Big Dreams

I have big dreams. But I tend to think of them as fantasy. But today I actually got to talk to someone about my dreams. I haven't been able to do that for a while and it felt good. At the "brown playground" I bumped into another dad. He actually had taken a back and white picture of me and my children on Polaroid film and I had blogged about that previously. Today since I had been doing Kung Fu, we talked about that. And it went from my thoughts and the classes I am teaching to the potential to having a Youtube Channel and that sort of thing. A Virtual Store front, a Virtual school online, in conjunction with a real life location (the Kung Fu Park) as well as various other things I had planned in the community. But he helped me see that the real potential and my real work should really be in the online aspect of it. And that's where I should invest my time and my money. Part of it was him juts explaining things to me and offering to even help me with some videos, and part of it was just voicing, aloud, to a non martial artist, my ideas. Of course I have voiced my ideas before, but mainly on this blog. And talking to him about it and having a conversation maybe dig deeper into just how long I have been working on these ideas. About as long as I have been teaching, which is over a decade. But I didn't see any potential outlet or market in the beginning. Or, really in the beginning I was tied down by my traditional system, and also by trying to fit into other people's niches (like Tae Bo and other fitness stuff) Instead of finding my own niche.

I have found my idea of my own system, the Kung Fu Playgroup Wheels on the bus stuff, really cool. Cool enough that I did it on stage at the Main Street Festival, even though I can imagine that as a teen, I would have thought the wheels on the bus approach dorky. What I haven't been able to reveal is the philosophy and all the other stuff that I have been able to grow from grouping the techniques in concepts rather than in forms. I have an internal, combative, meditative, and altered state of consciousness (or simply play time for children) ideas just from that one grouping of the 10 animals.

Actually I realize writing this by myself right now that it was only in conversation that I was able to talk about all of these things so clearly. I wonder why?

I guess I should work on that. The presentation of the 10 animals. I have written a piece on it before, but Chris (that's the other dad) made me realize that the journey to these ideas, the back story, would actually be interesting to people.  Because it is a very everyday back story, as opposed to arriving at them through combat or a vision on top of a mountain, I never saw them as interesting.

Anyway it is clear that nice short You tube videos are the medium of the day. Not the written word. That is, for teaching martial arts anyway.

Of course I will continue to write, but it will be more for me. But in order to get Followers, i.e. people to Follow your channel, I will definitely need to produce nicely edited videos.

It's a skill I really need to learn, and one that could potentially allow me to do my art for a living.