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Workpost 28: Taxes & Art Therapy

Byjack

Today I feel very tired but at least better rested than normal. I really want to finish my taxes today and I also want to experiment with art therapy and exercise to help get through the stress and effort of finishing.

My initial thoughts about art therapy is that it is all about reconnecting with your body…to do flow theory or follow what you feel. Art is about touching the forms with lines and paint, music is about creating sound, dance is about moving your body.

I’m doing more research. Here is a video that talks about using art to find a safe place:

Here is another video:

Current art therapy ideas:

  1. Express what you feel kinesthetically
    • Scribbling
    • Banging on the piano
    • Flow theory dance
    • Free writing
  2. Create a safe space, express what feels safe
    • Drawing
    • Writing
    • Music
  3. Repetitive motions
    • Shapes
    • Chords
    • Motions

But how does this translate to greater art creation? How does this create a world?

Thinking about this more, art creation is about the following:

  1. What you want to share with others
  2. What you find beautiful
  3. What you feel wonder about
  4. What stories you want to tell
  5. What is quirky, unique, and creative
  6. What worlds you want to live in and provide others

I have a couple ideas of how to transition from therapeutic art to art art:

  1. My therapy exercise (take a problem and solve it in the story by making the main character face a problem 10x more painful)
  2. Express what emotions you are feeling strongly
  3. Capture a memory
  4. Start with a characters
  5. Start with world
  6. Do a fanfic
  7. Daydream

Linkedin Strategy Video

Byjack

Start with a hook – what is the one thing I want the reader to come away with (How do find prospects on LinkedIn). Hook is the promise you make.

Rehook – add an objection, or do a contrasting statement.

Write to a loved one…I will write to my girlfriend.

Focus & Slowing Down

Byjack

Most people think that focus is a heavy thing, it is an effort of concentration. But really focus is a light thing. It is something subtractive. The more things you remove, the more focused you are.

Removing distractions, removing goals, removing worries, removing clutter. All those things contribute to the feeling of focus.

The first step of any focus exercises is simply focusing on yourself. Forget your goals and tasks. Let go of everything. Forget figuring out what to let go of and what to focus on. Simply direct your attention to your feelings. Breathe. Nothing else matters. Slow down.

Slowing down is one of the quickest ways to access focus because speeding up is the mindset of the unfocused. It is the mindset of trying to juggle many things, to switch between many things at the same time.

Rental Car Nightmares

Byjack

A couple of weeks ago, I rented a car at National car rental. My sister returned it for me, and I got a shock in my email a few weeks later.

I immediate assumed this had to be a scam, or some sort of mistake. But the more I read, the more that I could tell this was actually legit. They had the right time, the right place and right company. They were charging me for $1295.81 for damages to the vehicle.

Looking at this deeper I noticed that the line items were VERY extensive, replaces door parts and handles. According to them, the car was HEAVILY damaged.

Looking at the pictures, I could barely see any of the damages they were indicating. It almost felt like they were offloading the cost of wear and tear on me.

Obviously I was LIVID.

  • I knew that there were some small marks on the car when I picked it up, but I never took any pictures.
  • I knew that no damage whatsoever happened when I had the car. I didn’t think any of this damage was on the car when I picked it up, but the damage in the photos are so subtle its hard for me to be sure.
  • I had rental insurance specifically for this car, but didn’t want to file a claim for something I didn’t do.
  • My sister had someone walk around the car and CONFIRM it was ok before she returned it. They parked it, and who knows what happened after that.
  • National has a service for their “Emerald Isle” premium members where you can pick up and drop off a car without ever seeing someone.
    • This now seemed like a LIABILITY not a PERK since now I can’t get them to acknowledge damage on the car.
    • I’m a new member and if they were going to be f*cking sticklers about this whole thing, they should have EXPLAINED it to me. I would have got them to sign off on EVERY F*CKING SCRATCH BEFORE AND AFTER returning the car.

So I went to chase down this problem:

  1. I called National Support, and they told me that I needed to call their damage unit. I asked them to make a note on my case so I wouldn’t have to repeat myself.
  2. After I called their damage unit, they redirected me to someone else.
  3. After getting to another person, they redirected me to someone else.
  4. The last person seemed to know what they were talking about, but I had repeat myself because she could not access any of the notes that National Support wrote down.

The last woman who oversaw the appeals to the damages told me the following information:

  • Generally its better if you take photos beforehand, however, in situations where the “damage” is so small it is easy to miss, you can appeal and they will dismiss it. They consider it human error.
  • She told me that my “damages” were definitely small enough that someone might have missed it before (so it may not be caused by me).
  • She agreed to waive all of the fees.

So my lessons learned from this whole experience:

  1. Always get rental car insurance just in case.
  2. Take a video when you pick up the car to prove the condition of the car beforehand. (It’s gonna be me in the parking lot being like “hey this is me in the parking lot picking up this car at X time” so they have proof I didn’t take the video at some other place or time)
  3. Take a video of the car when you return it.
  4. If they try to charge you for something really small and not visible in your videos, appeal, and they will probably dismiss it.
  5. It’s good to be a mix of legitimately angry (I was furious) but polite at the same time (I apologized in advance telling them I was very upset but I knew it wasn’t their fault personally). As a result, they were helpful and resolved my issue quickly.

A day later I got an email.

Livestreaming

Byjack

So I recently had my first Livestream ever on Youtube.

It was a lot of fun, and I created a really cool story excerpt and a painting, but I didn’t feel like I was in the moment enough and had enough of a connection to the audience. I felt like I was watching myself and out of my own body

Talking to multiple people, I’ve come up with some ideas:

  • Invite people to do something in their life that centers on presence that they have been putting off
    • Yoga, working out, drawing, painting, stretching, cleaning
  • Create a wheel of ridiculous things
    • Ask lots of questions and when I get little or no engagement, spin a wheel of ridiculous things
  • Create a discussion with people
  • Minimize the windows so I don’t see myself most of the time
  • Play recordings while I’m doing something
  • Create some sort of prize