It’s been a few days after my deadline of September 12th.

I haven’t created business cards for my art coaching business. I haven’t learned the principles of javascript or front-end development or created a game.

The other day a friend was asking me about how to start a side gig and I had so much to tell him, yet these days I’m feeling a bit down and undermotivated.

A few realizations are perking me up a little.

Realization 1: My coaching program is not overvalued.

I want to charge $25,000 per year for my coaching program to help someone create a masterpiece. Before even pitching it to anyone, I felt like this was too big of an ask, I should lower my rates etc.

But as I thought about it deeper a few things occurred to me:

• I will be spending a lot of time with a client. I plan on spending 2 hr every other week with clients on formal coaching sessions, but that’s not it. My entire professional attention and all my skills are aimed at helping my clients succeed. So outside of formal coaching sessions (in person if I can manage it). I will be taking calls emails, and setting up times to do virtual sessions. My goal is not to be a doctor you see for checkups or an art class you regularly go to. My goal is to understand your art inside and out, and be a true partner, mentor, strategist, and guide in your process. I think $25,000 for a year is an absolute crazy steal for that.
• I’m not focused on getting clients that are poorer or don’t really have the funds. That would be both unethical and a bad fit. I already offer another class that can satisfy that demographic of people where it is more like a regular class, albeit a somewhat vetted and serious class (and not serious at the same time). I’m focused on the people who have the money and the passion to back it up, and we can spend some time to do something special. For someone retired with several millions of dollars, this will be nothing to them as long as they want it enough.

Realization 2: The process is complicated, but I have my blog

The whole point of this blog is be a place where I can incrementally work on works of progress and get better at things over time, instead of getting the final version all at once. If I don’t use this blog, I can also use my google drive, google docs, and slides to draft out things step by step and track overall progress in the blog.

Ok, we are in the home stretch for the first part of this business experiment.

The first big question I set out to solve is what is my lead magnet for art coaching? I know that I want to offer some free intro sessions, but it is now apparent to me that I want to do other types of lead magnets with people as well because I can’t do a free intro session with just people at the farmer’s market or at a conference (potentially at a conference but I’m not so sure).

Here are the potential lead magnets I have so far:

1. Prompts for dream creative projects
2. Artist masterpiece problem diagnosis
3. Free 1 hr Masterpiece planning call to determine creative project, project timeline, and plan
4. Free 2 hr coaching call after intro call

The second question I am pondering, is how do I make money off of the AI business?

I guess the answer to that, is that it doesn’t really matter if I make money off of it (at least initially), I just need to get good at dev because that in itself will make me money if I want to.

I feel exhausted. My head feels numb. I feel hot and tired. My back aches.

My heart feels heavy. I feel angry at myself. So helpless. My mind in a fog.

My apartment is a mess. I just want to cry.

I can’t work. I just play games all day long. my eyes feel tired.

It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. All I want to do is eat and play video games. The pull is so strong in my heart like there is a strand of honey getting pulled.

I feel a numb panic deep in my chest. I’m afraid of failure. I’m scared I will disappoint myself and everyone around me. Pushing myself to make my business cards is only making me curl up even harder.

It was a long week. I’m exhausted. But the work just keeps coming.

I guess I can cancel tai chi tomorrow. Sleep in.

Tonight I can clean my apartment until I feel more peaceful.

I know I can use the gym as a way to process emotions, but I don’t use it.

I feel this pull, this overwhelm, like the honey being pulled, from my heart.

I’m capable of anything. Even rising from this challenge. This is important because as I get more successful, there will be days I feel exhausted, and in those moments, I need to find a way to find balance, to find peace.

I also want to learn to embrace failure. Failure is so scary to me. There is an image in my mind of my business cards being a complete disappointment and I feel a pit in my heart. A horrible amaturish website I’m not proud of and I can’t fix it.

Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts at the beginning. The people who are exceptional, who are savants are not people who started at the middle. They are people who enjoyed the beginning.

But how can I enjoy this? I feel so scared it won’t be good.

Makes me think of this video:

In this video, Jesse talks about how play allows us to feel pressure while still being able to learn.

That fun is the key to this.

But what is the key to fun? What would make this fun for me, regardless of the outcome, what would make designing and drawing fun for me?

What would make it an infinite game, not just a finite game focused on an end goal?

It’s true, the thought of designing business cards does not sound fun to me at all. It sounds like a slog. But maybe that’s because I’m worried about failing.

Ok, what if I tried to merge my painterly style with “woodcut” style prints. What if I created a new drawing technique that I could use to create cool stuff for friends and to sell as products?

That definitely sounds more like play to me.

So what about going to the gym, because I like it so much when I actually go, but I find it hard to go to begin with.

What if I saw it as supercharging myself – which it really is doing. Whether I go to lift weights or just to hang from the bar and stretch it really is building my body up to full potential. It might even solve my sleep problems.

And what about sleep, why do I not want to go to bed? Because if I go to bed, tomorrow, I wake up with tons of problems. Well maybe, that’s not a bad thing. Maybe before I go to bed, I fill my to do list with questions that I want to search out the answers to.

