This is Intimidating! I Need Help! A Cancer Journey EP/Video to Help Others Sounded Easy.

The entrance to the radiation therapy room at Mercy Hospital, the start of my days for 8 weeks

Do you know anyone with cancer, depression or other debilitating conditions? Do you suffer yourself? Perhaps, like me you have a health condition yourself; and like me want to create something positive out of it, including coping strategies and fighting to find yourself back.

Would you like to be part of something that resonates with your values and help support me on this HAG (Hairy Audacious Goal)?

Yesterday I posted about Item #2 of 150 on my Life List inspired by Danny Dover author of the Minimalist Mindset, other books I have read like The Happiness Trap, podcasts like The Hidden Why by Leigh Martinuzzi, people I saw on TV programs like The Voice who had been on much tougher journeys than me and dared to dream of achieving lofty goals during the time I have been on my prostate cancer journey.

With the help of some good friends and family, some also still suffering from cancer I dragged myself out of feeling sorry for myself and decided that number #2 on my 150 long Life List of values based activities would be to created an EP and Video set of songs that were part of my catharsys and development, such that it will resonate with and help other cancer sufferers and their friends, family and support network.

I’m wondering if I have created a monster. How will I achieve this and 149 other things to boot, let alone find the energy for it, without detracting from my day job, which I can’t financially do without (and am passionate about)? How will I achieve this when I still frequently have to be woken up in the evening after my day at the office?

The answer, which is the same one as my cancer journey is that I can’t do it alone. In order to help other people, I need help from a team of people with a rich source of experience and some that can help with less specialist areas of support. Everything from project planners, musicians, vocalists, videographers to sound engineers, artists, production, social media, marketing and crowdfunding. Are you one of those?

I also just need supporters who can help spread the word, connect with members of the team, make cups of tea (or Texas Honey), run around after us and keep us on track and provide emotional support. We’ll need studio’s, technology, sound gear, meeting space, This is a pay it back or pay it forward exercise and should be a lot of fun.

Just since yesterday, I have already had firm offers of help from people, which is awesome and I will take them up on it. I’m going to need a pretty big team with a wide range of skills and it’s a labour of love, a not for profit venture.

Check out this short video with Danny Dover and see if it resonates with you. Is your life meaningful? For some of us it takes a reminder of our mortality and human condition to force change. Then you have to do something about it. You might like to take a similar journey and if you do, some elements may overlap. I’d love it to be this one.

So, this morning I started documenting what I am going to have to do in order to achieve this goal and it is huge. It could almost be a full time job in itself, which  is intimidating, but if I can find plenty of experts in different fields who will support me and donate time and energy; and find funds for the parts that I have to pay for, I’m going to make this happen. I’ve done it before with The Wireless Forum, Glenfield Music Centre, parents committees, sport club committees, Auckland ICT, SMEI International and more, all while keeping down a job. Anyway:

This is what I came up with for starters and it’s by no means complete:

Plan for Cancer Music EP / Video Project

1. Concept Document and elevator pitch
2. What help do I need at each phase of the project
   1. How can I even do it while keeping my job and energy?
   2. Project Manager
3. People or organisations that can help me
   1. People who have raised their hands
   2. Influencers
   3. People I would like to approach for help
   4. Mentors
4. Finance
   1. How much do I need?
   2. Where do I get it from?
5. The songs
   1. Finish them
   2. Practice them
   3. Write a story about each one
6. What do I need for each song
   1. Record basic demos
   2. Identify the sounds I want for each song
   3. What instruments / vocals do I want for them
   4. Find artists
   5. Find a producer
   6. Find a studio
      1. Engineer
      2. Mastering
   7. Record in conjunction with videos
   8. Video the entire process, not just the songs
7. The video/s
   1. What is the story for the whole production
   2. What is the story for each song
   3. Find a videographer
   4. Write each song story
   5. Find an editor
   6. Production team
8. Presentation
9. Publishing
10. Marketing
    1. Facebook Page
    2. Promo/merchandise
    3. Raising awareness
11. Launch event and concert gifting the outcome to the Cancer Society
    1. How would they use or benefit from it?
    2. How will it reach patients and their supporters?
    3. How will it endure

Want to be on the team?

