I want to start by thanking my inspiration for choosing the word Consistency as my word for 2023. I got the idea of choosing the word from the great instructional designer Stephanie Gerald, who I guess is now passing the bar to be a lawyer so soon-to-be great ID and lawyer! I have the amazing Betty Dannewitz to thank for the idea of using the word Consistency from her amazing episode on creating a brand with the expressive Tim Slade, who clearly stated the need to be consistent in your brand on the If You Ask Betty Podcast. Credit where credit is due!
In this Vlog post, I explain why I chose to create my own logo and argue why creating things for myself works for me and aligns with my brand. I backpedal to September 25th, 2023 which was the height of my 50 Pushups a Day Challenge for St. Jude’s Research Hospital. It was about that time that I completed the design of my logo and you can see it was first used on Day 26 of that same challenge where I also praised the use of our subconscious mind.
In this video, I have three reasons why I argue creating your own logo is the best choice. (If you are at all inclined and have the resources to do so.)
Creative Control
The first benefit of designing your own logo is that you are in control of what it is and what it becomes.
You are in control of the whole process from design to export.
You made the product, it is now a part of you. You are connected with it.
You know it’s strengths you know it’s weaknesses.
In the video, I explain you have to turn off the editor and invite the muse into the room to create something. Then invite the editor back into the room to resume editorial functions. I drew this concept from the book: “Art and Fear” by David Bayles, and Ted Orland.
This book is fantastic and I can not recommend it enough. I might talk about his book with people I know and people I meet on the street or in airports, more than any other book. I guess you could say at this point, “This is my book.”
Financial Benefit
I saved money. I didn’t spend any money, I only spent time.
Money saved = Money earned.
I paid myself to create this logo, by not paying someone else to do it.
As promised here is the Freakonomics Episode: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Money (But Were Afraid to Ask)” with a super-smart economist about spending less on trash bags. (Well, the trash bag part might not be in there, I might have made the trash bag analogy up, or it was from another expert on Freakonomics.) However, this episode still supports my point that spending less is good and is the same as making more money. (They also talk about how to invest money too, so that’s always good!)
It would have cost me $5 to $100 per hour to get a logo.
Did it take me an hour? No, it took 5 hours!
Do you want to see it? I recorded the whole thing! Some of the music I was listening to bled into the recording so it is not viewable in all locations. Sorry! (I am sure a VPN would help if you need to see it.)
5-hour video of my creating my own logo. (Well, 4 hours 1 minute and 37 seconds s, but it took over 5 hours and my video capture function continued to crash after 30 minutes of recording because of my RAM.)
Now, I’d like to point out again here that I am not a graphic designer (as you might have gleaned from that 5-hour video.) It might not have taken a professional graphic designer 5 hours to come up with a similar product. The value lost in that time is offset by my third point.
Moment of Learning
I gained new skills, and I had a fun time doing it! I worked in Adobe Illustrator to create this logo. (Well, first I got lost in Adobe Photoshop, applied all the filters, and got to a spot that was kind of OK.) Then I went into Adobe Illustrator.
I am not very experienced in Illustrator, but I want to be!… with Adobe’s job aids, I was able to work through the flow at my own pace and build some confidence in designing in Illustrator.
In this way, I was building skills that I can use as an instructional designer or even a graphic designer if I ever choose to do that to myself…
“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.
It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not.
We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.
The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
Hello, this is improvement Dave, and I am David Kolmer. I used and continue to use the WordPress platform to build this blog. There was a prompt on my WordPress dashboard of an idea for a blog post which was “Describe your best week “, or maybe “Describe your perfect week”… something like that. I didn’t click on it, but then realized last night that I had started one of the best days ever.
At any rate, I am going to use this prompt even though I didn’t click on it and submit it to the WordPress Metaverse officially. I will alter it a bit and narrow the scope to 24 hours.
Exposition to the Perfect Day
My perfect day involves me :
Supporting my kids
Supporting my wife
Supporting myself
Initially, in that order of importance.
I had a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to purchase myself a new bicycle for my September biking challenge until I purchased a new bike for my wife. My wife has gone through a few bikes, and they were all gifts or someone else’s bike, and none of them fit her. She’s not an avid biker, but I can tell that our lives would be better if we all had decent bikes.
Wait, What About the Kids?
I should state that I have purchased two balance bikes for my kids since before they could walk. These are bikes that do not have pedals so they can get used to riding without worrying about pedals. Let me see if I can dig up a retro photo…
Look at that handsome dude rocking that balance bike! Proud as a pig in mud!
