Extreme Z7

<09-08-2016> I Started A New Drawing Blog I've been thinking about the fact that the majority of my sketches aren't uploaded online anywhere. Personally, I think this is because I've pretty much gotten rid of the mentality that literally everything that an artist creates should be somehow given any form of online presence. With drawing, however, I find that each new thing is has become quite unique in their own way that it would be a shame not to build an online archive of every single page just for the sake of allowing other people to see it. I draw everyday and I've been doing so consistently for almost two months now. I can upload each new page onto my Deviantart account but I personally don't want to because most of my drawings are "just practice" and I don't want to mess up my account with them. My solution: set up a separate blogspot site where I post almost everything. You can find the site at extremedailydrawing.blogspot.com. I've only made 2 posts so far but there definitely is more to come.

<09-06-2016> I Still Meditate (and other stuff) I noticed that it's been a long time since I've talked about meditation in this journal. I worry that it's because I have not been taking it seriously enough over the past month. I still do it consistently though and I still love watching various spirituality videos to complement it. But I find that recent events have made me too distracted from it. Both my creative work and college work seem to be getting in the way. I don't know if this is ultimately lead to disaster but I do know that I have to make an effort to correct this. In other news, I've been thinking quite a bit about animation. I've always been an animation fan and over the past month I've been very obsessed with watching various short films scattered around YouTube. Not just your petty humor stuff but actual artistically motivated stuff. For a while I've been telling myself that I need to keep practicing my drawing skills first AND THEN get into animation. But the more I ponder about it, the more I realize the bullshit in this kind of thinking. My ego is trying to rationalize me into procrastination by telling me that I have to get good at drawing before I can "advance" into animation. The truth is that I really need start animating as early as I can and learning about it as early as possible especially since it is critically important that I even KNOW that it's a authentic thing for me to pursue in life and not just a random passing interest that stems from my distractions. I found this to be the case with music and video making, for a while, I dabbled with music production and let's play content but I found, much to my surprise, that they were not right for me. Especially music, it was pretty shocking for me to realize that I don't really have true authentic desire of the art of music. I have a feeling that animation is going to be different. Over the months of personal development growth I've experienced so far, I've seen big results in the level of contemplation I do in my life which is very important. I found that I have a true authentic desire to tell stories through visual means. The stuff I've created through my drawings are actually more dear to me than any song I've produced so far and even any game I've ever made. Visual imagination and storytelling is much closer to my heart than anything else. I still love music, don't get me wrong, and I will still get back to making more music in the future because I still have a deep love for the art form. But I really have to cut the stuff that is the least deeply ingrained in my soul and construct a far simpler and focused way of pursuing my life purpose. I found that my life purpose journey falters the most when I have multiple fucking desires, all of which clawing at my psyche to be fulfilled. That's all for this entry. It's a pretty long one compared to previous one's I've made recently. I guess I had a quite a bit of stuff in my head that's been wanting to be expressed for a long time.

@Canadian

<09-05-2016> Gotta Love Mondays It's been weird transitioning from Sundays to Mondays each week because Sunday tends to be the day where I lay back the most and be the least productive and on Mondays, I kind of expect myself to get back to a productive funk. I'll be honest, I hate procrastination more than I hate stressful work. Obviously because I get stuff done in the latter and also because I'm also stressed out when doing the former. Anyway, this morning I procrastinated more than I expected I would and I felt frustrated but it was not the first time I felt the feeling so it was slightly more bearable, but during the afternoon I found myself getting back to my motivated self. I have a lot I want to get done this week so here's to another engaging week where I work, learn and love more than I have previously been able to.

<09-04-2016> What Are The Answers To All The Deep Questions of Life? Welp, I'm inspired.

