(Consider this post NSFW). I thought a look back at my twenties was in order given that I turned 30 today. Below is a highlight reel of this decade in my life, quite a busy and transformational one. Oh, and no, I don’t care that I switch indiscriminately between present and past tense throughout. WhatEVAR! I do what I WANT!

Spring 1998 Finished second year in college, my first at Missouri Western. My first formal training in music, prior to that being solely a self-taught rocker. Start off majoring in music performance and sound engineering. No, I did not see any flutes being placed in any orifices during band camp. Disappointing, I know.

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Did I say I wanted to be a producer? I meant a director and screenwriter:)

Recently I wrote a post about the new design of this site and its reflection of my new career focus. Well, turns out I was part mixing up terminology and part needing more time to get completely clear about things. So, now you can see that I have changed the tagline on the site and rewritten the about page.

Ryan Oelke is an aspiring film director and screenwriter.

Currently he is collaborating with a film crew to shoot and complete a short film each month for one year. They will also be participating in Shootout Boulder, a 24 hour film competition in October 2008. During this time Ryan is directing and writing many of the short films. You can view them on this site.

I realized how deeply I am moved to create art and I am drawn into film through directing and screenwriting. Producers do get to be involved in some of the creative process, but they are most logistical coordinators. While I have learned over the years how to handle that side of things, it is completely life draining for me. Creating art gives me life. Film in particular pulls on so many of my passions, talents, and abilities. It’s the first path, aside from meditation, that I feel comfortable giving long days and hours to. I could write a book on how much insight I’ve developed over the last two months, but that’ll just have to come in small posts over time:)

I’m excited to both share my process in developing as a director and a screenwriter, as well as all the projects I work on. Last weekend I completed my first shoot that I directed and wrote for a contest. We should have the final cut before the week is over.

This week I finished (enough) the redesign of the new ryanoelke.com, which reflects my passion and focus as a producer of creative media, as well as the fact that I just wanted to get a cleaner, slicker design. The most challenging and rewarding part of this process was certainly not the technical - coding, tweaking the them (not easy for me, though) - but the personal exploration and discovery.

The past year of founding and leading Falling Fruit gave me invaluable experience in so many ways, and its closing has provided me a renewed fresh outlook on life and what is I ultimately want to do and be. I, of course, will sharing my experience and development as a producer here on this blog, but for starters, check out my about page. The first paragraph succinctly describes how I see me myself and the work I am doing and will be pursuing as my primary career focus:

Ryan Oelke is a Producer who designs and orchestrates ideas, passion, and talent into creative media - from music to podcasting to video. Envisioning and identifying passionate ideas, Ryan has a keen eye for bringing the right mix of talented people together, and cultivating and designing the ideas through his creative and practical direction to bring them to life.

I’m still fine-tuning my focus as a producer and doing a good deal of experimenting, so if you’re interested, you can share in my process on this blog.

I’d like to mention a few folks who have been invaluable and wonderful in helping me through this: Gwen Bell, a good friend and brilliant woman, has and continues to be phenomenal on all accounts. She has catalyzed my internal process, given me insight, and has also been my go-to person for all-things design. Eric Wolterstorff, a business consultant, of Shifting Culture has also rocked my world with his ability to dig in deep, cut the BS, and also to the get at the big picture and then ground that into something real. In fact, “business consultant” seems woefully inadequate to describe my relationship with him and what he gives me. I had a meeting with Eric yesterday that is further propelling me to clarity and direction. Last, but not least, Lion Albaugh, my good friend and the crazy guy who started Falling Fruit with me, continues to be a person that shares so many of the same passions as I and I love talking producing with him, and hope we continue to find projects to work together on.

A few things about the site and some things to come: The theme used here is Omnitheme and the creators have been overly helpful in assisting me in working on bugs and any difficulty I have, especially due to my lack of knowledge. Currently, I have done away with the traditional blog page - blog posts listed on the front page with the current on top. The tabbed section on the home page pull posts from a handful of categories that the tabs indicate. The default tab on the left shows the most current post. You can see older posts through the categories and archives in the side. If you subscribe via rss, this probably won’t even matter.

I will be creating separate portfolio(s) site that will be linked from the About page and in the sidebar.

If you really want get friendly, check out my Tumblr blog and follow me on Twitter. The Tubmlelog will have more frequent, but shorter posts around a lot of the topics I write about here, including personal stuff. And you should know what Twitter is by now:)

My friends, Vince Horn, and Duff McDuffee, also Falling Fruit co-founders, launched a new personal development blog, called Precision Change, a new blog about technologies of transformation, from personal productivity to personal power, mastery to meditation, self-development to self-transcendence. In Duff’s words,

Unlike other blog sites that recycle tired old aphorisms and
over-generalizations, we will focus on precise, practical ways to bring about change using the richest and deepest models available, backed by real experience. We will wrestle with complex issues while keeping it simple.

Think of it as personal development 201.

Also, Falling Fruit TV is launching a companion podcast on April 2nd, also called Precision Change.

You want more. More from your career, more from your time, more from
your life. To get more you’ve got to grow, from the inside out. Growth
is not always easy, but it can be a lot of fun, and a healthy
challenge. Precision Change is a show about growth. We explore the
technologies of transformation—from personal productivity to personal
power, lifehacks to life mastery, GTD to NLP, and other acronyms you’ve
never heard of.

Our first guest is Mark Hurst, author of "Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and Email Overload". We already have several well-known personal development bloggers on the schedule, and one HUGE productivity author on the bill. Stay tuned for it’s launch!

Check out my first post on Precision Change, "Overcoming Obstacles by Listening to the Voices in Your Head".

So far, we have three votes. Bet you can’t guess whose they are?:P Seriously, we have a good shot at this, I think. At least it will be fun, if nothing else.

Hello everyone! This blog serves as my central campground on the web, though I’m not entirely sure how or if I will use this as a blog. I mainly wanted a personal/business website and Wordpress offered the quickest and easiest solution for me, a non-coder:) I do blog elsewhere at Buddhist Geeks, Integral Awakening, Anxious Living, and Zaadz. I have also started a Tumblog, though I haven’t done much with it yet.

Above you’ll find links to the various services I offer, info about me, and a link to my résumé. Please contact me with any questions and comments, or just to say hi.