Fear. Affection. Inspiration.

Some words that I’ve been thinking about lately: Fear, Affection, and Inspiration.

Fear is a distressing negative sensation induced by a perceived threat, says Wikipedia. I’m afraid to do things that I know are completely safe. I’m afraid to do things that I know if I try, will bring me greater happiness. Somehow I get stuck – fixated on a problem, feel hesitation, and the negative thoughts grow. I find that not until I’m in a good place can I really look those thoughts in the ‘eye,’ gain clarity on just what needs to be done, and move on forward. It feels so good to face a fear.

Affection or fondness is a “disposition or rare state of mind or body” that is often associated with a feeling or type of love.   Affection is this thing that makes me more enjoyable, I feel. People like being around the sense of love that I can create and I like basking in the comfort they give back to me. Everyone needs a little love – so I don’t think this is a selfish way to move through the world.

Inspiration refers to an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavor. Why is that some people are inspired and others are not? I’m not sure if I agree with, or am feeling, the Wikipedia opener for inspiration.  I think what I’m looking for more is drive theory: The terms drive theory and drive reduction theory refer to a diverse set of motivational theories in psychology. Drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain physiological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied. Inspiration and drive, inspire me? I’d say so, yes. However, the act of having a creative, or unique thought is one thing. I’ve met several people who have great ideas. These folks, I swear, I’d get after them for days to pursue their idea and I receive nothing but passive excuses. I think that inspiration is the earmark for passion, the passion to make something happen. My next thought brings me to drive. So why can’t these folks compose enough passion to be driven? And why can someone with a whole lot of drive have no inspiration?  It must be that some people are born, or are trained, to feel that they need something more. People have asked me why I try so hard at various things in my life, and my response is something along the line of  ’I have to. The desire crawls on my skin.’ Much like a tireless itch. I must say that I respect people with the desire to pursue, to grow, to achieve; they’re admirable.

The Creative Process :: Article by Kimberly Brooks, Huffington Post

I came across this article by artist and new media designer Kimberly Brooks from the TED site.  She is the TEDx Fullerton guest speaker this year.

She compares the creative process to Kübler-Ross’s five stages of death. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance to the following eight stages: 1) Vision, 2) Hope, 3) Diving In, 4) Excitement, 5) Suspicion, 6) Clarity, 7) Obsession, and 8 Resolution. She makes the point in her article that people get steps one and two all the time, but its actually step three — diving in, that is the scary part. The act of doing separates the dreamers from the makers. Article here and Kimberly’s site here.

Corporate Conscience: Seth Godin

I agree with this, totally:

Corporate Conscience

There isn’t one.

Corporations don’t have a conscience, people do.

That means that every time you say, “It’s just my job,” or “My department has a policy,” or “All I do is work here,” what you’ve done is abdicated responsibility–to no one.

It’s convenient and even comfortable to blame the anonymous actions of many working in concert on a evanescent brand or organization, but that starts you on an inevitable race to the bottom. Organizations have more power than ever before. They are better synchronized, faster, and possess more tools to change the economy and the people in it than ever before. And the only option available to the rest of us is for individuals to take responsibility (it’s not given) for what they do and how they do it.

The very same tools that permit organizations to synchronize their efforts are now available to you and to me. I guess the question is: will we use that power to humanize the systems we’ve created?

PS It’s not just about being a good citizen: when bad behavior comes back to hurt the company, it hurts you, too.

The Never Ending Story, Creativity, and Finding Yourself (Buddhism)

I’m way too old to have watched The Never Ending Story for the first time.

Throughout the beginning of the story I made analogies between ‘the nothingness,’ a non-creative, factual, world full of responsibilities and tasks,  and ‘Fantasia,’ a land of fantasy, hope, and playfulness, to a book I’m reading written by the Dalai Lama, ‘How to See Yourself as You Really Are.’  Since Never Ending Story is really a children’s movie all the symbolism is spelled out at the very end — like any true fairy tale with a happy ending and moral of story.  The boring parental figure says at the very beginning, ‘keep your head out of the clouds and both feet on the ground,’ —  well,  this reality is the NOTHINGNESS (the black hole that destroys Fantasia land). The moral of the story is to stay imaginative, have high hopes, and be strong.

