I’m Late!

Preface

What’s your life trailer?

Whether in literal video form or mental picture only, we each have a story that plays on repeat in our mind. The highlights reel. The lowlights reel. Has it transformed over time? How? Does it have a soundtrack? Who’s the composer? Did you score it yourself or did you ask Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to do that for you? Excellent 2nd choice, by the way 🙂

What’s the current evolution of the story you tell yourself? Need inspiration for your next evolution? Join us at Shhpeak.com for my evolving books on this subject as well as a separate series dedicated to reclaiming the role of storyteller of your own life! Psst—ya kinda need to be the storyteller if you wanna direct at least part of your trailer 😉

My life trailer has evolved 3 times.

Vision board (noun) — a collection of images and words that represent your goals and dreams

My trailer is my “moving” vision board.

I use it to ask and remind myself: Where have I been? Where am I going? Where will I go? It propels me. Whenever I’m feeling stuck, watching it again propels me forward. Usually it’s just a single humble step—but hey! When you’re stuck, a single step feels awesome! Unless … it’s a backwards step I guess, but as we like to say, I digress—or is that regress? Oh, I’m an idiot. But being an idiot can be fun! OK, moving on now, as in progressing.

Thanks for taking the time to consider my life trailer as I share this short rollercoaster ride below.

I find introspection and retrospection invaluable tools towards achieving growth. That’s why I ask my inner child so many doggone questions. I hope you never stop asking your inner child questions too. Ya gotta feed that kid, cause as you get older and less cute, no one else wants to anymore. Responsible parents don’t let ugly kids starve.

I end with an entertaining behind the scenes video of my 1st trailer … as recorded with my kids, back when they were still cute … and more honestly—back when they thought I still was 🙂

Dedication

To my faithful First 100 Shhpeak.com Pioneers:

Thank you for inspiring me to write this short book, currently short 🙂 As it matures from pioneer reward into commercial product, I will proudly maintain this dedication to you throughout.

Enjoy the ride below and if you’re here to see the BTS video and whether your name made it into the credits, feel free to skip to the last sections!

Epigraph

A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.

Dueling Trailers

I’m late! I’ve always felt this way, until I ironically learned to slow down.

Were they ever really foes? Were they ever really friends? Did they ever even know of each others’ existence? Yes, but only retroactively. As each of 3 trailers came into being, it and I contemplated and fought against the previous iteration. These iterations weren’t merely trailers but the sum of careless life choices and destiny defining decisions. Each told a better story than the last.

If three trailers, not duel but triduel then. And as we slowed down … paid attention …… and began making our own decisions, this triduel became more like a trifecta of transformation.

AFTER vs BEFORE Transformation

I’ll briefly touch on each trailer in reverse chronological order. This will allow us to quickly return to where conscious decision-making started. When we get to trailer 1, we’ll have more fun.

Trailers 3 and 2 will be decorated by just a few intro sentences before the video itself because enough has been said elsewhere about these already. That, and a video paints 30,000 pictures which each paints 1000 words so … 3-2-1-go!

Music-more Video

Yes, “music-more”. Whatever is “music to your ears”, “your passion”, “your artistry” (not an artist? review its definition), then that is what is meant by “music-more”—shhpeak more of that stuff into your life. Trust your voice so you can give voice to your dreams.

Music-less Video

Music-less. I decided NOT to use any music past the intro explosion. If trailer 1 (next) was the music video that gave birth to this one, then trailer 2 would be the music-less video that results when you don’t trust your creativity, face your fears or make any of your own decisions.

Music Video

A Day in The Life of an Application Developer — I’ll refer to this trailer by its shorter acronym, ADITLOAAD, for obvious reasons moving forward 😉 And it’s not a trailer, it wasn’t initially. ADITLOAAD was just a music video that I and a coworker at Dell collaborated on. Music video at Dell? What in the h—glad you asked 😉

But first I need to thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to finally give this music video, the bloopers and BTS a home. This nomad’s tumultuous story has needed one since 2015. Has it been wandering for 10 years already? Wow.

Retrograde Renegade

So much of what we waste yesterday can actually be built upon when we slow down today.

This was definitely true of “trailer” 1 above.

And yet it’s still weird to see in retro how much would be recklessly abandoned in ADITLOAAD (trailer 1) only to be reclaimed in the making of Decoding You (trailer 2) and then redeemed in the making of Shhpeak (trailer 3). ADITLOAAD’s tumultuous story was fraught with creative, corporate, copyright and legal battles from the very beginning and appropriately ended in the largest IT merger in history. I don’t even know where to begin, so I won’t. I’ll just let the previous run-on sentence suffice, for now.

I do want to take you to the innocent beginning, though, and share the awesome intentions that kickstarted this hairy drain-clogged mess.

There is so much to cringe about when rewatching this old reel … but fool before master, right? Yes to both, so I will focus instead on the beautiful parts of this story. For starters, I got paid to make a music video at my IT job! I got to collaborate with a very creative dude named Paul Brant and we needed to get very creative with the “research paper” (music video) we were trying to submit to a Knowledge Sharing (KS) competition because of these problems:

1. Paul lived in New York, I lived in Ohio
2. Paul had won too many KS Awards
3. Only paper-based submissions were allowed

Let’s tackle these backwards.

PROBLEM 3:

Only paper-based submissions were allowed

Yep, these had never been done before. But after some creative chats with the marketing, legal and KS departments, we were sanctioned to combine our 50 page paper with our music video to submit the 1st ever music video paper. Our music video paper was a parody of the Beatles “A Day in the Life” that Paul and I renamed “A Day in the Life of an Application Developer”. The paper’s title said it all and what it couldn’t say, our music video did. We submitted them both.

