Snarkle Talks: Episode 06 (The Episode Where We Unpack Being A Content Creator with Caleb Jeffries)

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Kellie: 

My sound editor will hopefully cut this? 

*upbeat transition music* 

Kellie: 

Hi everyone!

Welcome back to the next episode of Snarkle Talks— the podcast where we mash together kendama, community and creativity. I’m your host, Kellie, that one friend who falls asleep at dinner tables by accident— and today we have another incredible guest! Caleb Jeffries, also known as Sling Shady, is a veteran kendama player and a content creator with a unique blend of humor and skill that’s made him a beloved and recognizable figure in the community.

In this episode, Caleb and I dive into a variety of topics including:

• continuing the philosophical debate of whether a hot dog is a sandwich…

• the challenges and rewards of being a content creator

• the future of kendama competitions

• and the importance of community in the growing sport.

You’re in for a treat, so grab a dama, practice your whirlwinds and hang out with us for a bit. Here we go!

Kellie Kawahara-Niimi (00:01.718)

I have with me a special guest. I would love for you to say your name and your pronouns and I am doing this in a different order because someone else said something contradictory– is a hot dog a sandwich?

Caleb: 

Hmm good question. I'm Caleb Jeffries also known as sling shady my pronouns are he him and it depends on your definition of sandwich. If you think your sandwich is just some sort of food encompassed by bread, then technically it is. But I would argue no. And that's why we have different words for them. 

Kellie: 

So I was talking to my audio editor and they said to me, a hot dog is a taco. And I'm like, wait a minute now, that is interesting. And I see it. But if that's the case, then is a pizza a taco? 

Caleb: 

Yeah, or is a bread bowl a taco? 

Kellie: 

Oooh, slippery slope. But is a bread bowl a sandwich? Because bread is… 

Caleb: 

Surrounding the ingredients. Yes. I liken it to the argument of is cereal soup? And if you say, yes, cereal is soup, then you could say the contents of a bath is soup or the contents of any container with water in it, including possibly things in your bathroom is also soup, which they are not. So I don't know. It's like why we have different words for them because they're different things. 

Kellie: 

Human soup, human soup. A soapy human soup is a bath. Yes. I love this. OK, I'm going to chew on this a little longer. (*heh, chew…) 

OK, OK. I would love for you to introduce a little bit about your background. Can you share with us how you got involved with kendama and what made you so passionate about putting so much time and energy into this hobby? 

Caleb: 

My story is pretty similar to most other people's. In high school, I had a friend that just had one when I was spending that at his house and I was like, what is this thing? I picked it up, took me 45 plus minutes to base cup, sara grip. And then as soon as I did it, I was just instantly hooked, In high school. I had a thousand different hobbies and their common through line was leveling up. Like skateboarding was my main hobby before kendama and it's same idea of learning a new trick through trial and error over and over and over again. And I got tired of hurting my body. So I picked up kendama instead. That became my main focus. It still gave the same dopamine of progressing, leveling up, learning, and finally getting what you're working towards through consistent trial and error and failure and failure rewarded growth. And something about that really spoke to me. And that was almost 12 years ago now. 

Kellie: 

Wow. I am a late bloomer. I found kendama maybe two years ago. And so it's always so interesting for me to hear the way that people's journeys have been almost their life. Like,a good chunk of their life they've dedicated to at least playing, if not competitions or putting their livelihood into it. Like a lot of players that I know and I talk to now have been playing for a long time. And do you do that with other things? Is that part of your personality? 

Caleb: 

I think the other longest hobby I've had is gaming. It's gaming and kendama. I got a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Silver when I was six. I've been gaming ever since, but other than that, Kenelma is easily the second longest hobby. I picked it up the summer between freshman and sophomore year of high school. I'm 28 now and it's been part of my life since. So those are the two big ones and same through line, just leveling up and progressing in some way. 

Kellie: 

Yeah. Is that what continually pushes you to create content? Like how would you describe your content? 

