Usually these interviews are a piece of cake. Send out an email with some questions, throw together a short introduction about the person, edit their answers for spelling, post. That's it. So when Phil insisted that we do his interview in person I knew it would be a little more involved than usual. Then we threw Danny into the mix on top of that. I ended up with a LOT to work with. What was so overwhelming about it was not so much the quantity (although it did take me hours to transcribe the whole thing) but what was in there. There was so much great stuff in this interview that I wanted to make sure I was doing it justice; I didn't want to just throw it together like usual. So instead I did nothing. For weeks I was paralyzed by the thought of working on this thing.
As usual, I learned my lesson. You just have to dive into it. You decide that this has taken way too long to get done, you have to do it. You sit down and start writing, you force yourself to get into it. And before long, great things begin to happen. Then you get excited about what you're doing and you actually want to sit down and do it. It's a great thing.
In the end though, I try not to put too much pressure on myself. Maybe this interview wouldn't have come out the same if I had sat down and done it right away. In fact I'm sure it wouldn't have. Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it wouldn't have been. Maybe the weeks of procrastination, in which this interview was constantly turning over in the back of my mind, formed the way I thought about the interview and thus the way I wrote about it. I suppose that's why they call it marinading.
Regardless of how I got here I'm here now. Part 2 is still to come, with a lot of insight and inspiration, the real heart of this interview. But for now enjoy the first half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local celebrities of the NW 23rd neighborhood. Get to know a little about their backgrounds, their sense of humor and how they got to where they are now.
Thanks for reading!
