View in Browser

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

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.

View in Browser

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!

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.

View in Browser

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!

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.

View in Browser

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).

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.

View in Browser

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!

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.

View in Browser

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!

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.

View in Browser

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.

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.

View in Browser

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

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.

View in Browser

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.

View in Browser

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.

View in Browser

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

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m revamping my work and my life. 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 VIDEO

MULTIPLE DISCOVERY
The Curious Case of Simultaneous Invention

This is one of my favorite segments from the original Everything is a Remix series. It didn't fit in the new version, but I still wanted to update it and share it. Hope you enjoy and if so, please tell the world! Click here to watch.

Operator 11th Hour:
Month 1 Update!

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

Month 1 is complete! Where did I land?

The short answer is: 65%. I got 65% of a bulls-eye for the course launch.

Sales were… fine. They were slightly good. And I had good success in a few additional areas:

• The Everything is a Remix newsletter had good growth.

• I’ve been consistent with producing two articles per week.

• The Remix site has gotten the most traffic since its heyday.

• I tried Google Ads as a small experiment… and got an actual sale!

• I started doing coaching and consulting and I’ve already arranged bookings for Month 2. I can help with ChatGPT training, video and creative consultation, and more. If you’re interested in working with me directly to help with education or your projects, reply to this email.

Overall, Month 1 sales results are mixed.

On the one hand, it’s a decent start and I’m still learning.

On the other hand, this was a launch, which is when you get to ride downhill for a bit. Month 2 will be all uphill, at least for the video course.

All in all, I need to regroup and find some high-leverage plays. Here are a couple upcoming attempts.

• Videos are returning to the YouTube channel! The first one is already up!

• I’m launching affiliate sales. If you register as an affiliate and sell a copy of my course via your link, you’ll make approximately fifty bucks. (Details TBD)

However, I’m not sure I’ve got anything on deck that can turn the ship quickly. So I called in the cavalry. I’m doing some commission work to relieve some short-term pressure. This will slow the progress on my business, but it’ll give me some financial runway and some space to reflect and re-orient.

Age of Deceleration

Part 2 of "Are We Creatively Losing It?

In my last installment, I asked this question: are we creatively losing it? Go read that before reading on.

The most obvious counter to this question is: but technology!

Yes, there is that. For example.

• AI, above all, is exploding.

• Augmented reality might be about to go mainstream with Apple’s Vision Pro.

• Even the widely despised crypto/web3 is vital, has exciting potential, and is currently worth a fortune. The real question is whether it can do anything or not.

Tech remains an innovative and dynamic realm… but it is definitely slowing down too.

Think about this.

It’s 2024. Let’s say you’re using a ten-year-old computer that you bought in 2014.

It’s a bit sluggish, it can’t run the latest operating system, but it does everything you need. It even pretty much looks like the new models. Sure, you want a new computer, but you’re fine.

Now hop in a time machine and set the dial for 2004.

A new iMac in 2004 looked like this.

But you’re not using that. Again, you’re using a ten-year-old computer. It’s 2004 but your computer is from 1994. That’s something like this.

This beast is an ancient relic. It’s a gray box with a huge, heavy monitor. It’s unbearably slow and has no storage space. You store your extra files on, yep, a stack of floppy disks.

You are miserable and desperate for an upgrade. You’re not fine.

Computer hardware was a runaway train in the eighties and nineties. But not anymore.

You can feel this. You can feel each new iPhone or new laptop being a smaller and smaller upgrade. More likely, you’re upgrading because the old thing is broken.

Tech is still briskly advancing and some areas, like AI, are explosive. But it is slowing down. Those of us who experienced the break-neck innovations of the eighties and nineties have witnessed this deceleration.

But the slowdown in tech is minor compared to the slowdown elsewhere in society. Next time up I’ll show you just how slow progress has gotten in the rest of human creativity.

See you next week, folks! Happy Monday!
Kirby

P.S. Did you know you can watch the first module of my ChatGPT course FREE? (That's 7 videos, over 25 minutes of content!)

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m revamping my work and my life. 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.

The Latest Stuff I’ve Made

Happy Monday folks! I’ve been a busy little bee lately, so let me recap some of the stuff I’ve made recently.

• A new video!

• I’m a month into Operation 11th Hour, here’s how it’s going!

• Part 2 of “Are We Creatively Losing It”

• A breakdown of how James Clear remixed Atomic Habits

• A breakdown of the launch video for the latest Arc Browser

• The Everything is a Remix newsletter continues to grow and progress. Sign up now and you’ll get two exclusive guides for free, “11 Incredible Ways to Work With Al” and “Finish It Now!”

