Life’s Edit Feature

Perusing the requirements of a project that was due, I found myself at the final step that involved creating a 10-15 minute video of myself facilitating a particular topic.  Kudos to the folks who regularly create videos of themselves, whether through YouTube, Instagram, Facebook Live, Snapchat, or any other medium.   It is, however, not my thing.  Place me in front of a crowd to present and I tend to do better, as there’s a sense of connecting with people in the crowd. Creating engaging videos – however – takes energy, creativity and charisma to reach through the screen to grab (and keep) the attention of those watching.

Notwithstanding, I was near the submission deadline and had convinced myself that creating the video was going to be quick and easy.  “You know the material,” I said to myself, “so just talk and get through it.  Ten minutes is not that long.”

Famous last words.

Several takes and 1 ½ hours later, I still had yet to record a smooth, engaging, error free video.  It finally dawned on me that there was an editing feature in the software that I was using.  Thus, I started recording again and whenever I messed up, I simply paused to put some space between the section where there was a mistake and then started that section over again.

I am thankful that there are often do-overs in life as well.

The edit feature was put to full usage as I painstakingly went through the 25 minutes of video, which needed to be condensed to fit within the guidelines.  This involved splitting footage, inserting content pictures, erasing large sections of mistakes, and merging all of the best footage together into a final product.

As I was editing the video, I thought about how wonderful it felt to simply erase what I considered to be the less-than-stellar parts…and there were many. I also later thought about life…how each new day offers an opportunity to start over, even in the shadow of the previous day’s mistakes.

Life’s mistakes will either make us or break us – it’s often up to us which one will occur. Yes – there will be any level of consequences for the mistakes that are made, yet there’s a lesson to be learned. And in the end, we have the opportunity to take advantage of life’s edit feature by changing direction and taking advantage of each new day, moment, or second that dawns in our lives. Sometimes we may need to pause and rethink our situations, as I had to pause when making a mistake in the video.  Yet when it’s all said and done…each new day = an opportunity to try again.