Falkor

I did see some relationship to the moral of the story and the thoughts of Buddhism. The characters in the story either represent our internal desire to stay alive, creative, and healthy, the Empress and the Warrior for example, and some others shadow the fear, anxiety, and the external influences that society places on individuals, the Turtle and the Wolf.  The empress is the creative beauty, youth, our soul that we need to keep alive and healthy. In Buddhism, one is taught to look to one’s inner self to discover true happiness and peace. It is outside influences that cause stress, anxiety, competitiveness, and ultimately, unhappiness. The Wolf preys on those that can be controlled, those without hope — an unsound soul that is consumed by the emptiness of unhappiness.  The Buddhists believe that happiness, compassion, and altruism will save the world (yes, just like the pink furry Love Dragon) and that battle will be the demise of life and everything beautiful.  So if Tibet is Fantasia, then China is the Nothingness.

Now time to bring in an article with no reference to pink furry love animals. Just to remind you, I’m talking about Falkor.  Check out this article from Fast Company:  Iconographic of the Day: China’s Monstrous environmental Problems .  Because of over population, a strong focus on growth, and not enough care for the country side and the  people, China is in severe trouble. The country’s economy could be destroyed by environmental problems. China has  air smog 2-3 times worse than LA, acid rains, and drought in large parts of the country.   Hmmm… I’d rather live in Fantasia.

And so on with my quest to bring people a little bit of happiness through (re)discovery of self and their creative side, in this case art.

Technology and Art, Emotional Landscape of the Internet

A friend introduced me to Johnathan Harris’s TEDX talk about the project We Feel Fine (check out the video, The Web’s Secret Stories here
). Harris is what I’d call a social tech artist in that his work convey’s web data in an artistic manner. The printed images are really cool and its easy to kill too much time on  the live site. Check out a portfolio of the rest of his work here.  We Feel Fine scrapes blog content with the trigger words ‘I am feeling’ and ‘I feel’ to see if an emotional key word or phrase exists in the remainder of the blog. The project captures the users personal information, ie. location, age, gender, and weather at time of post. Check out the live site here and click to open the program. Play around with the buttons on the bottom right and the navigation at the top of the page. So cool!

Founder Conference 2010

The founder conference at the Microsoft conference was a great learning atmosphere.  Saw some presentations by Aaron Patzer, Founder of Mint.com,  Adeo Rossi from The Funded, Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox, some PR guys  ( Anthony Ha, VentureBeat
Ryan Singel, Wired,  Hooman Khalili, Alice 97.3FM, Chris O’Brien, San Jose Mercury News) and Dave McClure who gave a presentation on AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) see his slide share presentation below:

Psychology and Art

I’ve recently got my mind set on the origins of creativity; the psychology behind why some of us are wonderful spastic zany creators, while others believe they lack the talent to dawn themselves A CREATOR.

I’m a fairly creative person who is also talented in the arts. I grew up wanting to get my hands onto crayons and clay and would stomp around the house in duck princess costumes. I was never told not to do these things and in fact was encouraged to be a weirdo, probably because I was entertaining to the rest of my family. I always loved art class, I spent most of my free time in high school working on AP work, studied design at college, and tried to get waitlisted into any other creative classes I could while at school. So I’ve got some training. As much as I’ve been brought up with creativity, I’ve been brought up with a business side.  I thought the two wouldn’t mix. I miss creating and getting my hands dirty with charcoal now that I sit at a desk 9-5.

