. I got it.

(I mean a figurative smackdown, people. Please don’t smack anyone.)

Mistakes now have a blast radius

In the bleak days that followed, I thought, “Well, no vacation. I screwed up, the money's gone. It’s done.”

But after a few days of licking my wounds, Nora and I decided it was better to just write off the money. We devised a new plan — and it didn’t even require a passport.

Weeks later, we flew to Maine, then crossed the Canadian border in a car. We used a birth certificate for little K. You see, my friends, that’s totally fine. Because... reasons.

This experience remains a bit raw, but it’s now overshadowed by how amazing that vacation was. It was perfect. Even though getting to Prince Edward Island and back was a comedy of errors worthy of National Lampoon’s Vacation. That’s a whole ‘nother story.

I’m sure all you parents out there know this, but vacationing with small children is next-level adulting. There is a shit-ton to keep track of. And just when everything is going great, you get a huge diaper blow-out. If your children are still in your future, be warned. It’s hard, be ready.

This kind of experience isn’t unique to parenting. When it’s your first time doing something complex, you can’t help but be dumb. You can’t know everything about that hotel you booked. You can’t know everything about that rental car. You can’t know that the worst possibility of choosing to rent “the mystery car” isn’t getting a tiny car, it’s getting a Ford F150! (Yes, that happened too.)

Beginners fuck up. When the score is kept in money, that hurts a lot. But you recover more quickly than you think.

I know what some of you are thinking: Dude, you're being too hard on yourself. This isn't “father failure,” it was just a mistake. Bit of a doozy, but still just a mistake.

Folks, what you don’t understand is that “father failure” is alliterative and also has a nice symmetry to it – similar syllables and rhythm to both words. Let me pen my little masterpiece here, will ya?

Yes, it was just a mistake. Another friend referred to it as a mistake with a “blast radius”. Past mistakes didn’t have a blast radius. Now they do.

If this was a video I would now hard cut to titles and cue this.

New stuff!

Once again, folks, I have new stuff!

First and foremost, I have a new guide to writing with ChatGPT. I spare you the hype, I show you how to write by doing real writing. It’s awesome, you should buy it. Buy one for a friend. And their friend.

I have a new Everything is a Remix newsletter! It’s weekly, it’s all about Remix and creativity with no vacation stories. I agree, that sounds awful! But actually, these emails are short, informative, and inspiring. Subscribe and you get my free guide to help you ship that languishing project, Finish It Now!

The Remix shop now supports Apple Pay! (You gotta use Safari.) We also now have Afterpay for merch purchases, so you can do installment payments.

The Tools page on the Remix site has long been one of the most popular, so I updated it!

That’s it from me, folks, I’ll see you in two weeks! As always, it is me, an actual human being, who sends these emails, reads replies, and whenever possible, has ChatGPT reply back to you.

Papa Kirby loves you Pookie,
Kirby

My new digital toolkit: Write Now With ChatGPT

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Are we losing it?

Hi everybody and happy Monday!

Folks, I have a question for you: are we, as a culture, creatively losing it? Where do you see highly inventive work being done? Where do you see stagnation or decline? Bonus points: why is all this happening?

Here’s my quick take.

• AI development is clearly highly creative and doing unprecedented things.

• I'm a novice in the genre, but sci-fi literature (like the Three-Body Problem and Children of Time series) seems innovative.

• Tech is slowly evolving but not dynamic.

• Politics and economics are stalled.

• TV, music, social media, and YouTube all seem stagnant.

• Film is virtually mummified. (Although there have been a lot of great horror films in recent years: Talk to Me, Lamb, The Lighthouse, The Witch, Hereditary, and Midsommar. And that's just the A24 films!)

Reply to this email and let me know what you think. I read everything. I can’t always reply, but if you type it, I read it.

A few new things before I get to the main event.

• I’m now on Threads! Threads is a new social media platform from a plucky, upstart company called “Meta.” I’ve actually been posting a bit there. Come follow!

• I wrote an article about when you should use ChatGPT in your writing.

• I made a commercial video recently! I directed and co-edited this awesome promo for the cloud security company Sysdig. This was a collaboration with my brilliant pals at Sandwich.

How to Reserve Aging. For a Bit.

In my mid-thirties, I got really into an intense, aerobic form of yoga called Ashtanga. The tougher the instructor, the more I liked it. I’d be sliding around the mat in a sweat puddle just midway through class. I lost weight, gained muscle, felt great.

One day, I ran into a friend I only saw occasionally. She said, “You look younger every time I see you!” Even better, I felt younger.

