PepperBlossoms

I guess it is tricky because in some situations, you may be forced to accept advice/criticism, in some you may be able to reject all of it. It can be hard to know what to accept and what to reject. It can be hard to know if someone's criticism is trying to hurt or help you.

Maybe I am partly upset with my peer because I just said thanks instead of saying I disagree. I didn't want to get more whiplash thrown at me and so by saying thanks, it is kinda trying to disengage, but I was not thankful for it. Maybe I should have just said, "I disagree and do not wish to receive any more suggestions at this time." I need to just stop thinking. I think that will help. Okay let me just do that.....

If you look at swimming pools alone... if you have ever cleaned a swimming pool you would be the most aware of this.. but also if you go in one you could be aware... there are quite a bit of bugs that go in swimming pools that cannot get out and they die. Almost every time I clean a swimming pool - lots and lots of dead bugs. Sometimes dead snakes. One time a dead mouse. The people who have pulls, build pools, build the infrastructure to make pools, build the infrastructure to get to the pools.... that alone is killing so many lives. Hot tubs too but they are smaller and so there will be less bugs getting in and dying.

I had a peer that I was interpreting to being an a-hole about me not paying attention to the Russia-Ukraine news and asking me if I don't have empathy, to which I responded I didn't want to focus on that right now, and this peer kept on getting on me about it... Well shit - like yeah I have empathy - I quit my job over killings that may do several times magnitude more killing that the military you are worried about. I quit engaging with this peer because it felt like me and everything/everyone around me was getting picked on. I had blocked the peer and then felt bad about doing that and then decided maybe this person was trying to help me, but then again, still the comments about you need to change this, you need to stop doing that, you need to get away from this, you need to... you need to... you need to... The suggestions and criticism kept on coming and coming. I feel like maybe she was given suggestions and criticism and now she does it to others. I don't want this person to get to me anymore. My last response to the last email the peer sent was basically just thanks - like a one line response. If I don't engage, she may not feel the desire to send anything else or may do so less and less. Basically every single person around me she criticizes about to me. Ugh yeah it can be a learning lesson. Ugh I don't like talking about people............... I don't want to be criticizing her though because then I am just doing what she is doing. I am aware of the idea - our faults in others COULD BE what we personally fault with - - which yes I do have a problem with criticizing others... so maybe that is me saying- how dare her criticize xyz when I do the same........ Hmm.. so I need to think about criticism some more... One way to not criticize anyone is to just not talk to anyone - then there is no opportunity for that. Another way is to not talk about people at all. Another way is to only focus on positive/happy stuff. Another way is to just say as little as possible. Another way is to figure out why you criticize people to maybe stop doing it. Well why do you want to stop? First, I feel like I was criticized growing up - so maybe I do it because it was done to me. I want to stop because I don't like it when it was done to me and others probably don't like it when it is done to them. But - there can be so much info gained when criticism happens - it can be potential for growth/change. There can be great benefits otherwise we may not do it. Criticism is like suggestions - it is like going to the therapist. The therapist comes up with a few paths/decisions that one could make that could work and the client could find that either those do work or no they are not interested in those because those are actually horrible ideas/not appropriate. The therapist isn't you. So in the same way, when one criticizes, they are like a therapist who is like throwing a dart at the dart board and sure they could hit the bullseye, but they could also hit very far away. When the criticism is useful, it is like, yay thank you so much this was great. When the criticism is off, it is like, you a-hole how could you say that? We are all just throwing at dart boards - even with our theories for things. Um... hmmm

The funny part is, the news is blowing up about the military but yet, you don't see it blowing up about the killings the Civil Engineers are doing. At least with a military, even if it is quite lop-sided, the under dogs still have a chance. With Civil Engineering - the life they are killing DOESN'T HAVE A CHANCE. It is too small, it doesn't know. The disadvantage is too large.