Let's Make Lots of Money

The Everything is a Remix affiliate program is now live!

Here’s how it works.

• You sign up for the program.

• You generate links.

• You share these links.

• When someone clicks your link and buys something you get a commission!

Sell anything from my shop and you make 25%! For the ChatGPT course, that is a cool fifty bucks if you sell it at full price. (Terms not finalized yet.)

Important note: This is a pilot program, a beta. There might be kinks. If you're not an early-adopter type, you might wanna hold off until this test phase is complete.

If you’re game, sign up for the Everything is a Remix Affiliate Program!

My Mallety Finger

And now BREAKING NEWS! I tore a tendon in my right ring finger!

I play rec basketball as often as a middle-aged man with a business to save and a small child to raise can manage. “Jamming” your finger is a super common injury in basketball. That's when the ball hits the tip of your finger, dislocates a knuckle, and you've got a sprain. Kinda painful, but not serious. I've jammed plenty of fingers.

But this jam was bad or unlucky and tore a tendon in my right ring finger, so now the tip doesn't pull back straight when I extend it. This is called mallet finger and it’s not as useful as it sounds.

For anybody thinking, "Well at least it's your ring finger!" You'd be surprised how useful ring fingers are! Especially the one in your dominant hand! You could even say ring fingers are handy.

Puns folks! I'm a dad now, I can't help it.

Tendons get low blood flow and are slow to heal, so I’m in a splint for… two freaking months!

Fingers crossed (the ones still work) that my finger can be straight or straight-ish after it heals. Stay tuned to this newsletter for all the latest on this developing story!

AI and The Shock of the New

Did I mention I’ve been a busy bee lately? Yes, I also wrote another brand new article, “AI and The Shock of the New.” Normally these go right in the newsletter, but I think you can read it more comfortably at my site.

Have a great week everybody! Enjoy your non-mallety fingers!

P.S. Again, the Everything is a Remix Affiliate Program is live! I’m still working out the kinks, but if that’s okay with you, sign up now!

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m revamping my work and my life. 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.

Just one question

Happy Monday folks! I know you’re all eager for updates about my mallet finger injury, but you’ll just have to cope with that suspense for a bit.

All I’ve got for you is a single question: what do you think of this idea?

Have a great week everybody!

Love,
Kirby

P.S. I have a major new article, AI and The Shock of the New.

P.S.S. The Everything is a Remix Affiliate Program is live! Make as much as $50 when you sell my course through your link. I’m still working out the kinks, but if that’s okay with you, sign up now!

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m revamping my work and my life. 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.

The results are in!

Folks, thank you so much to all of you who responded to last week’s poll! This poll had the most responses I’ve ever gotten. Without further ado, here are the results!

• Almost half of you were very enthusiastic about this idea.

• About a quarter of you were interested but still needed to hear more.

• And 7.5% loved this idea and would pay for it now.

• So 80.5% of you liked this idea.

• 15.5% thought the idea sounded good but were not personally interested in it.

• And 4% don’t think the idea is worth pursuing.

• So 19.5% weren’t that into the idea.

Overall, a pretty enthusiastic response! 80.5% is pretty high approval and, as I said, this was about double the response rate I usually get from polls.

I’ll continue to brew on this topic. Stay tuned for more!

In the meantime, I have another question!

Read Like an Artist

People don’t think of reading as creative. It’s considered passive, consumptive. Reading certainly can be those things, but it can also be highly creative if you do it the right way.

The simple key to creative reading is this: take notes. Make highlights and write notes. E-books are especially great for this and Readwise is the best tool to manage those notes. Your book highlights and notes should be part of a notes system that also includes your own notes drawn from your ideas, life, and experiences. Out of this brew of your thoughts and the thoughts of others, all sorts of ideas will appear.

Creating is so much harder if you don’t take notes. You’re perpetually stuck in the “blank page” phase, staring into the void and waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration.

Another key to creative reading that I’ve discovered is this: timing is everything. Read the book when it’s time to read the book.

I pre-ordered Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act as soon as I saw it was coming and I was thrilled to see it pop up in my Kindle library later. Nonetheless, I didn’t dive in, I set it aside.

There are a special few books, movies, and albums that I save until it’s the right time to experience them. How do you know that moment has come? I dunno, it’s a feeling, but I think this feeling comes when the work fits within my current interests and might have a role to play.

