It’s been an interesting week for me. After thinking I could quickly dispense with Freezerburns with a blog post and a status on Facebook, I got interviewed for AdWeek which resulted in an article about my quitting which led to it being an Editor’s pick and on the front page, which led to it getting picked up on Jezebel which then started a storm of comments on all my channels.
I decided to stop reading the comments because despite what my friends and family think, I don’t really care what strangers have to say about my show or my quitting. Dealing with 6 years of hardcore YouTube trolling can harden someone. The thing that troubles me is the articles have been written clearly on the slant that I decided to quit only because I realized how bad the food was or I was taking a stand for nutrition! That may have been the final straw but it certainly wasn’t “THE reason”.
Thank you, @GregoryNg for calling out companies who advertise frankenfoods to kids! You rock! http://t.co/jMnUxJbf4a
— MindStream Academy (@MindStreamTeens) September 4, 2014
Now I seem to be the poster child for “Calling out companies who advertise Frankenfoods to kids!” It’s not that I disagree with the premise that packaged, processed foods are not great for people. I knew this when I shot my first episode! I feel not great about people using the final episode as my grand political statement that companies are bad. That frozen food is bad. That commercialization of our food is bad.
“The irony is not lost on me that my show is more popular finished than it was running.”
I know, I know. I put myself out there and people can interpret or spin whatever message they want. It just feels icky to me. It feels like my original intent is being hijacked for someone else’s crusade. When I said in my previous post that I wanted Freezerburns to be one of the “many great ideas that I executed on in my career” it was not for Freezerburns to be one grand set up to condemn the frozen food industry. Still, getting ton of hits to my website, my channel, and my videos isn’t a bad thing. The irony is not lost on me that my show is more popular finished than it was running. And in case you are wondering if all this press will bring me back out of retirement, I just turned down a 5-figure sponsorship deal offer with a “healthy” frozen food company this morning. I think it is safe to say that I have moved on.
This had me thinking this week about how one defines “accomplishment.”
Due to extreme heat all CASL practices are cancelled today.
— CASL (@caslnc) September 2, 2014
I coach my 7 year old son’s soccer team and we are scheduled for tuesday night practices. This past tuesday in North Carolina was especially brutal with temps creeping towards 100 degrees. A couple of hours before practice the soccer league closed all fields and cancelled practices due to “Extreme Heat”. My son was devastated. This kid lives and breathes soccer and is the kind of kid that wants to practice all the time. Now, I have always considered myself a soccer player and felt I was fairly competitive in my youth and high school careers but I didn’t have a quarter of the drive my son has. When I got home, he came running to the door and asked if we could go to our neighborhood club’s field and practice any way. Without hesitation I said “yes”. I had a great time one on one with him and while he may have considered it fun. I considered it an aha moment.
Ordinarily a practice cancellation meant one things for me: free production time! It typically meant I could squeeze in filming a couple of videos before kid bedtime and with how jam packed my schedule was, it was a huge opportunity. On that day, a practice cancellation meant something altogether. Utilizing previously scheduled time for one on one time with my kid! I realized this week that I conditioned myself to define accomplishment with activity. Every day: kill it at work, kill it on Freezerburns, kill it as a dad, kill it as a husband, repeat.
Accomplishment was shooting, editing, publishing, metatagging, annotating, commenting, social networking, repeat. It was about optimizing a process to publish another video. A drop in a bucket that had no top to it. That isn’t accomplishment for me anymore. Now, it’s being with my kids, watching TV, creating beautiful things, calling my mom more, communicating better, pushing myself on my workouts…
Accomplishment to me right now is simply being here. The rest will fill in the blanks when it comes.
You may also like:
Gregory Ng
GOAL: Visit 100 National Parks as a family by 2020. Favorite Parks: Zion National Park, Mt Rainier National Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park
Follow Me:
Comments are closed.