As positive as these changes were for me, that lifestyle didn’t stick. I’d get on track for a few chapters, but then I’d revert to my old ways.

I've been overweight most of my life. It’s the kind of minor heaviness that basically everyone has nowadays. I'm always strong and sometimes in good athletic shape, but I generally carry around an extra 10 or 20 pounds of fat. 

A couple of years ago, I thought I’d finally fixed the issue once and for all. I ended bad habits, started good ones, and reached a healthy weight. Then we had a baby and that went straight out the window. Life became so impossible that I couldn’t cope with not drinking Coke on top of it all.

Folks, I think I’ve finally fixed this, and I think it will hold. Here’s what happened.

Creating the game

In spring of this year, parenting life became more manageable, and my willpower returned. I dropped from 210 pounds to 200 quickly and easily. All I did was moderately improve my diet and exercise. 

Then I plateaued for months. Partially, it was because it was summer, and I wanted to have good times with my family. But it was also because a higher level of discipline is required for me to get below 200 pounds.

I needed to change the game—or rather, create a game. I devised a little challenge for myself. I intentionally chose an aggressive goal. I’ll explain why in a bit.

The goal: lose 10 pounds in 5 weeks. That’s 2 pounds per week, which is the maximum considered healthy. The goal was a weight of 190.5.

I set the following rules targeting my worst habits.

• No eating whatsoever after 8 p.m

• No burgers and fries

• No chocolate, cookies, cake, or ice cream

• No cola

• No lunchtime pizza

Underlying this were some additional informal rules. I would eat healthy and increase my exercise.

Here’s what happened each week.

Week 1

Week 1 was a breeze. I exceeded the weekly goal and lost 2.5 pounds. At this rate, I’ll be done a week early!

Week 2

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Getting the numbers to drop got tough. I also got a cold, so I couldn’t exercise much. I only lost one pound. 

Week 3

Week 3 is when shit got real. I gotlodged at 195 pounds. Nonetheless, progress was evident. It was just slower and harder. Then, I traveled to a video shoot in San Francisco for a few days. Despite eating well, those days didn’t burn many calories. I came back about a pound-and-a-half heavier.

Week 4

I was slowly losing weight this week but still stuck at 195, the same weight from two weeks ago. Nonetheless, I noticed my appetite feeling lower and my midsection feeling tighter.

Week 5

In the final week, I break through and drop overnight to 193.5.

Final weigh-in!

The goal was 190.5. I got to 193.5, 3 pounds shy of my goal. That’s 7 pounds lost in five weeks. My goal was 2 pounds per week; I got 1.4 pounds.

Even though I missed my goal, this is a huge success. Not only did I shed 7 pounds in five weeks, that weight puts my BMI within the healthy range. At the very top of that range, but still in range.

It’s now been a month since I completed this challenge. I’ve kept up my good habits. There have been some food indulgences, but they’ve been moderated. I still haven’t reached my original target weight—and I’m not even sure I will! The goal now is to continue to lose fat, but I also want to gain some muscle, so who knows what my weight will be. The scale might not be my primary metric going forward.

What I learned

Set the bar too high. Making the goal harder is more fun. If you pull it off, it’s a huge win. If you fail, you still win as long as you make some progress. My goal was just a round number, a direction to head. After the first couple of weeks, I knew I wouldn’t make it, and the challenge became to see how close I could get.

Don’t consider the challenge a permanent commitment. All you have to do is five weeks or whatever schedule you set. If five weeks feels impossible, do one week. After that, you’re free to do what you want. But I bet once you get to that point, you won’t want to lose your progress.

Keep the time frame short-ish, like six weeks or less. It’s easier to stay motivated. If you can’t reach your goal that quickly, break it up into a series of challenges, with good breaks in between.

Weigh yourself every day. In the past, anytime my weight has gotten well out of range, I’ve stopped getting on the scale. No news is good news, right? If you know you’re gaining and gaining, you’ll do something about it.

Lifestyle goals are fun! It makes ordinary little choices challenging and rewarding. For most of us, the only goals we regularly have are projects, primarily for work. Lifestyle goals are less life-and-death than work goals. If you don’t hit your work goal, that could be a severe problem. Lifestyle goals are lower stakes. And when you fail, you can just regroup and try again. If you keep trying, you will succeed.

I got what I really wanted

I don't know if I look younger, but I'm entirely certain I feel younger. I'm lighter, bouncier, and have more energy. I take steps two at a time. Not having that extra weight jiggling around my midsection feels great. And I can now do a proper finger-roll layup in basketball. I couldn’t elevate enough to do that just a few months ago. 

