Dear Diary – Done is the Engine – SeaDate 260818
if knowledge is power, then those in the dark are powerless.
four weeks.
I've been grinding for a month. It’s great. Terrific even. But exhausting. I don’t know how, bury client is ecstatic. Thrilled that EIGHTEEN images came out great.
I have my doubts on a few, but they were approved and so shipped.
Maybe it would be good to stay this busy for a while. It seems advertising is picking up. And maybe making better personal choices will result in the kinds of blessing Jah always poured out on us.
This morning is a biiiiiit of a drag. I'm sure the entire agency is dragging at this point.
I have a term for this kind of project: 'Designing in high-rez'. meaning, constant changes that SHOULD have been worked out at the thumbnail or the sketch phase. The compounding issue becomes hours. SOMONE has to spend the hours to make the changes, but no one has the $$ to pay for those. So no one wins.
On the front end, the client is frustrated because they couldn't visualize what they were asking for and approved a sub-par idea, can't afford the change and just wants it 'right'. on the back end, you have the production artist who is burning 16-18 hour days to get it there, and get it there, then pull it back, then get it there again. and again. and again.
In the middle, the production studio becomes the pinch point between those two entities.
NO ONE is happy.
Enter: the professional. Wonderful comment from the owner of the production company:
You look for the small miracles.
Of course, BILLING helps ameliorate the long nights and days and the frustration of a partner looking for attention when it's otherwise claimed. :–(
Dreams last night were planetary. I watched a video discussing the Guild Hiliner from Denis Villeneuve's Dune and there were long shots of that giant thing hanging in orbit around planets, I think that stuck in my brain or something. I don't remember anything from them except me as a giant standing on the horizon of a planet.
Slow drag this AM. Considered getting out with friends to discuss the Bible. But think maaaaaayyyybe I'm of an age where I need to recover a little after having the dial at 11.
All my ideas are currently washed in to the delta... so I'll have to wait until I can net them in a sketchbook. speaking of. Here's a recent review of sketchbook #71 – Fear and Panic and Failure—oh my!.
Let everything you do be done with love.—1 Cor. 16:14.
I like to imagine that everything I do is out of love. But I'm the kind of fool that knows that isn't true or possible. I think more than anything, I want the PERCEPTION of all my acts being motivated by love.
Teaching is a problem for me. I'm not currently teaching in the the congregation and it's driving me nuts. Not that i NEED to... to be seen, stand on stage and be applauded, it's just that those who are doing it in my stead are... eh, they need work. And some of them have been doing it far far longer than me... well, somewhat longer. I've been teaching in a public capacity to large groups (100+) for more than 30 years, and publicly from door-to-door for more than 40. When I look at it that way... I suppose not many in my retinue have been teaching 'longer', but at least just as long. But eeesh, they just have not improved as teachers.
It baffles me how you can do the job for decades and still be rife with word whiskers, stilted phrasing, incomplete sentences, an inability to to teach a simple point, and on and on. Not that the teaching is terrible, but it's... uninspired.
Boring.
Put fire in your talk, or your talk in the fire.
This isn't from hubris. I genuinely care about those who are listening, see them struggling to carry their loads. And the congregation meetings are where we get refreshed. The impetus is on the teachers to give the audience a reason for showing up.
I know our teachers love God, just as we do. What a shame that ding-dongs like me can't lead by example now. Not forever. But for now.
One thing that's been rumbling around, is how my choices in life have silver linings. One lining is that i learned I am capable of great and wonderful things, as well as decisions that can cause great pain and hurt. Ironic considering one of my life's mantra's has always been to do as little damage as possible while I'm here.
HOWEVER... as I go through this very strange, sometimes effervescent, sometimes dark period in my life, I am finding I am MUCH more empathetic to those who struggle.
Whereas before, I'd look at a fellow sheep who was struggling and think, 'I know they love Jehovah, but why can't they get their act together? I mean we're all given the same # of hours, the same Bible, the same relationship opportunity with God. Why can't they figure it out?
Now.
I.
Know.
The heart is Lake Mede and our mind is the Hoover dam.
Sometimes we just push those gates too far open and all hell breaks loose. It's amazing, but also a lot of people can drown.
I guess the part that I'm learning, is that once those gates are wide, they are feckin' HARD TO CLOSE. In fact, there is a point where you can't close them on your own.
You need a friend to help turn the wheel. And you have to want to turn it.
Wanting to can be hard. You realize how much you've enjoyed being 'you' without the governors and tethers. It's freeing and alive and amazing. But none of us exists in a vacuum. We can be free and alive and amazing—within the bounds that don't hurt anyone else.
Lanes.
No one likes an obnoxious driver.
The friends-to-help part is really critical too. All of us should have those souls in our lives that will tell us not only when we have toilet paper stuck to our shoe, but also when we're wearing the emperor's new clothes.
This is another point of education. I long suspected that the same men who I serve next too and call brother, aren't real friends. Not in that sense that they exist and are born for times of distress. I have those resources, I just don't live near any of them.
You know who you are: MO, JS, RP, MD, JC, RP.... and many others who I don't speak to with depth or regularity, but could go just as deep and honest as any of those men.
IDK if my current group of men who live here don't have the ability to go deep and regular with me, or at all. It's not cultural. The initials above hail from the UK, Nigeria, Mexico, Canada, Korea, and Texas. It's got to be personal. Could education be part of it? Lack of it? Motivation?
Let everything you do be done with love.—1 Cor. 16:14.
Love? Is it lack of love? Surely not. I don't know. I hope it's not me. Like I have some kind of shell they can't penetrate. I don't think so. Honestly, my read on the group of leaders locally is a lack of genuineness. They say the right things, but it 'feels' surface. Like this is what you're supposed to to do/say.
It could be the 'culture'. There is a strong and deep pride in being ignorant. Which sounds harsh. But I know the different when someone can admit what they don't know and when they can't.
And I've seen a lot of roosters crowing in my time here.
And maybe it's fine. I don't think so, but my opinion isn't fact. Only a feeling.
And we know what happens when feelings make our decisions.
Love is the drug. it's also the guiding principle. the motive and the reason for getting up. We need to feel loved, love others and let it be why we exist. The kind of love that does the right thing because it's the right thing.
Not power. Not self. Not authority.
Nothing is beneath us. Including teaching others to be better than we are, giving them the tools and the keys to take the reigns. Be willing to watch them stumble, help them succeed. And to step back and let them be the one.
I've chased a rabbit trail here. There is no solution because there's not realy a problem to be fixed.
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“May your seas be wide enough for wonder, your harbor always waiting, and your light never fail when another soul is searching.” – The Lantern Keeper