A fundamental principle of being creative is making whatever you want to make. That doesn’t mean not taking paid jobs, you need paid jobs to be able to make what you want. But making sure that when you’re making things in your free time, the five to nine hours, you make the most of it and are making things that you actually want to make.

For instance, I have a waffle machine. It is one of the best things I’ve ever bought. Waffles are easy to make, they taste good (unless you burn them, only done that a few times) and it’s easy to mix them up (eat them plain, with fruit, with syrup). So when I was making waffles one day, I had an idea, why not make a video about it? And I did, for no other reason than I wanted to (and perhaps a little boredom from being home so much these days). Is it the most insightful video I’ve ever made? Absolutely not. Do I like it? Am I proud of it? 100 percent. For this simple video, all I did was grab my camera, shoot it and edit it… in a morning (and as a bonus, I got a meal out of it).

Find something you enjoy and start making, start doing, just have fun. Test out different ideas, different styles of whatever art you make. Release yourself from your own self criticism (because we truly are our harshest critics) and just create. I happen to like cooking, it’s something that’s fun to do. You can experiment, you can follow a recipe, you can combine recipes, you can cook a meal with friends, for friends, by yourself. It is such a versatile skill and something that is great for when you’re with people. Food is a unifier. So why wouldn’t I want to make a videos about how to make simple recipes (perhaps working my way up to more elaborate ones over time) that encourage people to cook and then share what they learned with their friends.

Ultimately when you create some piece of art, be it photography, video, a painting, a poem, a meal (yes, a meal can be art… anything can be art but that is a topic for another blog post) and you share it with the world, you want it to leave an impact. Even if you impact just one person… that makes a project worth it.

Take a look at this picture, what do you see? A scale model of a wall with a fireplace.

Look closer.

Dark stained wood trim … green wallpaper with a peacock pattern on it… intricate molding and fireplace surround… a sconce on the wall… candlesticks on the mantel.

Now put these details in context of a play, they all add up to tell a story. In this case, that story answers a question:  Mrs. Peacock… in the study… with a candlestick.

This wall panel is for a theoretical play based on the game of Clue. But it illustrates how important the set is to any theatrical production.


The set is one of the most important pieces of a production and often gets overlooked in smaller productions. It is the place that your characters spend all their time, the place they live in, work in, and play in. A good set is a character of its own. You have to make it feel real. An office should feel worked in… a home lived in (unless the character just moved in). The details are what give a set character. A childhood photo of the lead actor on the wall of the family house. A desk knick-knack on a police captain’s desk from her days on the street.

The popular ABC police procedural Castle had a man whose sole job was to create the whiteboards where the team laid out what happened in a crime. Republic of Doyle recreated a popular St. John’s, Newfoundland bar “The Duke” for the show on CBC. Look at the homes of your favorite television or movie characters, the small details that makes it feel like these characters actually live there.

Anyone can put four chairs around a table and call it a dining room set. But that doesn’t feel real, even if it’s a nice room with a nice dining room table and chairs. What is so amazing is how a great set feels so realistic, feels like the family is actually living in that house or that police captain who has been in the same office for 26 years. I want to learn how to make a set feel like a home, feel like it is lived in. It’s fascinating and something I am truly in awe of.

Hello.  My name is Ross; I am from Brussels, Belgium, and have lived across the United States.  I was a soccer player for a few years, dabbled in mathematics and attended some classes at Michigan State University. 

Hello. My name is Matthew; I am from the Detroit area of Michigan.  I love basically any activity in the outdoors. I am a videographer and photographer and a proud Butler University grad.

Both of the above statements are true in some respect.  However, the second would be considered truer than the first.  My middle name is Ross, my relatives are from Belgium, I have lived across the United States in that my family moved to Atlanta for two years when I was in elementary school, I played soccer for two years when I was in pre-school and kindergarten and was required to take math courses all throughout primary school.  And I have gone to Michigan State University to take classes as part of a summer journalism workshop while I was in high school. 

The point is that while all that may be true, there are many different versions of the same truth...

everything has some truth based in it; one just has to find it. 

Truth changes, albeit slowly, but it does change.  It used to be true that the planet Earth was flat, but then people realized that was the wrong “truth.”

The reason for stories being deemed “true” is  based upon the widely held facts and generalizations that support it.

So then, what is truth? 

Merriam Webster says there are nine different definitions of the word “true” and four definitions of the word “truth.”  With so many different definitions of one concept is it possible that one is the actual definition or that the truth is even true? 

All around the world, there are going to be different truths, all of them based similar subjects yet all different none the less.  With all these truths, it is fair to say that there really is nothing that is true and nothing that is false, it is all subjective to what one believes.