Stifling my creativity is akin to holding my breath – sooner than later, I can only do it for so long before I need to come up for air.

In terms of writing, I get my daily burst of air from creating some poetry. Easy enough to do on my own. Filmmaking, on the other hand, usually requires a team of people. But if I can’t make something new everyday – or at least fairly frequently – I’m gonna wilt.

I can’t very well let myself suffocate, can I?

Recently, I found a solution: grabbing a video camera and recording everything – ALL THE THINGS!

I used to hold myself back by contemplating whether or not something I was making was going to be good even before I started making it. Now I just tell myself that anything I make will be absolutely atrocious and then one, I’m never disappointed and two, no mental blocks get in my way now.

Of course, I can’t very well just record myself the whole time; otherwise, everyone would know how truly narcissistic I truly am and we can’t have that. So it is the people around me who have to suffer through my newfound tendency to document, document, document.

Did you know that pedestrians don’t take kindly to you shoving a camera in their face as you’re crossing the street alongside them? To be honest, no one in college ever taught me that, so I presumed the issue would never come up, but don’t do it!

Fortunately, I’ll probably never see any of those people again (except for Officer Patrick – shout out!). Family and friends are a whole ‘nother story. Tangent: I accidentally typed ‘friends’ as ‘fries’ and immediately got hungry.

Anyway, my uncles, for one, didn’t appreciate my recording their alcohol-fueled poker game on Christmas. I’m not sure if it was me asking them questions about every hand that got to them or if it was the running commentary about how the booze was ruining one of their marriages, but I’m pretty sure it was neither. I mean I was extremely polite about it all.

My mother is an example of the total opposite reaction: she loves it. But then she starts telling me what angle I should shoot her from and for how long I should record and then I start feeling like the exhausted one.

No matter who it is though, I really appreciate how a camera can put the small things in life into a different perspective. In the grand scheme of things, a single life seems so insignificant. But when you set it within the boundaries of that frame, it’s all there is. For however long that shot lasts, that is what matters.

You can call attention to the things in plain sight that remain unseen. Or not.

Or you can just shoot videos of cats playing with yarn. Shit, man – that stuff is hypnotic.