The view of one of the bungalows here on our Mayan compound.
Greetings from curbside at the Cancun International Airport!
I arrived and my driver is currently waiting on one other person before heading out to Taninah, where I’ll be hanging out with some pretty cool people for the next week (more on that Thursday). I’d never been to Mexico until about 30 minutes ago, so I’m excited to get started early on my goal of heading to 5 new countries this year.
Every once in awhile I think it’s worth stepping back and realizing how lucky we are to be living during this time. We have more tools, resources, and power at our fingertips than any generation before us. In fact, the amount of resources we have is really quite staggering when you take a minute to sit back and think about it.
Side note: It’s 81 degrees here, and 81 degrees has never felt so good.
Consider for a second the day you were born, where was technology at then? Perhaps the compact disc and VCR were just making their way into living rooms at a thousand bucks a pop. Maybe color televisions were beginning to be all the rage. What about the cell phone? Was that around when you were a kid.
My point is that we are living in an era that has the greatest potential for harnessing creativity of any time throughout history.
When I was in 7th grade we had to do a school project about something we’d learned on our “field trip” to Disney World. Yes, I went on an 8 day field trip to Disney World in middle school – it rocked.
On the trip we spent a day at MGM Studios, so naturally while some people were making hydroponic gardens, and dioramas about France, my friends and I decided it would be a good idea to do our project on moving making.
We decided to film a spoof on James Bond and Siskel & Ebert (if there’s enough interest I may even try and find it and upload it for your viewing pleasure).
Side note again: No really, it is beautiful here. I love my life.
At the time my dad was a producer at a television station in town and offered to help us edit our middle school project in one of the studio’s fancy-ass editing suites. We shot all our raw footage on a video camera that probably cost a thousand bucks at the time, and then he made us a tape with a running time code on it.
Before our editing session we spent HOURS going through every single clip, trying to decide which ones would make the cut and (I believe one scene actually had 52 takes…) and which ones were destined for the outtake real (which was more entertaining than the actual production).
After all the prep work was done and the film was shot, one Saturday myself and three of my twelve year old friends marched into the studio, sat down in the director’s chairs and spent four hours with the company’s best editor telling him what we wanted.
This suite probably cost well over a million dollars at the time. Had we paid for the services it would have been a grand total of $5,500 for our small little school project.
Today, I have more powerful software, higher quality video capabilities, and way more portability with my $1,000 setup, than the million dollar setup just 15 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, I may not be the best using these tools, but the creative potential is there for the taking.
This isn’t an isolated incident either.
Want professional level sound recording and editing software? Logic is $199. Garage band comes with new macs for FREE – as does iMovie.
I just bought Main Stage which gives me basically every single effects pedal for my guitar that I could ever want and it was $29.99. One of these pedals alone would be $100+.
I’m writing this in Evernote, which will automatically sync up to my phone that creates it’s own internet connection, and to my Kindle Fire which currently has a few hundred books on it – all there for my consumption.
Lest we not forget that I’m creating this from a curb at a Mexican airport.
We have extraordinary power at our fingertips, and the potential of what we can do with this is unlimited.
You’re reading this on a WordPress blog which has made it possible for someone as un-technically minded as me to create a good looking website and build a real business because of it.
We live in a time of creation and consumption. If you focus less of your time on the latter and more of your time building tangible skills, the sky’s the limit to what you can create.
As far as I’m concerned, today is the most creative day of all time. Tomorrow something else will come out that will make life even easier, but until then, take advantage of everything you have available to you and do something great.
Join The Discussion
Sweet bungalow! 81 degrees is perfect.
Technology has come along way since I was a kid, I remember vividly cramming in to a small class room, watching man land on the moon for the first time. “in black and white” I was just reading over at swissmiss, the term cassette has just been removed from the oxford dictionary seems like only yesterday I was using those.
I would never have thought of myself as creative, what is happening though is, that through advances in technology, people now have an option to go live anywhere and work less, which is a great breeding ground for creativity.
Yea Neale, they have really come very far
Hey Sean,
Bienvenidos a Mexico! I am in Puerto Vallarta working from my computer so your post hit a note. I have just started video work and like you said, it is amazing to live in an time when you can be a one man band, doing video or other online work anywhere in the world with technology advances. But as I point out http://aroundtheworldin80jobs.com/traveling-job-numero-dos-promotional-video-marketing/ in my post from yesterday (strange timing) on a SEO promotional video marketing (notice your shout out link in the end), there is a big difference if you have really quality camera equipment, but moreso, the skills to edit a lot of video. The guy who does these promotional videos for Mexico has a pro camera guy which takes him 10+ hours for a short 2 minute clip.
But then again, everyday it only gets easier with better and better tools. Enjoy Mexico if you make it to PV or will be in Cancun for awhile, give me a shout, I should be there in a month.
Best,
Turner
Dude this is a really good call just to thanksgiving.
And you’re right.. not only is this probably the best time period (in history) to be a business owner (risk/ease-wise), this is the easiest time in history to capitalize on creativity like you said.
And the availability of it all is astounding.. you put it in really good proportion when you talked about the filming software, and writing your blog post from the curb in Mexico.
Really makes me wanna stop and smell the roses, haha.
An important reminder I think, and even more important to encourage people to get started building something – anything.
– Alex
That sounds like a nice place to be, and quite comfortably warm. Gratitude is quite important in life. Gratitude can make all the good things in life just that much more better. It appears you have had lots of success in your online ventures. Thank you for sharing your experiences with everyone online. (:
Hi Sean! You are 100% right! It may be an coincidence, but I have read lately something similar in a Paul McKenna’s book. He wrote that we do not recognize how reach we are. Hospitals, many methods of communication, books, knowlegde, tools… 200 years ago some of this things just did not exist and some of them were available just for chosen ones!
I do agree with you – today is the most creative day of all time. We just have to find courage to take advantage of it!
Great post as always
Hey Sean, you really brought some fond memories here. I remember when we got our first colour television in the early 1980s. It was the most awesome moment in my family’s life. Can you imagine we almost stayed up three nights just watching the television. My parents will literally have to shut us in our room to keep us there. It was great days then
Hey Sean,
When I was born in India, they didn’t even have a television station, let alone a color TV set. A phone was a luxury enjoyed by the rich, and they only had BLACK rotary phones (do you know what those are? lol?) that were attached to the walls and remained in the same spot.
The radios weighed about 10 pounds and you had to wait about five minutes for them to warm up before you even heard the static to let you know that it was time to “fine tune” the only radio station you can get during day time.
Yeah, we have come a long way since then, and I am only in my 50′s.
Rasheed
My Mother held on to her rotary phone for ever, she just got a prepaid cell for emergencies a year back.
Technology really has evolved. I remember when I was a kid and went to my friend’s home to play Commodore 64 games – that he had recorded onto a tape from radio. I wonder what the “connection” speed was.