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Life List #2 Record an EP and Video of my Songs about my Cancer Journey

I know you are a caring person wanting to make a difference like me, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog. I’m looking for advice and assistance on this project and I want to gift the results to the Cancer Society so that many people can benefit from it.

Music is a great healer and I used it as one of the tools that helped me and continues to help me through my journey. When I first was told “You Have Cancer” and got past the initial shock, I watched shows like The Voice and saw the stories of people who had turned horrific times in their lives to good purpose, wondering what did it take for me to do something positive and values driven.

Where we leave our clothes when we go in for radiation treatment

I decided I wanted to do something too, which started with setting up the Facebook page Musicians with Cancer and other Maladies, I also wanted to try to do something really positive for other cancer patients and their families and friends.

 

So my Life List goal #2 is to complete an EP and music videos to help tell the story of my journey in terms of a cancer patient that may help other people relate to this horrible illness.

It’s 24/7, it’s scary and in many cases results in anguish, fear, depression, pain and death. The story isn’t unique, it applies to other conditions too like dementia.

Last night I watched the movie ‘Glen Campbell I’ll Be Me’ on TV and had tears in my eyes throughout the whole movie and my heart goes out to people suffering from dementia, which our family is also dealing with.

One of my songs for the EP is called “Who Stole My Words” which was about an experience I wrote about recently about falling out of an ocean kayak and due to my condition wasn’t able to come up with simple words like current and tide after I swam it to shore, not having the strength to get back in because I am not producing cortisol (i.e. no adrenalin). For a wordsmith, not being able to recall simple words is pretty scary.

So my challenge is that I need to fund this work and then make it available at no cost to people who are going through the same experience, because even with insurance, having cancer is very expensive and many people have to sell their homes or spend their life saving to help pay for their treatment or even to travel for treatment if they don’t live in a town where it is available. We had to spend a 5 figure sum to top up the gap for my treatment to date, so I know what it’s like. So I’d like to gift the album / video to the Cancer Society when it is complete.

I’m going to need additional musicians, possibly a backing choir for one of the songs, a videographer, editor and more people to help me. I’m going to need a studio, a sound engineer, a cast of several people and then there’s production and distribution. It’s pretty scary.

I’m keen for advice and help. First of all, where do I go for money? I’m thinking about whether to use New Zealand’s ‘Give a Little’ service. To raise funds because this is a charitable exercise. The finished product will be gifted to the Cancer Society and anyone who can benefit from it for free. There won’t be any profits.

Then I need a bit of a team to help me make this happen. Can you help with advice, or would you like to join the team? I can write the songs and I want to perform them with various artists, but that’s about the limit of my expertise.

So will you help? I need people and I need advice. You can contact me via Twitter Facebook by joining the group Musicians with Cancer and other Maladies, LinkedIn or Email.

 

We all need more kindness in this world

Watching all the solidarity after the London apartment building fire and all the terrorist events that seem to be occurring almost daily, it makes me wonder about what unites us.

We hear statements from leaders about how the adversity makes communities stronger, but it makes me wonder about what we can do to avoid these situations.

Can we make a difference simply by moving some muscles on our face and smiling or greeting strangers as we walk past them?

There seem to be a lot of people who become radicalized possibly because of their general state of mind. We are now hearing about so many people suffering from depression and anxiety, it is even now a significant problem for children in first world schools.

I note how it makes me feel when I make positive contact with strangers on the street, it feels good. A simple act of kindness could make the difference for someone who is feeling stressed, depressed or bitter and could stop them from doing something that could have horrific  consequences for themselves and others.

Smile and say hi to a stranger today.

Coping with stress in Christchurch

Never before have we experienced a situation such as exists in Christchurch today. As was seen on Campbell Live last night people are at breaking point. Even the ambulance officers who were interviews, some of whom  had lost their own homes appeared to be close to losing it, fighting on because they are trained to, because “my uniform says I am there to help”. Men saying they “Cried last week for the first time in 20 years”.

The situation is looking incredibly serious. We have our 2nd largest city full of people suffering from Earthquake Syndrome. Interestingly it is very difficult to find information about the psychological impact from a New Zealand perspective, which I blogged about yesterday it seems as if the authorities are keeping it as quiet as possible, worried that it will get worse if people start talking about it.

