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In today's podcast episode, I talked about my biggest mistake with this podcast and my artwork. My biggest mistake isn't some technical thing.  It's not in how I use Blender (or in how I record the podcast).  My biggest mistake boils down to one word:

PROCRASTINATION

With the podcast, I had recorded several episodes and had decided to move forward in producing it, in spite of the fact that a more famous person in the Blender community was also launching a podcast.  My thinking was that I would take mine along a different path or come at it from a different angle.  He was a more "advanced" user and took his show along a more "professional" route (ie those working in a studio) whether they used Blender in their day to day work or not and in talking about things going in Blender development.  My plan (at the time, and, really, still is) was to share my own insights with what I have learned in using Blender, particularly topics that are important, but don't necessarily get talked about in tutorials and are things that don't require "watching" to understand, as well as conducting interviews with the artists who use Blender to create their works of art. I even had several episodes recorded and in my stream.  But then I went on a vacation and right after that, my kids started back to school.  I was busy with those things for a few weeks.  As things settled down, instead of sitting down to record more episodes and get some interviews lined up (like I intended), I wasted away my time doing things that were relatively unimportant.  I also put off the interviews because I lacked one piece of equipment I wanted to complete my set up the way I wanted to do it.  I could easily have done interviews with what I had before, but I told myself that I really needed this piece of equipment. Well, I now have this piece of equipment (actually, I have had it for a while) so I'm out of excuses other than overcoming my own procrastination. Which leads me to my 3D work. While I have been a Blender user since the 2.43 days, I still consider myself more of an intermediate user.  I feel that there is much about Blender and 3d modeling, rendering, and animation that I still have to learn.  I know I will always be this way (for there is a LOT to Blender), but the biggest reason why I feel this way isn't because of all there is in Blender.

It's because I DIDN'T TAKE ACTION.

That's right.  The biggest reason why I"m still an intermediate user after using blender for at least 7 years (I know it's at least this long, because one project I did in Blender I did before my youngest son, who is now 6, was born and I had been using Blender for at least a few months to a year before that at a minimum) is because I failed to take action in at least 4 ways:  opening Blender, starting projects, trying something new, and studying Blender.

I Didn't Open Blender

One of the biggest challenges I have had in trying to learn Blender is going long periods of time without even opening the program.  When the program is gathering dust on your hard drive, it's hard to learn.  Part of this was because of other interests and goals that I was trying to accomplish.  But more often than not, it was merely because I wasn't putting forth the effort to open the program.  Oh, I'd open it occasionally and dabble for a few days trying to get some project done.  But then I'd go for weeks without even touching the program again.

I Didn't Start Projects

I had a number of ideas for projects that I wanted to do, but I never started them.  I felt my skills needed lots of improvement to get to where I could do those scenes.  I eventually came to understand that to do the scenes I wanted to do, all I really needed to do was a bunch of "smaller" items and put them together.  But I wasn't coming up with ideas of things I felt I could do, or even if I did, I would procrastinate on sitting down to do it.

I Didn't Try Something New

Over the years,