Can a crowdfunding campaign be art? Let’s find out.
Yes, there are a bajillion articles about NFTs now, as they’re the hot new thing that is poorly understood, often mischaracterized, and completely oversaturated right now.
As an artist who works both digitally as well as traditionally, I think that NFT’s are super interesting, yet was also concerned at the huge energy costs associated with them and Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies (ie. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) in general.
I wanted the campaign itself to be the art piece.
So I created a Kickstarter campaign that hawks NFTs — but physical ones. In the past, I’ve made monster-themed enamel pins, but for this campaign…
A reclamation of the right to not have kids or pets
Yes, you read that right, I have a son, and he’s a stuffed cat.
Not like a once-living cat that has died and been preserved with chemicals and stuffing. Like a stuffed animal cat. Some might call him a “Beanie Baby,” and if you looked through photos of Beanie Babies online, you might recognize him as a Pounce.
However, even if my son’s species is Pounce, his name is Mochi Socks Skylar Kitagawa, and I guarantee you that he looks different from online photos of other Pounces. …
What I’ve done and lessons learned. More for me than for you.
Hello! Inspired by my friend Francois Vigneault, I’ve decided to capture what’s happened over the last year. Also, since 2020 has seemed like a time warp of sorts, I’ve also wanted to include 2019, which was also a huge year for me, before it got lost in the foggy haze of memory. Enjoy!
If you’d like to jump straight to the part where I talk about what I’m bringing forward into 2021, you can just scroll straight to the bottom.
2019 — The Year of New
(Kaiju) Coaching
I not only kicked off my own coaching business (inspired by monsters, of course), but I coached a few sessions…
We often give people facts and aggregated data, but this often isn’t enough to change minds. Personalization and the telling of individual’s stories with details often suddenly highlights your point…
A simple single word change that can be incredibly powerful
To be fair, this change was less influenced by the film itself, and more by me considering how to review the film. After watching, I peeked on Twitter to see what other people were saying.
If you look at Twitter today, most of the #WW84 reviews are either super positive or generally negative. There’s not a whole lot in-between, and I honestly think that the film falls in that grey, middle space.
It’s not the most amazing film ever (even though I was really looking forward to it and wanted it to be). It has some really great…
No hyperbole, just lessons learned from processing the experience
I got a text from a friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in a few years. We exchanged pleasantries, doing the usual “How’s life in a global pandemic” exchange, and then she asked me if I had heard the news about one of my ex’s, who we’ll call Beth (obviously not her real name). I definitely hadn’t heard the news as we don’t run in the same social circles, but given the title of this piece, you are assuming right — Beth died yesterday.
To get this out of the way, given the times we’re in, no, it…
How we can learn to deal with impostor syndrome by learning from our doppelganger.
Doppelgangers, or otherworldly creatures that look exactly like us have always fascinated me since I first heard about them from the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering as a kid.
You may be most familiar with doppelgangers from the 2013 British film The Double, which brings us a doppelganger replacing an officer worker’s life, or Jordan Peele’s 2019 movie Us that showcases an entire family of deranged doppelgangers from beneath the Santa Cruz boardwalk. While these are both creepy films, the idea of an exact double actually has a much more positive origin.
They* said it didn’t make any sense.
Who is going to listen to a podcast that mixes short horror fiction with monster mythology and personal development?
Sure, if you’re looking at a starting a podcast and consider things like minimum viable audience or the numbers of listeners you need to gain advertising deals, or the number of new podcasts started every day, then starting a very niche podcast like this probably makes no sense.
However, if you’re looking at starting a podcast as an opportunity to put yourself out there, create something that YOU want to see happen in the…
A practical way to learn about how to build trust
If we want to get better at earning, building, and restoring trust, an insightful exercise is to consider who YOU trust.
Think about online shopping. This is actually a fairly high-trust transaction. You’re basically telling some stranger on the internet,” Hi, I’d like to buy something you’ve shown me a picture of. Here’s my credit card information, my phone number, my email, and where I live. Please only take the amount of money I’m asking you to, and please actually send me what you said you were selling.”
Think about the last thing you bought online. …
Practical advice on how to change your brain
Change can be really difficult — especially when we’re looking to change our own behavioral patterns. Whether you’re trying to give up smoking, become a more empathetic leader, or trying to stop checking up on your employees, the difficulty in changing these behaviors gets down to the fact that it’s hard to get out of the patterns that we’ve built for ourselves.
People like patterns
You see, as human beings, we really, really, really like patterns. Our brains crave patterns. We like knowing that green lights mean go, hungry alligators might bite us, and that cake will taste sweet and lemons sour. …
Rick Kitagawa
Exploring trust, leadership, art, business, skeeball, and horror fiction — Co-Founder, https://spotlighttrust.com + Coach @ altMBA + www.kaijucoaching.com.