So, when the kids did get pedals they learned to ride in about 24 to 48 hours. If that doesn’t sell you on a balance bike then you hate children!
Last month, I bought my son a brand-new bicycle. It was a trek pre-caliber at the TREK store. It was what he wanted for his birthday. He shared that his perspective is that I always get him something secondhand and that Grandma and Grandpa put down real money for the big ticket items. (Well, this is my extrapolation. What was said is that my mom bought me a Game Gear portable Sega gaming system for $130+, and he stated, “You never bought me something that expensive.”) So when the grandparents offered to buy this bike I said, “I am buying this one.”
The TREK storeon Manchester Road was very well-equipped and very clean. The service charges for tune-ups and the price for components seemed expensive. Or at least they cost more money than I want to pay. Anyway, purchasing my son a new bike provided my daughter with a very nice silver hand-me-down bike.
We bought her a Unicorn bell that she got at my son’s birthday party to make it more of a “her” bike…
She also got some nice flashing lights.
She wasn’t getting the hang of the pedals so I hooked up the Co-pilot by Wee-Ride and she felt better about pedaling. Just watch her RAWK that for the first time.
SO BOOM MY KIDS ARE TAKEN CARE OF. I HAVE SUPPORTED THEM IN THE MISSION OF HAVING QUALITY BIKES.
A Moment of Weakness
While I was at the TREK store shopping for my son’s bike, I noticed the Marlin. Now this is a bike that I have read about, and I know that the marlin is a quality bike at a good price. However, I also discovered that Roscoe, which is a higher-level mountain bike with a Hardtail, costs significantly more money. I ordered one of those in the view and then the TREK store never called me back. Exit Trek store stage left.
I ALREADY DISCUSSED BUYING A NEW BIKE WITH MY WIFE FOR MY BIRTHDAY AND WE HAD AGREED THAT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA HOWEVER, SOMETHING DIDN’T FEEL RIGHT ABOUT IT. LATER, I REALIZED THAT I SHOULD BE GETTING HER A BIKE FIRST. OK SO THAT’S ALL OF THE PRE-LOG OR EPILOGUE AND NOW WE’RE GONNA GET INTO THE PERFECT 24-HOUR PERIOD WHICH I STARTED LAST NIGHT.
The Perfect Day Started Last Night
Last night I drove with my whole family to pick up some sandwiches at Potbelly. We had some gift cards, so essentially, I paid no money for them, which is pretty awesome. We eat the sandwiches in the car, which is something my family loves to do because it’s somehow wrong but then so right.
We drove to Billy Goat Bicycle Co.down on Manchester Road in St. Louis Missouri. This bike Shop had been recommended by one of my daughter’s friends’ fathers at my son’s birthday party as the most awesome bike shop in St. Louis to go to. I guess it pretty much qualified as that because when I walked in, they had the marlin eight that I was interested in in the dark blue to dark gray fade in my size. They also had a Marline that was very small, which also had incredibly nice coloring from more of a blue to yellow fade which fit my wife perfectly. We did some test drives in the front parking lot. I was wearing sandals, but I didn’t let that hold me back from curving and carving some banks covered with grass on the apartment complex behind the bike shop.
After some amazing discussions with a man called Ben, who was wearing a T-shirt that had bandit from the show, Bluey and the word “DAD” on it, I found I had learned a lot about bikes, gotten some very quality advice on the downfalls or potential pitfalls of tubeless tires, and essentially purchased my wife’s bike moments before I purchased my bike.
Hers
His
So now we both have brand new bikes, and we can fulfill our destiny of taking family bike rides together. Now, that was just yesterday evening.
As I’m writing this, it is only 5:30 a.m. It is raining outside, and I have a window open. Rain is a big part of the perfect day for me.
So far, I have woken up at 4:30 and finessed the water I had in the 32-ounce mason jar next to my bed. I brewed a cup of coffee while I was filling the jacuzzi hot tub in the new basement bathroom with hot water and Epson salts. I noticed that all these push-ups and all these bike rides have made my body very stiff, and my muscles seem to be filled with lactic acid and they’re sticking themselves. Now after exiting the hot tub and dictating this blog post into my phone in the basement to play some of my favorite video games on the PlayStation 3 which I never give myself time to do. It is called PixelJunk shooter, and it is the best game ever in the history of everything.
After that, I plan to do 30 minutes of yoga. After that, I will help put my daughter in the car and give her a Dum Dum sucker and kiss her goodbye kiss my wife goodbye. Then I’ll hang out with my son for about 30 minutes, and brew some more coffee. He’ll probably watch some Minecraft on YouTube kids, that is, he will watch someone else play Minecraft, instead of playing a game himself, (which is normal these days), I think.