Caleb: 

It's kind of all over the place. That's part of what drew me to kendama is because around the time I picked it up, I started just making edits of whatever hobby I was doing with my friend, whether it was skateboarding, unicycling, scootering, whatever. I enjoyed just filming it and editing it to music. And so that drew me into kendama a lot, just creating some sort of visual content. I really wanted to be a cinematographer. I was heavily inspired by Matthew Ballard in the kendama scene. Just putting something on screen and editing it and seeing the final product has been massively satisfying.

Caleb: (04:52.558)

I've kind of been all over the place, just wanting to push myself in what I can do in terms of different genres of content. I like live streaming. I've made a couple goofy shorts. I have an Instagram short that's like supposed to be an infomercial. I'm working on a video essay. I don't know. I just enjoy pushing myself in terms of what I can do. Not all of it's going to be good. Like I'm going to fail a lot in my first venture out into a genre.

I don't think my first sling on the scene, the joke, man on street interview was my best one. I think my most recent one's my best one. And that's kind of how it works. And I don't think I have one niche style of content that I create. I try to be funny. I guess that's the biggest through line in my content, but that's about it. 

Kellie:

The humor that you have is, I think crude is not the right word for it, but it's close. There's a physicalness or like an acting? How is that different from who you are in your regular life? 

Caleb: 

Almost no difference. Really? Almost none. I enjoy doing little bits, if you will, like some silly impressions. I'll do a golem impression and hurt my neck really bad because I'll like strain to do the weird jerky movements. I've liked making people laugh since I was in elementary school. For a brief moment in my life, I wanted to be a standup comedian. And then I was like, ehh, maybe not. In high school, I did improv and theater. So just like, I don't know, I have kind of a performance sense of humor. Yeah. And that does carry through in my day to day when I try to make people laugh. 

Kellie: 

I think performance is the word that I was looking for. And it's really interesting that you did theater. So how different is acting and stand up to you? 

Caleb: 

Very. Stand up being by yourself on a stage and like, In our theater, you have, with the exception of monologues, you typically have another person there to bounce off and you have a script. Stand up, you have your jokes that you write, but you have to come up with material yourself and you have to trust your confidence is enough to have the audience bounce off and then you play off the audience. It's like theater, except your stage partner is the audience and they don't have a script. Yeah.

Kellie Kawahara-Niimi (07:17.518)

I had talked with Teo about what it means to be a Kendama performer on a stage and how your interactions with the spectators and how the spectators are a part of your performance. And the way that you talk about standup and how you view theater also, it really relates back to that presence and that relationship that you're building with your audience.

How do you throw kendama then into that comedy that you're trying to create? Do you think about them separately or are they always intertwined? 

Caleb: 

I think about them fairly separately, usually. When I'm live streaming on 365's channel, it's usually just me. So I'll banter and have comedy stuff. But when I'm working on a specific piece of work, it really just depends on the piece of work that I'm doing. If I'm doing a video essay about the history of Kendama Co. There's pretty minimal humor about it. As opposed to the sling on the scene stuff or the most theater one was the video that announced me as the content creator. And that one was more theater and script and acting. But in the real world of kendama, when I'm on stage doing freestyle or whatever, I've never been as good at melding the technical skill of playing and performing. Yasu's mastered that. He's like “the one”. But when it comes to content, it just really depends on the piece of content that I'm doing.

The most performance one was the Dama Jeopardy. Yeah. That one was, it was mainly performing to the guests though. I tried to give them my full attention. I barely looked at chat or acknowledged chat, but that was just trying to be a good host for the guests. And like, I guess they're my audience and I was trying to bait them to interact as much as I could to make a good show using them for the audience. 

Kellie: 

Yeah. The energy that you bring to a stream with your guests, you have to figure out how to balance your own personality versus someone else's. And so making sure that you know how to do that is really important. I'm finding that doing the podcasting thing, it's active listening. It's really listening to what the other person is saying because it's not just, we're going to go off of the script, especially if you're live, right? You need to be able to react to whatever is happening in the moment. So being really focused is something I'm learning…with ADHD, so hard. I feel you. It definitely helps that I've known these people for the better part of my life at this point. 

Caleb: 

I was going to ask about how the kendama community impacts you personally as a content creator, knowing the people that you're collaborating with, knowing a lot of your audience, going to events. How does that all kind of come together for you in a sense of connection to your content?