PROBLEM 2:

Paul had won too many KS Awards

Is that really a problem? It is if you’re the other contestants 🙂 Paul’s papers had won so many times in past KS competitions that a new rule had to be created because of him: once you get to 16 wins, you can no longer compete unless you’re the secondary author. That’s where I came in. Paul made me primary author, a humorous honor I still hold dear to this day! In the end, we won 2nd place of all global applicants—my 1st KS win, Paul’s 17th 😂

PROBLEM 1:

Paul lived in New York, I lived in Ohio

This was the craziest and most obvious problem: we worked remotely. Dividing a paper in half (which we did) and writing it remotely is not a problem. Dividing a music video in half (which we did) and sharing the same star role remotely? That would take some ingenuity. We’d need to divide ourselves in half while still looking like the same protagonist so we could seamlessly stitch him together in the end. Enter Disco Hound Wig Kit to the rescue. Or as my son calls him around 4:23 in the bloopers: “Mr. Disco Party Guy”

Did we succeed? I’ll let you judge. And remember, some cringe moments are mixed in with the beautiful!

Innocence Laughs

Another beautiful part (the most beautiful part) of this story was creatively collaborating with my kids: brainstorming, storyboarding, chasing buses on skateboards and eventually directing, shooting and editing the darn video. Props and animations too! Oh did the kids help me create a bunch of those! I think those were some of our best giggles while working together. Gas masks were sometimes necessary.

It was a fleeting moment I didn’t realize would flee so soon. Still, I remember we all lived 100% in that moment. I can’t say a moment like that has ever happened before or since so I’m glad it did. As I rewatched the ending blooper video earlier today, I’m reminded of how beautiful but fragile that kind of innocence can be. So it must be protected. It needs a protecting protagonist—Mr. Disco Party Guy or otherwise!

Lightning Strikes

Many figurative and 1 literal lightning strike later, innocence was over. Trailer 1 transformed into trailer 2, painfully. Lightning hurts. Figurative lightning strikes included a copyright strike, a merger, a silent work strike, many layoffs, and being the last man standing on a team of 7. The strikes continued. I was struck by the realization that people, like products, could be so easily disposed of. If I didn’t own my story soon instead of letting others continue to write it, I too would end up in the trash. So before being struck down I struck first. I decided our trailer was my CTA to take a three year national speaking tour. I took it, quit Dell, and 30,000 miles into it, my tour quit me. COVID struck. The nation shut down. I was struck down after all … and you and I were standing 6 feet apart—at best.

A literal lightning strike at the end of trailer 2 is a commemorative symbol of this chaotic time.

Luckily, before being struck down, I’d struck many a conversation with those that needed to be heard. I’d had the chance to meet many students and realize that my tour was about them, not me. Back then I wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. After 26 years of mental health problems and being afraid to speak up, I’d somehow become a national speaker … and sober for 5 years. What would I do with all that?

This question, this tour and the many hours of video collected from these travels, slowly gave birth to the “Decoding You” interactive book series and its eventual trailer. Trailer 2.

As I realized the HUGE overlap between the storylines of the ADITLOAAD music video and the conversations I was having on-and-offstage, I began merging these into a new trailer. The end result was a montage of the best parts of the tour, interspersed with the ADITLOAAD protagonist, as “Mr. Disco Party Guy” and my voiceover teamed up to introduce each of our didn’ts:

1. I didn’t trust my creativity
2. I didn’t face my fears
3. I didn’t make any decisions

I didn’t do these three because I didn’t trust my voice …

The reverse of didn’t #4 became the mission for trailer #3.

Bloopers

The outtakes below are from trailer 1.

Enjoy seven minutes of silliness (and some swearing). Eventually, I’ll add voiceovers to this and other “behind the scenes” videos to come. So much story to tell about that innocent time. Freshly sober from my previous 26 years of mental health drugs (I was about 5 years old), my kids were only a few years older than me and we inhabited the same playground of imagination madness.

Credits

Is your name in the credits? Then—thank you! Thanks for making it into my life trailer. You’ve inspired or conspired with me in many ways and have made my travels less lonely and more exciting!

My Life Trailer has evolved 3 times and I have those below to thank for this.

https://ReneRafael.com/thx

Afterword

I learned many important lessons really late in life. One big one was rush. Don’t rush. It’s a lie. I never got anywhere any faster by doing it. Instead, the opposite: I was late to everything. That’s what I got. I always felt late.

Until late adulthood—ahem, 42!—I wasted way too much time worrying what everyone else thought of me. I tried to accommodate for this worry by rushing around, doing everything everyone asked of me.

Most of it I completed.

Much of it I won awards for.

Most of it ended up in the trash.

It ended in the trash after they changed their mind. Yes, even the award-winners. I’d become an award-winning software/sanitation engineer. As a software engineer, this happens a lot. As a software engineer, you start to recognize this constant change-of-mind knee-jerk-reaction fire-fighting attitude in many people, both in-and-outside of software. So many of us waste our time. Take yours. Don’t rush. A new problem will be waiting for you tomorrow no matter how fast you go today.

What’s your life trailer?

Are you moving slow enough to see it? Enjoy it? Record it?—Transform it?

There’s so much left to be said but I intentionally limit myself for now.

In my short book Subcasts, I claimed “all our art can benefit from limitations” and I have so much art to create—so limit I must.

May you also decide to limit yourself and become a better artist of your craft.