While driving to school I saw they were tearing down that old house on our street that was an eyesore!
Then I will go to work in my basement. I recently put together a spare bedroom with an egress window that doubles as a study and a bathroom in the basement and this is my home office.
Today I have finished adding audio to the four modules of EPEC BRONZE for the National Association of Electric Distributors. Next, I will look at the script and enter all of the new script into the notes section of the Articulate Storyline file. This way I can easily print out a user guide PDF because the screens will be updated, and the notes will match. I’ve already aligned all the screen animations with the audio, so the last step is going to be pretty easy. I plan to break my fast at 12 but will probably wait until 2 or 3 because I drank whey protein powder last night at 8 p.m.
Tonight’s Plans
This evening I will pick up my son from school, then pick up my daughter and we will ride home in the Honda Odyssey. Then I will pull some fresh vegetables out of the fridge and some eggs and stir fry that all up in the Thai style I’ll probably fry some tofu as well and heat some of those smoked ribs that I have in the air fryer. Then I will drive to the YMCA with my son, or he will take a level five swimming course while my wife and my daughter ride bikes after that I will ride home in the Honda Odyssey with my son where he and I will probably ride bikes, then we will probably eat some ice cream. (Well, I might not have any ice cream because I am back on my ketogenic and intermittent fasting diet.) The kids will take a bath and we will take our showers. We will read some dog man turn on some colored, moving lights and the kids will go to bed. Now on some days, I would turn on some TV but for the perfect day, I would choose to not do that, instead, I would go to bed early at around 9 PM after drinking some chamomile and mint tea or some decaf coffee.
That will take us to about a full 24-hour period for the perfect day. What was interesting to me is my perfect day started last night and I’m not even halfway through it, It is not yet written, but maybe that’s the most important part of my perfect day. Much of the day is still in the future. It is unwritten, it has potential.
Conclusion
You know what? On second thought I don’t think I’m going to play that video game after writing this post I feel like it’s time to do my first 25 push-ups (of 50) do some yoga and Brew, and some more coffee.
The Best Day Ever
After I wrote the above content, I did some YOGA, My daughter woke up and then we walked outside in the twilight and enjoyed the rain.
We went back inside, I made her some hot chocolate and made a pinky promise that I would do some My Little Pony Cosmic Kids Yoga with her, but we did 15 minutes of the Frozen Yoga by Cosmic Kids featuring none other than Queen Elsa of Arendale.
My daughter said,
“This is the best day ever.”
She says that a lot, and she is always right.
Music by RoyaltyFreeMusic Nver Avetyan from Pixabay Technology Dubstep
Music by To Hot to Play, Lobo Loco, Free Music Archive (CC)
My goal WAS to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. It has been one week since I completed this challenge. I have done at least 50 pushups a day past the 31-day challenge. On day 36 (yesterday) I did 100 pushups! Then I took a hot bath and had to ice up my arm.
Comparing Day 1 to Day 31
Today I compare what my 1st day of pushups looked like up against my 31st day.
Here are the main points I make in this video:
(I am sorry they are not composed as learning objectives! HAHA!)
In the video, I fail to mention that this 50 pushups a day challenge not only made me commit to holding myself accountable but I was also motivated me to build other skills.
For example, I wanted a logo for my blog but have not been very active in developing it. The energy generated from this project motivated me to sketch out my logo, scan it in, and then design a PNG file in Adobe Illustrator with a transparent background. I actually recorded my screen while designing my logo and plan to release that video next week. Once I got the ball rolling on the pushups, other projects didn’t seem as daunting as they did before. The first step is the most difficult.
Not Too Late to Give to the Children!
I did more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am feeling better today than I did yesterday. It got down to 65 degrees here in Saint Louis, MO so I decided to do the pushups outside. I am trying to trim the videos down shorter now so there is less dead time and less talking time.
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am not feeling very well today. In this video, I declare, “That is the thing about consistency, you still show up even when you are not feeling well. I am going to give my 100% even though I don’t have 100% to give. I am going to give my full 83%.) My kids both got Hand Foot and Mought Virus over the weekend, and as our Nurse Practitioner warned, there is now a strain that adults get. Maybe it is the offspring of the Omnichrom Carona 19 virus. I am not pro-vax or anti-vax.
It seems to me like just getting the virus is a vaccination in its own way. Probably more risky than a vaccination but it’s cheaper! and I love a good value! Still, I’d rather just get a vaccine if I can afford it and it doesn’t make me sick. So, now that I have polarized my reader base, let’s move forward to the video where I try to do pushups even though I am not very fit and I am sick!