The time for The Creative Act recently arrived and I’ve been slowly reading it over recent weeks. It’s an inspiring book regardless of how you read it, but saving it for this moment made it explosive for me. It’s inspired thousands of words of writing and many good creative insights.

The first thing it inspired came after reading this passage.

If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist.

This idea combined with a recent conversation I had with my friend Andy Allen, then this article, “Art, Craft, and AI,” came flowing out. I think this piece is a strong insight, but it’s also an early expression and it’ll grow into something bigger and better

The Creative Act also inspired a new course idea, which I asked you all about in last week’s question. (You’re still welcome to answer if you want.) We’ll see what comes of that.

Because I read The Creative Act when it felt right (and made notes!), the book triggered countless ideas, many of which will continue to grow for months to come.

I know exactly what most of you are thinking. “Before you go, pleeeeeeze tell me more about your mallet finger injury!!!”

Oh folks, I can’t give away all the primo content in a single newsletter. I’ll dispense that gold in a future installment.

Love,
K

P.S. Don’t forget to answer this question!

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. These thoughts are a work in progress.

The latest!

Happy Monday, folks! First off, here’s the latest stuff from me!

• I have a new video!
  Multiple Discovery: The Curious Case of Simultaneous Invention

• Read Like an Artist: How Notes Fuel Your Creativity

• And finally, some satire, A Recipe for Awful Creative Feedback

You can always head to the articles section of the Everything is a Remix site to see what’s new. I typically update twice a week.

More results!

Last week I ran another poll. I pitched you this idea.

I'm considering creating a live virtual training event that teaches you absolutely everything I know about making videos and writing in the Everything is a Remix style.

I then asked this question: Would you buy this at a premium price?

It’s not a question I expected to generate many yeses... and it didn’t! This would be an uber-niche product with a small audience and, thus, a high price tag.

In total, 17 of you said “yes, I would pay a premium price for this.”

This might sound small, but this response is interesting to me. What I initially had in mind for this class was something like 12 people for $1200 each. So this is potentially worthwhile and I’ll be giving it further thought.

Should it happen, this course will certainly be an extraordinary and perhaps one-time-only experience. If you’d like to see it happen and you’d pay a premium price for it, you can still respond to the poll.

Operation 11th Hour:
Month 2 Update!

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

Month 2 is complete! How’d it go?

The short answer is: I survived!

Operation 11th Hour basically entered a holding pattern. In January I could see that course sales would be much slower in February. I didn’t yet have a good plan to boost sales and get in front of new eyeballs.

So I elected to buy some time. I rallied some freelance work, coaching, and consulting to fill the hole… and it worked. (However, because I diverted time to this other work, course revenue probably dropped even further.)

The end result: February generated almost as much revenue as January. I remain in the same position as at the end of Month 1, which I described as “slightly good.” I’m in a decent place for the short term, but staying at the “slightly good” level will not cut it. The trend line’s gotta up.

What’s in store for Month 3? It might look a lot like this month because I’ll still be working on those freelance projects, which will take most of my time.

I definitely need to change things up and get fresh revenue flowing. Month 3 would be successful if I could generate some new momentum from the educational work while working on freelance projects.

Wish me luck, folks! I wish you all the same and see you next week!

Love,
K

P.S. You can still respond to last week’s question!

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. These thoughts are a work in progress.

The latest!

Happy Monday, folks! First off, here’s the latest stuff from me!

• I have a new video!
  Multiple Discovery: The Curious Case of Simultaneous Invention

• Read Like an Artist: How Notes Fuel Your Creativity

• And finally, some satire, A Recipe for Awful Creative Feedback

You can always head to the articles section of the Everything is a Remix site to see what’s new. I typically update twice a week.

More results!

Last week I ran another poll. I pitched you this idea.

I'm considering creating a live virtual training event that teaches you absolutely everything I know about making videos and writing in the Everything is a Remix style.

I then asked this question: Would you buy this at a premium price?

It’s not a question I expected to generate many yeses... and it didn’t! This would be an uber-niche product with a small audience and, thus, a high price tag.

In total, 17 of you said “yes, I would pay a premium price for this.”

This might sound small, but this response is interesting to me. What I initially had in mind for this class was something like 12 people for $1200 each. So this is potentially worthwhile and I’ll be giving it further thought.

Should it happen, this course will certainly be an extraordinary and perhaps one-time-only experience. If you’d like to see it happen and you’d pay a premium price for it, you can still respond to the poll.

Operation 11th Hour:
Month 2 Update!

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

Month 2 is complete! How’d it go?

The short answer is: I survived!

