1/23/2025
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Dillon Barr
…that I think changed the course of my life.
I’ve been in one of my stress ball funks lately. My dad even said “son, I worry about you” for the first time in what feels like forever. And I can see where he’s coming from.
I work from 8-7 most days, with small breaks to see the wife and kids, and I have a few balls in my personal juggling routine. Starting my days making a social media post both for Unfound and a podcast I run for my business. 1 post a day on each platform.
Then my “work day” starts. One on one business consulting and daily classes for our 200+ clients. I have to be on my toes for these meetings and can’t show a sign of ‘weakness’; afterall, who would want to pay for someone that doesn’t know the answer to their every need when it comes to business building. Which causes me to spend downtime studying the latest trends, mostly on my phone or computer (a lot of marketing trends are on social media).
I’m on a leadership team, so the rest of my days are in zoom meetings with my team talking about growth, or zoom 1-on-1s with our employees to make sure we are doing what we can to help them hit their goals both with our company and in their personal life.
I finish the day by hopping on my “Unfound Adventures” google chrome window and either writing newsletters like this one, creating our next kickstarter, reaching out to our followers that have a Calling Creation coming up or questions on our facebook page, or plotting our next book in the series. OR I text Matt and Evan ideas for the world and our business.
Side note: Matt is currently working on a book that takes place in the Era of Order in Bastunia, 200+ years before Joan and Artie are even born. In this story we follow a detective as he tries to find the origins to a series of unfortunate events that plague a town. The town thinks they have their guy with a smoking gun, but the parser is quick to see errors in the story that is being laid out before him. The man in question is actually seeing a deeper evil that exists behind the typical veil of life everyone sees day to day. Stealthy ahzigra (the bad guys in Bastunia) called Shroud Hounds that exist in another realm where the naked Bastunian eye cannot see. They feed off negative energy and suck their prey dry and lifeless and the “fugitive” in question is the unseen hero to the lynch mob that seeks his head.
Anyway, I finish my day reading comics on my phone or, let’s be real, doom scrolling Instagram, facebook, or Youtube.
This weekend my wife and I went up to a cabin on the lake with a close friend of mine, his wife and their kid, who is only a few months older than our little one. The whole weekend was planned for us to unwind, grill food, swim, and check out to nearby small town. And then my wife dropped a bombshell.
“Could I challenge you?” woof “You think you could go this whole weekend without using your phone for work, both [9-5] and Unfound?”
WHAT?! But where will I find all of my ideas? How will I be able to grow as an author by studying other’s material both written work and marketing strategies….and how would I be able to doom scroll?
I was internally resistant but the external amazing husband and father spoke first “Of course I can.” What are you doing, you idiot?!
I did barter to use my phone as a notebook for ideas, but I only used it a few times a day for it. And I played music from it for entertainment, but other than that I kept my barefeet in the ground and mind in the moment, watching my son play with hopefully a lifelong friend of his, share in laughs and memories with a lifelong friend of mine, and listen to the wives ideas for where to go to next.
The weekend was absolutely incredible.
Sunday came and I was recharged, and had EIGHT new ideas for what we are creating here, both in the story itself and on the business. When I did use my phone I rifled off these ideas over to Matt to get his thoughts and we spent time going back and forth on how to weave these ideas into Unfound.
Screens are a useful tool, helping me learn more of what is going on in the world and connect to our audience. I mean, I’m doing it right now to reach you; but after a while they become a shroud hound of their own (and you didn’t think I’d make a callback to Matt’s book. Shame on you). They sap our energy and can even rile us up.
Matt’s got some intelligent way of explaining the frequency of our bodies being closer to the frequency of the earth, and the frequencies of tech, motors, etc tend to get us off kilter. While that is probably true, I prefer to see it more as spending less time in the Shroud, getting sapped of my life force by these shadowy hounds, and more time with my Callings. I’m one of the bigger culprits of doing this, which I believe sets me up to understand this the most and be a Pillar for others to show what’s possible on the other side. I want to help this generation and the next do the same thing; break out of the shackles of screens and into our innate creative geniuses. Using our imagination and the power of story to do so.
-DB
© 2023 unfound adventures
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Dillon Barr and Matt Emmorey grew up in southeast Michigan. As much as they love their home state, they were a flight risk. Dillon became pregnant with the ideas for Unfound Adventures in Kenya. They were adopted by Matt in Texas during the pandemic. The two fancy themselves good parents for Joan and the gang, but much of the childhood of this series was raised in virtual spaces, chairlifts, abandoned pools, high ropes courses, and a multitude of states.
AUSTIN, TEXAS
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