<09-03-2016> Clueless Directionless I had no clear idea what I wanted to do today. I'd usually have a list of things I want to do in my head but today I basically just went with the flow and spent time with entertainment when I wanted to and spent time working on things I want to accomplish when I wanted to. I feel weirdly satisfied though, like I didn't spend too much time with entertainment that I felt I got too lazy and I didn't spend too much time working that I got anywhere near stressed. In the end, my directionless approach got me equal amounts distractions and external results and I can't really ask for any more today (That's not exactly true, I still have cravings to do this and that as I write this.) But I think I only got lucky, so far I still think that a mindful and focused day are the ones I'm really going to be proud of but days like this should also be cherished I suppose. That's all for today.

@Chew211 That's the right attitude towards games through a personal development perspective.

<09-02-2016> I Need A Break This week has been intense. Not too brutal, but I did push myself a lot to get things I've been delaying done. Really pushing my productivity threshold level a little bit just to see how high I can put it at my current stage in life. Now, I want to rest this Friday night. Not worry much about the next weeks but just sit back with some entertainment.

<09-01-2016> Should I Think 10 Years In The Future Or Be More Present? Obviously the answer is both. Thinking far into the future also feels like I'm grounding myself more on the present so I can keep pursuing my higher goals. This is taking a lot of patience from me but as long as I keep at it daily, I shouldn't have too much of a problem. Anyway, I worked a lot on my indie game today, I spent my entire morning on it because I had a lot of ideas that just took me a lot of time to implement. I also had a bit of college work to do, I half-assed it thought because it's not something I have a real passion for. As for drawing, I have not done it yet but I plan to do some more practice tonight before I go to bed. That's all for today, nothing too special, just more productivity and contemplating.

<08-31-2016> I'm A Workaholic Just a little thought that crossed my mind today. I know I've talked about it before but I always seem to forget about it. Fortunately, over the previous months with my meditation and mindfulness work, I've been slowly transforming my life to feel a lot calmer and less work-centric but I still am neurotically work driven. But on the other hand, I also find myself working a lot more because my higher levels of awareness and emotional control allow me to work harder and faster without too much procrastination. Still can't wait to get out of college, though, because by then a huge workload will have been taken off my back (If I've done my work properly, that is).

Step 1 in getting rid of video games is getting your ass off the culture. The video game culture and the community surrounding is a very blind and distracted culture that doesn't know dick about self-actualization. I'm qualified to say this because I myself was an insider in this community for a very long time and still probably am to an extent.

@The Obedient Listner Don't focus too much on the words. Notice what we mean by these things in a conscious level.

@Christian Good! Modern science is simply bent towards predicting outcomes in phenomena through direct empirical observation. All of that is good and all but none of it is bent towards finding what is actually true about reality. You should consider yourself extremely lucky for figuring this out at a very early age. ----------------------------------------------------------------- @The Obedient Listner You should make the distinction between science and technology.

<08-30-2016> I Feel Good I feel much better today than I was yesterday. Today, I basically cut out a lot of distraction to make room for more productive work and the guilt and shame I felt from yesterday didn't arise again. I'm still being patient still slowly working towards higher goals and higher achievements but a lot of the lesser short-term goals are still important for me to finish. If I can't help but distract myself from all the small obligations I need to complete, how am I ever going to handle the pressure of pursuing my higher ambitions? I really need to keep reminding myself of this, otherwise I remain a slave to my distractions for even more days.

<08-29-2016> Sick Of My Rut! I'm sick of all my emotional troubles, I'm sick of living in mediocrity, and I'm deeply frustrated with my procrastination. I really want to live an amazing high-quality lifestyle but I find that I'm still struggling with distractions. It's days like these when I feel like I should target a certain unhelpful habit and just quit it for about a week and see what happens. I probably will do that because I can't afford to sit around and waste my time at the current stage of my life. I have a lot of troubles the require massive consistent action that my lower self wants to avoid for the sake of lessening the burden of emotional labor. Right now, I want to make a simple commitment to not play any video games for a week and just see what happens. I do not want to face the guilt of lost of productivity because I wanted to distract myself for a few hours. It's not enough that I just finish my obligations, though, I feel that my life purpose is on the line too. I find that my creativity and motivation to pursue my dreams falters when I'm in a emotionally negative state. My life purpose is so significant to me that it's almost like a life or death situation at this point.

