This is an incredibly moving plea to wear your seatbelt. Hat-tip to Autoblog.

PS I’m going with the guideline of if it’s seen by over 500,000 viewers, then don’t post it. It’s just under 400,000 views currently. :-)

There’s an organisation, let’s call it Nonprofit X (there is no real personal connection to me, but it’s just nicer if I keep it anonymous), who has been given a substantial donation to create something significant. X begins on the plans with gusto. Only the eventual scope of said project isn’t quite covered by said donation. Now the generous donation has turned into a debt to finish a project that was never really on Nonprofit X’s radar.

Rinse. Repeat.

Nonprofit X is now roughly $30 million in the hole, largely due to generous donations. Everybody’s intentions were noble. So, how did it happen?

1.) What’s sexy trumps what’s sustainable.
Without clear guidelines, you’re likely pulled to and fro by whatever looks good at the moment. This includes the big-picture, such as green-lighting projects, or not. And includes the little steps along the way about what priorities the project contains and how it grows.

2.) Donors’ commitments are limited.
In order to give a project like this its best chance of success, it needs to be frugal. Too often plans go right to the upper limit of the money made available, and there is no accounting for overages, price-hikes, and other eventualities. Perhaps there’s an assumption that the donor, who obviously believes in this thing, will just donate more if there’s an overrun. Well, obviously not. If you can’t accomplish a project with the money on the table, it’s generally better to kibosh the whole thing. (Unless we’re talking about James Cameron making a movie!)

3.) Unclarified Costs
You need the people who can forecast accurately, who can track accurately, and who have the authority to control tightly. They’re not fun for zany, creative people to be around. But they’re really important. Evidently.

I’ve found this to be true. If you can get laughing about something, even something deadly serious, sometimes the breakthrough is instantaneous.

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

David M. Ogilvy

If you have a five year-old, if you know a five-year old, or if you’re ever been a five year-old, I’m betting you’ll get a kick out of this:

Hat-tip to Neatorama — they’re on a roll recently!

I just listened to a podcast that briefly touched on how campy photographers are. Initially, I thought the point being made was that we’re all cheesy and raunchy, but that’s not the kind of ‘campy’ he was getting at. He was saying that photographers usually become fanboys for certain brands and products. The most obvious is camera brand, like Canon vs Nikon (vs Pentax vs Sony, etc.). But there are also camps that have developed around lighting equipment, tripods, and even camera bags. Despite the fact that it’s useful to have some consistency in tools to maximise familiarity, and minimise learning curve, adhering strictly to some imaginary constraint is rather unfortunate.

The camp-mentality is visible in all kinds of widgets (tractors, computers, airlines, underwear), but it also extends to larger, more philosophical concerns. Like how a photographer refuses to experiment with video, because she’s a photographer. Or a film company refuses to experiment in digital image-making, because it knows film. Or an oil company refuses to experiment with alternative fuels, because that’s not its expertise. Increasingly the employees and the companies entrenched in various camps are getting surpassed by the ones who aren’t. While that shakes things up a bit, and requires a radical shift, it means that stiff becomes flexible, and rigid becomes fluid.

Now, I gotta say, sometimes there are legitimate reasons to be in a camp, and that’s OK. You can find strong community, or something resonates better with you for whatever reason. Or perhaps you’ve got good reasons to not joining a certain camp. Great! Just be intentional about what camps you and are and aren’t a part of, and evaluate your reasons. It’s a lesson I’m learning. It’s just a continuation of Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously 101.

I’ve watched a lot of people just give up. They can’t engage, they can’t settle on anything, and they’ve stopped asking the hard questions. Or any question. I bet you know the type. You’re probably even related to someone like that. They’re the people who work for the weekends. They waste their life enduring jobs that doesn’t do anything good for them, often just so that they sink money into ingesting substances which assist in temporarily forgetting all about that for as long as possible. Which is never long enough.

I believe that people long for meaning and significance. And while I think that that quest is universal, I think there is massive dissimilarity in how that gets expressed. For example, I remember once a co-worker confiding that he wished that an earthquake, or a tornado, or something would happen here. Watching what’s happening in Haiti from a distance, I think I understand what he was getting at. While staring down life and death situations is horrific, devastating and terrifying, it’s also clarifying. There’s nothing like crisis to define you — to strip you right down to your essentials. I sometimes wonder if we don’t have enough real crisis in our lives. So that it needs to be manufactured and sold to us in whodunit movies, reality TV shows and televised sports.

