Full Days

Missed yesterday. Quickly approaching ten missed days. Don’t worry, I won’t let that happen. We’ll be fine.

The reason I missed yesterday’s post is because we’re having really good, full days over here at BI LLC! I’m almost a week into my new schedule and starting to feel settled into a groove. Productivity is high and sustainable, ideas are flowing and progress is being made on all fronts.

So that’s all for today. I’ve got a full list of things to get done and I don’t have too much to say.

Oh, I’ve also started reading The Prophet. Bryana’s boss got it for her when she left her job, and now that she’s finished, I take in a few lessons every day with my morning coffee. I’ll leave you with this excerpt about work that resonated with me.

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy." For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.”

- Khalil Gibran

So yeah, do it for the love.

-J.P.

For Who? For Whom*?

I think I’ve been pretty transparent here about the ongoings of business at Beautiful Idiots LLC. If it’s good, I try to appreciate that moment, and when it’s bad, I definitely complain about it. I think it’s important to be honest, so I try to maintain that ideal on this forum.

Which leads me to the thing I was thinking about in the shower today. We took a meeting yesterday which led to a four hour conversation about the future of this company - what it is, how it will look moving forward, and how we continue to grow and refine. For the rest of the day there was a lot of noise in my head, and it’s still too soon to make sense of some of it or make any final decisions.

One thing I’ve been stuck on is timing. I’ve also said many times that the current schedule we’re on lasts one year. It’s August 15. Our first release was January 13. Some simple math leads you to find that it has not been one year yet. The thing I’m struggling with now is knowing that we need to make a change, but trying to decide when those changes should be implemented. I keep asking myself, should we pivot immediately? Does that show adaptability? Should we finish what we started first? Is that kind of perseverance more valuable? Does an abrupt change make us look like we don’t know what we’re doing?

I don’t know. I think I’m landing here: If Understanding and I feel like it’s better to finish what we started and do what we agreed to do before we make any changes, we do that. If we decided we want to change immediately instead of going further down a path we know we’re going to turn off, we’ll do that. And that’s all there is to it. We were the only ones here when we started this thing, so we only have to answer to ourselves.

Do it for yourself.

-J.P.

Theoretically Speaking,

We can do whatever we want. We can put it in whatever box we wanna put it in and we can call it anything we like and we can explain it however we see fit. We can wake up and sing any song we hear in our hearts and we can make it sound like whatever we think it should. We can do that every day forever, experimenting endlessly, running in circles, faster and faster until the souls leave our bodies and fly into the ether, traveling outward eternally, gracing the universe with the ideas we once had the chance to verbalize, dropping them off with their new vehicles for another iteration. We can do whatever we want. I hope we all get the chance to experience that kind of freedom. I hope everyone meets their moment, that they should shine their starlight on the shadows of the day. And when those shadows are gone, I hope they reveal more beautiful idiots, with more ideas, ready to beam their lights back in our faces, until we’re all blind. Each and every one of us, forced to rely on each other to help us find our way. We can work together. We can do whatever we want.

-J.P.

Problem Solving

What a time to be alive, am I right? People can access information more easily and immediately than ever before in the human history, as far as I know. I always leave some room for the possibility that time could be a sort of circle, and everything is happening all at the same time, so the past would be the future would be the now, and in that case everything that we have in this moment was also present and as accessible as it was or will be in any other moment so maybe we’ve always been as we are, just with different tools. What I’m saying now-now though, is that the internet is a powerful tool.

These days, when I don’t know something, I can know it in a minute tops. I pull out my phone and ask the worldwide web and the answer presents itself to me and all I have to do is read, or in some cases, listen to a computerized voice tell me the information I was looking for. Then I know. I mean I know for at least a few minutes then I’m liable to forget everything I just read or heard. That’s the beauty of it being on my phone. It’s right there for me whenever I need it and I can preserve brain space for information I feel is more necessary to retain. It’s also the curse of it being on my phone. It’s right there for me whenever I need it and so inevitably I become hyper dependent on my devices. My silly little brain stays empty and dull and I let the world pass me by, content to consume content, wasting away in front of my screen.

