April 2014 Archives

It's been almost three weeks since my last video; the divorce project really took it out of me. I got a bad cold. Then a pipe burst and I learned a little plumbing.

All the while I was working on footage I shot: an interview with Jake Lodwick from 27 February 2014. Jake is an engineer and entrepreneur. He developed the video sharing web site Vimeo. Vimeo was sold for millions of dollars and Jake was soon fired. He admits he was then adrift, at a time when his personal oversharing on the web became more challenging as well.

Now Jake has started Elepath, a software studio. I was curious to hear what he had learned, and how he's adapted his personality for the task of building a company.

YouTube: Jake Lodwick: Weirdo CEO

Jake was one of the first people to encourage me to do interviews and videos on the web when I started talking about it last year. He offered himself to be the first guest on The Justin Hall Show and I'm glad to have finally gotten him in my folding chair.

This video has 39 images and moving pictures I found freely-shared on the web. What a miracle - a cultural commons. I thank many of the usual suspects in the credits; I'd also like to give a special thanks to Zabou for permission to use her Surveillance illustration about 10 minutes and 8 seconds in.

I have shared a number of intense things on my web site over the years, but I haven't told the story of my divorce. I thought I would only get married once! And then I would do whatever it took to make it work.

Well (spoiler alert), that didn't work out. Upon reflection, I think running GameLayers was a big strain on our partnership. I had to learn to let go.

So this week, for The Justin Hall Show, I made a video to share the story of my 2010 divorce:

on YouTube: Sharing My Divorce

Each of my "Justin Hall Show" videos is an experiment; here I wanted to challenge myself to discuss a topic I find challenging and upsetting. After I edited out my long plaintive stares at the camera, I decided I didn't feel my customary impulse to insert illustrations or music. So, it's a 14.5 minute long, somewhat stark simple video of a sad story. And what I learned! And that I survived! So it's not all sad.

Hopefully this video might help someone going through a challenging end to their union. As I was preparing to post this video, I learned that a college classmate of mine Esther Parker was killed by her husband, reportedly because she requested a divorce. It felt like a gut punch to read that news - I was reeling, feeling disoriented and unsure of what I was doing amidst that senseless violence and horrific tragedy. My girlfriend Ilyse pointed out that posting a video that supports people accepting divorce and moving on could be a positive political act - we need to learn to be in partnership, and we need to learn to let go humanely. And hopefully we can evolve to be more supportive of each other as we wrestle with the friction between our ideals and other people.