I had a slower start to the day. I started the day on my phone, waking up a bit early because my new retainer is bothering me when I sleep.
I watched some Valorant, talked to my girlfriend, and now I have a flight in about 3 hours. I want to leave in about 2 hours. I still have to take out the trash, eat up some more food and load the dishwasher.
I did a bit of a workout and I found out a couple of things that help with regaining energy, and gathering chi:
Butt-clenched breathing: sounds a bit weird but it works. Lie down, clench the sphincter muscle (what you use to hold in poop) breath in. Then relax and breathe out. Repeat.
Tummy circles: put the left hand over your stomach, then your right hand over that. Make circles over your stomach in the clockwise direction. Do it lightly. Then put your hands in the same area in your back and repeat.
Extremity exercises: this can be any exercise that works your extremities. For example, doing a dead hang and focusing on clenching really hard with your hands but leaving everything else relaxed, or doing heel raises with the tips of your toes super engaged with everything else relaxed.
Meditation: lie down close your eyes and walk down a staircase while counting to 10. Imagine the smell of wet stone, always puts me in a meditative state really quick for some reason.
Anyway goals for today. Just relax! I want to get all the chores sorted out and just spend the rest of my time relaxing.
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.
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:
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?
How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working?
What do I do about my art coaching website?
How do I get everything done in such a short period of time?
Should I start registering for fairs?
Should I pay someone to design the website for me?
How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently?
How do I start going to the gym and working outsite the apartment consistently?
How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time?
How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses?
When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time.
My goal today is to find balance, however that looks like…feeling like I can spend time meeting all my needs and progressing at the speed that I want to progress at.
For my AI Consulting, I want to spend some time this morning thinking through it a little more and following some of the steps I took in my project.
For my consulting project, here are the things I want to get done:
Last night, I went to bed at 11, but fell asleep after 1AM.
I feel totally drained.
Maybe its time to go back to bed for a little.
So I wrote that at 8 in the morning. I just took a nap after cooking for the entire morning with delicious tea eggs and soup. Then I spent a few hours napping and now I feel much better.
I really think my productivity is so much worse when my health is worse.
More napping, meditation, and exercise in the future! Napping if I’m sleep deprived, meditation and exercise if I’m not.
Today, the aim I want to focus on is content creation. I want to finish my post, and workout and meditate for the rest of the day.
Today I want to spend some time solidifying knowledge from my project for my AI consulting business.
I also want to spend some time on my art coaching business. Also, I want to spend some time gaming and working on my project.
I think I will spend 1 hour on each of those things. AI consulting business in the morning, project in the afternoon, art coaching at night.
The reason why is that I’ve been out of balance, spending so much time working late at night. I need a little recharger. I want to work at stage 2 (like 60-70% max workrate).
If I feel 3 hours of work is at the lower end of stage 2, maybe it’s 40%, max workrate is maybe 8 hours. That makes sense, I think 8 hours is pushing it for absolute maximum amount of effective work (you can obviously work ineffectively for longer than that).
But now I think about it, maybe it is less about how many hours I work, but more how intensely I think. I dunno, interesting concept.
Ok so after feeling out of sorts all day, there is feeling I want to process:
Hopelessness and exhaustion. After obsessing about the project for many hours every day, I gave it my all, and all in all I think I failed. I got a few “this is great” “good work” but deep down I don’t feel people were inspired and even if they were, I don’t see a vision anymore. I’m not excited for the vision and I feel extremely tired and burnt out.
I feel sharp pain and burning in my heart and buzzing exhaustion in my head and eyes, and tension in my stomach.
The wounds coming up are: my work is meaningless. Nothing I do has any impact. Everything feels gray and uninteresting.
Feels almost like a stitch in my side but in my heart instead. My eyes feel sore and dry and my mind feels numb. There is a strong feeling of emptiness in my head, almost like meditation but instead of open, I feel drained, empty.
I feel anger in response, frustration burning in my abdomen, hatred for feeling so stuck by people who are not inspired. I feel disconnected. I am alone. I have no meaning.
There is also fear in my heart that nothing will have meaning, even coaching and AI consulting.
I feel really burnt out.
I feel pressure not to get left behind, to face the overwhelming work with little motivation to spare.
Ok, well I felt the feelings for some time. Here is my response:
This is good, because it allows you to take a break from work and focus on what you love
My client always tells me that having a good vision is not enough…that’s his coping mechanism he learned as a child, it doesn’t mean I have to agree or stop my creative process to prove him wrong
My job is to be inspired and spending time on things that inspire me is not a waste of time
Maybe it will be a good opportunity to meditate and see what comes up
