TraceTV – Film – Music – Social Media

Orig­i­nally posted on Feb. 16, 2009: The Aquar­ium Con­cept
If you like these ideas please fol­low The Aquar­ium Con­cept on Twit­ter
This dude has one awe­some “real” aquarium »

The Aquar­ium Concept.

Pretty sight, isn’t it? It’s not mine, in fact, I have never had suc­cess tak­ing care of trop­i­cal fish. It’s just not my “thing”, even though I enjoy scenes like this. I do have an “aquar­ium” of sorts, but it has no glass, rock or water, only thoughts and dreams. My aquar­ium was a total mess for a long time, until I came to terms with this:

In order for things to flour­ish, they must have a good envi­ron­ment. This goes for peo­ple and fish and ideas too. You can have an aquar­ium, with some beau­ti­ful young fish but if you don’t take care of them (as I found out at age 10) soon algae grows in the tank, the fish start look­ing sickly, and then die off. Sounds sim­ple, and it is, but look­ing at your life and your goals this way takes a lit­tle prac­tice. It’s the same with ideas, projects, art, poetry, music, film, video, job search, fam­ily rela­tions; what­ever the pas­sion, the aquar­ium con­cept holds true.

Once you have begun a project, if you don’t take steps to com­plete it, even­tu­ally it gets for­got­ten, goes away, and becomes some­thing you just thought about a long time ago. Any­one who raises beau­ti­ful aquatic life suc­cess­fully will tell you to start small, take care of a few gup­pies, then add more life, which requires more atten­tive care. Over time you can build some­thing of true beauty share with oth­ers, like in the video posted here. The more you think about the fish you could have, and visu­al­ize their beauty, the more you “see” them in your mind, the more effort you will put into mak­ing that vision hap­pen. It’s the same in life; I pro­posed to my wife because I could visu­al­ize the won­der­ful life I now have with her. But you have to feed the fish! If I spent every night out at the bar and ignored my fam­ily, the mar­riage would fal­ter, eventually.

Also in busi­ness; I can talk about an intrigu­ing or tech­ni­cally pro­fi­cient video with a client, where we can both visu­al­ize it, but unless there is a bud­get, and then we step through the pro­duc­tion process and edit and pro­duce a final prod­uct, it doesn’t mean a thing to any­one. It would be akin to hav­ing a buddy who always talks about the amaz­ing aquar­ium he will some­day have, but never does any­thing to make it hap­pen; years go by and you get sick of him talk­ing about it. He has an aquar­ium but for­got to feed the fish.

It’s only real to you until it’s “real” in the world.

One of the most dif­fi­cult things for me to absorb, ego-wise, is that an idea, how­ever great my visu­al­iza­tion of it is, means lit­tle to any­one else, and never will, until I do some­thing about it. Ideas are com­mon, the exe­cu­tion of ideas is a rare com­mod­ity. Per­son­ally I have iden­ti­fied sev­eral projects, includ­ing three doc­u­men­tary films and a music release for my band, and I can see them clearly, because I have iden­ti­fied them as projects I am com­mit­ted to com­plete, and am tak­ing steps to make them “real” in the world. But for years I went through life bewil­dered when friends didn’t react much when I spoke of my ideas, my dreams. Sure they were polite, but gen­er­ally just gave me lip ser­vice on the sub­jects. Now I real­ize that I am the same way about a lot of what oth­ers talk about, because really that’s all it is — talk. There is no way any­one else will be able to visu­al­ize my ideas like I can, because they are mine, not theirs. It’s nat­ural. Only when I com­plete steps to pro­duce evi­dence of my work (trail­ers to the films, demos from the record­ing ses­sions) can those things start to become “real” to oth­ers. So I stopped expect­ing oth­ers to “get it” about what I do, until I have some­thing to show. Even then, I expect it to take time, and that I will learn and adapt based on other people’s reac­tions along the way.

Again with the aquar­ium analogy:

Just because you have a clean tank, doesn’t mean it’s good for all fish. A fresh­wa­ter fish won’t last long in salt­wa­ter, and some fish are preda­tors, gob­bling up weaker ones. Like­wise, not every idea you have is suited for the busi­ness you are in and there­for should just remain an idea. Some­times you get started on a project or quest for infor­ma­tion, and dis­cover you don’t really want to pur­sue it any­more, and that’s OK, just clean out the tank. Iden­tify projects that you are truly pas­sion­ate about, and focus on those. If you really want a tank with a beau­ti­ful coral reef, and pretty lit­tle clown fish dart­ing about, then cre­ate the envi­ron­ment for it. Yours will be a very dif­fer­ent tank than one cre­ated by some­one who wants to raise aggres­sive crea­tures to watch them eat gold­fish. Same in life, if you desire to be a nature pho­tog­ra­pher, but live in the city with no means to be in the wilder­ness, you could study and learn the craft, then take steps to move into an area more suit­able to your dream. If you want it bad enough, you will work for years to achieve that goal. If, after tak­ing some steps and research­ing the sub­ject, you decide that the life of a nature pho­tog­ra­pher is not for you, then no prob­lem, just flush that fish, and find one that will thrive where you are. So many peo­ple think they can’t achieve some­thing, only because they only want to think about the end goal, but never really visu­al­ize it, and never iden­tify steps to make it hap­pen. Once again, they for­got to feed the fish.

Check out my tank.

Over the com­ing months, I will be post­ing to this blog about these indi­vid­ual projects, my efforts to make them “real” in the world. For now here’s an overview of our projects and an idea of what kind of fish they would be. It’s been fun to think of these things in this way, and I think fun is what Inter­net mar­ket­ing and social net­work­ing should be all about.
A trio of Lion Fish:
Three doc­u­men­tary films in var­i­ous stages of pro­duc­tion with sup­port of The Still Kickin’ Foun­da­tion, a 501C-3 non-profit orga­ni­za­tion. See Trace Doc­u­men­taries Page
A her­mit crab, get­ting big­ger and more bold to ven­ture out, day by day:
Trace Ele­ments — Stu­dio CD — see Trace Ele­ments on MySpace — check out a few advance mixes from the CD
The Grouper:
Trace Pro­duc­tions — online since 1998, my core busi­ness site — see TraceProductions.com
Two Elec­tric Eels:
CityB-roll and TexasB-roll — HD stock footage busi­ness — got the first eel in 2002, added sec­ond in 2008, they are also get­ting big­ger, bolder day by day.. soon to make a big show­ing out of the rocks. See CityB-roll.com

I try to feed the fish every­day, whether that is adding more con­nec­tions in Linkedin, Face­Book and MySpace, pub­lish­ing posts to this blog, work­ing on doc­u­men­tary treat­ments, what­ever, I just keep feed­ing the fish. I am con­fi­dent that if I keep it up, chances of them all dying off and going away are neg­li­gi­ble. One of them might get sick some­time and die off, or one might gob­ble up another… But I will replace them, and learn from my mis­takes. My desire is to have them all thrive, and to be in need a big­ger tank.

What’s in yours?

Sub­scribe to this blog, we appre­ci­ate your inter­est in our aquar­ium! Also, if you want to show me your tank, sign up to Face­book and request me as a friend. Men­tion that you read this blog and I will be sure to add you. Then you can post arti­cles, pic­tures, videos, related to your projects, your pas­sions, your fish tank, and I will be sure to check them out. My email address is tracy@traceproductions.com. Thanks.

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