To make stuff, many times you need inspiration. You need an idea which tends to come from inspiration, out of the blue, wanting to do what someone else did, an epiphany, something we feel emotional about, etc. The longer we are doing something, the harder it can be to keep going because you may start getting less and less newness as easily - you will have to work harder and harder for that newness because the stuff you have been doing you will already be used to. Doing ANYTHING other that what you were doing may provide magnitudes of more newness in context. Doing what you have been doing will allow you to find more and more gaps than you did before and more newness places to look for. Sometimes the people who are the best in a certain area are the best because that is all they do. But people can also still be good at a bunch of things too. HOWEVER, if you have kinda stepped foot in many areas of life, it could feel that some areas just have SO MANY GAPS that it feels OVERWHELMING and that you feel more comfortable going with the gaps with the stuff you are familiar with because you can already identify them and it does not feel as overwhelming maybe because you are more aware of what you don't know unlike other areas where you don't know what you don't know.... or maybe this area you have an interest/passion/talent/curiosity for and so your drive can help push you even if it still is overwhelming. When making art/music/film/literature - (I don't like the work literature... it reminds me of indenture like indentured servants - woah I looked the definition of indentured servant up - someone who worked for FREE for many years to repay a loan/debt/eventual compensation...) I was talking yesterday about how it could feel like when doing artistic work, it is kinda the same as getting in to any profession. A musician for instance require take tons and tons of training and tons and tons of money - training how to use each instrument, how to get them to work together, how to best utilize each instrument, how to make melodies, how to record, how to mix music, how to master music, how to put music online, etc. Then there is the whole buying each instrument and buying computer software which can add up to a lot if you let it. If you look at doctors and how they put in say college (4), med school (4), residency (3) - which is 11 years right there and potentially 200k of student loans in debt (or none depending on your country) - plus there is the shitty possibility that you do not get in to medical school or you do not get in to residency because there are less spots as you move forward (which I am not 100% on but I think I have heard that that is the case, but again will depend on your country... which is kinda shit by design...) - so someone could get super far with all this time and money and not proceed to the next level because of the design of not enough spots (ON PURPOSE??)... It is kinda shitty in how school and work are designed where there are not enough spots for everyone. However, yeah there are some schools that accept just about everyone which is nice for them to have more students and nice for the students to have somewhere to go - - and there is the whole thing about depending on your profession, the college you went to make not matter at all... your grades may not matter at all.. But, there are not necessarily enough job openings for every student - so you could theoretically have every student make a perfect grade in school and yet some will find jobs and some won't.... so again you completely finish all the schooling and may STILL not make it.... Umm anyhoo - so with music you could put in years and thousands of dollars and still not get anything out of it. Or look at film - it can feel like it is really hard to compete when you have groups that have MILLIONS of dollars to work with and thousand or million dollar equipment and staff and it is like - I don't have that capital to work with... and feel like you can't compete. Kinda like with any sector of work where the little people feel like they can't compete with the big firms who have more money to toss around. I guess this area of life is my current complaint. I don't like complaining and would like to get desensitized to it or just so detached from it that I am so uninvovled/unengaged that I do not care. I feel like my experiences at corporations/companies were so bad that I really don't ever want to go back to one and part of me is amazed at how many people are willing to work for them but part of me can see - well people need money and corporations/companies have them/provide them and so as long as there is a need for money and corporations/companies willing to pay, people will go. Sure you may have a lot of naïve, knowledgeless, low experience people going there who don't know they are walking into a death trap shithole place to work... and then you will have those who have been there a while and know it isn't anything to smile about.... but am I being too pessimistic here or not? One of my peers at one of my last companies said that he had a guy where the two of them would just complain about work together.. actually another peer told me the same thing... and I have done the same thing too................. I wonder if some industries are worse than others but I also presume every industry will have disheartening stuff to it. Part of me is having a hard time eating lunchmeat - like I am kinda disgusted by it now - well maybe ham seems worse than turkey for some reason.. I feel less disgusted by eating vegan meat (depending on the brand - some of it is kinda meh). Ummm so like - if everyone stopped killing animals for meat consumption, stopped working for the military for war, what would the world look like? Well what about all the civil engineering and the killing that causes?? What if the Civil Engineers stopped too? WOW I just had the epiphany.................................. I think Civil Engineers kill more than the military in active war does Like think about it - when I was watching a road get poured, maybe 100 maybe 50 maybe 200 dragonflies flew into the hot asphalt and got stuck... and then there was the rock truck shortly after coming to dump rocks on the asphalt and then the roller truck to push the rocks into the asphalt - so they burned and got smushed to death........ Then the MANY frogs stuck in the wastewater treatment plant. Then the HUNDREDS of trees pulled from the ground. Then all the compacting probably killed THOUSANDS of bugs. Then all the animal habitat destroyed. If a variation of this is happening on EVERY SINGLE PROJECT YOU DO, where death is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid, and you do this work for 40 YEARS.... you have probably killed a million lives...?? What do you think? For the road you worked on, how many bugs are going to get hit by the windshield, how many animals are going to turn into roadkill, how many people are going to crash and die? WOWWWW.. but... yet again - like look at places where a bomb is dropped and millions die... or where there are concentration camps of millions who die? I am going to have to ask one of my peers in the Civil Engineering what he/she thinks about the number of deaths civil engineers cause over an entire lifetime... ORRRRRR if you look at how Civil Engineers make the fast food/restaurnants/grocery stores/factories that are part of the animal killing process, then yeah they too are causing it... ORRRRR the military bases/defense contractors/factories/suppliers that create bombs/guns/chemicals/pesticides that create killing to - - that was helped to be built by civil engineers. But what about the surveyors - Civil Engineers have to use them on almost every project - they too are killing... I think the Civil Engineering sector kills more life than the military sector. Wow.... that is really all I can say.... wow.. S*** Like yeah look at all the pollution that is created by the help of Civil Engineers building the infrastructure to make that pollution happen. But then there is the finance industry that finances everything including Civil Engineering and military - if people did not get paid to do what they do - maybe they wouldn't do it??? But then there is the idea where people may work for free like the indentured servitude listed above.

