Waiting to hear back about my future...

Well, I've bit the bullet and applied to the School of Visual Art in NYC for an MPS in Fashion Photography.  I missed the initial deadline so now it's just the rolling deadline.  Now I'm essentially just waiting to hear back about something that will hopefully drastically alter my life forever for the better.  This is hopefully afford me the career opportunities to make a real living as a photographer and be able to pursue my photographer with all my time and energy! I'm a skeptical atheist but I'll accept all the good luck, well wishes, positive vibes, and prayers you want to send my way.  I really hope I get in.

Interesting article.

I found this really interesting article on boing boing.  I'm not sure whether or not I agree with it 100% but I definitely think it's got some great ideas.  Its about how to learn new things and become better at the things we love to do.  I do think it's rather difficult to become great at something if you don't love it, as I've said before, so much of what talent "IS" is the degree to which something is able to hold your attention and motivate your actions.  The rest of the idea are hit or miss depending on individual circumstance I think, but maybe you'll disagree with me.

Your health and your creative block...

I learned recently that highly creative people have a higher than average sex drive and that sex helps increase creative flow.  People often forget, that just look food water and sleep, your body needs sex.  When I mean your body needs sex I don't necessarily mean with another person, that comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.  Consider this, stress levels have been intimately linked to prostate cancer.  Men who don't masturbate only a daily basis, even those that are receiving sex daily with a partner, are at a 40% high risk for developing prostate cancer.  Having time alone privately when you can simply be with yourself, listen to your body, and meets its needs for pleasure and release, great increases your overall health and well being.  Having sex with a partner can be nice because it is a very direct physical expression of affection and closeness, and the animal part of our brain responds much more to directly observable actions than to words and implied ideas or feelings.
If you're feeling creatively blocked, go through this checklist.  When was the last time I ate? Have I had some sort of substantial protein in the last two hours? How much water have I had to drink today? Am I feeling thirsty? Am I constipated or having other issues with my digestion? How much sleep did I get last night? How well did I sleep? How many hours have I been awake? Am I nearing 16 hours since I got any sleep? Am I feeling cranky or emotional? Could I use a nap? Is there something I'm upset about, consciously or unconsciously that I'm leaving unresolved? Am I feeling lonely or needing to be touched? When was the last time someone held me or gave me a hug? When was the last time I got a chance to socialize with people that I enjoy who don't stress me out? When was the last time I got out of the house just on my own to do something that refilled my creative well with awe and wonder? When was the last time I really made love with a partner? When was the last time I had an orgasm entirely on my own when I could simply be by myself, unrushed? When was the last time I simply sat in a quiet room alone with my thoughts, possibly drinking a cup of tea? When was the last time I got some sort of aerobic exercise I enjoy that really stretched my muscles and helped me burn some stress out of my body? When was the last time I tidied my work space so that it gave me that feeling I thrive on in my personal work? When was the last time I did something altruistic that made me feel better about myself? When was the last time I was pampered to help me relax? Have I been spending too much time thinking and stressing about my work and not enough time creating?

When you complete that list, I guarantee that you'll feel much better and the gears that pump out your creative juices will be properly lubricated, ready to take on whatever project lays in front of you.

Wait... I could actually make enough money to make art?!?

So hey everyone.  I just by chance happened to stumble across this amazing website, Patreon.  Instead of being like kickstarter where its all for a single big project and its lots of money, its you contributing a couple dollars each time I produce a new work, like a tip, to support me for creating work that you like or are into.  The great thing about this is that I'd be able to move out of my parent's house and get myself a little place I can make more art and write more and, and.... DO STUFF!

I find the entire concept pretty brilliant.  What's really great is that you can tell the website to not tip me over a certain amount per month so that you never have to worry about going over budget.  Its really exciting and it allows me an opportunity to create some of the more non commercial works I've been interested in for a while.  To quote the title of one of my favorite books "Make Art, Make Money", as in make amazing art and get it to make the money for you.  Hurray for the gift economy!

So I'm going to start producing a whole heck of a lot more art and posting a lot more writing on here, and you can all benefit from the fruits of my labor.  I'm so excited and I really hope my loyal fans will support me.

https://www.patreon.com/Lumos_de_Fortuno

LifeNaut

So I found out about this really cool website called LifeNaut. Its run by the leading company in the field of AI.  The concept is that they are attempting to make a digital copy of your mind which will eventually be able to be loaded into an android and someday in the future into a clone of your own body.  Now I personally don't feel that even a clone of myself with an exact copy of my mind, is the same thing as "me", because I view myself as being the sense of awareness that looks out and views my memories and the world around me, the ghost in the machine.  I do think though that creating a digital copy of myself could be useful for completing my own goals which will take a very long time to bring to fruition, such as a Queer Home State and space exploration.  I especially like the idea because it might mean that some part of me, my son if you will, would get to experience a future period in time where we're able to custom terraform planets and engineer their ecosystems as works of art, a great dream of mine.  If I don't live long enough to see the day where we're able to use medical nanites to make ourselves immortal, hopefully someday in the future, a person much like myself though hopefully much better, will be able to continue making the world a better place as I hope and even enjoy the fruits of my labors.