Minor health issues have vanished or improved. Knee aches are gone. Backaches, worsened by parental lifting, are markedly better. I have a skin condition called rosacea. It's improved, and a related condition, a form of eyelid inflammation called Blepharitis, has disappeared. Most of what’s going on in these cases is inflammation. I wonder what unseen inflammation has also lessened.

My mental focus has improved, though that may be because of other recent changes. I’m also less irritable, probably because my blood sugar is more level.

But here’s what I really wanted from all this.

High blood pressure and high cholesterol increase your heart attack or stroke risk. I’ve only had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels when I have weighed less. Before this challenge, my blood pressure was markedly high. Now, it’s only slightly high—or maybe not high at all, depending on which country’s guidelines you subscribe to. I just got a physical, and I’ll know my cholesterol soon. There’s no doubt that it’ll be better.

Of course, I did this for myself, but above all, I did it because I don’t want to be debilitated in old age because of my choices. I don’t want to be compromised in my golden years because Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup was just so delicious. I want to be healthy for Nora and Little Kirby, as well as for myself.

This is a permanent change. There will be some lapses in the future. Life will get in the way. But I’ll get back on track.

Ripple effects

Just as importantly, this little health challenge has had ripple effects beyond my health. It’s given me a feeling of effectiveness and competence during this fumbling chapter of my life. Getting wins, even when they seem unrelated, helps you gain momentum. I chose a goal, had success, and that inspired me to try new goals.

Reader, create a lifestyle goal for yourself. They’re fun and rewarding. It doesn’t have to be about weight or health. Want to read more books? Get more chores done? Make more memories with your loved ones? Give yourself a challenge. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Have a great week, everyone! See you in a couple!
Kirby

P.S. Here are the books that inspired me to get into lifestyle goals.
P.S.S. I’ve got an awesome new morning coffee recipe. Try it!

ONE DAY FLASH SALE!

Save 30% on my new toolkit, Write Now With ChatGPT. Use the discount code GPT30OFFOCT! Offer expires at midnight tonight!

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I am Returning to Video

(with your help)

Hi everybody!

Yes, I am returning to video… I hope anyway. So this occasion calls for a video! Click here to watch!

If you have any questions, reply to this email and I’ll answer them!

Have a great rest of the week, everyone!
Kirby

P.S. If you wanna skip the pre-amble and buy my next thing, go for it!

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The Next Thing is a Go!

It’s official, everybody, I am returning to video! The upcoming AI course is a go. Click here to watch a brief message from me.

If you missed the previous announcement, you can see it here.

I’ll be building some of the material for the course in public on X and Threads, so be sure to follow.

This newsletter will now resume its regular schedule. Talk to you again on November 6th!

Have a great weekend, everyone!
Kirby

P.S. You can still get the course at the early bird pre-order price for the rest of today (Friday, the 27th).

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

It's make-or-break time

Happy Monday everybody!

I’m going to talk about two things.

1. How I found The Next Thing

2. How it will either make or break me

A couple weeks ago, I started selling pre-orders for a new AI video course. (You can still pre-order it for half-off!) I had a goal of selling 40. If I didn’t make that goal, I’d refund everybody and move on to something else.

I sold triple the goal, 120 sales.

Here’s its sales this year versus everything else.

It’s not a huge hit (yet), but it’s definitely a hit. I’m onto something. This AI video course will be The Next Thing. Here’s how I got there.

How I Found The Next Thing

It was a series of small but growing successes that led to the AI project, starting with an idea from Nora.

A couple years ago, Nora proposed selling downloadable guides. We took existing content and turned it into guides and worksheets. These were the first swing at selling educational content.

Over time, I sold a couple hundred. That didn’t add up to much money, but they were profitable. In my eyes, this was a spark. A teeny-tiny spark.

After I stopped making free videos, I launched what I called Stage 1. As I wrote at the time, “The purpose of Stage 1 is to build a foundation and launch some experiments.” The purpose of Stage 1 was to run tests and scale up the successes.

I chose these four areas as possible future paths for my career.

• Education

• Video production

• Marketing

• Writing

Education was the one I found the most promising and compelling. I chatted with dozens of teachers and developed some possibilities. But I quickly realized there was a bottleneck: I needed curriculum.

Video is costly to make. How do I create new material that’s not video? I’ll do new guides. I updated and overhauled the original two guides and started working on ideas for a new one.

