“When you look at things that are far away, muscles in your eye relax and your lens looks like a slim disc.
When you look at things that are close, muscles in your eye contract and make your lens thicker.”
So the key is to relax right? Well, yes and no. Muscles always work in groups. If certain muscles are constantly too tense, then there are certain muscles that must be weak (since if one set of muscles never relaxes, the other set must always be weak).
After researching further, I found the muscle responsible for focusing the lens of the eye. It’s called the ciliary muscle and it looks like it doesn’t actually work in pairs but is like smooth muscle tissue of the stomach.
An interesting article is here and I signed up for the guys course to see what was up.
Today I had a couple observations after feeling very depleted and inflamed with allergies:
Breathing fully and deeply while feeling the sensations helped move the chi
Clockwise massage on my stomach really helped the chi flow a lot
Same direction with palms facing back on the lower spine to tailbone also very helpful
Clockwise rubbing of the solar plexus also really helpful
Hanging was a nice resting position
Eating slow wasn’t the best method
Prefer to eat moderate speed for a small amount at a time, chewing in a bigger motion and smelling and tasting the food with small breaks in between bites and some stomach massage
I want to continue to push myself and work on finding good resting positions and strategies to recover.
I also need to work on setting a baseline and measurements to track progress.
Get a scale to weigh myself
Get a heart rate monitor, smartwatch or fitness band to monitor vitals
Need to come up with a standard lighting to take a photo
UNIT ONE, Week 1: Regen from tiring out (no matter how tired, wired or drained) lasts 7 days
There is one drawing that I’ve always wanted to create, and luckily, I already have a photo reference for it!
I am eager to use my skills on this new pose as well, but the intricacies of Sova’s outfit is definitely making me nervous.
Here is my mini syllabus:
UNIT ONE: Create a manikin structure drawing from life
UNIT TWO: Go into the game and use the character model to get the all the sova details and map them in.
UNIT THREE: Create a more refined drawing in preparation for final inks.
I’m too tired to talk much about what actually happened. I spent at least 12 hours on this process.
I did not have the chance to color to perfection, I also sadly left Professor Sova on the draftroom floor.
Professor Sova sketch
Things I learned:
It takes a much longer time than I thought to create a pleasing lineart sketch, if it doesn’t look good you probably didn’t spend enough time
For lineart, focus on creating forms, not just outlines. Seek to understand every little detail
Colors is a whole another beast that I didn’t get much time to practice or focus on. If things were different, I would have spent more time working on my color process.
Shadows is still a mystery to me. Need to find a process that works for me.
I’ve been feeling pretty lost as of late. I am thinking about my youtube channel, about my job, about coaching, about my health and about my challenges with youtube and fitness. I’ve been stressed out about all these different things and I don’t really know how to tackle all of them at the same time. I don’t know what to focus on, which ones makes sense to put energy into, and how I will go about focusing on any of these things.
I’ve been feeling depressed, overwhelmed and depleted, constantly self medicating with youtube videos and games.
Recently, I’ve been inspired by this video:
Health is everything. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you don’t have to choose between that and health. You will be a better entrepreneur with better health.
I want to drop all of my other challenges and focus on this for a while.
I want to focus on my health.
I thought about what this meant for quite a while because health is such a nebulous topic. I feel that Brian Johnson in project Blueprint is taking a very scientific approach to health, but I want to take a more personal approach.
Here are the areas that I care about:
Mood: How positive and happy I feel overall
Passion for life: How motivated I feel about life, relationships and projects
Energy: How energetic and strong I feel
Flow: how in the moment and attuned to my body’s sensations I feel
Attractiveness: how healthy I look
Some ideas of times that I can measure these things:
When I wake up: great for seeing how well I slept
Around 10 AM: good for checking up on my morning routine
Around 3 PM: good for checking on my afternoon routine
Before I go to bed: good to seeing the cumulative effect of the day and how fulfilled I feel
I’ve tried these type of challenges before, but I feel that I sort of neglected the mental part of health, feeling healthier physically but mentally trapped and unhappy. I want to really commit to doing video journaling this entire time in order to make sure that I can express myself and work through mental challenges.
What would mean success to me is not just feeling much more happy, passionate, energetic, in flow and attractive, but also to create a lifestyle, mindset and routine that will maintain and grow that over time.