Caleb: 

It definitely makes me care about it more. I love having these people who I call family and great friends who I've known for over a decade now be part of it. And more than that, I like making stuff that they would enjoy. Like literally today, Keith Matsumura commented on two of my Kendama Jeopardy in one sling shady vids. And I was like, “Oh my God, Keith likes my stuff!” And just talking about my ideas with them at events and I trust these people. And I think a lot of them are really funny and I value their opinion just bouncing ideas off of them. Even Stacey in my chat helped me come up with a good visual comedic bit for the next thing on the scene. 

Kellie: 

That's awesome. The interaction that you have with the audience in a live chat, what is that like compared to being on a stage even? 

Caleb: 

I kind of, I don't view them as this, but I use them in the same way that standup would use a heckler.

If it's a serious question, then I'll respond to them and try to use my experience as a vet in the scene to actually help them out with a legitimate answer. Or if it's somebody just saying a quip, then I try to bounce off of it and be funny off of that. It also just depends on if I know the person behind the name too. That's kind of big. I started multi streaming on YouTube and I'm seeing a lot more just random people who've never heard of kendama that aren't even part of the scene. Those ones I tend to give less attention to and I want to foster the connections that I know and the connections I know for sure will keep coming back. 

Kellie: 

Yeah, maintaining the relationships and stuff. Can you talk a little bit about 365 in your relationship with them and how that works? 

Caleb: 

Yeah. So Chris June and Nick Stodd, they're two of my best friends who I've known for like June and I just celebrated that we've been friends for 10 years. We met for the first time in person at Tacoma Takeover 2014. And right after we met, we instantly clicked. We made a doubles edit called CJ and CJ. And then when I moved to Portland in 2015, I didn't even really have to make new friends because I was already such good friends with June, Stodd, Wyatt Bray, and all of COTK there at the time. So when June and Stodd started 365, almost two years ago now, I was like talking with them behind the scenes, like sharing my ideas because we're all good friends and we hang out all the time.

And then in January, they came to me and were like, do you want to help us make videos? Do you want to stream for us? Do you want to be our content guy? And I was like, absolutely. I love doing this anyways. Like I streamed on my personal channel previously. So yeah, they just brought me on and it's my responsibility to be the jester. 

Kellie: 

Be the face. 

Caleb: 

Yeah, one of them. 

Kellie: 

Yeah. One of the faces. What does the life of a content creator for kendama look like? What does your daily or weekly routine look like for content creation? 

Caleb: 

I'm always editing something. Typically, it's a stream VOD that I knew I could create into a YouTube video. Not every stream can really be a YouTube video. There are a lot of filler streams where it's just me catching up on other edits that have just come out, reacting to them, doing daily games, playing Super Mario, trying to beat Sweets' time, which actually I've done for a while now. I'm waiting for him to catch back up. But typically it's just like working on an edit and thinking about what other long -term projects I can do. 

We've actually been transitioning into creating a different production business. So there's going to be a lot of non-kendama related video content that we'll start doing. Just like things like weddings and photography shoots, things like that. So that's been taking up a lot of my time. But as far as kendama related stuff, it's just thinking about what would be a good, fun, entertaining stream.

How can I make that into a YouTube video and then working on editing that for usually long form content, short form contents, a little bit harder to think of the premise of, but it's way easier to edit. So there's two sides of that coin. 

Kellie: 

Gotcha. You can answer this as roundabout as you want, but is there money to be made in kendama content creation? 

Caleb: 

Not yet. Kendama would have to grow way more, which is kind of the idea of me doing it. Kendama. As a community or sport really won't grow that much if the only content that's ever put out is edits because the only people who watch edits are people who already play. So you got to be a little bit more click baity. Honestly, you got to have somebody who had never heard of it, see something in their YouTube recommendations and be like 12 world records in a day. What's that? Then click on that and be like, what's this toy and start getting stuff in their algorithm, possibly get hooked after one video.

But as of now, not really. Not enough to make a living off of, for sure. 

Kellie: 

So you mentioned doing video production for outside things. How do you think having different types of skills can relate back to how to make money in Kendama just in general? 