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
Please Donate to The Children
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
If you had to nail it down, what is consistency? How would you go about being more consistent?
31 days ago, I shared a post on Consistencyand I would like to follow up with my progress using this word to guide my 2023. I made some heavy claims at the end of that post and so far I am holding to all of them, and have even added a few, 31 days later. I have also added that I will not eat any processed sugar. That has grown into me learning about and following Ketogenic meal plans and bumping the gym visits from 2 days a week to 3 days a week. I have also started intermittent fasting with my newfound fullness of burning only fat and not sugar as fuel. It has been easy for me to not eat for 16 to 20 hours each day.
I hesitated to share my deeper feelings about this concept in my first post but I will do so here.
Consistently Who?
Consistency? Consistently me? … Well, who is that!? I change my mind all the time!
The Fleeting Soul
In college, I took a class called Introduction to Philosophical Problems with the great Professor Robert Money. We read a short trialogue, in which I remember many details other than the title of the work itself. (I will reach out to Prof. Money to get the deets if I can.) In this debate, a religious character is on their deathbed and then two colleges visit him. The two visitors are confused about how the religious person can be so calm. The religious character explains his faith in the traditional Socratic concept that the body will decay but when he dies his soul will separate from his body and travel to the afterlife. The character Philo challenges the mystic by claiming we change our perspective, mood, (basically our identity) from moment to moment. Philo the mystic asks how the religious man can believe in a single soul when we manage to change our mind or the full course of our lives in a single moment. Philo argues that there is a stream of souls passing through a person at any given moment.. and then of course the third character is an Aetheist and laughs at them for believing in souls at all.
I would say that Philo the mystic has a good case here. Maybe that is because I am agnostic. I’m not the atheist who will claim I can’t weigh the soul so it’s not real. However, the idea is by nature abstract. If I do have a soul then what is it? Is the mind the seat of the soul? I like this image of us having a continuous stream of souls passing through us because that is what life feels the most like. When I see pictures of myself from decades before, I sometimes have to take a moment to even recall that moment in time. Other times I can’t remember it at all. Getting old is a journey.
Is being consistent really about who you are? Or more about how you want to be perceived?
The Curse of the New Years Resolution
A friend asked how my “New Year’s Resolution” was going at a party two weekends ago. It struck me to the core. I thought, “I dare you label this effort a new years resolution! Besides, I wrote in my blog that I am trying out this word for the year. I intend to keep these plans.
This was my daughter’s birthday party where I ate veggies, pulled beef off the sandwiches, and served cake, but ate no cake. That’s not how I acted just two weeks before. Not even close. I would have had multiple sandwiches and two servings of cake, and I probably would have served beer at the party.
To be fair I drank more than my fair share of alcohol on new years night 2022 and then gave up alcohol the next day. So I suppose my friend’s statement of this being a “new years resolution” rings true. What bothers me is this understanding that people don’t follow New Year’s resolutions. To my benefit, I am also following my first two guiding principles, honesty, and consistency.
So, let’s start with a 1-month update on how How do I plan to implement consistency in my life, and how I’m doing…
I have given up caffeinated coffee since November 24th, 2022, and replaced it with adaptogenic mushroom beverages. I have added a cup of caffeine here and there but only when I’m working out.
I have consistently sat in meditation or yoga for at least 10 minutes a day.
I am not drinking any alcohol for January 2023 and plan to keep this going indefinitely.
I have hidden my cell phone when I am around my children and this has only been an issue once or twice when Zoom popped up from work.
I am building models and figures with my children less often than I would like, but the LEGO building has definitely increased, and I have stepped up to build some incredible aquariums for my kids which I can share later.
I am helping my children read books every day. I have also started flash cards with the younger child.
When I speak I am working on focusing on being calm and honest, and maintaining my true calm and thoughtful demeanor (as much as possible), this has remained a challenge for me but my new diet has helped me improve on this.
I have not gone Disc Golfing much at all, but the ground is covered in ice right now so I have focused more on the gym.
“I will consider going to the gym once in a while.” This is the promise that I didn’t make but was able to keep. I started with 2 times a week but have bumped that up to 3 times a week. I am using the free Strong Lits App. and linking that up to send data to the YMCA app where I track my other activities from the gym and all steps counted by my phone.
Since following this new way of life, I have found some new ones.
I will not eat breakfast and will not eat after 7 PM.
I will not consume carbohydrates.
For now, I will not eat any food that has been found to increase the glycemic index. (Potatoes, carrots, apples, bread, candy, alcohol, etc.)
