Really appreciate the votes in Ryan Seacrest’s YouTube Fitness Channel contest! Honestly, I have to say that when I first heard about it, I just brushed it off as yet another popularity contest that would be won by the person with the biggest marketing budget and the most Facebook Fans that they could badger into voting for them. I have to say though that I actually have found this contest *has* meant a lot to me. I have discovered that I have a lot more support that I realized.
I do fitness stuff because its my passion, not because its my job. My reward is when people stop me on the sidewalk to thank me for changing their lives. Although I have been retired many years, I work more hours per week now than when I had to work .. because I love what I do and would do it even if I was not paid. I am always doing engineering, working in the shop, or dreaming up new fitness tools to add to my scoobysworkshop website. Lifting weights completely turned my life around in my twenties and I have always wanted to pass that on.
Doing videos and keeping my websites up and running is very time consuming and a lot of headaches because I do *everything* myself. Some days I start to wonder if its all worth it, or wondering if I am getting thru to anyone at all. I start thinking that I am just wasting my time and that people are no longer interested in what old Grandpa Scooby has to say. I start to think that maybe my scooby1961 time would be better spent in the garage tinkering with the latest cool robotics hardware.
tfw: You do a video that you think is *really* important and it only gets 1/1000 the views of someone elses BS “gain two inches on your arms in a week if you buy my $97 eBook” video.
I have always done the videos that I think are important, rather than the videos people want to see and I refuse to make silly promises of rapid muscle gains or fat loss because its a cruel trick to play on people. The best way to be popular, get lots of views, and make lots of money is to tell people exactly what they want to hear … even if its not true. I’d rather tell the truth and be able to sleep well at night thank you very much. Anyway, I am a very optimistic, positive and happy person by nature but every once in awhile, I go to that dark place and start to wonder if I should throw in my public fitness towel. Without fail though, the moment I start to have these negative thoughts, someone will stop me on the sidewalk to say “thanks”, or something like this contest happens and it instantly puts things back into perspective.
I really appreciate everyones support in this contest and I don’t care if I officially win Ryan Seacrest’s contest or not because I have already won. I know there are some people out there who understand what I am trying to accomplish. I know that I am still changing peoples lives with my workout-at-home-get-fit-for-free approach. I know there are people who are not just interested in aesthetics but interested in health and fitness as well. I know there are some people who see thru those “shortcut to huge arms/pecs/abs” videos and don’t want to be lied to or patronized. Like when someone stops me on the sidewalk to thank me, this contest has given me the energy to carry on.
By the way, I have a sneaking suspicion that my special friends are behind my success in this contest – thanks special friends!
How do I get Ryan to use a better picture of me, that one is HORRIBLE! Where is the my hat? Of the 18 kazillion pictures of me on the internet, they found the ONE single picture where I was not wearing my hat. Seriously, any of these are better!
We ARE all going to make it … even if you can’t decrypt my dang 501 message. Its been so long I dont even remember what it said anymore.