I’m sure there’s a life lesson in this experience somewhere; mostly it’s just fun: http://www.cesmes.fi/ Move your mouse and watch the circles subdivide over and over:-)

Technorati Tags: inspiration from unusual sources

I love it when things come together in a way that says what I’m trying to say, but so much more effectively than I do!  I found a story today that does just that.  It’s a tale of one man, Dave Carroll,  taking a bad and frustrating experience with an airline and turning it into something that will move his career light years ahead of where it would have been without the kick of motivation and yet in a way that is authentic instead of ‘designed’ by marketing professionals. Not to mention that the airline is finally ready to talk…

While we’re not all musicians, we all have creative gifts that could be used to create something powerful in the wake of bad customer service (or anything else.)  I’m as guilty of giving up after reaching ‘the wall’ as the next person – the nonfunctional $2,000 Dell laptop in the closet speaks to that. Once the gamut of customer service was run, what else could I have done with that situation?  Or could still do? Maybe I’ll make a found art sculpture from the cracked mother-board…:-)

Note that it was over a year from the incident to getting his first video out there so sometimes it’s just as much about persistence as creative vision; once the fires of righteous anger die down something else has to take it’s place.  No swear words required; just the muscle to juice the lemons.

Here’s the music video that is part one of the solution:

And here’s the story behind it all.

Technorati Tags: Importance of Motivation, inspiration from unusual sources

I think these will help anyone with Wednesday inertia and maybe even inspire some full-body singing in the car later on. PS22 is definitely gaining in popularity on the Internet. Personally, I favor the videos from informal rehearsals – maybe it’s the air guitar and other drama as only grade school kids can bring it that gets lost when they get on stage. In any event, they make a great statement for how having the arts in public schools benefits us all!

Technorati Tags: inspiration from unusual sources

As I’ve been working the kinks out of this site, I’ve been learning some interesting things about myself.  I get really embarrassed by what I see as completely avoidable errors; I found six broken links that were broken because I had copied the html code incorrectly. An easy and human kind of mistake and completely fixed within an hour. I’m still struggling with feeling like I should have focused more on those details; never done it in the first place or caught it sooner!

As I was messing around with all the online tools I also solved a mystery.  A handful of people have been putting my name in search engines, going to my photography site which has my name as the domain (www.julietchase.com) and then leaving immediately.  I could tell the latter because the average time on site was around 1 second. Ouch!  It’s hard not to be flattered by strangers googling you, but then for them to leave without even looking at my work?

How would you feel if an adult film actress had recently changed her name to yours?

Quite.  I’d probably be more irritated if I didn’t laugh picturing men with umm, certain expectations suddenly staring at landscapes and flowers! No wonder they left so quickly. But on another level, it made me realize that little mistakes are going to happen and what I’m not doing may actually be more serious. There’s a lot more I could be doing to promote my business and thereby dominate the search results for my own name. Instead of feeling defensive, I’m feeling inspired to go the extra mile and keep working to hit that tipping point.

As part of that I’ve been thinking about how to make this site’s content more meaningful and consistent. I thought I’d start by doing more posts and trying to structure them a little more to the days of the week so Inspiration & Motivation on Mondays, Tools & Exercises on Tuesdays, Humor & Fun on Wednesdays, Books on Thursdays, and continuing my Journal on Fridays.  For now I’ll continue to take the weekends off. However, if there are things you aren’t finding out there in the great wide world of the web, I’d be interested in hearing about them.  Maybe that’s the missing link! I need all the help I can get on this mission:-)

I’m curious to know if something similar has happened to anyone else? Or what you would do if you suddenly found yourself sharing your name like this?

Technorati Tags: challenges, Importance of Motivation, inspiration from unusual sources, tipping point