Where is your Focus at?

ey neighbors, it's your buddy next door Mason Stewart and we're back in the booth. Thank you all for being patient with me last week. I didn't schedule my time well and so I ran out of time to do the vlog recording and everything and I didn't want to make a rushed product so I figured I would just delay it a week and see what that gets us. But we are back and I'm very excited to be back with you. I really am. I have a lot of good insight from these last two weeks and things that have been going on in my life. So let's just, we gotta have a nice food adventure at the end too. But let's let's start going over these last two weeks. I've mentioned before pretty openly on these vlogs that I tend to struggle a lot with anxiety and depression revolving around the voice over world mainly because it's a very competitive industry. And there's a lot of nose right, you get a lot of nose thrown at you. But recently I've mentioned I started doing a an auditioning class with Scott burns and a lot of the people in that class tend to be a little bit more novice compared to myself in the voice over world right. They haven't really started auditioning or anything like that. All the information I'm getting is still really good for me. But that's that's the case anyways, we He sends us a faux audition, write a fake audition throughout the week, randomly and we send it in as if it was like a real audition coming to us. Well doing them for these last two weeks now. I felt like I'm at the same level as these people that are just starting out and it may be that they just have more natural talent and this is something I've had to work at. But it was very frustrating and it kept me down. And so I've also mentioned that I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints right. I'm going to adjust my camera a little bit. I apologize. It is not staying in the spot I want it to so don't you freaking love that. Okay, there we go. Anyways, sorry about that. It was bothering me. I'm a member of the church. of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now. There's been a big push by our leadership for the worldwide church, our profit to kind of expand our core, our core values right and to live those core values. And we had a good discussion this last week in our Sunday school about what that means. And it was it was a very eye opening thing because it related not just to like my spiritual well being and how I feel about that. But it also harken to anything going on in our life. And so I was thinking about that. And then I started rewatching Parks and Rec if you guys know what Parks and Rec is it's a fun little like us calm that's kind of like a mockumentary, kind of similar to the office if you've watched the office. But it there's a character His name is Ron Swanson. And he's kind of this eccentric like libertarian, right just kind of like on the extreme of the libertarian scale anyways. He's talking to one of the main characters Leslie Knope, who is running for her local city election and trying to do her job at the parks department. Right. And she's things are slipping through the cracks and things aren't being done correctly and missing things. And he begins to tell her a story. You know, because he's, he's an eccentric person. He begins to tell her a story of when he was 11 he was working at the steel mill. And then he you know, got an offer to work at a tannery and he wanted to do Balto he tried and then you know, he started using a leather tool on a piece of aluminum right? An absolutely ridiculous story for an 11 year old but the thing he says next is the thing that hit me the most. And it relates exactly to what I was talking about with my church and really focusing on your core values and everything. He says it in a much different way as you'll find out here. But really, he said don't half ass to things. Full ass. One thing that got me thinking, what does it really mean to be all in on something? Are you all in on something? I thought about my life. And you know, I am all in on my religion and my spirituality. That's a big thing. For me. That's a very important thing for me. But I wanted to try to find something a little bit easier to digest a little you know, more

connecting to everybody that watches these. And so I realized Overwatch for myself, the video game Overwatch. I am fully committed to Overwatch. That's what I love to do in my free time. People like watching movies they like watching shows that I doing stuff. Anytime I have my own free time or I'm not doing stuff with my wife. I'm not doing voiceover stuff. I'm not doing other things. I'm playing Overwatch and I'm trying to get better. And people have tried to get me to play other games right valorant and all these other different things and I nothing like satisfy that itch for me like Overwatch does. So I'm fully committed to it. And I don't really play any other games and that's what I do for my free time. That's really what it means. Am I taking the time to do everything I need to do in voiceover I'm doing my marketing. I'm reaching out like via LinkedIn, all of those different things, doing cold emailing, maybe I need to start doing cold calling to agencies, different things like that. There are all sorts of things that we can do. And we've talked about this on the podcast before but it's the difference between good, better and best, right? What is the good thing that you can do? What's a better thing that you could do and what's the best thing that you could be doing? Looking at my voiceover journey for the past, like seven years, because that's ho

w long I've been doing. It is seven years. There's a bit of a realization that comes into play. And that realization is that I may not do voiceover in the future. Not because I don't love it and not because I was a failure. But because the industry doesn't seem to be leaning towards my voice, my style of reads different things like that I've

coached everybody says you're doing great that you should be getting jobs, all these different things. But I'm not.

And that's a tough pill to swallow. It's something I can't really explain. It's a tough pill to swallow. So, I have decided that I need to be prepared to move on when the time is right. Now my current day job is not something that is sustainable long term. I honestly took it and was going to use it as you know, kind of just like a building plate. If voiceover didn't work out. It was not somewhere I was going to stay in somewhere. I don't plan on staying. So I'm looking into options for myself to start looking into while I'm finishing up or continuing on this voiceover journey. We'll just kind of have to see how things play out unfortunately, that's the way of the world right? But if we split our time too much into these different things, right, and we're trying to go all in on two different things. It's not going to work out. I'm not trying to go all in on two different things. I want to make that clear. I am 100% focused on VoiceOver. That's my main goal. Right now when I'm not doing things I do anything voiceover related that I can I've taken classes I do coaching. I audition. I send out emails, I connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, you know, I'm doing all these things that people tell me to do. So I feel like I'm all in. I really do. And that's another big piece. Don't let like other people tell you what you should and shouldn't do like your life is your life. Right? Find what works for you and then move on with that. But there's been kind of a serious buddy next door, post neighbors and I don't want to I don't want it to get too bleak and too down. So I'm just going to leave it with that. Find a way to full ask something don't half ass. Two things. Don't half ass a bunch of things. Just full ass one thing. That's my advice for right now. But let's jump into everybody's favorite part is the food adventure. went to Walmart this week because I had to pick up a few things and I don't go to Walmart all that much anymore. Because we have a grocery store close to us. The grocery store close to us though. It's kind of a regional one. So a lot of the big national stuff and kind of other things that that you just can't find there. So I took the opportunity. I have a couple of food adventures lined up. Now. I got a couple of different things at Walmart. But today we're going to start with a prickly pear or aka cactus fruit this is fruit that comes off of the cactus called prickly pear, cactus fruit or a Cactus Pear, different things like that. I've never had one. I've had prickly pear soda. If you have ever tried that. It's pretty good. I like it. So I figured might as well give the real deal, a shot and a taste. So let's give it a taste and see what happens. Here we go prickly pear guys

it's interesting it's got these really hard seeds in it. That makes it unpleasant to eat. But the initial taste is like very cucumber it's like a milder cucumber with like a sweeter second sweet cucumber. Not bad. Overall not bam. I knew about the seeds. I've probably won't be buying this again. I'm gonna go ahead and give it a five I think it deserves a solid five. It tastes good. The seeds are really annoying if you find a way to get rid of the seeds or whatever. Go for it. But yeah, it's just gonna be five. We're gonna eat it all though, because we don't waste food around here. Food waste is terrible. Don't waste food guys. Anyways, we're gonna leave this episode of your buddy next door. I appreciate each and every one of you for stopping by hanging out and listening to me ramble on about my struggles in my life. And then staying for a fun food adventure. Hope that you all have a wonderful week, find some way to be kind to yourself and to all those that you can run into this week. And we'll catch you guys on the next one. See ya