ep.24 West Park Park Bench Podcast - Balance (unbenched)

10:48AM Jan 10, 2023

Speakers:

Caron Lyon

Keywords:

year

balance

people

maintaining

project

podcast

prep

shedule

production

posture

plays

plan

crypto

moment

stage

producer

pension payment

quarterly

working

producing

Welcome to Episode 24 of the West Park park bench Podcast. Today is unbenched. But I am in West Park. It's 2023

The world has resumed. It's very wet and rainy. But I'm sat in my car I've been for a swim. I'm starting to reform my year ahead.

At the beginning of each year, I try and find a word that will guide me. I've never been one for resolutions because at the beginning of the year is the toughest time to build a new habit. You're coming straight out of an old year. There's been Christmas there's been disruption. And I like to launch myself into the year but to launch myself into a year with a commitment for something that I have to maintain, I think is a big ask, especially when you're asking it of yourself. So I have for many years, had a word it's only been the last, I think five years that they've been consecutive and I've meditated. on them all and I can remember them.

So last year was posture and that was about holding myself straight and focusing and having a posture, the political potential of posture. I really liked the idea of having a word that can have multiple have multiple strands and multiple meanings. But ultimately what I wanted to do is lose a little bit of weight or at least start to address and turn my attention to my physical health. And I have to say, I did that. And part of the routine that I built up in the end was yoga, and a swim. I would like to do another yoga class and a you know the swim in a week. But right now maintaining yoga and maintaining a swim is a success. And I think it's important to have things that you can say I succeeded at this. And I think that is probably what has brought me to my word for this year. But just to give you another idea of my previous words, so I had a mindfulness was the year before so 2021 was mindfulness and 2020 was boundaries and they've all come out of a what I've learned from the December or what I learned coming out of the year.

So this year, this year my word is balance and before I got to November, I was thinking about it all year when I think you know what is my what is my word and what might I like to do next year, and I really wanted to extend the posture into maintaining a focus on myself. And I wanted it to be musicality and I had ideas of doing the musician to play keyboard. I have a keyboard at home that I've had for many many years. And I tried to start to learn playing it but it never really caught and I thought that's great. However, as the year progressed and my shedule and my grant from the Arts Council came to a close I realised that I need a solid foundation, and I need that solid foundation to be in perspective. And one of the things that I really recognise in my shedule is that I I'm not working hand to mouth as hour to hour or day to day, which I think some people can do in this cost of living crisis and even before the cost of living crisis. That struggle is very real, to maintain and sustain the physical body, putting a roof over your head, paying your bills, getting to work petrol food, and I kind of got to a position where I was month to month I was thinking about how much do I need to have in a month and we were covering those bills. And my work life was quarterly.

So I would be planning three months ahead at a time. However, I realised that the larger that my projects become that three month delivery window is not enough. Now, when I started doing the media camps, a three month window to announce it and then to plan it and then deliver it with the internet and to engage an audience was fine but that was when I wasn't any costs at any overheads because lace market house gave me the venue. I had internet I had the space in which I was going to deliver it so it was just about putting a programme in place and bringing people into the space however, during my producers diploma and now with my headset, as a producer. That is very much a mindset of an employee as a stage manager being brought into a project with all the pre prep having been done to pick up the pre prep and to go with it. And I kind of set in my mind the pre prep I didn't need anybody else. So when I was announcing that I was going to do something and then announce it and then deliver it and promote it and run the event. It was it was it was sustainable. It was deliverable. Also doing those events, I learned about my structure of an event itself and how I could make that deliverable manageable and that's where my plan and prep and deliver reflect and report came in that reflection after an event is crucial. And for so long. As a stage manager I would come out of a project and be exhausted and event people will go into an event and we're exhausted and I recognise this as a stage manager working on events where I already had that kind of reflect and report process built in where you put the props away and you tidy the prop store and you do your maintenance and you did your thank you letters. And that was as an important part of the closure of a project but as a producer, there's much more for me to consider. At the end there's the reporting if there's funding I mean, there's the talking to funders and finances and investors. There's also the what's next and at the beginning of the project, there's not just the plan the prep, there's the strategizing for the plan prep delivery. And I suppose this is the the producing part of it. There's an overarching linear path that goes through a project that the producer has this working on project rather than in the project. And that's something I took away from some of the business practices of not working in your business but working on your business. And when you're in a business scenario, it is a running shedule it goes from day to day and the the time passes and repeats. So quarterly can be cyclical. And I think this is the thing that I realised is that deucing isn't cyclical in that quarterly sense. And that producing is cyclical in a production sense, and that production could have a lifespan of three years.

So if I've got a lifespan of three years with the development, the research and development, the engagement in the financing and then the plan the prep delivery report and reflect that last bit takes place over probably nine weeks if you are your tour or and I think that that part of the production process. I've never really had to do that. And basically because I've not had the money to do that, but I need to have the money to do that if I'm going to do that. And to do that I need to take the time to put my pitch pack together. I need to put the marketing pack together. Or if I'm not going to do the marketing I need to find an income source to be able to bring on a market or bringing a general manager.