Somehow, a very obvious subject was missing from the list above: AI. I’d just finished Everything is a Remix Part 4, I’d done lots of research, I knew it was a growing realm and yet I didn’t include it. Nonetheless, AI remained on my mind, because the next guide would be about ChatGPT.

The Growth of AI in my work

The reason I didn’t include AI in my list of possibilities was simple: in my own work, I wasn’t finding AI that useful.

I initially used ChatGPT for two fairly minor tasks: research and editing/proofreading. For me, it was like Google crossed with a Super Spellchecker. It was handy, but it seemed like small potatoes compared to the first time I used Photoshop or Final Cut Pro. Those were explosive technologies that upended how I worked.

But I kept coming back to AI, in particular to ChatGPT. Its limitations initially frustrated me, but I found ways to work with them. Its role in my work grew. I realized I could share what I’d learned about ChatGPT in a new guide, and developing this guide would help me raise my AI game further.

Write Now With ChatGPT was my second swing at selling educational products, and my biggest and best guide to date. I produced it in 25 hours and I’ve sold 93 of them. It was profitable and it outsold the previous guides.

Again, this wasn’t a big success, but I found something vital. I found growth.

The Video Itch Returns

Video as the media format for the new course happened for a few reasons.

• A while ago I asked all of you how you like to learn, and about half of you said video. (Shocking that people reading the newsletter of a filmmaker would like video!)

• I started to miss video. The itch had returned.

• I’m already fuckin’ great at video.

I researched video courses on ChatGPT and concluded: they’re trash. I knew I could compete, and I believed my combination of AI instruction with creative instruction could be unique and exciting.  

I had a conversation with my buddy Jay Acunzo (who you should all follow) and this chat solidified my next steps. He helped me settle on selling pre-orders and having a sales goal. This was another way to test the waters more before wading in.

The Path That Led to The Next Thing

So here’s the path that led to my upcoming AI course, aka The Next Thing.

• Nora’s idea to sell guides.

• New guides would support the development of curriculum

• AI guide performed better and demonstrated market interest in that topic

• Reader feedback and personal reasons pulled me back to video

• AI video instruction becomes The Next Thing… or at least The First Next Thing

Throughout this time there was an influence too pervasive to list: you guys. All your replies, form responses, video chats, what you do and don’t buy — my path forward has been deeply, deeply influenced by this ongoing communication with you. It’s trite to say but true: I couldn’t do this without you.

Here’s a funny note I just stumbled on from a chat with Peter Nilsson.

AI, video, and education < intersection, what are opportunities there?

That’s from… May 12.

I mean, that’s The Next thing, right there. Upon re-reading that I initially thought, “Man, I coulda saved some frickin’ time if I’d just moved on that then.”

But having the answer isn’t enough. You have to know why it’s the answer and you have to know what the answer means. 

I didn’t then. My knowledge needed to grow and a lot of other pieces needed to fall into place. You get where you’re going one step at a time.

The Next Thing is the beginning or the end

The stakes are high for the launch of this AI course. It needs to be successful and perform like a real business. If it doesn’t, running my own business as my occupation doesn’t work. I’ll need to find a position with a company. 

This is it, folks. It’s make-or-break time. If this works, Stage 2 begins. The Next Thing will be video education about AI and creativity.

Right now I’m busting my ass to make the best course I can. In the new year, I’ll be busting my ass to market and sell it. I’m going to put as much time, energy, and creativity into selling it as I put into producing it. I’ll probably keep these emails brief in the coming weeks. 

Wish me luck, folks! Hope you’re all doing awesome!

k

P.S. You can pre-order AI For Creating Content 2024 right now for half-off!

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Dusting off the old film nerd hat

Happy Monday friends!

I’m currently going full-blast on my upcoming ChatGPT video course and doing everything possible to ship that sucker by Christmas. For this mailing, I’m gonna keep things light and dust off the old film nerd hat. 

I don’t put the film nerd hat on much anymore because I just don’t watch that much stuff anymore. This is mostly because of parenting, but it’s also because… I mean, what is that there to watch? The field seems weak. (This pre-dates the Hollywood writers’ strike, by the way.) 

Perhaps because of this, I subscribed to The Criterion Channel recently, thinking there’ll be some great new stuff there and if not, at least I can watch some great old stuff. I found some of both.

Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

Turn Every Page is an absolutely precious documentary that captures two literary lions late in their lives, Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb.

Caro is one of the true genius authors of the last century. He’s written just two mammoth non-fiction works: The Power Broker, about the New York urban planning titan, Robert Moses, and a still-ongoing five-volume series about Lyndon B. Johnson.