I wonder what the world would be like if everyone quit working for corporations. Food, water, health - that would immediately start to go into question. Old people would die. I don't know if there are enough wild animals around for people to hunt - I feel like they would all get hunted and people would start eating each other as vegetables wouldn't grow fast enough and there wouldn't be the seeds for everyone to have them. Art could be considered not necessary for survival and as an added bonus when the basic needs are met. I guess again like always I struggle with decisions.

https://vimeo.com/153493904 https://www.beeple-crap.com/

One of the things about the Russia-Ukraine thing, which I have read like zero about and have not been following, is that if the people just didn't follow the orders, it wouldn't happen because there wouldn't be anything to make it happen. But, because people do follow the orders, it does. The more who go in to help fight = more death/destruction. You are kinda better off staying out as one less person involved. With the USA-Middle East thing, the USA was basically Russia and the Middle East was basically Ukraine - so for people in the USA to be like, oh we pity Ukraine, well why didn't you pity the Middle East when your country, the USA, was there for like 20 years? However, I also know nothing about that as well and so maybe I shouldn't be talking. If the USA was only in the Middle East for Oil, well maybe Russia is doing the same - for some resource. The large countries are a danger to the small countries.... a bully trying to eat someone else's cake ... I was talking with a peer today and she said that she has been an EMT and is having to go to therapy because a 5 year old died in her hands. I told her that I too have dealt with death from Civil Engineering. The difference is the EMT's work to prevent death and the Civil Engineers actively cause it. I quit my job over the caused death that Civil Engineers create. Death is weird and yeah I think I am not enlightened enough at my current stage to think about it differently. I think that with Civil Engineering, either you are low conscious and don't feel bad about the death you are causing, or are even unaware of it; you are medium conscious and aware of the death you are causing and you feel bad about it; or you are high conscious and see everything not as death but as a transformation from one to another, or (ah idk). I guess it is hard to find beauty in killing animals/bugs/trees - at least for me. ... I am wondering if I need to take a break from the books I have been reading and just finish the book I started writing.. but I am also wondering if I need to get a professional editor or just use some peers... I have kinda quit caring about it. I have another book idea as well.... I was also thinking it would be cool to make wild art and wild videos - or like digital art videos... There are some really good ones. ... I feel like people are partly controlled through the media. If people quit watching the media, they may not be controlled as easily. It is a coin toss on whether to watch it. Watch it and you may experience stress/worry/anger. Don't watch it and you may feel carefree and at ease. However, the people who watch it may get more info - but that info could be lies and they could be highly deceived. It can be hard to tell who to trust. If something is important enough, someone else who is obsessed with the news will tell you, a peer once said.

Gratitude - what are you thankful for? For my mind, bank account, other artists, teachers, all the things others have done that make life so much easier, friends, family We see what others have done and it can be inspiration for us to do it too. You need to stop consuming and start doing too. but i don't feel ready for that yet. I am telling myself no i need to read some more... Is that bad? At some point I am going to need to pick and just do. I had the idea of the Grand Slam of Creativity - making a piece in Film, Art, Music, and Writing. It was just an idea and I won't necessarily do it....

I need to break the habit of talking about specific people to other people - I guess I am just so used to it....... I need to catch myself when I am talking to someone that okay I am wanting to refer to another person but I do not need to be specific about who... It is just easier that way.

What are my limits? It can be really helpful to ask what one's limits are because they can try to do things to push those out further to enable them to do more. My limits: number of hours in day - if you are more optimal with your time, it will be saved more amount of money in bank account - this one is weird because for some things, it is worth spending because you get more out of it. On other things, you want to save energy/interest in something - I can try to stay in something longer to build my focus power, interest will involve looking for potential gaps that could have more to look for knowledge/awareness/skills/experience - what I am currently familiar with; the more I expose myself to, the more this will grow what I am around that will inspire me to do what - internet/actualized/peers/memories/brain/books - if I talk to people, what am I talking to them about. Sometimes wandering aimlessly is more productive than productively wandering. You never really know. Both are helpful.

