After several late snowstorms, it feels like spring has finally arrived. And that means young critters are coming out of their dens for the first time! Nicole and I have been studying a red fox family: mom, dad, and their five new pups. When it's time to come out and play, it's non-stop running, jumping, and wrestling as they practice the skills they'll need for life on their own. A scavenged tennis ball rolled down the hill makes for a fun game of catch the "prey".

Came across an unexpected traveler in the field headed for the greener waters of a new pond.

Up close, he resembles of Jabba the Hut.

It was a gorgeous spring morning to set up low along the banks of the pond and watch the birds do their thing.

One a cold winter's morning this raven laid claim to a sunlit cornice. "Nevermore!"

I went out to practice flight shots early this morning before a day in the office. When the gulls get into a feeding frenzy, it makes for nice action along the water. Gorgeous morning to be out in the field, too!

Last fall Nicole and I had the pleasure of filming and photographing these wild river otters in Yellowstone. Mama (on the left) mostly sleeps while the cubs roughhouse on the bank and in the water, then she preens them before putting them all back to bed.

I'm grateful today, and every day, for the freedoms I enjoy. Thanks to the men and women who support and defend our liberties.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met.

It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through.

I wish someone had told me, too. Here's another piece of advice that would have helped me: Learn to accept and get good at quitting. To be able to continually say "yes" to the creative work you care enough about to fight through, you'll need to say "no" to a lot of other ambitions.

I look forward to seeing you at RubyConf!

When I was a kid we had a pet raccoon on the farm. So despite all the mischievous behavior of this critter, I still have a soft spot for raccoons. Their faces aren't a disguise—that's their true character! I photographed this kit while it was sneaking along the foliage of a lakeshore looking for a tasty breakfast of crawfish. He made out like a bandit.

People walk there every day and don't realize that someone died there.

The competition for us in the stereo business were the people who sold motorcycles, the people who sold vacation packages, the people who sold surfboards, etc. because those were the things that were taking away our primary customer from buying a stereo. People had a limited amount of leisure time. They could choose to spend it any way they wanted to choose to spend it. And all the time they spent not listening to music or hanging out with their stereo system was time that we lost because they were off pursuing some other interests.

Listening to this podcast really helped solidify some rethinking I've been doing lately about our training business. For years I was convinced that our competition was other training companies, conferences, books, screencasts, blogs, and so on. My thought process was driven by the flawed assumption that a person interested in learning Ruby programming, for example, would only pick one of these resources and discard the others. After all, if you've read a book, why would you need to take a course? And if you've gone through one course curriculum, what's the value in taking another course? Follow this line of reasoning and your efforts as a business owner quickly become focused on being perceived as the one and only choice.

My thinking began to shift a few years back when I became interested in learning photography. Aside from running a couple rolls of film through a cheap Kodak camera one summer as a kid, I had no experience with photography. So when I decided to get serious about it I was, as we say, a total newb. And to be honest, at first it felt really uncomfortable. I was accustomed to being the person who taught others, and now the tables were turned. So, which workshop, book, or blog did I pick to learn how to make photographs? Every single one of them! I attended multiple workshops put on by "competing" companies, and the differing perspectives were invaluable. I also devoured every book I could get my hands on. And I read lots of blogs. Years later, I still do all of these things to continue to improve my photography. I can't imagine starting over and having to choose just one of these resources. I certainly wouldn't have learned as much, and I'd be at a dead end in terms of advancing my skills.

So now when another training company or new way to learn programming comes on the scene, I don't see them as competition. Instead, I see them as potential steppingstones for students along the learning path. And hopefully, when you're on that path, your pursuit will ultimately intersect with our passion for teaching. Our real competition is cat videos on YouTube, streaming movies on Netflix, tweets on Twitter, status updates on Facebook, and all the other things that take your attention away from programming. With that in mind, my efforts become focused on developing courses that are so engaging and rewarding that you decide to turn your full attention away from other activities and spend what leisure time you do have on improving your programming craft.

Our problem, I think, is not that we fear. We fear instinctively. It’s as natural to us as breathing. In some cases, it’s that fear that keeps us alive, though more often I suspect it’s what keeps us from truly living. Our problem is that we listen to that fear whispering “What if?” to us and we don’t take that question out of the shadows and hold it to the light. Fear only asks us the questions; it’s not answering that question, letting the uncertainty gain momentum in the silence, that holds us back.

If this resonates with you, rest assured you're not alone. We don't like to talk about our creative fears because they are rooted in something deeply personal. But in the silence, the collective voice of fear gets amplified. We assume that everyone else sits down every day and boldly goes about their craft, never questioning how it will be received by the world. That's an imposter talking. As David points out, our fears simply don't lie down that easily.

I'm constantly battling the undercurrent of creative fears that conspire to hold me back from doing my best work. I'm afraid my code will be criticized for not following "best practices". I'm afraid my best days of writing are behind me, and nobody's listening anyway. I'm afraid our next course won't measure up to expectations. I'm afraid my photographs will never tell the story I so desperately want to tell. I'm afraid this is my last blog post. I'm afraid of letting people down. I'm afraid I'm spending too much time on this and not enough time on that. Pushing through those fears is by far the hardest thing I do every day.

If there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that being true to myself is the best way to break through the barriers to creativity. When I listen to my authentic voice, it drowns out the voice of fear. And that's when I do my best work.