Roughly one year ago I started making this series. I set out to make a little video about what happened in the month as I seem to get up to a lot of stuff that I felt needs to be all mashed together.
Maybe it’ll motivate some others to come get involved? I thought.
12 episodes later that hasn’t exactly happened but I do feel I’m starting to get the series where I want it. So here’s the little celebration of this series 1st birthday!
Would you be surprised if I said I spent a lot of time in the water in May?
One of my favourite things about putting this series together is looking back and being like yeahhh oh man that was fun. May was fun and the episode from May can be found below!
Winter is now on it’s heels and I’m charging into Spring!
There are so many types of content floating around out there that I don’t even really know where to be begin.
In my first phase years ago of making stuff to put online it was all skimboard orientated because that’s what I knew. Fast forward a few years to where I am now. I tend to split between vlogs/day in the life stuff, informative and more nicely edited visual treats. Or however you want to explain it all.
Here’s some interesting stats of my own that I’ve learnt from my own content.
-Vlogs have a much higher initial engagement due to the personal aspect of them. You can see in this weeks one below
– Informative videos seem to work well once they’ve been in the system for a long time.
– Finely edited videos with very little personality expressed, don’t do as well as they did 5 or so years ago but…. If you create a video targeted at something specific then they can and do get on a little roll.
– The average spearfishing video possesses zero creativity. There’s no personality or context to what is going on.
– The average drone video possesses zero creativity. There’s so many people putting content out now that it has become overused and dull.
– Surfing related content creates a heeeeeap of interest but also the most negativity.
– Podcasts are rad and are booming. Is this the rise of real news from real people?
-Adventure based content from little businesses and/or groups is on a massive boom right now. Soon to be horribly saturated.
-Fishing content is so popular to the point that I don’t really think you can make anything original!?
-There’s a lot of negativity online but the channels I have created seem to get much lower than my average share, which is great!
That’s just a few things I can think of off the top of my head that I’ve noticed from my own experiences. As the online content market rises so do the opportunities for people, young people in particular.
February was the best month this year, so far! The water was warm and clear. So clear at stages it was hard to believe, for the Gulf that is.
The best thing about this month is that the holiday crowds have typically gone and we’re free to play. I didn’t quite realise how much play time there was until it came time to edit.
Sit back and enjoy this 12 minutes of action
I sit here frothing over Summer footage as we’ve just had our first two frosts of the Winter. Gaggh.
The dictionaries definition of hobby is this “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.”
As children we all have hobbies. We have plenty of free time, therefore we have hobbies. Some of us continue with these hobbies our whole lives, most of us don’t.
As “adults” we need a hobby or two. Judging by our obesity statistics my opinion is that that hobby could do with being somewhat physical. A hobby that makes you sweat and improves your physical fitness is the best kind of hobby.
A lot of retired people need more hobbies. This would help occupy their time, assist with the aging process and lastly (and hopefully) give them an interest besides targeting young people having fun.
Even though we retire from work at a late age we seem to retire from hobbies much, much earlier. Remember the days when you had time to be bored? BORED! Now most of us just work too much in order to “get ahead”. I don’t quite know what is “ahead” but I do know a life without time for my hobbies is a shit life.
One of my favourite quotes is “You didn’t stop skateboarding because you got old. You got old because you stopped skateboarding”. I don’t skate but this is absolutely perfect.
I am an obsessive hobbyist. When I find something I like, I like to do it. Every so often isn’t enough, that’s not a true hobby. I want to get good at it and everything is a competition, including with myself. It’s gotten to the point where I believe you can monetize any hobby. But why do you want to make money from your hobby?
TO DO IT MORE!
This isn’t easy. In fact it’s bloody hard, just like life.
This weekend consisted of hobbies, nothing really else. Skimboarding, diving and good food was the order for Saturday
Sunday with better viz and a beaut forecast we were off to hit the water
If you’ve been following me for a while that this is a fairly common thing here. I’m learning more about myself all the time and where my hobbies can take me. It’s much further than you would think.