So my word for 2023 Being balance. I think at the moment my equation is ideally 30% working on client work working on regular income projects or projects that will bring in a fee. And then 70% needs to be working on the production of the time. And that production could be in finance it could be in pitching it could be in the research and development phase. Now, at the moment my balance is flipped to the other way. At the moment I'm spending 70% on stuff that isn't in production, because 70% is not client and it's certainly not bringing in 70% of an income. The income I'm receiving right now is probably 20% of what I need to sustain myself month to month so that balance of finding time using my time well and observing and working through the equations of life balance to create a balance so it's January the ninth whilst I'm recording this and if it feels it feels good, I didn't think I was going to be able to say that a week ago.

I found Christmas 2022 And the end of the year of 2022. Very hard, not in a healthy way and not in a mental well being out of control way. But just a sense that it didn't end in the way I had planned. And a lot of that came from the outside disruptions of what's going on in the world right now. And that is the cost of living crisis. It's the war in Ukraine which is impacting on food supply chains, which is affecting what's on the shelves, it's affecting how much things cost. And with this balance, not only have I got to balance the income that I have, but I have to increase that income to keep up with that cost of living. I've had a pension payment since I started working and I've been very fortunate that I've maintained those life insurance payments and also a pension payment. But of course, that increases year on year with inflation so I have no idea what the impact of that is going to be on this year. The other part of my financial standing is that I do have some crypto that I play with. It's not crypto that I expect to use to sustain myself as a living but because of the state of crypto right now, that is not worth what it was so as a cushion it does not feel good.

Also at the moment, focusing on balance, there is been a rush of emergence liking Geyser just exploding into the air of artificial intelligence. And the AI that is around right now in January 2023 is accelerating at such a rate that I suspect that if I am still making this podcast, By April, the landscape could have changed exponentially of what is possible.

If you'd listened to my podcast at the end of the year I had one which was excitement and terror. And that excitement and terror is really tangible right now. I can see changes in my YouTube feed of makers that are diving into this stuff and producing videos to say hey, you can do this. You can do this. Have you seen what this can do? Oh my god, the world is gonna change. This has made me $20,000 a month. People who are monetize, monetize, exploit, exploit exploit and as a creator and as a creative in the entertainment industry, you you kind of a little bit set back from that.

So thank you so much. Do comment, do let me know that you listen to these. I have a Facebook group for the PCM adventures so people who I work with people who I'm interested in taking on this journey. I have a Facebook page where I like to invite those people. They're often people who themselves are on adventures and I can cross post and share with that group. So if you follow me if I'm friends with you on Facebook and you want to join the PCM adventures, please let me know. If you are using Twitter at the moment, despite what Elon Musk is doing to it. I'm @pcmcreative do follow me do comment

For me it there's an interest, there's a fascination and the production that I am exploring the big overriding big win of project that I am exploring which is likely to be the three year project is about taking an audience into an environment that is going to show them some stories about what this technology can do in a narrative. And using the stage convention and stagecraft, that's available at the moment to kind of take them out of reality. Give them a really interesting and immersive time. That will make some leave at the end not quite sure if what they've seen is real well, they will know that what I think this is it, what they will see they will know was not real because it was theatrical because it was staged and because it will be done in a very Brechtian style. The technology will not be hidden, it will be very transparent about what what is before them and what it is it's manifesting these illusions. But even though you can see what is manifesting it those illusions for the first time that you see them are going to take people by surprise. I would like to think that people will want to come back and see the show, but also they will want to come back when the show is in town for a different show on the same set because the environment, the staging, the plays, is going to be the same each time. It's just the story that will change.

And I'm really interested to see how that plays out in a production environment. How that plays out, in terms of interest for investors, in terms of interest for venues, will you want to rebook it? Will people see that it's coming back? But not to not the same story, not the company doing the same story but doing the same stagecraft but then thinking about that right here and now, which is why I love doing these podcasts because I don't really get a chance to talk out loud structurally, it's very hard to talk out loud structurally to yourself, but talking out loud to a podcast, an audio blog because this really isn't a podcast. I would love to do some more podcasting things but again, that needs a balance to find guests and to find time to prep those guests is a very different animal. Than this audio blog. So balance and there's a balance.

So, thank you so much for listening to Episode 24. Obviously, the title will have been balanced and this is going to be a West Park Park Bench ubenched, but that's too long, so it might not I think the one in London that was unbenched was the initials and on benched or London unbenched so this is going to be Westpark unbenched. Ha but then I need to get the title in. Hey, you will have seen the title before you get here.

So thank you so much. Do comment, do let me know that you listen to these. I have a Facebook group for the PCM adventures so people who I work with people who I'm interested in taking on this journey. I have a Facebook page where I like to invite those people. They're often people who themselves are on adventures and I can cross post and share with that group. So if you follow me if I'm friends with you on Facebook and you want to join the PCM adventures, please let me know. If you are using Twitter at the moment, despite what Elon Musk is doing to it. I'm @pcmcreative do follow me do comment

and also where else

community is really important. And I'm about to start a new community for equity, which will be the East Midlands branch. Another podcast maybe next week, maybe the week after. But how you engage with people through the internet when you don't have physical presence. And that's something I've talked about in previous podcasts is about presence. And about haven't done community if you think there's a word in line with the types of podcast titles that I do, let me know what what would you like me to Muse upon? Also, if you would like to join me on an benched edition, please let me know. So thank you so much. Happy New Year. I hope 2023 progresses as you would like don't make a resolution. Find a word and let me know what that word is.