Here are the questions I have today, that if I knew the answers to I would rest easy:

1. What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
   • Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it?
   • Should I extend the schedule?
   • Am I losing money?
2. How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working?
3. What do I do about my art coaching website?
4. How do I get everything done in such a short period of time?
5. Should I start registering for fairs?
6. Should I pay someone to design the website for me?
7. How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently?
8. How do I start going to the gym and working outsite the apartment consistently?
9. How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time?
10. How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses?
11. When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time.

Art Challenge

Create a beautiful website and business card that will inspire magic and creativity in a way that I don’t have to explain to people what I mean create it for my younger self

Creating it like a gift for all my future clients

Business card is a gift and does not need to be similar to my website

Website is hogwarts, the business card is the invitation

Business cards will be trading cards:
-paintbrush
-pen
-writers block
-plot armor
-chiruscuru

Website will start as a powerpoint story -> website layouts
Worlds are waiting to be created
Villian imagined, dragons born, heroes conceived

AI Challenge

My way to get into the industry is simple. I need to learn node.js, react.js and maybe AWS in order to have a foundation to create whatever app that I want to.

Once I have those three or so elements, all manner of apps are possible

It’s 1 am in the morning and I feel tired.

When I think about drawing on my drawing tablet I feel overwhelmed high in my chest.

I feel really really scared that everything I do will be frustrating and not good or artistic.

Let me start with some inktober sketches.

What strikes me when I draw is that art for me, even just plain linework, is all about discovery, all about uncovering the truth or the world underneath the scribbles. It doesn’t matter if I don’t see the world at first, it emerges from within the shapes.

I mean this style is definitely me, I guess I worry that if I try to refine it, it will lose the liveliness in here. At the same time, I’m not sure I want the business card to be this messy and a part of my wants it to look more like a tarrot card. I imagined a swashbuckling kid with big aviator goggles and a bunch of dripping paint brushes.

	AI Gaming	Art Coaching
Ideal Place	Quiet with cool game posters that give me inspiration	Somewhere warm and comfy and inviting. Traveling, in the library, Craft, or Sa-Ten
Ideal Tools	Multiple monitors, clear file structure, keyboard, notebook	Sketchbook, drawing tablet on laptop and phone, clear file structure
Ideal Warmup	Minigame, blog post, writing ideas in notebook	Inktober prompts, art instagram posts, blog post working out some sketch ideas

To-do list

1. Decide on clear file structure for AI gaming
   • Github
   • Jupyter notebooks
   • Python code
   • Project documents
2. Designate a coding notebook
3. Think about alternative coding spots or ways to optimize effectiveness at home
4. Connect tablet with laptop and phone
5. Decide a clear structure for both branding sketches and other sketches
6. Designate sketching notebook

Results

1. Decided to start with Google Collab and branch out from there
2. There aren’t any really good coding notebooks, will buy a new one eventually will use bad one for now
3. Not sure
4. Done
5. Done
6. Done

Time is really running out in the first part of this challenge.

Perhaps it is time to actually create a challenge. I want to create separate challenges for art coaching and AI consulting (now AI gaming).

However, I think it’s ok to do both at first because the setup for each is pretty light work and can be done at the same time. In that case, I can include today.

Setup Challenge (4 days, Sep. 2nd – 6th)

UNIT ONE: Workspace cleanup (day 1)

1. Ideal workspace brainstorm
2. Action items
3. Execution

UNIT TWO: Processing pain + work (day 2-3)

1. Workday for art coaching
2. Workday for AI gaming
3. No work needed, only emotional processsing

UNIT THREE: Planning (day 4)

1. Design a challenge for art coaching (3 days)
2. Design a challenge for AI gaming (3 days)

There are a couple of things I’m feeling into.

1. I wonder if I have prediabetes since I do not feel well after eating sugar. I feel a bit numb and my stomach doesn’t feel good. I feel it in my kidneys as well.
2. I really want to tackle my bloating and take it seriously. I was able to find way to tackle my knee issues, I should be able to tackle them too. My first thought is just to massage right below the belly button softly but for a long time, it tends to work and is very gentle.
3. I want to refocus on my businesses, maybe create some challenges around them now that I’m excited and motivated to work on them again.
4. I want to do what I set out in the last workpost, cleaning out my to-do list as cleanly as possible.

Ok here are some of the symptoms of prediabetes:

• Increased thirst – yes at night
• Frequent urination – nope
• Increased hunger – nope
• Fatigue – not really more than usual
• Blurred vision – nope
• Numbness or tingling in the hands or feet – nope, more on the back
• Unexplained weight loss – nope
• Dark spots on the skin – nope
• Skin tags – nope
• Slow healing of cuts and wounds – nope

So I probably don’t have prediabetes, just don’t respond well to glucose spikes or processed sugars.

In terms of bloating, I want to keep it simple, just doing very light circles right below my belly button really is causing me to feel like my gas is leaving. I want to make it a habit to do that when I’m feeling bloated.

Also, when I feel stressed, I want to focus on breathing. I want to charge my watch more often and use it to check my stress levels.

I’ll leave my business planning to dedicated blog posts, but overall, my next step is to improve my working tools and setup.