Mondays are for Creators

As the rain drips off the window behind me, I am taking a moment to shout out to people who are creating and continuing to create. Each person on this list inspires me, some in ways that are overt — others are a bit more subtle.

Brook Taylor (of Tommy and Brook) I had the pleasure of working with Brook for the most of the time I was at iHeart and she has always had a passion for a lot of things but sharing awesome recipes was high on that list. Right now she has her own food blog called “Cooking with Brook” currently she is in the middle of Crocktober enjoy and get cooking.

Myron Stanley — one of my favorite creators because he works in the film and comic book universe and in my office so I get to be around his creative brain all day long. His passion for the art is contagious and I could talk to him about comics and film for hours, he has such a fantastic spirit about the art You can catch some of his characters and what they are up to at Comic Fiction and look for his next film soon (I just got to see some sizzle reel footage and it looks amazing)

Jim Olson — Jim and I have been friends for, let’s call it 37 years for easy math. In that time Jim has been a constant source of inspiration. When we were both into the art of 90’s Marvel comics, he could draw…I could hobble together something art related. When we got into music, he could play anything and I…took a minute to discover drums is where I belonged. He is the type of guy that could be either endlessly maddening to be around because of how talented he is, or a treasure of inspiration. For me, he is the latter — a brilliantly sweet friend and amazingly talented. You can see some of his work here.

If you have ever wondered how/why I started “creating” things it would be fun to say it was my parents who inspired me but honestly, it was the fault of two people. One is Mark Ferguson who was my TV teacher in high school and was such an anchor to keep me grounded in that class and understand how GREAT productions are made and what it takes to keep a team together when things go wrong. He was the absolute best thing about high school and his passion for broadcasting forged an understanding of how to use tools to create and distribute messages in order to create a change in the viewer.

And the other is Dave Reid.

Dave and I have been friends as long as Jim and I have been but it was Dave in 1992 who introduced me to the internet and what it could do. After high school I went to Hope College and Dave went to Iowa State and one of the ways we stayed in contact was using the early internet. At that point he and I were both working in college radio, I at WTHS and he worked at KURE the Iowa State station. There was this buzz in the circles we were in about this new publishing format called “a zine” or a magazine for the web. We thought that we could put one together, we would call it 181 Degrees from the Norm (a geographic spin on 120 minutes which was on MTV at the time) and we would publish reviews of shows, CDs, interviews with people like d’arcy from the Smashing Pumpkins, Warren Cuccurullo from Duran Duran, Kevin Martin from Candlebox, the guys from Living Colour, and on and on. We were two kids who didn’t ask, we just shipped and that was all him.

Currently he is the co-founder of a company called Urban Milwaukee where he once again uses his passion to ignite change in the city he loves, Milwaukee, WI. He thinks deeply about mass transit, urban growth and renewal, and how a community grows by reinvesting in itself. You know who asked him to start this company? Nobody.

Tonight go start that blog, podcast, record that song, write that letter, just start something because there isn’t a better time to do so. If Dave and I had Facebook when we started that magazine, that uphill climb might have been less of an incline. You have every tool you need to create whatever you want with absolutely zero permission needed.

GO.