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Workpost 33: At the End of My Rope
Byjack
I feel pretty awful. I’ve lost focus in work. I feel overwhelmed and unhappy. Every day I stay up late at night. The only solace I find is in games. Everything that I wanted to do now feels like things I have to do.
I struggle to regain the mentality that I use for these workposts.
I guess I feel extremely tired and depressed.
There are a couple of things that filter through the haze that I’m feeling:
- I want to find a way to post on LinkedIn again. That is the one thing I want to work on achieving.
- This new idea in taichi, and breathwork. To receive what is coming instead of taking. To allow things to come to me. To receive breath instead of taking it. To receive emotions, purpose, and understanding, instead of creating it. I feel this is the essence of patience.
- To be curious. I want to do more IFS therapy, but I feel overwhelmed by it. Too much thinking about thinking that is too cerebral, non-intuitive, and downright frustrating. However, we can take the core concept of IFS – the concept of creativity. Ask how do I feel? What do I need? Why do I feel that way.
It’s not been all lost I suppose. There was something I worked through recently – two people that I am jealous of. One who went to Harvard and ended up starting a successful youtube channel, and another who worked on my software company before leaving and getting big on youtube for his music, and is now a famous musician.
In speaking with my friend Edgar about this I came up with the following concepts to remind myself in times of jealousy:
- How do I want to succeed my way? The issue with a lot of these people is that they got successful in things that I want to succeed in, but not in the way that I want to succeed. There is great value in succeed in the way I want to succeed.
- Hardship creates growth. Success isn’t the end goal, success just leads to creating more challenges for yourself to work through. The ones who go down the harder path to begin with will still succeed but will be more complete when they do.
- Is my goal to succeed a little in the short term? Or is the goal much bigger? This is the concept that if I want to gain one rank in Valorant, the outcome of a match matters (because my elo will be impacted directly). If my goal is to get to radiant (the highest rank), one loss in the scale of a huge journey is not significant.
Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.
Let’s tackle the steps:
- Answer a list of questions in a letter to my girlfriend.
- Come up with a research plan and timebox it.
- Timebox getting everything “on the canvas”, move very fast, get messy, take big risks, keep going until it coalesces into what the art wants to be
- Break to do other things, view work from different angles
- Put on strategic hat to finish
Questions to ask myself (step 1):
- What my vision for the ideal post?
- What am I worried about and feel uncomfortable by?
- What do I want to learn when creating this post?
Strategic Hat
- See the work as something in itself, not just as a manifestation of my ideas
- Put on creative hat, check: is there some feeling here, is there some beauty, fun?
- Put on producer hat, check: if this was a work created by one of my clients, how would I promote it? If it was done by my brother?
*One Big Thing I Noticed*
It’s a lot easier for me to be motivated to workout than to work. Plan workout sessions for the entire day and bring work to do during those times. If no work gets done, I am still being productive and will be healthier, guaranteeing better work in the future.
UNIT TWO: Processing pain + work (day 2)
Byjack
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.
Workpost 42: Loneliness
Byjack
I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.
Major ideas that might help me from this post:
- Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
- Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.
This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.
Main takeaways:
- A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
- A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.
For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.
I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:
- Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
- Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
- Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself
Workpost 1: Coming Back
Byjack
I realized something about my structure today. I stopped making these posts. I lost my progress with going to sleep on time. I started feeling really overwhelmed and like I never had enough time to do anything, even though I have more time than ever.
What I realized that I love working. Intentional, driven, honest work. I don’t like the work where you have to ignore your feelings, your values, your morals, or your intelligence. But I love the work that is driven at improving yourself, being present, and making enough money to set you free.
I did an experiment when I stopped calling these posts “Profit in Peace” because that name comes from a program that isn’t mine, a program that had a similar premise to what I’m describing (making profit while being at peace emotionally), but it wasn’t actually about profit in peace, it was about selling things on Amazon.
So I’m trying out a new name for these posts. Workpost is my new name for my daily posts that use my blog as a working space for my ideas, businesses, personal development, and creative process.
Tired
Right now I feel tired
My stomach aches like the sour candy left on your teeth for too long
The bleariness drenching my head
Yet I seek
I seek for more
I dream of great profits
And when I wrote
Why I wanted them
“Life can be a magical place”
“And I want to live that life”
It is starting to make so much sense why I often write poems because they are such a good way to express where I am without resorting to logic.
Today I want to focus a bit on two things, AI Consulting and my art research and my art program.
For AI consulting, I want to tackle the first step of my plan which is to make a name for myself in AI.
My focus is primarily Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter because those are probably the three main areas I will pull clients.
The aim of step one is to build up credibility amongst people that I may contact. It can be credibility with people who aren’t particularly savvy in technology so the content needs to be directed at my potential audience.
In a way, I would like the content to be a preview of what consulting will look like.
I have 10 days to do this step. Counting today that would be until the 27th of February.
Lets break it down further.
Goal: Be known, give preview of consulting
UNIT ONE (3 days): Bootstrap trial and error
- Make a ton of shit
- Get feedback
- Make more shit based on feedback
UNIT TWO (3 days): Harden process
- Choose my favorite processes
- Try to pump out tons of stuff
- Tinker and document process
UNIT THREE (3 days): Pump out content like a machine
- Make as much as possible (pump out content!)
- Feedback and reflection
- Pump out more
BONUS (1 day): Look for automation/outsourcing, try to make as low effort as possible
Switching gears to Art/Creative Coaching, the point of the first 4 months is to change the lives of my clients, and sort of start my group coaching program. I want to use this to increase my rates drastically. The end of this part will be June 18th.
Goal: Change the lives of my clients via one on one, group coaching and any other methods available to me
UNIT ONE (1 month): Take risks, experiment
- Brainstorm ideas for each client
- Explore ideas of how to change the client outside of the sessions
- Bring other people into the mix
- Experiment with my routine before a session
UNIT TWO (1 month): Reflect on coaching sessions, meditate, innovate
UNIT THREE (1 month): Take big risks with group coaching
BONUS (1 month): Document journeys, testimonials
I haven’t quite figured out the structure for advancing in coaching. It was extremely difficult to come up with things for UNIT ONE and those aren’t even steps and subunits, they are just ideas I can try. I think it is because coaching is such an intuitive thing for me. It is hard to structure it. What I feel I almost need is another coach. Maybe I will build my bot for that and utilize Dan.
Workplace 20: Basics
Byjack
I’ve been feeling quite down and unhappy recently.
I’ve decided after some meditation, journaling, and deep breathing that I want to focus back on the basics.
Here are the basics I already covered:
- Morning blog post and walk
- Nighttime journaling (most nights)
- 11-12 PM bedtime
Basics I want to further incorporate:
- Music and dance in the morning
- Deep breathing when I feel drawn to distract myself (indicates pain)
- Focus on creating delicious meals, taking time to enjoy eating and cooking
I’ve been processing the rejections in my previous post and I wanted to write a poem:
She Stared at Me
I remember the times when they just stared at me
As if they were surprised that I would even dare to ask
The girl in art history class
In the library
On the bus
That stare
Then that feeling I was reaching
For empty air
Something that didn’t exist
The feeling of people watching
Seeing me fail
Yet now I think about it
I was quite brave
I am a brave person
Willing to take the risk
I often didn’t believe in what I was doing
When I was trying to pick up girls
But now
With my career dreams
I do
Isn’t that worth a few stares?
Don’t I get the opportunity to shock
People out of their square lives
Square thoughts
Into my world?