<08-28-2016> I Have No Clue What I Want To Write About Today So Here's A YouTube Animation To Make Up For It

<08-28-2016> Not Even Baby Steps Each Day But Little Caterpillar Squirms But hey, it's still progress!

<08-26-2016> Getting Inspired To Be Creative I've think I've found my true creative passion. I love to draw and visualize ideas onto the real world through visual means, I also love to do it through audio or game design but being a visual storyteller is where my heart lies. A thought crossed my mind today about asking what it would be like if I gave up drawing and pursued something else (Not that I was considering it, I was just curious) and I found that I just couldn't bear to handle removing it from my life. Meanwhile, if I'm ever barred from making music or coding/game design for the rest of my life, I could still make the most of it. Now I find that I've gotten a step upwards and now have to focus on getting inspired and positively motivated to embody the creativity that I want to contribute to the world. Reduce as much guilting, moralizing, or any negativity based emotion that I've used to rely on so much to get myself to do stuff. Being inspired to create a funny cartoon is loads more fun than telling myself that I have to do it because it's my life purpose. I have a lot to learn, a lot of effort to expend, a lot of time to practice, before I can tell myself that I can die happy. EDIT: I stumbled upon this Rupert Spira video a minute after writing this entry, I thought it was really amazing so I thought I'd share:

@Leo GuraWhat do you think about politics? Is it important in one's life to know current political events? Personally, I've never gotten interested in the news on politics. I'm slightly interested in studying what's it's all about and sometimes the psychology that comes into play among politicians can be fun to learn about. But what about the actual political events? Sometimes I worry that I'm being an ignoramus for not following it.

<08-25-2016> Pretty Ok Day Today was a pretty ok day. Nothing too nasty, nothing too inspiring. Very different from yesterday which felt a bit too stressful but also had a moment of pure present awareness and excitement for the future. I guess the gauge of daily intensity doesn't like consistency. That's all for today. Again, pretty even flowing day, there were still a lot of waves, of course, but nothing I couldn't handle.

<08-24-2016> Combating Stress With 'Do Nothing' I had a lot of unexpected stress panics today. Eventually, I just couldn't bare to handle them anymore so I shut down my computer and the lights to my room and began to lie in bed quietly. I started noticing everything in my present awareness to the best of my ability. Every emotion, every thought, every motivation I currently had to do the things I keep telling myself I need to do. So many things happened afterwards that I don't want to detail them all. Just know that I felt instantly happier and more conscious of the fact that I had no reason to be stressed and I was creating everything I was being stressed about. It feels like a step closer to this weird concept called 'unconditional happiness' which has been mentioned many times in Leo's videos. I could actually feel that my ego has a lot of resistance to being happy no matter what whether I'm working on something or doing nothing. That's all I want to say for today. I have more work to do.

@Leo Gura Yeah but everyone's ego can still use advice like that to rationalize abuse which is far more common. That kind of advice isn't very helpful to the majority. Still, I agree demonizing is something one should be weary of.

<08-23-2016> Unable to Fully Accept Emotionally Challenging Tasks Over the past couple weeks, I've been dealing with a lot of internal pain and pressure to do this and do that but I can't help but procrastinate too much and guilt myself when I do. A few minutes ago, I started feel some progress away from this and actually got very mindful of the present moment every "negative" sensation I felt simply dissolved into pure perception. I guess, after a while, your feet do get used to the fire of reality. The question on my mind is, how deep can I take this and for how long can I hold it? Feelings of stress and frustration characterize this phase I'm moving through. Last month, I've been able to reach a peak of high performance and productivity that I've never experienced before but now I've definitely backslided. I think it's because of a return of a lot of duties and obligations that I actually don't enjoy doing but have to do anyway if I am to survive in this world, physically. In my case it's college work, the only work I really enjoy is creative work so I can't get myself motivated for this very much so uncontrollable procrastination is having its dark return. Somehow I feel it does not have to be this way. If I can just get used to the painful emotions a lot more then I feel I should be able to accomplish these unwanted goals very quickly.

<08-22-2016> Laziness Part 2