Lately I’ve been really nerding out of that thing called nature. I have always loved the outdoors and have always prided myself in having a child and adulthood mainly spent outside.
As you may know New Zealand is nice. I would sell it harder but honestly we have plenty of tourists as it is. One thing we don’t really have though is killer animals. You know like Lions and Snakes and shit like that.
When it comes to the ocean though, we have killers. Most we know about, some we don’t. It has been terrible for diving the last couple of months so I haven’t seen as many as I would have liked to. Yeap I want to see them!
This afternoon I saw something leap out of the water. My first thought was a big Shark. A bluey grey colour makes me thing Mako. I didn’t want to jump to a conclusion so I just assumed dolphin but with no fins, spray or jumping in the little while after bring me back to Mako. This is awesome! Just nature doing nature and only a couple hundred metres off the back of one of my favourite dive spots. Wasn’t a baby either.
The Far North has it’s fair share of these predators and I have been spending a bit of time there recently. The last trip was to try and spear a Marlin. I’ve dropped a heap of vlogs as usual so you’re welcome to dig a little deeper in OXS TV. The day below consisted of huge dunes, big wave and weather forecasting for the next day
Game day. As far as being nervous goes, this day was up there.We went out so try find a Marlin to spear. I was to be alone in the water in a pressure cooker situation. Here’s the day
As I get a little older I’m feeling more drawn towards this sort of stuff. After seeing what I’m pretty sure I saw today (what a mouthful), I flew the drone over the area in the hope I could spot something, did a little work out then just went back to the water and stared. Fascinated.
Long term I want to get a lot more involved with this sort of thing and document it. Nature tearing nature a new ahole is weirdly fascinating and I want to be part of it.
With 2017 almost over ha! Sort of, not really. To kick off this years series of Alive In New Zealand I wanted to mix the standard editing style with more of a vlog feel. Vlogs are popular and my vlog channel is almost bigger than my main so that’s my approach.
This will make the series longer and hopefully more interesting and engaging. This episode has all the drone shots you can imagine, thundercats, spearfsihing and some mad buggers on a wake winch. Take a look at the new episode below
Long term I want to make this series an accurate representation of not just my life but hopefully a lot of Kiwis lives! With a bit of luck the next episode won’t be too far away.
Trying to come up with something motivational and/or thought provoking each week is pretty hard. Talking about what you’ve been up to in the last week is easy.
In this society which we acknowledge suffers from Tall Poppy Syndrome, talking about yourself is frowned upon especially even hinting that you may be good (or even okay) at something. So here’s the balance. Each week I try to provide something at least a little bit thought provoking…. Whilst talking about myself ha. Neat huh.
This week I don’t really have anything thought provoking but boy am I having a good time. I finally feel a little more focused and am very happy with a few of my latest little projects. Last weekend we shot off for a dive with the intent of getting some fish for the smoker. A slow start but I managed to run hot towards the end. Check it here
Sunday was a smokey day. At times, smoked fish is a huge part of my staple diet. I love the stuff but only with salt. If you use sugar on your smoked fish then you’re doing it wrong. Wrong!
So that’s it for this week. No motivation, just fun.
We all need a thing. That passion, that interest, that I’m going to go do that on Saturday thing.
I have four things. These are all things that through experience I know I thoroughly enjoy doing these things more than the average person. Why? I’ve always enjoyed certain thing a lot. Obsessive, enthusiastic, maybe a little bit crazy. That’s why.
I do them as much as possible. Like a lot, several times a week in fact because well, why not? That’s what makes me tick.
The next two videos are all about what makes me tick as I spent another weekend doing these things that I love.
One thing I don’t enjoy is bored people trying to shut other peoples fun down. This day was extremely fun minus one blemish
As for you thing you might be wondering how to find it, what it is, how do you go about it? Well if you don’t have a thing that you are super passionate about then start looking. Do something different. For the average person you need to expand your social circle and have a look around. There’s a few people in different areas doing your thing.