What I’m really thinking about today though, is how that information exchange affects other aspects of our lives. Almost all the questions I ask myself throughout the day have an easy answer which I can find it instantly. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to ideate. I don’t have to find a way to be ok with not knowing for a while. Now, if it’s something trivial like how long it’ll take me to get across town or why I haven’t seen the same products in the grocery store or what that actor’s name was, fine. Might as well just look it up and get it out of the way. But what about questions like “why do I feel a little different today” or “how long am I going to be looking for a new apartment” or “will I ever get to where I wanna go in life” or even “what way am I supposed to go… in life”? Sometimes I ask myself those questions. I’m pretty sure those answers aren’t on my phone. So what do I do when I don’t get an immediate answer?

Take a deep breath. Let it go.

When it starts to feel so easy to be right, it can feel just as easy to be wrong. And in an age where information seems to rule all, it’s really uncomfortable to be without that information. I try to remind myself it’s not wrong to have questions without answers. It’s good to go through things and be unsure. Not having an answer is a very different thing than being wrong, though. It’s ok if you don’t know. Don’t let impatience get the best of you. Knowing everything is boring. There’s beauty and growth in the mystery. Let the search for knowledge take you on an amazing journey, and embrace the fact that you are learning. You’re sharpening your skills, learning resilience, becoming brave.

What a time to be alive.

-J.P.

Six Days

I think that’s how long it was this time before had a breakdown.

You know what, I went to get my glasses, and now that I’m wearing them I’m feeling much more reasonable. It wasn’t a breakdown per se, but the pattern I’ve developed this year is to dive deeply into a chunk of the work we’ve set out to do this year, get to the last item on the to-do list and get overwhelmed by doubt, complain about everything that doesn’t feel like it’s working, then spend the next day trying to balance that negativity with a different perspective, and remind myself that I need to be patient. So, maybe not my best look.

I often wonder about this cycle. Is it really the only way I can keep myself motivated? It can’t possibly be the healthiest. Mental fortitude has kind of always been a focus area. I remember when I used to play CYO basketball at St. Mary’s Church in Fishkill. I was about 10 and my dad was my coach and there were two parts of my game that my dad would always harp on. I turned the ball over too much, and I always let my emotions get the best of me. When you play point guard, you have a responsibility to your teammates to run the offense and keep everything under control in order to find ways to win. I was a pretty dramatic little kid though, and it was hard for me to keep my cool. I wasn’t very good at hiding it either. A few hiccups early and I would be visibly upset. I’d play with a bad attitude, which would lead to rash decisions, which cause turnovers and would eventually cost us the game. I played sports all through high school. I learned this lesson over and over, game after game.

I had six good days before I let the game get the best of me again, but I’m working on it. I’m trying to run the point. The team needs me to keep my head on straight so we can convert these opportunities. When you’re tryna get buckets, you can’t let the game get the best of your head.

-J.P.

Attention to Detail

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want. My own font. The perfect Beautiful Idiots typeface that only we would use.

I know this seems unnecessary, but it’s the little things that matter to me. Look at it this way. Free fonts, standard fonts, fonts lots of people use… they’re totally unremarkable. You never comment on a font if it’s fine. If I had something spectacular though, something specific and immediately recognizable, you’d know it as soon as you saw it, “oh, this is a Beautiful Idiots project right here.” You’d think, wow, I’m so pleased by the aesthetic of this announcement, poster, video, copy, or whatever it is that now I’m really looking forward to consuming the product that they’re selling me. Or you’d look and say wow, this isn’t business, this is art. You can tell by the way the words look. Then you and everyone else would have so much fun looking at our stuff that none of you would ever be able to look away, and you’d be waiting, with bated breath, for more from us. And we’d deliver. And all would be beautiful.

You’ll see. One day. Not today, though. Because the font I like costs $500.

-J.P.

Refresh

I had an idea either this morning or last night to write about something that at the time felt quite profound to me but I’ve forgotten what I came to say. Maybe it’ll come to me. Instead, I’ll let you in on some things that we’ve been doing over here since we got back to work.