Caleb: 

Are you asking how to be different? Because like there's so many multi -talented people in Kendama. Like how does Kendama help do outside things like video production as a business kind of?

Kellie: 

A little bit. Can you imagine a world where we take the video production skills that you have and monetize them within our industry somehow? I am so stuck on this idea of how to create viable businesses that live in the kendama sphere while still making a living. I have so many different types of visions. When you think about content creation or even making a living off of kendama, at all. What does your future look like? 

Caleb: 

I think Kindamma would have to grow significantly for somebody to make a living purely within the Kindamma sphere. Part of my goal in doing content creation is to get more eyes on it and grow it. I think Kindamma is not currently big enough to support anybody who's not a company owner or a direct employee of a company. But I do see the potential in long-term growth to support professional players for living, to support content creators for living, and to support tournament organizers for living. As of now, I think the kendama community has a massive purpose and a massive boost in giving creative and talented people like professional players, tournament organizers, content creators, giving them a space to hone their skills that they can then bring to the outside world while still remaining...within the Kendama space, but using that skills that they've honed to actually make a living for themselves while Konama continues to grow until they can be full Dama if they ever can be. 

Kellie: 

Yeah, I recognize that my dream is a pipe dream at this moment. You know, like a long term goal. It is super long term. It's also not impossible, I think. And I think that just the open mindedness of it's possible– Don't give up on it. Keep creating. Yeah. I know that moving into the real world, like an adult job, right? Like being an event organizer is an adult job. 

Caleb:

It's really hard. 

Kellie: 

It's a whole job. It's a whole career and it takes up a lot of time and energy and it requires a team. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's not outside of the realm of possibilities for it to be somehow viable to live off of at some point. But in saying that, Kendama is not big enough yet. I want to segue to your other project, KenDocs. Can you talk a little bit about what your involvement is in that? It's little to none, actually. KenDocs is Daniel Robinson's brainchild. I've been good friends with Daniel for like my first event that I went to Battle in Seattle 2012. He was one of the first people I talked to. And when I was at KenDama Co. he was the team manager.

So like we're in close communications and traveled together all the time. So when I was making the world rankings last year, it just made sense for something like that to be on a neutral website, not super affiliated with any one company. The only reason that 365's name was on is because I'm on 365 and I did pretty much all of it. In the future, I do want it to be just one neutral thing to make outside sponsors, hopefully to just associate it with Kendama and not 365 Sweets, KUSA, whatever. So when I was doing it, I reached out to Dan, I was like, can you host this on Ken Docs? And he was like, absolutely. I think Ken Docs is an amazing thing. When it came out, I did a whole stream talking about it and actually made that into a YouTube video on my personal YouTube channel. Just talking about the importance of it to like document stuff. It was one of the big steps into legitimizing us as a sport because we need documentation and history. So much of kendama history has been totally lost because nobody cared to keep track of it. 

Kellie Kawahara-Niimi (19:17.422)

Yeah, so the...The rankings that you're doing, can you talk about how that ties into legitimizing kendama as a sport and how that will help us grow both our viewers and our participants? 

Caleb: 

Yeah, that's like part of my main goals last year was like create content and do rankings all with the same ecosystem of growing kendama in mind. At the end of the day, as cynical and shitty as it is, everything is about money and we need more eyes, more sponsors, yada yada to bring more money and attention to the scene, which will inevitably grow the scene and will give tournament organizers, content creators and professionals more opportunity to make a living off of just kendama. So alongside creating content, I worked on making the first official rankings because I fully believe that kendama has what it takes to be big and to support all these kinds of ecosystems. We just need more eyes and more money on it. So the idea of a big name sponsor, like Red Bull, for example, seeing an official list and being like, number one player in the world. And then their Instagram handle, and then they click on the Instagram handle and see 35 ,000 followers. And they're like, there's a lot of eyes on this. And then they see KAKO or the World Cup getting this much average viewers. And they're like, this is a lot of potential ad revenue.

And then we can, with more legitimacy, approach them and be like, Hey, can you give us a thousand dollars to sponsor NAKO? And we'll run some ads halfway through and they'd be like, a thousand dollars, that's nothing. But we're such a small scene. It would make such a big difference to us. And also from an outside spectator's point of view, it creates more storylines to see number 10 beating number one, as opposed to talking to somebody who has no concept of the scene.

