#ShowUsYourPeanuts

As many of you know I am a bit of a Stuff You Know Addict. It is the podcast that plays in my headphones whenever I am sitting on a plane, and it is what I listen to when on a road trip to a shoot. Last Thursday was no exception as I headed out to Northern Arizona to shoot a series in a climate that doesn’t melt my camera.

On the docket for the day was one of the more recent podcasts, “How Junk Food Works.” Going into this one, I was expecting to learn the usually statistics and an occasional trivia answer or two (i.e. did you know that Oreo was the knock-off brand of Hydrox?). However, I was captivated early in the conversation with one aspect… how much sugar we take in. After all, I was on a two hour trip to get to the shoot location, so needless to say, there was an abundance of junk food. Heck there was food that I thought was health food that, after close inspection, was even worse.

When I got home from the shoot that night, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, that I was not eating as healthy as I should in order to shoot at my absolute best. While my health is important, I am often more conscious about my diet and activities around a shoot time because there is nothing worse than showing up on set foggy in the head or with dry bloodshot eyes.

Towards the end of the SYSK podcast they mentioned the documentary Fed Up. It caught my attention, as I have been Netflix binging these last few weeks while staying home to help rehabilitate my dog Teddy. One of the documentaries that is always high on the “recommended” list is in fact Fed Up, soooo I decided to watch it. BIG MISTAKE

Fast forward 24 hours and I am sitting here after having talked with my wife about a new approach towards eating less sugars, and I am cranky. Not cranky like I’m tired, more cranky like “I am become death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” (little throwback to Oppenheimer). All of this made me realize that perhaps I was a bit on the sugar addicted side more than I should have been. It was also at that point that I all this time I may not have been thinking as clearly as I should have been, perhaps my ability to conceptualize an image wasn’t as strong as it should be.

Last year after an extreme panic attack, I took three months off of alcohol and caffeine completely. It wasn’t fun at the beginning, but as time went along I found a clarity in my mind that had not been seen in many years. I was able to plan lighting easier, focus quicker and shoot more efficiently. However, I found that balance was not in existence as I do like a nice glass of red wine to relax. It was at that point that I found one’s creativity is a natural existence from within, but is often chemically manipulated. Being able to find the sweet spot where it exists in life is something that takes deep studying of what happens to your creative process as outside stimulants present themselves.

This all brings us to the title of this blog… some of you may already know what it means. It is a segment from one of my favorite shows, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” It addresses much of what I have been talking about in this blog in a way that is both scary and hilarious at the same time.  Enjoy