Understanding is revamping some drums for one of the upcoming Roe’s Garden tracks and he’s sketching out another one. We’ve got 21 tracks to finish for the calendar year, but we’re in good shape. That number should almost half by the end of next week.

In the meantime I’ve been working on Spotify Canvases for new releases. They take me longer than I’d like but I’m getting better. I also put together a series of ads we’re going to run on Instagram with the help of my sister, Olivia. I’m excited to see how this first run affects our streams and our reach, but I’ve already got two or three more series ideas for sponsored content that we’ll experiment with after we get this first round of results. Finally, I revamped the website because if we’re going to run ads, I’d like people to actually land on something worth their while. Every page got a makeover, and I think over time even those will go through more iterations as well.

So maybe none of these things are the final step, but they’re all steps in the right direction, and I’m trying to zoom in so we can start to make some incremental growth. Little gains compound, and that’s all we can do right now. It’s good to be back in the swing of things, back on my normal diet, back at home. Things are shaping up nicely for the final push.

-J.P.

Assistance, Please

Missed another day yesterday. My bad. It just got away from me. I think that’s maybe four or five days now that we’ve forgot to post. I’m going to consider it a success if we put up 350 days. Anything over that is A+ if you ask me.

I don’t have any excuse for not posting, I just have a lot on my mind right now. So many ideas that I’m trying to keep organized and keep in motion, parallel to one another. You wanna know what one of my dreams is? I dream of having an assistant. Someone I can throw an idea at and count on them to bring it back to me, to make sure all the boxes get checked. That’ll be the day. When I can offload some of my thoughts and trust that they won’t be lost to the ether. One day I’ll have an assistant. One day.

-J.P.

Phoenix to Los Angeles

Well, we made it back home, bringing our month on the road to its finish line, which is coincidentally the same as the starting line, which I like to believe is a metaphor of sorts. We always just begin again. It’s a timely thought, because yesterday I cut a clip of a sky turning from blue to grey and it was immediately clear to me that I was self-sabotaging.

At the beginning of the year I set out with the goal of establishing a presence online to grow our Beautiful Idiots community, so there would be more people there to hear our music when we released new songs. Trying to keep it simple, our plan was just to post one reel a day on Instagram and TikTok. At the beginning of the year, when the release schedule was light that meant Understanding and I would shoot an original idea - usually something we thought was funny - and cut it together and put it online. Then in the week leading up to a release day we would tease the new music, hoping to build anticipation. We did a couple bits I’m pretty proud of and some of our music promo was clever in my opinion, but as the release schedule has filled up, it’s become more of a burden than it’s worth. It’s stressful to think of a new idea every day and the inevitable quality dips make me kinda depressed to be honest. On top of that, the posts are not successful from a business standpoint. We get roughly the same amount of streams on our reels as we did in January, or even less sometimes. Plus, no one comments, no one shares - usually not even the people involved in them. We’re breaking our backs trying to think of new ideas and keep it on a tight schedule as the amount of music we have to work on increases simultaneously, and we’re not growing or engaging people online at all.

So, that’s been a pretty big bummer. For a long time I was dead set on pushing through the whole year with the same plan no matter what anyone told me. I said one year so it was gonna be one year. People grow every day though, and now I feel differently, and the best part about having a company of two people is that we only have to agree with each other to change course. So that’s what we’re going to do. The music will continue to be released regularly (three songs a month until October when we push it up to four for the rest of the year), but we’re going to take a step back to reconsider our social strategy. Hopefully we’ll come out of this with a much more fun, effective approach. If not? We’ll try again. That’s life.

I had a lot planned for this road trip. In the month leading up to it I had an idea to work a lot all the way through it in hopes of using it for an upcoming project. As the start date crept closer, it became pretty obvious that that wasn’t going to happen. On the way out, I did more than I thought I would, but nothing that was particularly groundbreaking. When I got to my parents, I knew for a fact I wasn’t going to achieve my original goal. On the way back, I scrapped the rest of the plan.

What I got out of this last month was a lot of good quality time with people I love, a much needed rest, and some helpful conversations that helped to push our plan forward. So now I’m home - back in Los Angeles, and it’s time to begin again.

-J.P.