Invisible

Shattered and broken
Fragmented Mirror in the sand
Empty
My fingers reach out
They touch only glass
No eyes staring out to meet my own
The blue sky stares up straight through me
The world sees only light and all things in contrast to it
I have become shadow
Chimeric
Ersatz
Ephemeral
...gone

Trying to talk ourselves out of what we already know

No matter how much we tell ourselves that we don't know what it is that we really want to do, we all in fact, at least as adults who have had a chance to sample what life has to offer, know exactly what we want.  The thing we want to do with our lives is usually the thing we spend the most time trying to talk ourselves out of.  We try to convince ourselves to follow another dream, and very often we do for a long time till we realize the mistake.  If we fail at something that we don't really give a damn about, it doesn't matter because we've never really risked anything.  To go after the thing most dear to our hearts and be told we're no good at it, that is a wound which is all too true.

As adults, we have learned to protect our hearts, to do everything we can to avoid serious emotional injury.  The danger with following the dream dearest to us is that to really do it authentically is to make oneself vulnerable.  The Id and the Super Ego both want to discover and express this dream but the Ego will do everything it can to deceive us and protect us from what it perceives as a fatal threat.  Even so the Ego can not hide the enjoyment we receive when we are fulfilling this secret desire, though it will still try to lie to us, often by trying to find this we like ALMOST as much but that we don't really care about.

So how do you figure out what it is you really want to do with your life? I've been studying this question in depth for a while now.  Here's a list of questions and quotes gathered from and inspired by sources wiser than myself.  If you're having difficulty finding your path in life, try asking yourself these questions, and remember, you're not allowed to edit or criticize yourself.  Gift to yourself the permission to "be stupid and ridiculous" because any attempt to edit is your ego trying to throw yourself off the scent of your path.

1. On his nightly television show George Lopez said (and I'm paraphrasing) "Your calling will be the thing you do the best with the least amount of effort."  The truth of it is that the reason that it seems to be the least amount of effort is you enjoy what you're doing so much you often don't realize how much time, energy and work you've put into doing that special thing because its a labor of love.  Think about when you were a little kid (or heck even now), the small amount of time and effort it takes to take out the trash seemed the greatest burden in the world, but the countless hours, blood, sweat and broken bones you gladly sacrificed in the summer to build a tree house or a fort was no trouble at all.  What do you do exceptionally well but seems to take no effort at all?

2. Revisiting the previous question, Joseph Campbell was quoted as saying that people completely misunderstood him when he told them to follow their bliss.  Many people have come to think that he meant you should do the thing which made you "happy" or was fun, they had come at Campbell's theory of bliss with an entirely superficial perspective of immediate gratification.  Campbell was later quoted as saying, "I should have told them to follow their blisters".  Campbell believed one's "calling", was not the thing that made you superficially happy, indeed when you're doing something that really matters to you it can cause a great deal of stress and anxiety.  Campbell believed one's "calling" was the thing which gives us a sense of fulfillment.  Studies have shown that the most difficult and grueling jobs on the planet are also the ones with the highest recorded job satisfaction.  This is not because a job has to be difficult in order for it to be fulfilling but because the jobs were so difficult there was no way anyone would last in them unless it was where they were really meant to be.  What is the thing that you spend countless hours at, that you don't even mind or notice when your hands are bleeding and covered in blisters? What is the thing you can't walk away from until you know it's been done right?

3. Forbes magazine recently suggested that one way for their readers to figure out what it is they really want to do is to ask themselves, "If money were no object, if you never had to worry about money again and you had enough money to do or create anything you wanted, what would you do?"

Three seemingly simple questions that when put together paint a much large picture of who you are as a person.  When you're really allowing yourself to be free and honest with yourself, do your answers ring out together into a unified answer?

I'm lucky in that I've figured out mine do.  Its not an easy path, and one I've been trying to dissuade myself from for decades but my path is that I'm a fine art photographer.  Its scary because it feels like that is something that even within the art world is a hard sell but I'm going to make it work.

A book I would very strongly recommend to anyone in a creative field is "Make Art, Make Money".  Its all about the Jim Henson approach to living as an artist.