Operation 11th Hour basically entered a holding pattern. In January I could see that course sales would be much slower in February. I didn’t yet have a good plan to boost sales and get in front of new eyeballs.

So I elected to buy some time. I rallied some freelance work, coaching, and consulting to fill the hole… and it worked. (However, because I diverted time to this other work, course revenue probably dropped even further.)

The end result: February generated almost as much revenue as January. I remain in the same position as at the end of Month 1, which I described as “slightly good.” I’m in a decent place for the short term, but staying at the “slightly good” level will not cut it. The trend line’s gotta up.

What’s in store for Month 3? It might look a lot like this month because I’ll still be working on those freelance projects, which will take most of my time.

I definitely need to change things up and get fresh revenue flowing. Month 3 would be successful if I could generate some new momentum from the educational work while working on freelance projects.

Wish me luck, folks! I wish you all the same and see you next week!

Love,
K

P.S. You can still respond to last week’s question!

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.

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. These thoughts are a work in progress.

Golden Years

Nora and I now live in Southern California with our two-year-old son, Kirby – otherwise known as Little Kirby. These are the Golden Years of my life in every way.

The days are sun-drenched. Sounds glorious – and it kinda is – but it’s also not ideal for my extremely Celtic skin.

And we've been fortunate to spend a lot of time with our little blonde golden boy in his early years, as his mind and body and soul are exploding.

Life could so so easily be entirely different.

Little Kirby is our Miracle Child. It was difficult for us to conceive. Nora willed him into existence.

We were frighteningly lucky with his birth. If different choices had been made, I could have driven home alone that day.

I've never been a religious person, but there's no other way to say it: I am blessed.

I am an Old Dad. I was 49 when Little Kirby was born. The years were already passing a lot faster than they used to. And since I've become a parent, the chapters fly past.

I've already lost my newborn, in a blur, then my infant. I'm now in the toddler chapter. In no time at all, this will be the distant past too.

When I remember this era, I'll remember its golden haze. This precious time in golden Southern California with Nora and my golden boy son. It's not a place I planned to be, I don't know how long this will last. It's all so heartbreakingly fleeting.

It's still happening but I miss it so much already.

Love,
K

P.S. Nora and I take a lot of photos and videos of Little Kirby. One night I was looking at them while listening to music. "Gold Star Mothers" by Hammock started playing and the combination of that song and the video clip I happened to be looking at vividly captured this time. I combined them in this video. This is what life feels like now.

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.

View in Browser

The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. These thoughts are a work in progress.

The Spring Reset

It’s springtime, folks! And for those of you in the southern hemisphere, happy fall! Cold and decay! Hooray!!!

Regardless of your GPS coordinates, it’s a new season and it’s the perfect time to reset. If you’re off-track, let’s get on track. If you’re on track, let’s level up.

Remember, this can be about anything, not just work or creative projects. If you need to do better with your health or your family or relationship or social life or community or even hobby, a new season is a great opportunity to create change. 

The Good

Here’s where I’m at. This is all about business because that’s my focus this year.

I’ve done decently thus far this year – or as I’ve said before, slightly good. Here are my wins, some big, some small.

• I started the year with a bang and delivered a two-hour-plus video course about ChatGPT, on time, on Christmas Day. I executed a good launch. The course has been well-received and some well-known people took it.

• I ventured into areas outside my wheelhouse, like Google Ads and targeted emails, and scored some small wins.

• The Everything is a Remix newsletter was a priority and generated good growth.

• I’ve met loads of amazing people.

• After course income started to decline, I was able to quickly secure freelance work.

• Consistency has long been a weakness of mine, but I’ve put out two articles every week all year.

• I’m writing the most and the most easily I have in my life.

The less-good and what I’m going to do about it

Here are the struggles I’ve had and how I’ll address them.

Overall, after a strong start, momentum has dipped. Some of this is because I’m working on other projects, but that’s not the only cause.

• Course sales dropped more than I would like. I need to refocus on sales and marketing and establish consistency.

• My social media efforts have not delivered much and I’m occasionally making myself cringe with stuff I’m posting. (To be clear, selling stuff requires enduring some cringe.) I’m mostly shelving social for now and just posting updates about new stuff.

• I’m gonna launch something new! This will be something I’m very excited about and I hope you will be too. It’ll be my biggest and best product yet.

But the biggest change I’m going to make is this.

Video returns to the center of my life

I’ve written a lot this quarter, more than I ever have before. I’ve really developed that muscle. But there are two problems.

• It hasn’t amounted to much.