In the absence of anything else, I think that is exactly what they should be doing, but more on that in my next blog. Maybe its naive of me, but today as a citizen of NZ with no mandate or authority I emailed Dr Martin Seligman of the Positive Psychology Centre at Penn University. In the US they experience repeated incidents of natural disasters in certain areas and of course with their military forces they also have extensive experience in PTSD. In NZ we really have no skills to understand or deal with repeat natural disasters and their human psychological consequences at a level like this, which in my opinion is why we are doing very little about it. We aren’t coping with the demands of repairing buildings, deciding which suburbs stay or go. We still aren’t dealing with the damage to buildings and the EQC is not paying trades people who are close to losing their businesses for trying to help people keep their homes habitable.

If you haven’t seen the Campbell Live tent recordings where they left people in a tent without any interviewers prompting them, to say how they feel, watch the following video and tell me you are not moved.

Observations on Web 2.0 and hive culture

I was sitting in my daughter’s unit and reading the prelaunch draft of Gordon Dryden and Jeanette Vos book which is about to launch, called Unlimited.

I wanted to take some notes, but I couldn’t find a single pen in the house. There was a wireless keyboard and mouse and the PC was connected to their TV, but no pen.

In the Preface to the book they wrote about how interactive the web now is. with “mass innovation, mass participation, mass co-creativity, mass personalisation.” I think the key word is ‘mass’. Most of the things we do today have been possible for a number of years, but there were only a small number of people doing it. I don’t think we were even called geeks yet.

Now with applications such as FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo and others, a huge percentage of people around the world are sharing information, ideas and their personal space on the web.

Having an encyclopedia on the internet was a logical extension of Encarta which was wonderful for the multimedia and interactivity, but who ever thought there would be something like Wikipedia where everyone has the ability to have input as well as the ability to edit or add to what other people create.

It seems to me that we are evolving into a sort of community consciousness, like a hive, where we all interact with each other becoming part of an interactive organism. For now it is a semi-optional environment where we can choose to participate and the degree of participation from tangential to immersive. I say semi because even if we don’t interact directly, what we say and do often is still recorded in quotes and other forms of data such as photos and video.

Neural interfaces, such as haptic is not the norm yet, but having already celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the mouse, connections between the brain and nervous system and other devices whether physical or optical are realistic. Car manufacturers like BMW are monitoring eye movement and many people with amputated limbs or other disabilities are now able to manipulate devices without physically doing so by direct motor control.

Police and military have for some years been working with communication systems incorporating helmets with monocular displays and voice activated communications. Conventional communications adopted as normal by the masses include text messaging, where it is not unusual for Generation Y’s to conduct multiple concurrent conversations.

The same concept applies in social networking on applications such as Facebook. The networks are also now being merged and instead of having separate networks, it is now quite normal to have family, friends and work colleagues, associates and clients all in the same network with  in many cases access to the same information.

The Ubermens concept is reemerging, mentally anyway, but we also have a collaborative effect which has little to do with IQ or EQ and makes us more powerful and at the same time more transparent. People who are open, honest and happy to share are in a way evolving because honesty becomes a biproduct of the intercommunication.

As I get older and am more open to viewing and understanding the world, nature and nurture, the more I see the amazing symbiosis between all things, living and inanimate. The only thing that really stood apart were human beings who have tried to transform the natural order of things to create a new reality that suits our higher needs as described by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs.

As a hypothesis for consideration, could it be that we have a growing segment of humanity  becoming more connected and in doing so taking more responsibility for each other and our environment. Could this be a factor in how a black president was recently elected in the US? Could this have to do with why more and more people are starting to consider sustainability in their lives and taking responsibility not only for themselves and their community.

Is Truemanity an advanced outshoot of this concept?

Will this continue to evolve as more and more people have access to the same forms of communication, where state censorship is circumvented and a ‘for the hive’ mentality overides the individuals who feel they are more equal than others?

How will it evolve. Will groups of people continue on this path becoming more cohesive and if not with parapsychology but through technology become more intimately connected?

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course https://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)