Being like, yeah, this guy's really good and he's playing this guy who's really good. Now you can be like, that's number five in the world. He has this and this and this record against this guy who he's currently up against. It creates more of a storyline and it gets people more invested in it from a sports aspect. 

Kellie: 

Yeah. I think that the underdog, when you say a storyline, immediately my brain goes to, I want to root for someone. 

Caleb (21:38.03)

Exactly.

Kellie: 

I want to know who my favorite player is, who do I relate to or love the most and who do I get to cheer on. And building that type of connection really does require time and energy and money. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the current Kendama competition formats and the judging systems and how that plays into your ranking system? 

Caleb: 

So for the first year, I ranked everything together, even though freestyle and open are very different formats and styles of competition. In the future, I'd like to rank freestyle and open separately because of how different they are. But one of my main struggles with competitions, not having a uniform format specifically for open, not every open competition is double elimination. They have different trick lists. Some are way easier than others. So it was tough to balance weighing a competition's value with those aspects in mind, especially because like, I gave points based on placings that players got in the competition. Like in double elimination, people can get seventh place and in single elimination, people can't. At least people who get top eight don't get seventh place. In single elimination, the placings are first, second, third, fourth, fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth. Yeah. Because they tie because people get knocked out. They all get fifth. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then doubles like first, second, third, fourth, fifth, fifth, seventh, seventh. So like weighing that was pretty difficult. I think I did it pretty well for year one. There's some tweaks that can be made, but this year I'm going to have a much bigger team of people involved in a lot more input. 

Last year, my initial process was I sent out a survey to 40 plus respected members of the community and asked them where they rank the value of certain aspects of competition and the rule set was one of them. Yeah. 

Kellie: 

How, how do you think that the judging and play format affects both the players and the audience?

Caleb: 

For open, the judging is pretty standard. It doesn't affect the audience that much. But for freestyle, currently, pretty much all freestyle competitions outside of Catch and Flow, you're pretty much playing to the judges or you're playing to the audience. So the audience's emotion and reaction can influence the judges. Like Yasu's really good at this. If you were just judging based on tricks performed, then Yasu would not do nearly as well as he does because he has such a, he's playing to the emotion a lot of the times. He has insane skill. He's lacing really, really hard tricks, but it's repeated tricks in between pumping up the crowd and the judges. 

If it was, I don't know, if there's no right answer, unfortunately, there's no right answer to freestyle judging. But the way that it is now, I think players are just now starting to figure out a system. 

Like Wyatt Bray dominated freestyle last year because he figured out his line. He almost treated it like a World Cup run, like a rehearsed run. He was just like, judges are focusing on how many spikes or tricks I land. I can just ensure that this is practiced to a T and I will land this many spikes and this many difficult tricks. And then Yasu's mixing up the game. Nobody knows how to judge him. 

Kellie: 

When you think about an ideal winner, like in your head, is it the audience hyped because the player is hitting hard tricks that are creative and new that they have not also practiced over and over again. Like, how do you imagine that player showing up to the stage to win? 

Caleb: 

Like an ideal run? Yeah. When I think of a freestyle run, it is not in isolation. I don't think of one perfect round. I think of a player's performance throughout the competition. Typically, I try to think about what their top eight run like? How much variety did they mix in?

Honestly, I think Nanoka's run at Battle at the Border this year is some of the closest I've seen. She had so much variety of tricks from round to round. Her first round, she was doing crazy stalls, and then her second round, she was doing a lot of taps and instas, and her third round, she'd mix in a couple spacewalks and more balanced tama control tricks. Like, if I saw any one of those rounds in isolation, I would be like, yeah, that was an insane, really, really good round.

But a perfect run, I think, is a little bit different. Like Wyatt Brays runs, his end rounds are insane, he lands so many tricks, but then I'm like, he did that last time. I really like how you had a couple of different examples on how runs could go. So like ideal is impossible to describe, but some context was really helpful. How do you approach the people who say that the standardization of rule sets are going to constrict creativity? 

