There’s a great many things I want to do in life, always has been, always probably will be. I can’t help but feel incredibly lucky, I have loving family, find amazing friends wherever I go, have plenty of opportunity, I’m healthy, and I never had to do any/much work in school to achieve average plus grades. However, I don’t feel I’ve really excelled at, well, anything.

I don’t tend to talk about myself on my blog because I feel there’s much more interesting things available to discuss, and starting a discussion where the initiator is the subject material seems a bit conceited. But this isn’t a discussion. It’s a reflection, and hopefully the beginning of an important change in my life.

There’s been many people I’ve met in various places that I’ll never forget for many reasons but one in particular; their incredible ability to work hard.

Somehow I’ve managed to make it through life thus far without really putting in much effort at all. I’d like to develop the skills these aforementioned friends have, and enable myself to excel at whatever I choose to apply myself too.
This probably seems pretty pathetic, as most anyone coming across this and bothering to read it will likely possess more ability than I to focus on tasks and see them through to their completion. However for all my faults there’s at least one quality that I can be proud of, and that’s my desire to weed out and improve on my weaker areas, of which, this is perhaps the biggest.

What I intend to do, is set some goals for myself to achieve this week outside of work and social activities. This I will do publicly in this post, so they are out, rather than inside my head where I can push them to the back of my mind. Throughout the week I will set aside time to get them done. I may or may not do this again next Sunday but right now, I’m just going to focus on the coming week.

1) I will study a minimum of 4 Chinese classes from chineseclass101.com

2) I will produce concept sketches and final textured 3d model of a small character or object.

3) I will read and summarise one of the essays in Emergence, Dimensions of a New World Order

4) Study a Go lecture on KGS

I will post my progress on what I achieve as I go. For now however, its 1.20am, so I’m going to chill out, watch a film, sleep, and starting tomorrow, I will become more focused and productive.

Filed under: freelance thinking, life musings by kiamo
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Enjoying the company of old friends you haven’t seen in years is something I’d imagine brings everyone happyness, even if they arrive at a slightly inconvenient time.  I read an article about our train of thought the other day and some articles linked from it.  It got me thinking about how I can spend time with my friends at the same time as maintaining my train of thought, focus, motivation and inspiration.

First of, I’m working on an architectural piece of art.  So naturally I can draw inspiration and insight from other awesome architectural pieces of art.  Today we explored some of the more interesting parts of Leicester and I took lots of photos.  Tomorrow we are going to explore Nottingham castle.  Train of thought… check!

Music is something I listen to nearly all of the time, the last few days I’ve only been listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings soundtracks.  I’m going for a really epic feel to my environment, epic music really helps me stay focused.  check!

Time’s a precious commodity I cant afford to waste.  Between putting in as much work as possible into my FMP, working at gokidsgo for money, taking part in various Baha’i activities and spending time with Dima and other friends, when I do take some time out to play a game or watch a film, its only time well spent if its something that inspires and motivates me.  Tonight I watched Speed Racer again, easily the best film I’ve seen in a long time.  Actually I’d like to write a review of that at some point.  Motivation, check! Inspiration, check!

Having blocked out the basic siluet of my environment, I now need to think about the details.  I dont feel that I’ve worked nearly as hard today as I did yesterday, but looking and photographing old buildings has kept me thinking and planning in my head which is valuable in itself.

Shown above is a painting I did today.  Apart from the technical observations I also learnt that theres something of a balance to be found between listening to ones gut desires, and forcing oneself to keep working something that your not feeling.  I really should’ve just stick to 3d today as my brain wasn’t working in 2d very well.  The whole time I was working on it I just wanted to be working in 3d and painting texture pages.  I’m a bit afraid of getting distracted and going completely of task, but I suppose sometimes its ok to just role with my feelings, so long as they are somehow focused on the project.

Filed under: Art, life musings by kiamo
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