Nowadays, I’d say that I’m passionate about the creative process and understanding and sharing creative experiences. I’ve done some reading and have found that we are all born creative. In fact, it is our natural state; trying new things out, experimenting… and failing. Children experience more theta brain waves (LINK about Theta), the creative kind, than do adults.  Adults experience these brain waves while sleeping, while dreaming.  So what happened to our creative ways?! First, our brains change so that we experience theta waves mostly while unconscious, secondly we learn not to express ourselves because others deem that drawing dead deranged animals, or zombie brides, is wrong. Man, I’m glad that Tim Burton’s teachers never reprimanded him. Check out his video story HERE, click on About Tim Burton.  Our teachers and parents taught us to doubt what our innermost self wanted to express. This sounds like crap! Maybe this is why we’re all repressed and need $$$ for psychological unwinding of the brain.

So as adults there are two ways to tap into our creative subconscious. The first is through a moment that is described as flow by psychologists. Flow is the moment that is reached when skill and action meet at a peak and all forms of self-consciousness disappear; we expend our energy on only the thing that matters most. The Zen idea of no-mind is similar, a state of complete absorption is what one is doing. The moment of flow can be experienced by athletes in a run or in a game.  The second way to understand what is going on in our subconscious mind is by understanding images that are experienced while dreaming.

Many people do not see themselves as being creative because they don’t paint, sing, dance, etc. I read an article called “The Art of Creativity,” published by Psychology Today (read HERE) which describes this as the “Big C.”  Many people see creativity—the glamorous achievements of geniuses—and overlook the ways each of us displays flair and imagination in our own lives.  Creativity, in fact, is merely a way of looking at the world. One can choose to look at the world in a state of fear, afraid of change. Or, one can change little things each day, experiment a little with cooking, with one’s hair, etc.  I think it feels pretty good and rewarding to be creative and inspired. A question that I ask myself is how can I share the thing that I love, the moment of creative flow, with the world that believes they aren’t creative because they’re not talented by their own definition?

Tonsai beach, Thailand

Day 12 of my trip to Thailand and I’ve made myvway to Tonsai Beach, part of the Krabi region. I took a ferry from Phuket, about an hour and a half of travel time, and was shuttled by a little Thai moter boat to Railay beach. The trip over was fantastic. Crystal clear blue water, limestone islands jutting out of the sea. This all ain’t so bad. Immediatly when I got to Railay I could tell the difference of lifestyle that Krabi has to offer. There were maybe 20 stores and bars on the path up from the beach. Super low key. Well, oops, I took a look at the bungalow website and it is actually 450 meters from Tonsai beach. I remember at the moment having read about the treachorous path from Railay to Tonsai. Yes, I almost gave up, turned around and called it quits. It really wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t carrying both bags and had some water. It was 20, maybe 30 minutes hiking through the HOT mosquito infested jungle up some pretty damn steep and narrow paths. I think I lost 5 pounds of water weight on this short trek and maybe the equivelent in blood. Tad bit of an exageration : ) So I finally get to the first set of bungalows where my friend and I have planned to meet and were hoping to find accomodation. Akkk, they were full and the lady working there didn’t speak much english. I almost turned back to see if I could grab an expensive room in Railay, glad i didn’t. I walked to the next set of bungalows, full again, but the owners were much more helpful. They called around and found me the only open room in Tonsai. When I looked online weeks ago all places that accepted reservations were full and all others were first come first serve. I snagged the room for 700 baht. This seems expensive for a fan

(no AC)  bungalow in the middle of the jungle/ rocky beach. There are lizards and ants running through the bungalow. This will be my first stay at a place with a mosquito net. My fantastic cottage in the hills of Phuket was 1200 baht.   I finally calmed down and cooled off once I put my bags down, then headed into ‘town’. This place has the aura of a tree house burning man rock climbing camp. It is assumed that if you’re in Tonsai that you climb. Went to the beach and I saw some people getting in their last climbs of the day. The beach is rocky and is not ideal for swimming, but there was a beautiful sunset. Sorry, no photos. I can’t wait to climb tomorow! Sorry for any mis-spellings, typing from my iPhone.

Tevra and monks.. Van Halen, hot for teacher!

Buckets of fun

Tonsai SF Crew

Tonsai, tide would bring water right to the rock.