The other subject of the doc is Caro’s prolific editor, Robert Gottlieb, who not only edited everything Caro wrote but many of the great authors of the last five decades. Fun fact: he edited the term “catch-18” to become the now-famous “catch-22.”

The doc is a fascinating glimpse into the collaboration between a great writer and an elite editor who makes him even better. Fun fact: the topic of the nerd fight these two had for decades… semicolons. 

Gottlieb passed away earlier this year at 92. He’ll never read the final volume of Caro’s Johnson series, which still seems years from completion.

The greatest video essayist you’ve never heard of

Through Criterion I stumbled on a rarity: a video essay doc. Not only that, it’s called Lynch/Oz, and it’s about the connection between David Lynch and The Wizard of Oz… that is some Gen X film nerd catnip right there.

The film is an anthology featuring a number of different writers and directors and it’s definitely a mixed bag. And because Lynch never talks about any of this stuff, the results are entirely speculative.

Lynch/Oz still had its moments and I wanted to know, who made this? The answer: Alexandre O. Philippe. Don’t know him!

I did a web search and saw he made another video essay-ish doc, Memory: The Origins of Alien, which I loved. I then realized that Philippe has actually created a body of documentary work that is mostly video essay-ish in format. Who knew? Not me!

I immediately devoured Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist then 78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene, which yes, is just about the Psycho shower scene. This is an entirely sensible framing because the shower scene is clearly a distinct creation within the film. The doc’s title is a reference to the shower scene having 78 camera setups (!) and 52 edits.

(Another film-within-a-film classic is the scene now known as “Victor Takes a Trip” from The Rules of Attraction. This was a stunner in 2002 and the film itself remains underrated.)

If you love Psycho, The Exorcist, or Alien, those docs are must-watches. And if you love Lynch and/or The Wizard of Oz, you’ll enjoy Lynch/Oz too.

Other Discoveries

• Spaceship Earth is the utterly fascinating story of eight misfits who spent two years quarantined inside a self-engineered replica of the Earth’s ecosystem called Biosphere 2. (This event inspired the 1996 Pauly Shore comedy Bio-Dome.) Thank you to Michael Garfield for the recommendation.

• Come and See is a great Russian anti-war masterpiece I’ve somehow never seen.

• I’ve also started watching Scavengers Reign, an imaginative sci-fi series about being stranded on a weird and extremely hostile planet. Seems to have clearly drawn inspiration from the stoner cult classic Fantastic Planet.

And back to it I go, folks! All you Americans have an amazing Thanksgiving!

Hope everybody’s well! Later!

k

P.S. You can still pre-order Al for Creating Content 2024 at a discounted price!

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Viruses, muscle spasms, and ChatGPT!

Happy Holiday Season, everybody! Just a quick update from me.

Things have been challenging here in the Ferguson-Ryan household!

Of course, I’m neck-deep in the ChatGPT course, which I hope to launch before Christmas. I’d say my odds of success are looking about even right now. I’m proud and excited to publish this course!

The already tough schedule has been toughened further by parenting life.

Since little Kirby started pre-school he’s been leading home a parade of nasty bugs to share. The best was bronchitis, which I’m not sure I’ve ever had. That was weeks of powerful coughing.

Nora then injured her shoulder in recent weeks so I’ve been doing most of the childcare here at home.

It’s been miserable at times, there’s not been nearly enough time or energy for everything, and yet, this is a golden phase of life. Little K is happy and healthy and our life is filled with friends, big and small.

I just wanted to wish everybody a very happy final month of 2023! If you’re struggling, I get that too. Hang in there, friend.

Talk to you all in a couple weeks-ish!
Kirby

P.S. The best Christmas movie is A Christmas Story. The best Christmas album is Elvis’ Christmas Album. My favorite Christmas movie that is not a Christmas movie is Withnail and I. My favorite Christmas movie to ridicule is Love Actually, which worsens with age.

P.S.S. The next newsletter might not arrive on a Monday, because it could be synced to the course launch.

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

New Year’s Resolutions Work. Let’s Make Some.

Happy New Year everybody!

Folks, first of all, my new ChatGPT course is live! I’m very proud of it and I think it’ll make a dent in your life. See the end of this email for a special launch promo.

If you pre-ordered the course, you should have received an email. If you missed it, search for “Your order for Create Content With AI and ChatGPT 2024 is ready”. If you can’t find that, let me know!

It’s 2024, folks! Should you make some resolutions? Yes, you should! Here’s why.

