Non-practice

It’s my birthday today, and I can’t stop but think at this – some people don’t understand why I say I’m not good enough for some things.

I posted some photos online, some people liked them so much that they thought I should print them.

I don’t think I’m an artist-photographer.

I look for beauty, I’ve done more than 100,000 photos until now.

But I’m a beginner, still.

I haven’t studied things a lot, I just got some experience.

I don’t even look at a lot of other people’s photos, and, even if I do, in a lot of things I’m a beginner.

For example, shooting images in a room with low light or images in a theater, where’s there’s both a lot of light and not enough light should be a task for a beginner, at most a medium photographer. I’m not that good, I don’t shoot photos so well.

Even at composition, while I do know the basics, I’m not an expert.

I also don’t like to spend a lot of time on a photo, both when taking it and when editing it.

I don’t think that everybody should do everything. Yes, photography is a hobby, but I have some criteria in order to publish something, and that criteria has not been met until now.

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There’s a speech I like a lot: Charlie Chaplin – Final Speech from The Great Dictator.

I’m thinking a lot about launching a business.

Two things stop me from doing so:

• I totally refuse to pay others a small amount of money. I don’t like this habit I see a lot in „I, the entrepreneur, drive a Mercedes, the employee can walk”. But if I pay big wages, it’s hard to stay competitive.
• I don’t have an idea to sell others as a perfect gift. I don’t have anything which is really moving the needle in „I want to give the world the gift of …”. This isn’t present in my life. There’s nothing I wish to sell others. Sure, I exaggerate, there are some things, I would like to make the world better, but, mostly, I can’t find a lot of things to sell that are part of my emotions. I don’t wake up in the morning saying „World, listen to me, I want to offer you the gift of …”. If I have some ideas, I put them on this blog, but there’s none with huge importance. Sure, I’d wish people would help one another, but I somehow feel that if I want to sell this there’s some sort of imposed ideas, which I dislike.

Still thinking about this.

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“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” ― Sun Tzu

I do get some ideas, I am creative at times. But there are plenty of times I’m not creative at all, I follow rigid procedures, having a poor memory sometimes is a burden.

But when I do get an idea on how to improve a procedure, what to write on a blog post, I generally tend to write that idea down and follow up with a blog post as soon as I can.

Writing an idea down helps me clarify it and save it for later. Not for too much later, as I tend to forget things.

But once I write an idea down, generally more of them follow suit.

I’m not at all at Seth Godin‘s level, but I do my best to make the world better, and also work on myself.

How to get more ideas? Not only by reading more books, or watching movies, or reading the news, but also by doing things.

You tend to get more ideas if you expose yourself to things. Sure, reading helps in some aspects, but just by reading, in my opinion, you won’t solve lots of things. You need thinking and immersion, and for that a job well done is a great tutor.

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“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” ― Mark Twain

FEAR: False Expectations Appearing Real

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

I have some dark emotions. I don’t like rats and bugs.

But they are pretty much innocent. Most bugs fear me, and most rats will run away from me.

I have only encountered them a few times, and most of the time it was me who started the process (I ran after them, not them after me).

Yet, I fear them, and I associate them with dark emotions.

That’s irrational, I think.

The solution?

The first step is acknowledging the issue.

The second step might be trying to change what I can – how I look at the world.

I can’t change the existence of rats and bugs. But I can look at them in a friendlier way.

In a poem like „Gândăcelul” – by Elena Farago the little bug is presented nicely.

In a book like „Papucii lui Mahmud” by Gala Galaction, the rats are around a monk living in solitude, and they are considered to be part of this world, they are not abnormal creatures of which we must get rid of.

The third step is reinforcement. Meet a rat, don’t run away from it. Meet a bug, don’t kill it, and don’t be afraid to touch it, or, at least, don’t look at it with disgust.

That’s it – three steps: acknowledge the issue, look at the situation differently, and reinforce the way of looking at the situation.

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There’s a book called „Partea nevăzută decide totul”, by Horia-Roman Patapievici.

The unseen part determines everything could be a possible translation. I’d like to adapt that in the current blog post – The emotional part determines everything.

Everything is related to emotions. Your ethics code, how you see success, how you prevent failure, how you fight for your rights, how determined you are to do a good job, how you view your role in society. Emotions are pretty much everything.

I can’t stress this enough.

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On his bio on Twitter, Jim Bagnola says (punctuation corrected by me):

„Humbly enjoy a world ranking among leadership professionals; funny, focused, complicated, spiritual, frequently intelligent, often has brushes with stupidity”.

I know this because I used to handle his account for a while, I think he wrote the bio himself, but not 100% sure about that. :)

“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” ― Mark Twain

The thing I want to say is that we are all smart and stupid most of the time. At the same time.

I can be good at some aspects of online marketing, but even in there I have flaws. But I’m not good in a lot of other aspects of life.

The list of „I’m-not-so-good-at” is quite huge. The same is the list of „I’m good at”.

I think of persons I know. Some people are fantastic in some aspects and less-than-fantastic in others.

And, even more troublesome, my criteria are faulty. I analyze people based on a mental model. That, too, has brushes with stupidity.

Not only am I stupid, but I analyze others in stupid ways.

From 2 stupid dogs: „ARG, You dogs are entirely too stupid to qualify! STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!” (source)

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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou

Sometimes, people tell me – „I moved on! I changed, I’m not the same person!”.

This leaves me in shock – how can people change what they feel about X (X can be a person, a situation, a thing, an action, a habit, a hobby)?

While I do have a poor memory (sometimes, life seems to look a lot like „Memento” (2000)), there are some things I can’t forget – mostly how I feel about X.

Finding out people can actually move on from a thing in their past is simply amazing!

On another note, I’m as much puzzled when I meet people who can’t move on. The opposite is, it seems, also true.

Also, a song on memory – Barbra Streisand – Memory. :)

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There are some quotes in the Bible, like this one:

So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. (Exodus 3:8 NIV)

(Plus others)

that refer to places flowing with milk and honey.

While it must not have really flown, it might mean that those places were good for raising animals that gave milk and bees for their honey.

Did it flow? Sure, but you needed to put some effort into this.

Add some toast and you get a song. :)

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