journal
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad; whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
- John le Carre
- John le Carre
Someone once told me that saying “Rabbit” on the first day of the month will bring you good fortune for the rest of that month.
Happy February. We are already in month two of 2020. I hope your year has been good thus far. Mine’s had its share of challenges but nothing major, in my opinion. The blessings far outweigh any hassle and I hope it stays that way. The changes I’ve implemented at the beginning of the year and even a couple of months prior to that has been truly helpful in improving my outlook in general and how I cope with and react to obstacles. I just uploaded video 18 on YouTube which briefly covers and tracks my progress in terms of making art, personal development, and ensuring I have leisure time / ME time for this week. No energy slumps this week, thankfully. Not like the one last week. I did have to push through on Friday since it was a particularly super mega busy day. It was already evening and I still haven’t worked out. My brain started to make excuses as to why I should just skip it and postpone until the next day. It’s just old habits trying to sneak back in just as it sees a bit of weakness. I pushed through it and worked out anyway. I’m pretty proud of that. Last year, I would’ve just given in and procrastinated. *** Goals I reached this week: Self-improvement = Exercised 3X Creative pursuits = I worked on my ink drawing (grid series); wrote a blog post Leisure time = I was able to play some games on STEAM and watch some TV shows I’ve been trying to keep up with Goals I didn’t complete fully: Daily Meditation (5 out of 7 days) Journaling (1 out of 2 days) *** How was your week? Hope it was a good one. If not, there’s always next week to work on. Until then, “Rabbit.” Be well, [R]
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I’m typing this blog post as I wait for this week’s YT video to render (currently at 66% uploaded.) Better late than never. The last two videos and posts were typically up by middle of the day on Saturday. We’re a minute shy of 10pm and I’m still at it.
It’s indicative of the kind of week it’s been. Nothing bad, just a lot of changes and events here and there which shifted a lot of my tasks. While I didn’t get all of my weekly goals checked off, it would have been much worse if I didn’t have any schedule in place at all. A year ago, something like this would have completely thrown me off guard. I’m not sure what changed this time around but for once, I’m ok with it. Of course, there are certain times where I feel it’s optimal to do certain things. For instance, meditation first thing in the morning is what works for me. But this past week, I actually missed a day (it was that busy), and on a couple of days, including today, I have to put it off until later. The same thing can be said with my workouts. I prefer to do them during a certain time and certain days, but this week, I had to bump two days towards later in the week. The important thing is that I get them done as these are habits I’m trying to instill for the long term. Goals that were reached this week:
What I did not get to do in its entirety:
What works: Plan by week, augmented with revisiting nightly to see if there are any changes that could affect the rest of the schedule for the next day. What doesn’t work: Not getting early enough on weekends. I need these crucial quite times to get work done. Time to wrap this up. The vid has rendered and is posted. *** Have a great week. Make some stuff. Do kind things. Be well, [R] I just posted a new vid on YouTube. I would’ve been done sooner but I decided to add background music to it. In doing that I needed to use an audio editor to cut and splice the music so that it was sufficient for the length of the video. It was a bit tricky but the loop came out alright and I like the way the vid turned out.
It was good to be able to work on my ink drawings again. I’ll be doing more of it this week, even if it’s just an hour a day. Everytime life gets busy my art and writing seems to be the things that are sacrificed and pushed aside. As if they’re not important enough to fit into my life. Although no matter how long I fall into a slump, I’m always drawn back into drawing and writing (pun not intentional). What I hope to accomplish by planning, tracking, putting out videos, is that it’ll become a new habit that I’m not willing to set aside so easily. So here’s a quick run-down of which specific goals were reached this week:
What I did not get to do:
What works:
What doesn’t work:
It’s snowing outside and I have a few things to take care of so I can hit the drawing board this evening. *** How has your week been? Are you working on any personal projects at the moment? Be well, [R] Trying on a new year for size and comfort is always strange isn’t it?
I have been using a bullet journal since August 2019 to set and track goals. I break things down by week which seems to work at the moment. Some main to-dos that I completed for online work last week were minor site updates, blog post, and some YT updates. YT updates took longer than usual since it’s been awhile since I uploaded a vid and the platform has made changes since I last did anything with it. I spent some time the last couple of days creating basic templates so that my workflow is better. I’ll see how it goes for the next vid. It’s been a very busy week and while it’s been productive, my energy level has not been the same since I haven’t been exercising for a couple of weeks now. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I caught the flu a week before Christmas, and I still have a minor cough from that illness. This forthcoming week, I am back to my exercise routine which should significantly improve my overall energy and mood. I still have to do some planning for the week so I’ll conclude this entry now. Be well, [R]
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad; whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen. Currently: Drawing. In the traditional sense. Not so much in digital format as I've done so in the last few years. My graphite pencils and inking pens are getting a lot of mileage as of late, as it should. I've almost forgotten how much fun it is to just draw things I like, and draw things out of my dreams or at least pieces of what I remember (which is something that's been happening a lot to me lately). The scratching noise that a perfectly sharpened pencil tip makes when it makes contact with the paper. Filling in the lines and the in-between with black ink. It's the best. It's been fun, challenging, and keeps me sane.
