Tuesday, September 30

2:03 discipline

it's hard to start a routine when my schedule is determined by my whims.

I can always do it tomorrow.

Friday, September 26

Happyness in three steps:

In random order:

- Work, to make money: being self-sufficient.
- Something, haven't figured it out yet.
- Work, to make things for the sake of making things.

Saturday, September 20

4:07 back in the east coast

not sure where it's from, but someone, maybe more than one person, once said:
no matter where you go — there you are.


time for new habits? possible?

people say you should break from habits. but I haven't established my habits yet.

Wednesday, September 17

16:07 GPS Systems

The next evolution in navigational systems will guide you through life.

Monday, September 15

13:47 Snooping

watching. following. looking?

and sundry adjectives.

browsing through someone's facebook photos gives you a false sense of who you think they are.

you'll see all the photos and assume things. and if you happen to be interested in the person, delusions.

idealized and romanticized thoughts as to who they are. and who they can be.

and that's fun.

then I see things that tell me, oh, she's probably too much this way or that way, and I say, it'll probably be more fun if I just watch from afar. check in every now and then.

and leave it at that. keep the fantasy going. keep it alive. because it's fun at this moment. and I'd rather have that than finding out anything else.

what a silly world we live in.

23:55pm Seattle to Portland

A weekend in Seattle only gives you a glimpse of the city.

How long do you have to live in a city in order to know it? to figure out what makes it different from other cities?

two and a half days isn't enough.

I get to take photos and walk around. be in the city, but afterwards, there isn't much left for comparison.

only an impression and assumptions.

I'm tired now. not sure why. maybe 'cause I walked around quite a bit today at the Fair. where they sell 400 thread count egyptian cotton sheets.

I don't know what to take away from all this time off. all this exploring. digging myself out with a spoon.

maybe some perspective on life. a smidge.

Tuesday, September 9

When art is co-opted by ads



CP Luv points to this video.

It upsets me.

I actually enjoyed these inflatable bag-nimals when I saw them for the first time. But then it gets to a point where I've had enough of it.

It's a one shot.

Then I see the ad. which doesn't feel genuine. They try to tie it into riding the subway instead of driving. it makes sense, but it doesn't feel genuine. seems fake and forced.

so I don't like it.

the ad drives people to the site, but the site is lame.

it's the not the first time I've seen art co-opted for advertising. will it ever be legit?

don't think so. because the art wasn't created with that purpose. so when the ads try to use it, it wasn't the original intention.

can you justify it? maybe. but it still feels like a cop-out. finding the easy way out. it'll never be as good as coming something uniquely for the ad.

the magic is gone when you know how the trick is done.

Thursday, September 4

19:04pm Shopping is the most romantic thing imaginable

Strolling my way home, I passed by the Utretcht art supply store. Wander in and look around.

I look for a sketch pad, because I want to fill up a whole book with my wonderful ideas.

blank canvases all around me. each one a potential for something wonderful to happen.

I didn't need anything in particular. I've had plenty of sketchbooks half filled with scribbles, but none of them were close to the ideal sketchbook.

I didn't need anything, but I wanted to buy something, because of the potential.

shopping is the most romantic thing anyone can do.

Whenever we buy anything, we're buying potential. we have romanticized ideals as to what we want to do with our purchase. Make beautiful paintings. run better. look sexier. anything, but better. that's the goal when we buy things.

so we're always filled with what can be. that potential is what makes shopping so addicting. because we want to be better.

maybe that's why girls enjoy shopping more. because they can see the potential in things. they're more attuned to that part of them that allow them to see things. the better side of things.

then I went to Office Depot.

while going down the escalator, I thought about that potential again.

office depot doesn't sell office supplies. they sell potential. efficiency. they sell everything that can help you be more efficient at work. to be all you can be. at the office.

so I was naturally psyched about buying post-it notes. 'cause it'll help me be more organized and allow me to tack on neon squares of to-dos all around me.

same with index cards. to help me learn chinese. index cards.

I actually gasped in excitement when I saw half-sized index cards. what will they think of next?

then I went to Powell's book store. not books with information. but the potential to be inspired by stories. to be smarter from information.

when women go shopping. the potential to look better. to be desired.

that's the world we live in. it's filled with potential. all you have to do is buy it.

Wednesday, September 3

White-ish Birthday

0:56am A Sense of Oppression.

self imposed. stillness. silence. a spotlight in a concrete room.

the question is how does anyone control what they feel beyond any moment?

if you're sad. how do you turn it around and make yourself smile?

how long do you allow yourself to feel certain things until it's enough and no more.

enough so that any more is destructive. counter-productive.

how do you stop yourself when you can barely tell where you are. or how do you even realize what you don't know.

Monday, September 1

Nina Holton, whose playfully wild germs of ideas are the genesis of her sculpture, is very firm about the importance of hard work: "Tell anybody you're a sculptor and they'll say, 'Oh, how exciting, how wonderful.' And I tend to say, 'What's so wonderful?' It's like being a mason, or a carpenter, half the time. But they don't wish to hear that because they really only imagine the first part, the exciting part. But, as Khrushchev once said, that doesn't fry pancakes, you see. That germ of an idea does not make a sculpture which stands up. It just sits there. So the next stage is the hard work. Can you really translate it into a piece of sculpture?"

Jacob Rabinow, an electrical engineer, uses an interesting mental technique to slow himself down when work on an invention requires more endurance than intuition: "When I have a job that takes a lot of effort, slowly, I pretend I'm in jail. If I'm in jail, time is of no consequence. In other words, if it takes a week to cut this, it'll take a week. What else have I got to do? I'm going to be here for twenty years. See? This is a kind of mental trick. Otherwise you say, 'My God, it's not working,' and then you make mistakes. My way, you say time is of absolutely no consequence."

18:27 Reading online makes me anxious

Because the minute I open a page, see something interesting, and click on the link, there's something else on the new page that's interesting.

and down the rabbit hole we go.

it's worse when one page yields multiple pages. it quickly spider-webs into way too many tabs to read in one sitting. and before you know it, I'm reaching for my inhaler to keep myself from hyperventilating.

welcome to the joys of the information age. when everything is at my fingertips, how do I keep myself from overdosing?
“Talent” is like having a nice ass or a rich father; it helps open doors, but the actual work on the other side of the door is all on you."
from 43Folders
“I don’t miss my old life in New York. I only miss the life in New York I know I never would have had.”
“Just remember that there are other places,” she says, “and other people live there, with perfectly happy lives.”
from New York Magazine

Reading this article from Portland. I've lived in Miami besides NYC. But visiting Portland feels like the first time I've been to any other city besides NYC. maybe it's the lack of family.

or how different it is. or the fact that up until a certain point, you only consider certain things in a certain light. meaning that I had never thought about the liveability of cities until recently. and any experience before those thoughts started happening don't count.

the article affects how I feel about the tentative future, since, like all future events, nothing has happened yet.
There's so much labeling in the marketplace with the word luxury. It's become one of the most over-leveraged terns in marketing. But, curiously, no one's taken the concept of information and packaged it in a way that says: to get information first is one of the biggest luxuries of all. I think that there's room to use both the newspaper platform and probably a radio platform to create a very powerful print and broadcast brand.
Tyler Brûlé