Remind Me Again
Generally, I don’t notice birthdays, anniversaries, or other time-based milestones unless my Google calendar, or in fact my wife, tells me.
And maybe that’s why I almost completely failed to notice that it’s August already, which means that we’ve now been doing Fish and Bear for 6 months.
Obviously, I didn’t manage to remember that all by myself. Recently, a lovely guy who had come to one of the early F&B returned. It was great to see him and hear his stories. It felt like bumping into an old friend when out getting groceries. Anyway, more to the point, he was all enthusiastic about all the changes we’d made in fancying up the event.
I was surprised, because I don’t think I’ve ever been fancy in my life (I am from Port Glasgow after all). But looking around, I saw that he was right. Changes had been made, gradual but continuous - and dare I say it, a little bit fancy. I just hadn’t really noticed how far we’d moved on from the original events.
Obviously, the basic premise that no one can, or ever will, see the world as you do, has remained the same, but almost everything else has changed.
The start of any new project, Lynn calls “12 weeks of misery,” to highlight that the beginning of anything involves experimentation and, therefore, potential failure. But also to remind us that after 12 weeks, it's time to assess if the project should progress. This is to protect us from ourselves! A long time ago, Lynn and I worked on a YouTube channel project where we created a comedy video for every day of the year, and we continued doing this for over a year. In our hearts, we’d known that, for practical reasons, the YouTube project was doomed well within 12 weeks! We hope never to make that mistake again! 🤞
The first 12 weeks, Fish and Bear taught us how to set up the room, the need to display the timer, and how to prepare those present to be ready to speak. And we are now at the end of the second 12-week block, which we called “12 weeks of ‘Ooh!’” - We called it ‘Ooh!’ because now that it was working, we wanted to see what other surprises were in store.
In this second phase, we’ve experimented with some of the exercises, and we‘ve created scripts to move towards a day when we can spread F&B to other locations where events can be run without Lynn and me being present.
So, now what? We will be starting a new 12-week phase. Maybe 12 weeks of ‘Hmmm?’ I think we now need to get serious(🤣) about adding another location. Maybe something in Burbank, NoHo, or even WeHo? Who knows. We are open to suggestions.
Predictions are always inaccurate and often humbling, but reminding myself of all the changes we’ve made in the last 6 months keeps me curious.
Are you curious enough to come to the ‘slicker and more organized’ Fish & Bear?
If so, I’ll see you on Thursday.
Mark
xo
Fish and Bear is held every Thursday at 7pm.
Check out our WEBSITE: https://fishandbear.net
If you fancy reading some of Lynn’s writing, then check out her weekly Notes From The Valley at lynnfergy.com