Caleb: 

I think it depends on the rule set. I think there are some rules that could very well could just stifle creativity. Like if we were just like SLC, the skateboarding circuit, if we did rule set similar to that where they give a certain amount of threshold points for certain skating tricks. I think that could stifle the rule set because people would just be like, okay, what tricks are worth the most points? Let's just farm those. 

If we had some sort of rule set that rewarded creativity, then that would not stifle it. And I understand a lot of people who would say that. Some of them are OGs who remember how the JKA pretty much killed Kendama in Japan. Their competitions were so rigid and unfun at a certain point that the youth completely lost interest and Kendama was dying. Yeah.

And that was the most recent time kendama has been standardized. So fear of repetition, there's a valid, but they also have to remember this is the same people who brought freestyle to it that are trying to think of some sort of standardization. Our goal is not to stifle it. Our goal is to grow it. We just want to be legitimized within the eyes of outsiders. It's not to crush and constrain players within.

Kellie:

I really think about it as creating guidelines to follow as opposed to specificities that you have to meet. Just because rules have been done doesn't mean I have to do them the same. 

Caleb: 

Exactly. 

Kellie: 

And so it's been a really interesting conversation to have with a lot of different event organizers, players, and spectators on what makes a really fun environment to watch and be involved in Kendama. 

Caleb: 

Yeah, they're fun. There's a lot to dive into. I also think if we made a ruleset and people are like, yeah, this is good. And we ran with it. And it got to a point where players figured out a meta to just win consistently. And then Kendama got boring. The ruleset would probably change to mitigate that. So it's not like one and done. This is how it's going to be. Deal with it. We want Kendama to be fun and engaging and maintain its excitement. 

Kellie: 

Yeah, and I think you have to be flexible. Just because you have an outline doesn't mean that structure has to be rigid. Time moves and the only constant is change. And so rolling with the times as we go, I think is really important. So yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about the amount of competitions that are popping up, not just in America, but like around the world. And how neat would it be if we were able to create a way to not regionalize, but like we can make the “best of [continent]” and then “the best of the world”. And how do we go about creating those pockets so that we all talk to each other and get to a point where we could do something really cool like that. 

Caleb: 

Yeah, that's another reason why I think standardization and putting out like a PDF of how to run an event is important because it'll make people who just host their weekly jams in whatever town that never has a big event. They'd be like, “Hey, I can do this. I have the instructions right in front of me. I'll host a smaller regional event.”

And more things like that will pop up. And the more events there are, the more local rankings you could have, like regional rankings, best of, it could be best of France. It could be the South Carolina kendama rankings. And be like, yeah, they're the number one player in North Dakota because there's enough events and small regional things there. I take a lot of inspiration from Super Smash Bros Melee and there's, I call it PR, which stands for power rankings.

There's enough weeklies, monthlies, whatever, in almost every region that you have the top 10 in each state. You have the top 10 in Europe, yada, yada, yada. 

Kellie: 

Yeah. For the event that we're creating Malama Dama in Hawaii, one of the things that I guess I'm saying out loud here is we want to create a team event. And it's not just you have to be a sponsored player with a business but people can create their own teams and enter them into the event and compete together individually. And so I'm not sure if you're familiar with golf. 

Caleb: 

A little bit. I actually use the PGA prize pool split to split the points of events for rankings last year.

Kellie: 

Oh interesting. Okay. So golf is an individual sport. Each player is playing to beat their best score, right? To do the best and beat the course.

And if they beat the course, then they may win the tournament. But you can't go out and gun for a specific person because you don't know how that person is going to play that day. And so when I think of how judging and how points or rankings could work in terms of encouraging the individual player to play their best and then taking that score, however that ends up being scored and taking the best three out of four players to win a team competition. 

So taking the best three scores out of a four player team and then ranking those and seeing who comes out on top as a group as opposed to just an individual. And I think something like that could create a way for people to root for their favorite team, to play with their homie, right? They get to make a team with their homies. They get to make matching jersey shirts if they wanted to, right? Like, what if a no-name team beat a branded team with sponsored players? Telling that type of story also feels really neat and interesting to me. And so adding different layers of creativity and how we create competitions is gonna make your job harder.