New Year’s resolutions work

New Year’s resolutions are a tradition with a bit of a bad rep. Sure, most resolutions will fail. Almost all attempts at making change in your life will ultimately fail. You exercise for a while, your enthusiasm fades, your workout sessions taper off, and before long you’re back where you were. You revert to our old ways – and you may find yourself demoralized and ashamed to boot.

Of course, if you keep trying, you will eventually break through. This is a certainty. Every major change I’ve made in my life was preceded by a string of failures. I tried to clean up my diet dozens of times before the change held.

Certain moments, though, give you better odds of creating change that sticks. When you get a clean slate in your life, a reset, it’s a bit easier to change your ways and keep it going. For example, when you move or start a new job or begin a new relationship.

Every year we get a new clean slate at the start of the year. And the changes we make at times like this are a little more likely to stick because we feel less weighed down by our past.

Change is hard and it mostly doesn’t work (unless you never stop trying). But the start of a new year provides an unusually good opportunity to pull it off.

Convinced? Alright, let’s make some resolutions!

Step 1: Give this year a theme

Your theme is your mission for the year, it’s the adventure you’re about to embark on.

For me, 2024 is My Best Year Ever. The main focus is my business. I worked all of 2023 creating the groundwork to build a proper business and livelihood. I’ve now got a superb product, a strong market, and loads of ideas and tactics for marketing and sales. I intend to rock the shit out of this year.

In 2023, I created 2X growth in this business in just six months of focus. This year I want 10X.

This could be your year of simplicity, creativity, giving, health, balance, or any realm you want to improve. (Not every resolution needs to fit the theme, but the most important ones should.) Your theme is what will give your resolutions meaning and purpose.

Step 2: Make some resolutions (not too many)

Now make some resolutions! Reflect on the year past. What went well and what didn’t? What are the areas of your life where you’d like to see improvement? What are some exciting and somewhat risky goals you can make?

Remember: a resolution is an activity, not a goal. My 10X business goal for this year is not a resolution. The resolutions are what will help me achieve that goal. “Lose 10 pounds” is a goal. “No snacking after 7pm” is a resolution.

How many should you make? Certainly no more than ten. If you want to keep things simple, three is always a good number. And if you’ve just got a single thing on your mind, one is just great.

I’ve made a few resolutions for my business and a few for my personal life.

Step 3: Write 'em down and put 'em everywhere

Write down the theme for the year and your resolutions and read them every day. Stick post-it notes everywhere, make them a daily item on your to-do list, write them down each day in your journal, whatever. Occasionally relocate them to someplace fresh.

Celebrate the little wins along the way. Get support from friends and family and be your own biggest cheerleader. 

2024 is the year to start using AI

Conveniently enough, I have a recommendation for what one of those resolutions should be. This is the year to learn ChatGPT and AI. You should integrate AI into your work life this year, especially if creating content is part — or all — of your job.

And guess who should teach you? Yep, yours truly!

Learning ChatGPT can do any or all of these:

• Raise your content creation game

• Help you get more done in the same time

• Allow you to work less

I achieved the first two of these while creating this course. The course is a bit better than it would have been without AI, and I created over 2 hours of high-quality content in just 2.5 months of part-time-ish work. Most excitingly, I released it on schedule, on Christmas day. Anybody who knows my history knows launching things on time has never exactly been my superpower.

After just the couple hours it takes to watch this course, plus your own practice, you will be good at working with ChatGPT. (For anyone thinking you can binge random YouTube videos and get the same result, sorry, you definitely won’t.)

Get Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024 now. The regular price will be $199, but the launch price is just $149. And you can save an additional $25 by using this code at checkout: BESTYEAREVER

That code expires end-of-day this Friday.

Happy New Year everybody! See you next week!
Kirby

P.S. Yes, weekly emails are back! You’ll be hearing from me bright and early every Monday morning!

P.S.S. You can save $75 total on my ChatGPT and AI course! The launch price is $50 off and can save another $25 by using this code at checkout: BESTYEAREVER

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Wading into a cold sea of indifference

Folks, I am bracing for a tough winter. I live in Southern California so it’s not the weather that’s gonna be tough. It’s my professional life. Here’s where I’m at.

If you don’t believe, why bother?

In the spring of last year, I officially pulled the plug on my old career. The business model for that era was this: make the best videos I could, give them away, money happens. That method worked extremely well for me once, about a decade ago, but it was in terminal decline for a while before I finally let it go.

For the rest of 2023, most of my income was generated by awesome freelance projects for people like Sysdig and Sandwich Video, Generation Genius, Nick Milo and Linking Your Thinking, and Bloomberg Law.

