Focus and Distractions Can Both Help You in Life
I Never Clean Unless the Gloves Come On
Focus and distractions can both help you in life. For cleaning sometimes it’s good to have obbsessive focus. My blog frequently references The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The act of putting on rubber gloves might be a trigger action. Perhaps, PPE makes me feel slightly less disgusted with cleaning and touching filth. I felt stupid as I took a photo putting on my gloves as if I were an action hero.
It’s time to wipe this disgusting filth and low level germs off of the face of this planet. My inner child came out, grabbing my cleaner as if it were some advanced germ killing weapon. For the next hour the only thing I worried about was cleaning.
Neurodivergence and Obsessive Focus
Focus and Distractions Can Both Help You in Life, sometimes distractions get the better of you. It can feel like distraction is a hindrance when the smallest of annoyances can disrupt my focus for 10 minutes or more. My focus is more like a broken switch than a progressive dimming knob. When I get into my element, I can be pretty obsessive. One of the drawbacks with neurodivergent people is that we like to have “Proper” processes. I’d wished my parents told me how to properly clean or I had worked for a cleaning company for a small period. My own cleaning methods are in place, but perhaps I should watch a YouTube tutorial?
I put on a talking podcast and brought my bottle of bathroom cleaner and a hard sponge. Like Forrest Gump, I focused on spraying and scrubbing until it became almost a meditation. Following one round of cleaning, I was displeased and began to really focus on the parts that needed more attention than others. After cleaning as best as I could, I sprayed the surfaces with hot water to rinse all the grime away.
There’s a small sense of accomplishment you get when doing mundane tasks. A small part of me wishes that I’d hear that Xbox Live achievement sound play and I’d get some experience points to put towards cleaning skills.
Focus and Distractions Can Both Help You in Life with balance a Chain Reaction Occurs
With one part of my mind distracted by the high levels of abstraction in a podcast, the monkey brain could focus on cleaning. Before I knew it the dishes were clean, the laundry was getting washed, and I had cleaned my room. When I worked at a fabrication shop in Gunma, I put this obsessiveness to use as I cleaned the paint guns. Time would melt away as I made sure not a single spec of old paint was left on the guns.
A skill of mine Clean and organized are two different things. To clarify my room was clean, but still needed some help on the organization front. After cleaning the room I was happy if the place was presentable. Single occupancy Japanese apartments aren’t really designed for guests, but for my own sanity I’d like it if the room were organized. My room was far from just a room. By contrast it was my entertainment space, my office, and a reflection of my mind.
Creative Spark
Focus and Distractions Can Both Help You in Life, sometimes a creative muse will grab you and not let go. I’d been staring at my TO-DO list at the end of every blog post. At the top read “Make a New Year’s Video For the LaidbackMarco Channel“. As a result of repeatedly looking at it I felt it was time to take action. I’d been procrastinating making the video because I didn’t know what I wanted to say exactly. Most videos on YouTube are just people sitting in their rooms, the result of the content race meant that it was easier to have good lighting in a bedroom studio and shoot from there.
I wanted my videos to be at least a little different so leaning into my love of film and cinematography, I wanted at least a cinematic intro.
Being on camera is difficult for me. As I watch my past videos I can only cringe at the awkward delivery, acting, and vocal tics. For every umm, uhhh, and odd speech pattern a little bit of me died.
Similar to Running the Day before, it was easier once I got started. It was a challenge to film myself in a cinematic fashion, because it was much easier to do from behind the camera. Still I tried to remember what I had learned earlier.
Working with limitations is anything but limiting
LaidbackMarco
Focus and Distractions Can Both Help You in Life Sometimes You’ve Got to Beat the Side Quests
As I began offloading my footage, I noticed some photos on the SD card. They were taken almost a month ago, but I had completely forgotten about them. The night I spent with my friends in Tokyo surged through my mind as I looked at the photo. What some people don’t recognize about being a photographer is that it’s not simply a job or a passion. More than that, photography is a way of life. It felt weird to not have a camera around my neck.
One of the photos was that of my friend Dave’s Tesla on the streets of Tokyo. The street it was on was almost a physical time capsule of a time before I was born. Opposite to that was Dave’s Tesla, a representation of the future. Even as an internal combustion engine fanboy, I wasn’t blind to where world was headed. Like I said before I’m not a stranger to swimming upstream.
Doing a lot with Simple Techniques and Tools
The raw shot of Dave’s car leaves much to be desired. I shoot in a flat color profile and a little underexposed so the image looks flat and boring out of camera. Included in a photographers way of life is sitting in front of a computer for long periods of time editing photos for their light and color.