• I don’t think I’m especially great at it.

Writing feels partial to me, like a prototype. With some exceptions, I often feel like something is missing from what I write. 

Now, I don’t love every video I’ve made. But I love plenty of them and I like the rest. It’s easy for me to make stuff I like in video form.

I can’t escape video. I’m a lifer.

This might sound like an obvious conclusion, because, y’know, I’m a filmmaker. But this is a major change in my work.

The way I made videos before was insanely labor-intensive. Everything is a Remix, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, all the video-essay style stuff – each of those videos took months and there was no conceivable way to make them faster. They weren’t working well enough to justify that kind of investment. I had to let that kind of work go and try something more efficient, writing. Writing has gotten faster and easier for me and now I think I can adapt that material into easier-to-produce videos.

And I now have a business model. Before I only had videos. Video is possible again if I can make it in a reasonable amount of time and if it can serve the business.

So I’m trying that next! I’ve already launched a new video, which you can see below. (It’s a version of the ChatGPT course content.) 

I’m aiming to publish a new video every two weeks, but the quantity-quality balance is not settled.

So that’s my major course correction. All of you will, of course, be the first to see how this goes.

Have a great week everyone!
Kirby

P.S. Yes, I have a new video about writing! It’s a version of the ChatGPT course content.

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.

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. These thoughts are a work in progress.

“The Years Pass Like Months.” Why Does Time Speed Up?

When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked as a low-level graphic designer and technician (Mac nerd) at a printing plant in a tiny town in Nova Scotia, Canada. I made hundreds of newspaper ads for a couple of years, then graduated to pizza flyers and fishing equipment catalogs.

Places like this pretty much don’t exist now. Guys would smoke cigarettes while standing beside literal tons of highly flammable newsprint. Some folks were clearly alcoholics and that was ignored so long it didn’t get out of hand. 

The guy who serviced the vending machines was a fun character. He had friends at the plant and dropped in during his breaks. He was a huge, powerful, big-bearded man with a potbelly that stretched thin the mid-section of his t-shirt.

I would guess now that he was probably 60-ish – or maybe 50-ish with a lotta miles on him.

He was a light-hearted guy who loved small talk and jokes. But one day he was earnest and I’ve remembered what he said ever since.

“Time speeds up when you’re older. It’s all so fast now. The years… they pass like months.”

I’d never heard of such a thing. Time was… time, right? You get older and older faster and faster? It gave me an existential chill. Especially because I instantly knew he was right.

As a kid, every day was a long and winding adventure. A year was an infinity.

By the time I’d heard this guy’s insight, my thirtieth year was approaching and I was noticing how quickly the odometer was spinning. As the decades have passed since it’s just gotten faster.

Time accelerates as we age. Days blend together. Did we go to the play gym yesterday or the day before? A week begins then it’s over. You get used to being in your 40s, then you’re in your 50s.

Each year of your life passes a bit more quickly than the one before.

I’d never considered that I could do anything about this.

I’ve been listening to Moshe Bar’s fantastic book Mindwandering and he thinks you actually can do something about it.

Why do the years pass more quickly as we get older?

Bar thinks one of the reasons time speeds up is because we experience less and less novelty. We’ve seen so much that we engage less and less with the real world and spend more and more time in our mind’s perception of the world. We increasingly look at our mental map, not the territory around us.

I’ll also add: we vaporize thousands of hours on phones, TV, and video games. This is huge.

Bar believes when you spend less time lost in your interior monologue, time slows down.

One way to do this is through mindfulness meditation. (If you’re curious, just search. There are loads of resources out there.)

But it’s even simpler than that. We all know how to quiet our minds. Stop talking to yourself.

When you notice your mind jabbering away about nonsense, let it go. Begin to recognize when your mind is churning and let the thoughts pass. Don’t say anything in your head.

Your mind will always churn, that’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s trying to make meaning and plot your future. You can only reign it in.

We all have to work, parent, study, caretake, et cetera. Sometimes you need to talk in your head while doing these things. But when you don’t have to, don’t.

How do you slow down time? 

The answer is simple: think less, experience more.

This can feel boring. Accept the initial discomfort.

Try this out this week. Quiet your mind. Slow it down. It isn’t easy to do, but it is simple to work at and improve.

Oh, and more important than slowing time down: it feels better. It’s a better life.

Love,
K

P.S. Did you see my most recent video?

View original post

The Midlife Remix

Loop Media, 864 Grand Avenue #158, San Diego, CA 92109, United States

Powered by Squarespace

Unsubscribe