Thoughts in November

Reflections

As November reaches its end, I’m reflecting on my past two months of unemployment. I’m feeling something that isn’t anxiety, but closer to being restless, antsy— I haven’t picked up the appropriate rhythm of “work” where I’m getting up, painting for hours, making personal training content, then going about my hobbies, only to repeat them on the next day. On one hand, I didn’t expect to feel that rhythm for at least three months out of being employed, but I had hoped to trend in that direction.

I’m tempted to get a job to build that routine and add structure and community into my life. My first thought was to reach out to my network on LinkedIn in order to try to pick up software contracts—tempting, but that feels like force-of-habit, and is not striking on the fundamental goal of this period of self-starting. I do believe that there’s value in trying to acquire software work, but I want to do something radically different than what I was doing before.

My second thought was to get a job which pushes me towards another loose direction that I might have for my life: a career in tech sales. I only have tangential experience with tech sales, having heard from old coworkers that I might be good at it, and in past roles I worked with leadership to demonstrate and project possibilities of the inner-workings of our technology. I enjoyed this reasonably well, so I do think that rather than doing software engineering, my next “adult” job will be something closer to the customer.

I’m thoroughly tempted to strike something which teaches me the fundamentals of sales, to go to the basics—and that’s how I’ve come to the idea that I should either 1) work as a personal trainer, sourcing my own clients, or 2) go sell cars or art.

In a completely different direction, I’m itching to do something more manual—I don’t want to be a laborer per se, but I have wanted to learn more about home construction, and I’m also interested in expanding my manual dexterity by doing something like working in a cafe or bar.

Still, at the root of my thought process before I quit my job, I’m reflecting on the fact that I’m taking this time to bet on myself; I don’t want to go to traditional employment where I’m paid to make money for someone else. I chose the path of trying to forge my own income with art and fitness coaching, so I know that I want to continue that thread for a while. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the author discusses the idea of choosing where to dig a well and digging it to the best of your ability, rather than getting restless and digging 100 shallow wells.

I spent a lot of the past week lounging in bed, sick with something heinous. I let myself do a lot of scrolling and time-wasting, which feels fine on a sick day. Still, I feel that it’s now-or-never to fix my dependence upon shallow dopamine. Instead of lounging, reading, stretching, and working, I’m doing a lot of scrolling and poisoning my brain. I find myself chasing hits of success via Instagram likes or TikTok views. I don’t believe that posting these sorts of unplanned, impromptu bits of content are actually advancing me towards my goals, but they do feel nice, which is what’s most dangerous.

I do think that social media has some place in my life and in my plan for success. I think it’s essential to acquire media leverage in order to promote your services and products—in my case, I think that if I can acquire leads to sell paintings or fitness services online, that’s a win. However, I don’t know about the actual usage of the platform, as I’m addicted to consuming useless content, and that distracts from my ability to achieve my goals.

I did spend a day where I left my phone off and it was magical. I think that I have to do that more often—I’m truly able to do so without societal or professional repercussions and that time doesn’t always come.

Speaking of plans for success, I’ve been thinking about strategy. I like the way that Dan Koe talks about monetization on the internet. I feel that I haven’t done the work to establish this pipeline, but it makes so much sense to me. I think that I need to do more work to get my thoughts out to my local network, plus promoting what I’m offering. I like the idea of using social media just as a funnel to your own personal brand and network. I already have the infrastructure to collect emails and sell products and services— if you’re subscribed to my blog, thank you! And if you aren’t, please consider following me here!

I’ve then considered what I might offer. I think that paintings are one thing, but they’re honestly a bit of a commitment as both a buyer and a seller. I’m interested in offering inexpensive workout plans, or personal training initial coaching sessions. I don’t know what low-cost art I might offer here.

Art and Work

In terms of artistic work this month, I worked on an attempt to copy one of my favorite contemporary artists, Sergiu Ciochină’s:

I like his style a lot, so I’m focusing on shadows and negative space like he often does in his pieces. I did a piece of impressions of a shadow cast on the wall by a vase with flowers.

I took some photos and analyzed the colors and trying to understand how to translate that to oils. The darkest parts of the flower appear to me to be about right for alizarin crimson straight from the tube. The vase itself and most of the shadows are tan/brown, where the wilted husks of the flowers appear almost Naples Yellow + Alizarin Crimson. There’s a wash of some sort of burnt umber, a peachy, mostly-red color— the mass of dead pedals. Averages out to almost-orange. The stems are not super green, but they’re mostly green, red, and tan (but not quite Naples Yellow).

I did a super rough sketch to see if the idea has much merit. I laid down a base coat of Cobalt Blue Hue and Alizarin Crimson mixed to become a deep violet, with a touch of mixing white. I then laid the lights down with Hansa Yellow (which I should have brightened). Here’s the rough end-result:

I think the concept has something behind it— I might try to do one that is a bit more realistic rather than just blasting it out with a knife.

I’ve been writing down the colors that I’m using for various ongoing projects, as I quickly come to the understanding that I cannot remember for the life of me which colors I used on something that I set down for storage.

On Jacob Digging 2, I’m using Naples Yellow + fleck of Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Umber for the skin tone. In writing this, I already found utility, as I had to make corrections a few days later.

Here’s a sketch that I did to understand the positioning of the shoulder and hands:

Some of this translated into my painting, but I’m caught staring at the obvious flaws in the figures without knowing just quite how to fix them. I painted my waist and hips at a strange ratio, and my bicep doesn’t make a ton of sense. My neck is also thin and the profile of the face is bizarre. Jacob looks pretty decent, though!

I also slapped quite a bit of paint on this Monet-inspired piece:

I don’t think it’s done yet, but it’s certainly getting close!

I also finished a few other paintings which I’ve yet to publish with high-quality photos:

I’ve done a decent amount of drawing practice this month, and I’m excited to see my line quality and abilities improve. It’s really fun to see the dividends on drawing practice! In addition, I’m dedicating a lot of time to jiujitsu, although I had a long hiatus due to this cold. That has been going really well, and I can feel myself improving quickly, especially now that the first round of aches and pains in my hips and joints is wearing down.

Plans

On the agenda for the remainder of this week:

• I’m planning to sign up for Artinerary, which is a site to host an artist profile associated with ArtLink, the organization which runs First Friday in Phoenix.

• I’m going to apply for some personal training jobs - considering EoS since it’s so close to my apartment, but I think it makes sense to shoot for a few spots. I think getting real in-person training experience as a professional (not just casually training friends) will help with my online offerings!

• Email Roosevelt Row about vending at First Friday

• Go to life drawing hosted by the Arizona Artists’ Guild

• Make a self-promotional video for Instagram and TikTok to funnel people to this site and advertise what I’m trying to do: sell art and fitness coaching

• Make a video discussing some of the shoulder rehab stuff that finally got me over the hump to 100%!

Thanks for reading!