Caleb: 

Yeah, I'll have to consult the I have a team of 11 people. So when we do votes, there can't be any ties. And I would just have to pose that question and be like, do we include this in ranking? Yeah. And then if the votes, yes, I'll be like, OK, how are we going to do that? 

Kellie: 

I think that moving the needle, even with the ranking system that you have, it's imperfect. 

Caleb: 

Yeah, it's going to improve every year. 

Kellie: 

But thank goodness you've made it because you've started it.

Now we get to improve upon it, just like how you were talking about earlier. You make content and then you make better content later. Yep. And it's just iterations. 

Can you tell me what's next coming up for you? 

Caleb: 

I alluded to it a little bit, but so right after I got brought on on 365, I actually got laid off of my mortgage job like a month later. And I was like, that kind of sucks. But, I'm in a spot in my life where I owe it to myself and I have the privilege to give my all at something that I actually care about. So I gave that year to pursue content creation, try and legitimize Dama a little bit more. That year just ended and now my next step is June and Stodd and I are going to do a production company, not necessarily within kendama. So that is currently next for me. 

As far as like kendama content, I've been trying to schedule episode two of kendama Jeopardy. So that will be coming somewhat soon and more team content. I want to get June and Todd and Elijah and James Weatherall, who also lives here in Portland, get them together for more team streams like Jenga, Wheel of Punishment type stuff, just because it's fun and people enjoy watching it. 

But mostly my brain's been on the production company and then of course, rankings will happen this year. I'm just waiting on finding one more Japanese rep for the committee. 

Kellie: 

You are juggling a lot. 

Caleb: 

Currently, yeah. Juggling a lot. 

Kellie: 

If somebody wanted to do the things that you're doing, what would you say to them? Just do it and don't be afraid to fail. The hardest part about streaming is clicking go live every day. Consistency is key. It's easy to do it once. It's easy to put out one video and be like, I'm a content creator. It's easy to stream once and be like, I'm a streamer. You have to do it consistently. 

And I'm guilty of falling off on that sometimes. Life gets busy, that happens. But if it's really what you want to do, you will find time to do it. And you're not going to be good every time. Just like think about everything through the lens of kendama. You didn't get your big cup first try. You had to fail a couple of times and then you get it. And then you get better at getting big cup. You're just going to improve with every iteration.

Caleb (35:22.414)

The hardest part is just trying and continuing to try. 

Kellie: 

Yeah, it's been a running theme now in a lot of these where “just jump”. 

Caleb: Yep. 

Kellie: 

You just got to jump. It's scary and terrifying and also the most thrilling and fulfilling thing when you actually do the thing that you've dreamed of. 

Caleb: 

One of the biggest things dama taught me is just delayed gratification. You just got to try. 

Kellie: 

That is the worst. I'm like, no, no, no, I want it now. Now. 

Caleb: 

Everyone does. I do too. 

Kellie: 

Okay. Can you please tell our listeners where they can connect with you and follow your kendama journey? Yeah. My Instagram is at slingshady and I stream pretty much exclusively on 365's channel. So twitch.tv/@365 kendama.

Also on our YouTube channel, 365, we're now multi streaming on YouTube. Randomly, super secret, homie only streams might happen on my personal stream, @slingshady_ on Twitch, but not often. If you do catch it, it'll just be Mario speed running. 

Kellie: 

You gotta keep your title. 

Caleb: 

Yeah, exactly. 

Kellie: 

All right. Thank you so much. And I will talk to you all later. Bye.

*upbeat transition music* 

Aaaaand that wraps up another episode!

Big thanks to Caleb for joining me on this conversation! Make sure to check out Caleb’s latest projects and follow him on Instagram and Twitch for amazing kendama content— all the links will be in the description below.

Thank you again to all our listeners for tuning in to Snarkle Talks. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share this episode with your friends or let it play in the background while you play your favorite video game— we really appreciate your time and your support means the world to us!

A randomly fun fact to end this off with— a flock of flamingos is called a “flamboyance” and that somehow feels incredibly fitting.

Thanks for listening and until next time keep your enemies close and your damas closer.