Discipline. Patience. Control. So much to learn about drawing. Learning about new techniques, observing, applying. I'm just soaking it all in. Movies. Graphic novels. Music. The art of storytelling in whatever format it may be. It doesn't matter. It all feeds the same beast. I'm not sure where I was going with this post... Truth is, I'm a bit preoccupied. Sitting over to my left is the current piece I'm working on...and it's all I can think about right now. Also, I will make a new section on this site for art posts. I've scanned some already but getting the page together means time away from actual drawing so it will have to wait. I try post up some works on my Instagram acct. which is quite new. (@zerotorockstar if you want to add me - link on upper rt side of this page.) Thanks for reading and see you around. I originally wrote this post at the end of October with the intention of posting it the first week of November but for some reason it stayed in the virtual file cabinet called Evernote for a whole month because I'm lame / I'm a bad blogger / I got real busy with stuff. Whatever. =P Anyways, I've unearthed this piece and going over it again.
I recently read about the Zeigarnik Effect, see its definition below as taken from PsychWiki The Zeigarnik Effect is the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008, pg. 122). The automatic system signals the conscious mind, which may be focused on new goals, that a previous activity was left incomplete. It seems to be human nature to finish what we start and, if it is not finished, we experience dissonance. By starting something, we tend to have this desire to complete this task. Of course this goes hand in hand with focus and not procrastinating but from what I gather, we'll always strive to finish what we started. I just released my first novel a couple of months ago. I sure as hell didn't write that in a month or less. More like slowly punching letters in between projects for about a couple of years. Could I have done all that in less time? Absolutely. But regardless of how long it took to write, rewrite, and rewrite some more, the important thing is that it's done, and in channeling my inner Seth Godin, I shipped it. Come to think of it, penning the first draft was by far the easiest aspect of writing and publishing a novel in my own humble opinion. It's everything else after that took a bit of time. Of course there were hurdles along the way. Resisting the urge to edit while you write. This was a big one for me. It was horrible. I just couldn't help myself and didn't even realize I was doing it. I had to break that habit real quick which greatly improved my daily writing output in my current works in progress. By criticizing and doing line edits instead of focusing on getting the initial story out it was taking time and focus away from getting those critical initial thoughts down on paper. Bad writer! =) I went through periods where I would set the novel aside and pick it up a month later. What happens is that I have to get myself reacquainted with the work again. So now instead of juggling two or three different stories all at once which I used to do and still have a slight tendency of doing. I just focus on one and complete it before moving on to something else. See, I'm kind of doing it again right now. Here I am typing this blog post while thinking about another blog post I'll be working on at a later date. Focus man, focus! After the rewrites, I had a hell of a time formatting this for some reason. I never had any issues with formatting any of my past works but for some reason this one was a doozy. Of course this was formatted for the print book as well so that was mainly the cause of my headaches. I think I spent an entire day, formatting, reformatting, and testing the sucker until i was happy with the results. Live and learn, eh? Then again. it's just like anything in life, it gets easier the more you do it. Despite its share of hair-pulling moments, this first novel is something I'm very proud of. Anyway, I've always known this work couldn't be contained in 1 volume. Even during its early stages I've already had ideas for at least a Book 2. So in terms of works in progress, I'll be working on Book 2 next year, that's the plan anyway, to stat work on it. I want to thank everyone who has helped me with my books, whether you bought it / tweeted about it / retweeted or whatever. It truly does help in getting the word out. I try to plug every so often on Twitter but I hate to be one of those folks that constantly peddle their wares. There's a way of doing it that is not intrusive. BOOK SALE! Another quick sale, my 2nd one. If you want to snap up a digital copy for only $2.99, that's $2 off, just go here https://gumroad.com/l/XpkA Then enter the code: panic First 25 purchases gets it. You'll get a zip file with a pdf, epub, and mobi files of the novel. Stay tuned for the next blog post in which I'll briefly go over my process of cover art design. Till next time, Your friendly neighborhood letter puncher. - Ro P.S. Don't forget to start on your project. Get it out of your head and work on it. Create. Make art. Then share. =) |
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