But alongside this work, I was creating impressive growth selling educational products through the Everything is a Remix site. My first little hit was a downloadable guide to writing in ChatGPT. I followed that up by selling pre-orders for an on-demand video course about creating content with ChatGPT. That course is by far the most successful product I’ve ever created.

Even though my educational ventures did well last year, it was still a minority of my income and nowhere near being a livelihood.

My objective this year is this: turn my educational work into a real business. That means it entirely provides for me and my family.

And I don’t have a full year to prove this is viable: I have one quarter. If the metrics aren’t good enough come April, it ends there and I look for in-house opportunities.

One of three futures will arrive come spring. 

1. This attempt fails utterly. 

2. I land somewhere in between and have to make a judgment call.

3. This works well enough to continue the pursuit.

You won’t hear me say this again, but number 1 is the most likely outcome. That’s the reality for all businesses – they mostly fail.

But I’m putting on the blinders… now. I am going to run at number 3 with all my might, with moronic optimism. If you don’t believe, then why bother? I believe. 

Weathering my winter of suck

The product that will decide my fate is Creating Content With ChatGPT and AI 2024. If it can generate the right revenue this quarter, then the journey continues onward into the spring. If not, the path ends there and I move on to something else that is not running my own business.

I am by no means a master of online sales, but I’ve done enough to know this: launches are the easy part.

I have loyal fans and this product had a good launch. But I am now leaving the warm confines of my fandom, you guys, the people who know me and like me and trust me. This winter I am wading into a cold sea of indifference.

I will be doing sales and marketing all day, every day, for three months straight, weekends included. And I’ll be doing it to people who don’t know how I am and don’t care. Rejection and above all, indifference will be constant. Every day I’ll need to generate momentum and sales.

This winter is gonna be challenging. Here’s what will help me weather it.

• I am extremely fortunate to otherwise have an awesome life. I will be grateful for it throughout.

• I’m gonna celebrate every little win, every click, every newsletter subscriber, every sale.

• Above all, I’m grateful that I get to give my all and try. I’m prepared, I’m ready, I’m gonna give this everything I’ve got and the chips will fall where they may.

How can I help?

Some of you might be wondering how you can help. Here are a few ideas.

• Buy the course (you can still save $50!)

• Buy anything!

• Share the course on social media

• Talk to your company or organization about taking the course or bringing me in for instruction, either on-location or virtual.

Every little thing you can do to help spread the word means a lot to me, folks.

Lastly, if you’re still not sure if you think the course is for you, check out this free chapter which I’m sharing with you guys first, My Journey With ChatGPT.

Have a great week everybody! See you next Monday!
Kirby

You got this email because you subscribed to this newsletter. If you like what you read, please forward this to a lucky friend. And if you received this email from someone else, you can subscribe here.

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Operation 11th Hour

Happy Monday everybody!

First things first, are you subscribed to the Everything is a Remix newsletter? If not, I command you to do it!

It’s new emails every Wednesday about creativity and AI. Most recently, I took a swing at defining when it is and is not okay to use AI art.

When you subscribe, you’ll get my new free guide, An Introduction to Creative AI, which walks you through 11 places to start your journey into creating in collaboration with AI.

So go subscribe!

Operation 11th Hour

As mentioned last week, I have one quarter (January - March) to establish a viable business producing educational content. I’ve now dubbed this mission… Operation 11th Hour!

Sounds campy but also serious. Yeah, it is!

This is my final attempt at making an independent business work. If the numbers don’t add up come April, that’s it, and I move on to pursuing in-house opportunities.

The primary revenue vehicle for this is my new video course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024. (If you’ve not bought it yet, you should and you can still save $50.)

I’m now two weeks into Operation 11th Hour. How’s it going?

So far… it’s working! However, please brace yourself for a rather enormous “but.”

BUT!

This is the part that often works: the launch. 

The challenge when selling digital products is to keep the faucet of sales flowing over the coming weeks and months. It’s very common to see sales stop entirely not long after launch. My daily battle is to keep the sales going.

I got a small win this week because week 2’s sales actually surpassed week 1’s. That’s no mean feat.

A huge win would be if month 2's sales exceeded month 1’s. How can I do that?

Firstly, through ongoing sales efforts, day in and day out.

And secondly, I’m gonna try something crazy…

Video.

I’m sure many of you are old enough to remember when I retired from video content creation. Yes, something like that did happen!

But actually, it was more specific than that. I quit doing the kind of video production I’d been doing for years: making cool videos and praying. That kind of video-making is indeed over. 