Low energy is what - at rest, trying to build back up, looking for potential, calm, observing, stuck slave High energy is what - active, moving, in flow, intense, engaged, curious, proud We can't keep up high energy necessarily all the time. Certain activities may go low and others high. Exercise - high; Coming up with new ideas - high Eat - depends Sleep - low (for some reason, when I sleep/meditate - I feel like my energy gets lower sometimes..) I am not sure.

Notice the combination of many things and when they are put together they become something new. Stick + ink + feather = feather ink pen I feel like I am hanging out on the ceiling for my max smartness- like I am kinda getting stuck where I am not smart enough to go further. Like I am too dumb for many of the things around me. Wow what crazy timing. I just saw a peer with this message on their facebook: "???? YOURSELF ?? ??? ???? ?? YOUR ??????. ????’? ??? ???? ??????" Yeah I feel like I am at my limit kinda. When I look at people posing with fish, I look at the fish's eye and see the feelings of it being terrified. The terrified feelings are in context to the proud feelings the person is having who caught the fish. It is weird how we will start to get memories from the past that we had not had in like 15 years. It is weird how different thoughts can inspire us to think different things. It is like to get to the past, you have to think about something that was similar but to think about something that was similar, you have to run across something kinda similar but then look at more stuff that is kinda similar to that stuff and then it may remind you of the past which then may remind you of everything else at that time too. I am not sure what the benefits are of going back and venturing in the past - maybe for a better understanding of what we have experienced and who we are. I feel like I forgot so much of it. You never realize how great something was or how lucky you were to have it until you look at in relation to the context of the rest of your life and go oh, wow, I was actually so lucky to have that - I can't believe that I forgot. There was so much energy, laughing, playing when I was younger and then it kinda died out - it got dramatic. The energetic, wild, free energy was amazing. We don't fully understand why it died out but it did or why we had it in the first place. We can't really ever understand everything even if we want to. I feel like a part of me had lost my spirit. I got too focused on school and tennis; too angry/jealous over things. I lost that free fun energy. I forgot it even existed. It was like it got buried. I got depressed, anxious, bored. I guess we can't stay in the same mindset forever. It is like a pendulum where it goes back and forth. I have a hard time paying attention to things. My mind jumps from one area of reality to another and it doesn't stay at the same place for long. It gets bored, it wants to move on, it wants new, new, new. A problem with wanting new so much is that you aren't staying long enough in any one place but that can also be a strength when it comes to diversifying. I think the energy thing is weird. It may actually be counterintuitive - like the opposite. This is totally made up but what about this idea - just like how there is different temperatures and how the temperatures will be seeking equilibrium, so hot stuff will lose heat around cold stuff and cold stuff will gain heat around hot stuff - well what if we all have a certain energy and when we are around those with less than us, they take it and when we are around those with more than us, we take theirs? But is that even I thing - I feel like that is pseudoscience. Like, you could argue that someone criticizing you has less energy than you and is trying to upset you in order for you to release some of your energy and give it to them. But we could also choose to not react and so we don't give them any? And then they stop trying because you are no longer a source of food (energy) for them and they have to go looking elsewhere? If we make the situation negative, are we lowering our energy and giving them enough to escape? Meh I don't know. Energy is weird. Or like two people could lift up the energy of each other; or two people could lower the energy of each other? Or is it that it feels in harmony so the energy seems higher but when it seems hard/complicated, the energy feels lower because more is getting used? And what is it that makes it easy vs. making it hard? What about the people we feel too scared to be around?