The First Round of Processing
The first round of processing was simply balancing the exposure, changing the color to be a little more dramatic, and finally some photoshop sharpening. I’ve been told that it’s best to let a computer handle the sharpening as in camera sharpening quality is pretty poor.
Round Two
After looking at the Image I felt that the lighting could be a little more dramatic to help you focus on the subject. I added some multiplication layers to make a really deep focus on Dave’s Car. Following that Edit I imagined it would be fun to emphasize the brakes lights on the rest of the floor so I added a color dodge and painted the pavement red. Finally I added some glow to the lights in the sky to give the image an extra layer of separation and depth
Final Touches
I wanted to add an extra sense of originality, depth, and some extra pizazz. Using the pen tool to select the tesla I added some subtle feathering to cut the sharpness before duplicating that layer twice. Adding some gaussian blur, I scaled up the size of the tesla before changing the opacity, transfermode, then adding some masking. For the lights I set an extra screen layer to add some graphic godrays before duplicating the tesla once more to add some glitch effects.
Final Result
Given some extra time I would have liked to add some original elements. 3D modeled Objects, Drawings, or Original signage would help add to the cyberpunk atmosphere that i was trying to create. Even Photobashing some elements from cyberpunk fiction might have sufficed to adding to that future/past sort of feeling I was going for.
Editing For My 2024 Year Start Video
I have four YouTube Channels.
It might sound like a lot of work, but it’s actually easier to build a following having four channels than to put it all on one channel. Think about how you use social media and follow, subscribe, and interact with accounts. Usually those accounts have similar content right? Unlike variety packs at costco people typically like to know what they’re buying into when they hit that sub or follow button.
Finally I sat down and edited the video for my LaidbackMarco channel. There were a lot of things I was unhappy about.
Because it’s easier to film yourself on the 80D as opposed to the A7III the low light quality isn’t as good. The motion graphics are basic if non existant. The color grading isn’t really touched at all. For a portion of the video it’s just a montage of life moments as opposed to self contained stories. Despite all the things that made me unhappy about the video I was happy to finally launch it. The Sound Mixing is subpar and there is some noise during my audio.
While I love Film, Life isn’t a Movie
As much as I love the motivational quote by Joe Rogan that says your life is a movie and you’re the main character, life isn’t a movie. It’s something more at times, but also much less at others. Not everyone’s life fit’s into a neat arc or story that Dan Harmon likes to poke fun at all the time.I used B-Roll on top of myself talking because I didn’t want it to be just another video of a person in their room.
None of these clips are color graded correctly, it will look bad
Then I thought to myself, not every clip has to be color graded does it? A YouTube video isn’t a movie. Although I like to pour hours into color grading and edits, not every video has to be highly produced. Sometimes people just like to see what is happening in your life.
To Do List
Make a New Year’s Video For the LaidbackMarco ChannelGet Organized Physically/Electronically- Keep better track and record of finances
- Design Shirts, Clothes, Sweaters, and Products for the brand
- Make a diagram of LaidbackLifestyle funnels and web
- Redesign website to integrate product sales
- Cleanup YouTube channels, linking, and tags
- Send Ophelia, Monstercat, and Other Labels a Demo. . .how do I put together a demo and press kit?
- Visualizer for “Lost at Sea”
- Vertical Visualizer
- Create shorts from Tokyo Underground Footage Vertical for LaidbackJDM
- Upload any Video To LaidbackGaming
- Finish Editing Yokohama Photos and Post Them Online
- Make a reel with trending audio of before and after edits
- Draw anime characters on them for laidbackanime
- Create Shortform Content from Nissan Global HQ
Non Negotiables
Study Japanese- Exercise
The Future of LaidbackMarco
I thought about what I want the future of the personal area of my brand to look like. On YouTube LaidbackMarco will serve as a platform for VLOGs, Reactionary Content(Haven’t Done Yet), and the Behind the scenes operations of my other sub brands. I’ve been experimenting with the idea of livestreaming when I work from home and creating tutorial based content around my music and art.
I want to create casual videos more similar to my Blog on that website while making it as cinematic as possible. This latest VLOG with a cinematic intro is more in the direction I want to take that aspect of the my video. My new years resolution for 2024 was to make this year one of huge growth. Growth starts with a single step and it felt good to cross something off of my To-Do list which is now publically shared. . .yikes.
Much Love
LaidbackMarco🩷❤️🩵
