A few weeks ago I started the Sova Art Competition listed here.
While I was really excited initially about this art competition because I get to combine two of my passions (art and Valorant), I started to feel really overwhelmed because I don’t feel that I have enough experience with digital art and drawing from my imagination to get to the type of painting that I want to submit.
I think I will need to embrace failure and discover what kind of art is coming out for me, but also, I want to break down this challenge into lessons or milestones, just like with the Valorant challenge. The mindset I want to take is to create a syllabus in such a way that it is impossible for me not to win.
Today’s date: March 10th 2023
Submission deadline: March 27th 2023
Number of days remaining: 16
UNIT ONE: Sova Model Studies
Day 1 – Portrait
Day 2 – Half Body
Day 3 – Full Body
UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing
Day 1 – Explore figure sketching techniques/simplification
Day 2 – Copy a pose from memory, trace, and correct original
Day 3 – Animate
UNIT THREE: Inspired Starts
Day 1 – Random Line Start
Day 2 – Famous Painting Start
Day 3 – Disliked Painting Start
*All exercises have the potential to be a final submission.
Days remaining after sova fan art drawing class: 7
I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.
After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.
The fear of dying in the game:
Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
Makes me frustrated when I lose
Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games
I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.
For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.
It will intuitively let me know:
When to peek
If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times
So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!
I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.
Some takeaways:
Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.
My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.
This is definitely one of the most difficult challenges I’ve undergone in a while.
I’ve tried a couple of things and I feel frustrated.
The Reaching for the Untouchable
The frustration
The reaching in my heart
Is getting to me
Reaching for the untouchable
I wonder if I will ever know
The doubt creeps
I seek to know
And when I rush there
There is still nothing
Frustration in my chest
Like a roar that wants to escape
But is trapped behind bars
I have created multiple messages to my girlfriend in French, multiple times I’ve tried to imitate. I feel like imitation is the key, but I grow tired of seeing no results. I feel tired and frustrated.
I feel angry and unhappy.
I suspect failure is such a hard thing for me to grasp. It is such a tough pill to swallow.
I saw a video with a lot of potential:
It is about learning jiujitsu really fast. But really it is about learning. He talks about many ideas in the video, ideas that I’ve myself considered. Ideas that I think are pretty profound and helpful:
Performance vs. growth
Train in the gym to fail – growth
Compete to win – performance
Form to leave form
Repetition until it is second nature
Turn something thought into something intuitive
Smaller circles
Reduce something from intuition to a conscious idea
Look for different ways to apply it
He mentions some really interesting sounding books:
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin
The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
Anyway, I feel if I were to embrace my fear of failure, I need to meditate on it, but also come up with a plan.
I first want to come up with the plan to train From to Leave Form…and be repetitive about the most common words in French, say them until they are second nature.
So what are the top most common 10 words in French:
Oui: Yes
Non: No
Merci: Thank you
Je: I
Tu/vous: You
Le/la/les: The
Un, une des: A, an, and some
Le/la/les: It, them
Et: And
Mais: But
Bonjour: A general greeting meaning “hello” or “good morning”
Au revoir: Goodbye
Salut: Hello
Amour: Love
Bonheur: Happiness
Chat: Cat
Chien: Dog
But these words are too basic. What about the top 10 most common phrases?
Bonjour: Means “hello” or “good morning”.
Merci: Means “thank you”.
S’il vous plaît: Means “please”.
Ça va?: Means “how are you?” .
Je ne sais pas: Means “I don’t know”.
Parlez-vous anglais?: Means “Do you speak English?” .
Bienvenue: Means “welcome”.
Madame/Monsieur/Mademoiselle: Means “Mrs.”, “Mr.”, or “Miss”.
Anchante enchante: Means “nice to meet you”.
Sava: Means “how are you”.
C’est simple comme bonjour: Means “it’s simple as hello”.
Et patati et patata: Means “and so on”.
En avoir ras-le-bol: Means “to have had enough”.
Tu m’étonnes: Means “tell me something I don’t know”.
Ok that is a little better, but what about the most common French verbs?
Aller Means “to go” and is also used to describe the near future tense. Avoir Means “to have” and is used to express possession, relationships, physical and mental states, and many other contexts. Être Means “to be” and indicates the action or state of being. Pouvoir Means “can” or “to be able to”. It’s an irregular verb like prendre or faire, belonging to the third group. Savoir Used to indicate knowledge or understanding. It can also be used in many idiomatic expressions, such as “savoir-faire” (know-how). Mettre Means “to put” but can also be used for dropping someone off somewhere, laying the table, taking time to do something, laying a carpet. Prendre Means “to take”, including “to travel” on particular forms of transport. It is also used for having meals. Venir Means “to come”, and it can be easily used to conjugate the recent past or convey the idea that you have just done something recently. Vouloir Often translated as to want and to wish in English, as its main usage is to express desires and wishes.
I want to read more about verbs in French but it is too late and I need to go to bed.
“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.
My peace today was disrupted by work early. It is nice to have time to talk about strategic leadership things. I usually don’t have that much time during the week.
However, it’s not the type of morning that I aim to repeat.
I intend on reclaiming as much peace as I can in this 20 minute span.
I feel that respect is a really important need for me in work, and I feel that this need was not met at my previous job, it remains to be seen whether or not it is met enough in this job. I have my doubts to be sure.
Today, I woke up feeling much better, even though I went to bed a bit late. It’s because, on top of journaling, I also did cupping on my body to unblock anything that was blocked. Turned red on my chest, I guess a lot of blockages there specifically.
I feel with the level of stress this morning with no peace and no running I’m feeling surprisingly good.
I wonder how to push back on blatant hostility and disrespect in a way that I want to. I suppose some rage journaling should help and maybe my coaching mindset.
Today I want to focus on making a video on how to handle lack of respect in the workplace.
I don’t know how that is going to go but that’s what I want to do.
Perhaps I need to meditate on it some more.
Maybe finally watching another 20 minutes of the coaching call will be nice as well.
I don’t know exactly if this is a core wound, but I strongly believe that I am responsible for people’s emotions and that I am a bad person.
In order to process this (a rebalance my emotions), I am going to focus on a time when I hurt someone and focus on the part right before it so I can remember that there is a good reason for doing what I did and perhaps have a little more compassion for myself.