Or you can just watch the real video, which is really awesome too. I’m the guy in the brown jacket. I don’t get to do much until the later scenes…yeah, I was trying really hard not to mess up. Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, the interns at my work decided they wanted to make a music video based on a spoof of the Earth, Wind, and Fire song September. They wanted to eventually use the video as a way to promote the place where I work to the students we cater to.

Filming the video didn’t take much time for the staff–most of the parts are solo acts or dances that the interns performed alone. But there were a few parts that required most of the staff to participate.

Honestly, it was probably some of the best bonding we’ve ever done.

Learning the dance moves, poking fun at each other, and eventually working in synchronization to get it down on film was an incredible group experience. And then there were the 4 minutes we spent today watching the finished product.

I can’t show the entire video yet (it’ll drop in December), but I’ll show you a raw clip that we actually filmed today. I’m the guy in the brown coat.

TED is an organization that hosts conferences based on the premise that there are brilliant people out there with “ideas worth spreading” (no, I have yet to be invited, thanks for asking). All of the talks are made available on the TED website.

I watched 20-minute this talk by Ken Robinson on Friday, and I really enjoyed this guy’s take on education. He describes how the educational institution unwittingly teaches students not to be creative. He’s funny and eloquent and British.

What he doesn’t go into is how to re-learn creativity after we’ve been sucked dry after so many years. I consider myself a creative person, but that creativity is often overwhelmed by practicality. To some extent, this is necessary. For example, say I have a great idea for a movie I want to shoot. I may be excited about the idea, but my instant reaction is that doing so isn’t practical. I don’t have the time for such an endeavor, and the video won’t be worth anything afterwords. I’d be better off writing a script and trying to sell that.

Such filters prevent us from a lot of time, but I think they also limit our creative energy. How do we get that back? My suggestion would be to do something creative once a day for about 15 minutes that has no chance of being profitable. I’m not talking about doing something that you don’t think will be profitable–I’m saying that you should choose something that has zero chance of making any money.

Something like playing with blocks. Or making your own origami with no instructions. Or making a paper airplane.

Yes, all of those things are a waste of adult time. Nothing can possibly come of them. No chance. But I wonder if we started doing things like that for 10-15 minutes a day, if those creative parts of our brain that we’ve locked away since we started studying for the SATs (or way before) will start to come out to play again in the parts of our life that do have meaning.

If I ever start a company in which I have on-site employees (TypeTribe is just me), I’m going to try to do something like this. Every day at a certain time, we’ll gather in a room and do something completely creative and completely unproductive. And then we’ll take that creative energy back to our desks and make create something beautiful.

Also, there’s no need to come here to see the place–you can walk through my condo via the video tour below. If you can spot three or more ceramic turtles, you win a prize.

Oh, and where will I live, you ask? I will survive on wits and gumption alone. Combined with a nearby apartment.

Naturally, my cat was pretty excited about the camera, since he knows I’ll be video taping him from time to time. So he tore into the box not knowing that the contraption in my hand was the camera. See below.