I will go to the gym three times a week and spend at least 15 minutes on the elliptical and then do a 5X5 Stronglifts set. (below)
What I like about the free StrongLifts app is it takes your weight and looks at how often you workout and then slowly increases the weight as you go. The great thing about resistance training is you continue to burn calories after you lift for repair.
No Sugar
I am not eating any sugar and I have also cut out fruit that increases the glycemic index. So not eating bananas, oranges, mango, grapes, raisins, dates, pears, etc. But I am eating berries, plums, kiwi fruit, grapefruit, etc.
I found a video, (or the video found me) about the benefits of cutting sugar by Dr. Berg.
Ketogenic
I have also given up starches and grains to switch over to burning fat as my fuel instead of sugar.
I have to say that burning fat is keeping me full for much longer. Intermittent fasting has been much easier than ever before and two weeks ago I only ate a huge salad with meat, eggs, and cheese at 1:30 PM and then hearty soup at 4 PM. That was it. That’s all I ate all day, and I feel super full! Last Monday I only ate one meal at 4 PM.
A Whole Lemon Blended with Tumeric
Another thing that I had heard about was throwing a whole lemon in a blender and blending it up with some ice, stevia, and water for a snack while “Fasting” There is a debate whether eating lemon juice during a fast will “Break the fast”. The juice from a whole lemon is 3 carbs. However, if you blend the whole lemon and drink it all it does not raise your glycemic index, i.e. does not cause you to generate insulin, so as far as a state of ketosis is concerned you are not breaking your fast. I have also started throwing a fresh rhizome of turmeric in this shake and taking it with a 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt.
Workout During my Fasting
Something I just started to try out was going to the gym during my fast and seeing how I felt. I did that this morning at 10 AM and I still didn’t feel hungry until 12:30 PM. Then I ate a shake with a whole avocado, some organic cream, walnuts, strawberries, raspberries, water, stevia, and ice. It’s 3:19 PM now and I’m still not hungry.
Striving for a New Self
Perhaps consistency is just striving for a path to keep me coming back to my best self; to keep me honest. I am going to consistently accept Lou Reed’s “New Found Man”. I am finding that I am coming back to things that worked for me in the past. It’s like I am living my life like a track list of “David’s Greatest Hits”. What’s interesting is that these are things that people have shared with me that worked for me and now I am going back to them. Just like the song by Lou Reed that was shared by my friend Bart Ringer.
If you have ever taken a class on play analysis or studied theater in school you might have heard the word stasis. Stasis is another word for peace or rest. When a play starts something happens that breaks the characters out of stasis and the play is about the action the characters take to return to stasis. I feel like when I was traveling the world and making a living doing theater, stunt work, and teaching English; my goal was to live in a state of broken stasis. I was young and that was a cool way to live, it made my life seem interesting, but it was exhausting. Now that I am older and I have kids and own a couple houses I think I have redefined that goal. All I want to do is find a way to return to stasis. I don’t listen to music because I think it’s cool anymore. I listen to it because it relaxes me.
Bigs up Your Vocation
I had a phone call with a mentor (an official unofficial sponsor) of mine who recommended a book titled “The Art of Work“. I started listening to the book soon after our call. I found a YouTube video where an AI bot is reading the whole book. It is creepy that a bot is reading me the book, but I kind of like it and I have been listening to the book while I organize spreadsheets of eLearning content I am curating. This book is giving me a path. It’s giving me a mental model of what building a career and mastering a trade can provide.
The opening of the book talks about how the meaning of the word “Vocation” has lost some of its glory. In the past, a vocation was a calling or a mission. It was often reserved for those being called to work for spiritual or religious endeavors. One thing that struck me is that the book lays out 7 layers of a master. I will write more about this in a future post but for now, I wanted to identify that the layers build on each other. You don’t just complete number 1 and then move on to number 2. You complete 1, Awareness, and that is the base that you use for #2 Apprenticeship.
So to apply this to my word for 2023 of Consistency, it should build off of my theme for 2022, Honesty. So having consistency without honesty will not work.
So for this year, I will be: Consistently Honest So, I’m getting closer to how to be Consistent.
Just getting drunk on new years eve and then waking up the next day and saying I will give up alcohol for January is the first step, but it’s not the path I need to be on. It is not my “path with heart”. If I write these things down and publish them to the world for all of my millions of readers, or even just a couple (thanks for the support Mom.); then I have put the idea out there and even if just one person reads it, I will feel more compelled to follow through.
So, consistently who? Well Consistently the new me. Who is that? Well, I think it’s more of a how. How do I want others to perceive me?
Improvement Dave 