What we need to face down is that the systems of our world have made it increasingly challenging to engage with the stuff of life. No goal has proven to be of worthy of commitment, not even the most apparently noble. Everywhere you look, there’s corruption, deceit and dissatisfaction. Nothing on Earth is pure. Our media reflect that to us repeatedly, in truth and in fiction. But despite that, I believe that we each have a responsibility to own an area, and make it as good as we can.

Each of us has a purpose. There’s something that quickens our breath, dilates our pupils and makes us feel especially human (define that how you will given the stimulus). It’s truly sad that most people don’t pursue those things, or cheap out on them.

My Mom gave me Ignore Everybody for Christmas after I posted something about it a while back. This book is amazingly motivating and inspiring in simple, bite-sized nuggets. In it High MacLeod says that everyone has their own personal Mt. Everest. It’s the thing that will haunt you the rest of your life if you don’t at least attempt to conquer it. That connects with me, even if I don’t have my own Everest identified yet. But I’m open to the process of figuring that out, and I’m starting to take personal steps to make this journey count for something…tangible. I hope that you find sufficient reason in your reasons to act on them all the way. And if not, maybe it’s time to find new ones.

In tropical heat
The smell of sweat
Bred of wrestling soul into sound.
Pursed lips, set jaws
Limbs contorted unnaturally with the strain of hoping
to one day generate tone and tempo as if organic machines
A tremulous tonic solfa
From clear-sky eyes
Yearly murking into sophistication
Wanting to know enough to feel
And feel enough to sing
And sing enough to preach.
Allowing our skins to be sprinkled with dust rubbed free
from countless pages of others’ sweat-drenched ink,
to unlock the mysteries of wood and pearl and brass,
And each other.
Eking out a reason to belong

I don’t particularly like Twitter, but I think this is all I need to say about this scenario.

Me: “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.” Them: “They’re only flesh wounds. Shoot faster!”

This is the season of new beginnings. Or so I heard over and over in this morning’s sermon. Too many times, in fact. Far too many times…but I digress.

To me, New Year ’s is at best an artificial new beginning. There are myriads of cycles that we acknowledge, and there are many annual markers along the way. Birthdays, anniversaries, and calendar holidays come to mind. Each one promises a new start, and gives us the opportunity to ‘do better next time’. But often each is made murky with unmet expectations and exhausted hopes. After the loud, colourful parties have subsided (has Dick Clark been replaced by an animatronic robot, or is that just wishful thinking?), we’re left with the mundane, perhaps disappointing reality. It’s that phenomenon that I resonate with most strongly.

I have surrounded myself with people that I care about, who share similar goals, who are asking like-minded questions. (I sometimes wonder if my circle is too homogenous, but that’s another matter.) The problem is that while our collective intentions run to the noble and divine, our practical efforts are foibled are definitely confined to the human level. For me, 2009 was the exploration of good ideas. I was exposed to many. It was a year of personal growth and development, perhaps the most stretching year I’ve had yet. But one of the things that was reinforced to me repeatedly was that good ideas are radically insufficient. You need to be able to sell them. Not just in a way that other people can agree that it’s a good idea, either. Good ideas need to be sold to the level that others are willing to act on them. They won’t go anywhere without others getting involved in a way that costs something.

So while I’m not getting into the game of New Year’s resolutions (not yet, though if I land on a good enough idea…), I’d like to offer you a challenge. Identify something in your life that is worth sacrificing for. Something that has matchless worth. And intentionally sell out to it. If you need the early days of January to give you the impetus, so be it. But don’t restrict yourself to do that for just 2010 — let this new start be the start of something really significant and lasting. Find the people to help make your deepest dreams come true, and cling tightly to them.

I’ve wondered how Pixar was going to top itself after its big, action-packed adventures like Cars and the Incredibles. Like every good artist, the company didn’t try. It went a completely different direction.

Up is a much simpler story with fewer characters and plot devices. But it adds some unique things to the field of animation. I don’t think I’ve seen injury or blood in an animated film (non-anime that is) in a long, long time. When elderly Mr Fredricksen grumpily whacks a guy on the head with his cane, there is a definite cut, and that’s not the only injury. Neither is that the only unique touch of reality that Up presents. It handles topics like failed hopes, the pain of lingering infertility and the impact of divorce on kids. It’s amazing that they can address all those things and keep the movie light-hearted and fun. But they do!

Up is a smaller story than most of the previous ones (though there’s still a daring transcontinental flight involved), but it’s a real human story that is told with immense sensitivity and great skill. Highly recommended!