When you don’t have a business model, video content doesn’t make sense. I now have one, so video makes sense.

For Operation 11th Hour, I’m trying some new things and some uncomfortable things, like ongoing sales. But I also want to play to my strengths. I need to break out the big guns for this battle… and that’s video. 

So videos are coming to the YouTube channel! (I also might make a video for a large newspaper I’m sure you’re familiar with.)

Are you somehow not subscribed to my YouTube channel? I command you to go do that too.

Steamboat Willie is now free

Did you know Steamboat Willie entered the public domain? A lot of copyright pessimists thought this day would never come and copyright would just be extended endlessly. Well, it happened. You can legally do whatever you want with Steamboat Willie.

But remember, Mickey Mouse is still trademarked, so don’t go trying to sell Mickey Mouse t-shirts on Etsy.

That’s it, folks! Have an awesome week!

Kirby

P.S. Subscribe to the Everything is a Remix newsletter! It’s my straight-laced pro newsletter. This is my screwball personal newsletter.

Order my new course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024, now and save $50!

You got this email because you subscribed to this newsletter. If you like what you read, please forward this to a lucky friend. And if you received this email from someone else, you can subscribe here.

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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Are We Creatively Losing It?

Welcome back and happy Monday!

Feedback for my new ChatGPT and AI course has been fantastic! You can see a few testimonials from Hans, Jeff and Charlie on the landing page. If you’ve bought the course and have feedback, I’d love to hear it!

I'm excited to announce that I'm broadening my horizons beyond just the video course. I'm now venturing into personalized coaching, consulting, and interactive teaching sessions. If you need deeper engagement, tailored guidance, or hands-on learning, this is how I can provide that.

If you want to raise your creative game with ChatGPT – or without! – I’m now available for bookings. Sessions are assumed to be virtual but I’m open to travel.

Now is definitely the time to book. If you’d like to discuss, just reply to this email.

Alright, I’m now going to do some thinking in public.

Are We Creatively Losing It? If So, How Do We Get It Back? (Part 1)

Are we, as a culture, in creative decline? If so, why and what can be done about it?

As many of you know, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit and I’m going to start sorting my thoughts here, in installments. 

Let’s start with The Stones. 

I love The Rolling Stones. Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street are as great as anything you’ll ever hear. As a young man, I loved them with a weird intensity, and I still love that music now. Lots of the stuff I loved when I was young doesn’t stand up. Their music does.

The band has a new album out and critics are again breaking out this old chestnut: “their best album since the seventies.”

I'm old enough to remember when critics said that about the now extremely forgotten Steel Wheels from 1989. As a hardcore teenage fan, I tried my best to love Steel Wheels but I couldn’t keep up the facade for long. And that album, for its time, seems better than this one. 

To be clear: if you love The Stones, the band sounds good on the new album and hey, the old fuckers are still doing it! Maybe that’s more than enough. But let’s not delude ourselves: the new album isn’t actually good. 

The Stones have lost it. Just like we all do. Some of us even become embarrassing.

When it comes to losing it, music is a tough industry, almost as tough as being an athlete. Musicians peak early and decline early. They have their heyday, then maybe they're good or occasionally very good after that, but not like they were.

There are always exceptions. 

• Beethoven was in his fifties when we wrote his 9th symphony (and almost entirely deaf).

• Leonard Cohen released I’m Your Man at 54.

• Beyonce has remained a vital pop artist into her forties.

• Johnny Cash was releasing exciting music at the very end of his life.

It can be done. But mostly, it isn’t. And this doesn’t just apply to us as individuals.

Entire genres lose it. Jazz, classical, folk, the blues, and rock were all once teeming with innovation and are now dead. Rap is late in life and will soon follow. 

And entire cultures lose it. Egypt, Rome, and the Ming Dynasty all lost it well before they fell. I’m sure war, disaster, and famines were major drivers, but I suspect creative decline is another factor for why empires fail to rejuvenate.

Are we late in the game too? (By “we” I’m not sure I mean Western Culture, I think I mean global culture. The world is now running on the same economic operating system and seems to operate within one creative paradigm.)

Now before I go on, I’m sure some of you are thinking… BUT TECHNOLOGY! VIRTUAL REALITY! AI!

Yes, there’s those. But next time I’ll explain why that’s not enough. I’ll continue unpacking this in the weeks to come.

Have a great week everybody!
Kirby

P.S. You can now watch the entire first module of ChatGPT and AI course, for FREE! That’s 7 videos, over 25 minutes of content. And you can still save $50 on the full course using this code at checkout: JZ834HQ

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