Ok.. finally adding some photos and it is August 2010 now. Tonsai is AMAZING despite all my above bitching about the mosquitos, etc. People come here, and some never leave ; )  The crowd that sticks around is international, young, loves to climb and drink Chang. oooh, chang. I did two trips to Tonsai — one with Tevra, and another with Dave and other SF climbers from Mission Cliffs.  I’ll never forget the many sunsets I watched after a full day of climbing at the Freedom Bar.

While updating, I should also add that Koh Sok is, well, even far more amazing than Tonsai, but purely for the quiet beautiful desolate experience. We almost  got lost on the way to the jungle, a couple of times actually. No one here speaks English.. the real Thailand.  We hired a boat to drive us across the lake. It took about 45 minutes to get to the set of floating bungalows where we’d spend two nights. We ate like kings, swam, kayaked, and sat through several thunderstorms (about 4/day).

Chumphon

Khao Sok

Koh Tao

Koh Tao is a great place to see, fairly traveled.  Koh Phangan is the place to be for the full moon.

Palace of fine arts photoshoot

Well, ok, I’m more than a little late getting this post up considering the shoot was last year. I started the post shortly after the shoot, maybe I was waiting for pictures so the entry would look more interesting. I’m excited to do the next shoot, but I’m bummed that my Thailand tan is ALREADY gone.

On the afternoon of Saturday the 7th I got together with the crowd of iworld enterprise to work on their alter ego themed calendar. Dasha and Przemek asked me to be a model for the calendar which I was ecstatic about, what fun! The theme  that the duo  chose for me was an ancient roman gladiator setting, I was to be the empress and the warrior. D & P picked the personalities for me to show off my crazy outdoorsie strong side next to my soft, sophisticated feminine side.  There is always a chance they told me all this so they could build up my flattery and hence loyalty to the project.

We finally got ourselves collected and ready to go at the scene by about 1′oclock. Dasha was handling the camera, Przemek was  handling the lighting and promotion, and Sterling showed up at the tail end of his bike ride to, ehem, work on costume malfunctions.   Dasha had crafted an empress outfit at home and I was able to borrow a sweet looking Roman warrior outfit from my coworker. We set up at one of the columns that has a staircase leading to a flat landing. The outdoor light was great except that I was squinting most of the time.

It was fun to work collectively with the group, all of us being creative and having great ideas to contribute. The attention I got as a model was such a trip for me. The crowds passing through the Legion though I was legit, many asked who I was and where I was from.  Przemek capitalized on the moment by handing out business cards.

First Tuesdays Technology Update

I went to the Clausen Law Group technology update networking event last night. The group meets the first Tuesday of every month at Point Richmond and features a speaker with great work experience and insight into an industry.

The speaker last night was Tony Ruggiero, CEO of FirstOnScene LLC. He started his talk discussing the quality and price differences that the  military is spending on fighter jets.  He turned this around and compared the trends in fighter jet quality and price to the technology industry. He showed how IBM at its rise had some 55K workers, Microsoft had 27K, and eventually down the technology line, Faceboook has 1K workers with 300,000 users (a 1 to 300 employee to user ratio). The phenomena that he expresses here is that technology, when used efficiently costs less, therefore reaping greater profit margins, and requires less man power. The jump in technology that has made programs like Facebook and the iPhone so successful is that these programs were written to pair with API (Application Program Interface). API allows non-paid employees to create tools that will integrate into the open source program.  An  example of an API program for Facebook is Animal Farm,  and an example  of  a program for the iPhone  is the Kindle, as it is an add on created by another company not employed by Apple.

The take away from this meeting: Innovate or Die.  Embrace the latest trends in technology and use them to your advantage (ie. create your own application to integrate into programs such as Facebook and the iPhone and find a way to make money through the benefits of free viral marketing).  For example, Kindle is a free app on the iPhone, but Amazon makes money when consumers purchase and download Kindle books. Tony Ruggiero referenced the fart app for the iPhone. Most thought the idea was ludicrous, but because of the viral spread of the name, and the low cost to download the app for the general public, the .99 application made the owners rich.

Right, time to build my app!