It is helpful to look at what other creatives are doing, what we find interesting, what works, what doesn't, how they do it, etc. Asian Art https://royalthaiart.com/asian-art/ It is very simple and subte but also beautiful. https://shiboridragon.com/products/asian-alexander-henry-gilded-botan-1 This combines curves with straight lines. https://shiboridragon.com/products/asian-alexander-henry-cherry-blossom-branches-red I think one thing that separates asian art from other art is how bendy/wavy it is. I had this shirt that I really liked in elementary school with Asian art on it and I was sad when it was gone. https://www.pantherprint.com/psychedelic-trippy-art-canvas/ I like it how the forms merge together in a kaleidoscopic fashion. I like how all the different shapes and forms are able to make a face. I like it how the texture seems to match with traditional African culture. The face seems very realistic too. It feels kinda sad how it seems white skinned people dominate so much of film/art but maybe that also has to do with what country I am in and what is popping up. I like how the path has chess pieces and is a chess board and Alice in Wonderland is on it. The way they have her pose in the wavy fashion goes along with how the chess pieces are oriented in different directions and the path itself is wavy. Using a character that goes against typical dress makes it more interesting. I love the theme with how the artist stuck with a certain color palate that is somewhat dull to create a feeling of insecurity and how the cards too fit with the theme of insecurity with how they are shuffled and then random pieces throughout the piece. This reminds me of ocean life. https://www.artnews.com/feature/hieronymus-bosch-life-early-works-best-paintings-1202685134/ This is me when I realize how hard aloneness is. We may push people away but then when the threat of aloneness comes up, the perspective changes entirely. What fills you up and what makes you feel empty? It is amazing at how much emotion art can inspire/show. Wow. So this is Pronto Surrealism. A person with vegetables ha. Very funny. https://www.thecollector.com/bosch-garden-earthly-delights-surrealist-art/ There is so much going on here. It makes you say wow by the sheer amount of work the artist had to put forth. The depiction of agony and suffering in Hellish Art reminds you of the times you had experienced that yourself. Famine, war, poverty, loneliness, grief, regret, guilt, anger, sadness, jealousy, envious - all very hard to experience. Hellish art seems like it takes a long time and lots of detail. I feel like with art, we like to see stuff that we haven't seen before. When we have seen something quite a bit, we may be bored of it and not inspired. I think our ability to be inspired by stuff changes pretty frequently (or at least it does for me). I've been looking at art and now I am already starting to get bored of it. https://www.artmajeur.com/en/elvira-btbh/artworks/11741786/spirit-molecule This one reminds me of the idea where stuff with senses can see. https://www.artmajeur.com/aleksandra-dokic This is cool. I like all the texture/pattern applied to every surface. I like it how this one is wavy and also promotes a sense of hurry and style. https://www.artmajeur.com/alexander-ganshin The eyes in this one seem kinda present/curious but also seem like they aren't present... I feel like it is done in a way where the viewer will project what they want onto the character maybe. The character is almost staring at you but not quite. https://www.artmajeur.com/bruno-beghin The waviness, the mess, the colors - it is a cool effect. https://www.artmajeur.com/ru/aleksandr-llichev/artworks/15530470/portrait-l I like it how there are all of these different colors but yet you can still tell what it is. .. Well that was interesting looking at all of these artworks. Lots of very talented artists. It is kinda sad how school prioritized so much of Language, Math, History, and Science to where the arts get left behind. Yes I can see that society has to have a pragmatic side in order to survive - however, kids who are more drawn to art are spending so many hours doing the pragmatic stuff over the art stuff that they may never or rarely play with their art side. If the arts (music, film, writing, food, images, whatever) was given the same priority as say Math, what kind of impact would that have? I feel like school kinda forces us to disconnect from our emotions and feelings because we are forced to comply with whatever the teachers/school wants us to comply with. All those years doing the main 4 subjects when we could have spent more time developing some in the other subjects. I can see the problem where there are so many extracurriculars one could explore... This is off topic but yesterday when I was googling "yummy food", I was surprised when McDonalds and other hamburger's showed up as the results. It makes you wonder how much of the search results are paid for by companies. You could argue that the results may impact what you think of when you see it (like brainwashing/programming you) - so when people are seeing McDonalds as yummy food, maybe it would get them to think that - but I can also see - no we don't have to agree with what the search engine shows us (I am not sure to what degree of power we have over not getting influenced). There are so many things the search engine can show - I guess it is just sad that it was not showing more healthy stuff which would also taste better.

When you heart is in something, you will look past excuses to get it to work. When your heart is not in something, you will start to come up with excuses and reasons for why things are problems. Look at what you seem to keep on complaining about and look at what you ignore complaints, criticisms, and doubts and stick with. We may start to get as creative as we can when our heart is not in something to prove to ourselves and others that it won't work; likewise, we may do the same when our heart is in something to prove that it will.

The better the idea, the more the interest. It is all about the idea and you can use dictionaries, random number generators, random stuff, etc. ---- Advice from Mr. Beast

I never felt like I fit in either. I think the lack of diversity is a huge one with people staring and taking photos of you and how like you said, basically 99.99% Chinese in the mainland. Also it felt very harsh to live there. The plants and food were cool. The cities seemed like it was more aggressive to live in than the cities I am used to in my country. The people honking at you, the people everywhere, the air pollution, the lack of sunlight, the buildings everywhere all densely, the tree after tree after tree after tree on the highway, etc.

Aggressive Design

Asian food looks soooooo good