how successful was i today?
So I want to talk a little bit about what a day in my life is like, what dayyys are like. What kind of different days I have, and how I determine whether a day was "good" or not. Now I'll say that most of my days are indeed "good" days. I rarely end the day mumbling to myself, "damn, that was a baddd day." I usually feel pretty content with the results from my efforts and activities. But that is in part because I've become as accustomed to the ways day generally go for me as I am. If someone else were to slip into my shoes and compare what a generally fine day is to me to what their days are like, there could be a lot to talk about.
I don't have a lot of rules, nor do I have outlandish expectations set up for myself to achieve. This is actually admitting a lot of what is missing from my life.. I generally do not complete many things in a day because there is so little structure, or ambition.
Okay, so a successful day for me, in general, would be constituted of activities related to my creative endeavors. A day in which I get to do a photo shoot would be a good day. A photo shoot that has been planned to participate in with other people - that has been planned and had structure of visualization structuring it, this would constitute a good day for me. It means that there has been a build up of planning, communication with other people, visualization of an outcome, and the follow through to make it all come together. Not a very hard thing for most normal people in the world to do. I used to have activities like this quite often, back a couple of years ago when my artistic vision was paramount. Nowadays I rarely do photo shoots anymore because I've lost the passion of believing that creating art is an important matter. Creating art used to be the only thing that arose passion inside of me, which felt healthy, but anymore I don't see what the worth of creating art is worth other than to make me feel good. I no longer feel that is is important for art to shared, or seen. The internet has killed this aspect of it for me. Very sad outcome...
The other creative activity that can constitute a good day for me is to get some writing done. Writing, as in the writing I do for my novel. That's not the only writing that makes me feel good about my days, I also occasionally write music reviews, or blog entries. Music reviews are the only thing that I write that gets somewhat wide exposure because of the online zine that I am allowed to have my articles published on. But there is no pay, just a little bit of notoriety. It would make one think that I'd put more effort into doing that type of writing, and it's true, at times I get more ambitious about it, but never ambitious enough that i end up writing very much. In truth, I have quite a bit of trouble getting motivated and mentally focused enough to write very much about music. This is a sad thing.
Going on more into what makes a good day come about for writing is that it takes me a lot of effort to "get somewhere" that I can sit down and focus on writing. I have a lot of trouble writing at home because I feel that there are too many distractions here for me to be able to focus. So I've created a routine over the years of stating that the only place I am able to concentrate to write is in cafes or libraries. I'll tell you though, waking up, getting dressed, and slipping out of the grasp of my mother's attention so that I can get someplace private to write, well, it's a struggle. There are times of the year when I can get into a good groove and make myself go to a cafe on a regular, almost daily basis. That is pretty much just during the month of November when I participate in Nanowrimo. The rest of the year is a crapshoot. (There are other things I can write too! I used to write for the Helium.com website. I could start to do that again, not that it's anything that I'll make job-like money from, but it's a discipline to make me get focused and write.)
So, according to the tenets I've just laid out for you, was today a successful "work" day? No. I did not do a photoshoot (or work on photo projects) and I did not get to a cafe to write. Even though I did publish some photos tonight, and i AM writing right now... so it's a half successful "work" day. Or maybe less than half because the work I did, am doing is kind of half assed. I'm only writing in my blog, and the photos I displayed are not part of any grand project. Photography in general feels half-assed all the time now. I'll blame that a lot on Instagram. my satisfaction in calling myself a photographer is judged by how much i contribute to Instagram. which is never going to make me money.
That is another vein of discussion I can go into. Is anything I do that does not lead to making money "successful"? In my sad example of a half-powered life (half powered because of the devaluation I suffer from due to my mental illness) success is only of any worth if I create activities that have structure and get me to be someplace doing something. Getting out of the house is success. Even if I just go for kratom energized walks/hikes/bike rides/bus/train rides I have achieved success over the demon of depression.
So today I succeeded in taking my mom out for lunch and driving her to a place where she likes to look at Halloween decorations. Bringing joy to another human being is successful, yes, i think so.
I don't have a lot of rules, nor do I have outlandish expectations set up for myself to achieve. This is actually admitting a lot of what is missing from my life.. I generally do not complete many things in a day because there is so little structure, or ambition.
Okay, so a successful day for me, in general, would be constituted of activities related to my creative endeavors. A day in which I get to do a photo shoot would be a good day. A photo shoot that has been planned to participate in with other people - that has been planned and had structure of visualization structuring it, this would constitute a good day for me. It means that there has been a build up of planning, communication with other people, visualization of an outcome, and the follow through to make it all come together. Not a very hard thing for most normal people in the world to do. I used to have activities like this quite often, back a couple of years ago when my artistic vision was paramount. Nowadays I rarely do photo shoots anymore because I've lost the passion of believing that creating art is an important matter. Creating art used to be the only thing that arose passion inside of me, which felt healthy, but anymore I don't see what the worth of creating art is worth other than to make me feel good. I no longer feel that is is important for art to shared, or seen. The internet has killed this aspect of it for me. Very sad outcome...
The other creative activity that can constitute a good day for me is to get some writing done. Writing, as in the writing I do for my novel. That's not the only writing that makes me feel good about my days, I also occasionally write music reviews, or blog entries. Music reviews are the only thing that I write that gets somewhat wide exposure because of the online zine that I am allowed to have my articles published on. But there is no pay, just a little bit of notoriety. It would make one think that I'd put more effort into doing that type of writing, and it's true, at times I get more ambitious about it, but never ambitious enough that i end up writing very much. In truth, I have quite a bit of trouble getting motivated and mentally focused enough to write very much about music. This is a sad thing.
Going on more into what makes a good day come about for writing is that it takes me a lot of effort to "get somewhere" that I can sit down and focus on writing. I have a lot of trouble writing at home because I feel that there are too many distractions here for me to be able to focus. So I've created a routine over the years of stating that the only place I am able to concentrate to write is in cafes or libraries. I'll tell you though, waking up, getting dressed, and slipping out of the grasp of my mother's attention so that I can get someplace private to write, well, it's a struggle. There are times of the year when I can get into a good groove and make myself go to a cafe on a regular, almost daily basis. That is pretty much just during the month of November when I participate in Nanowrimo. The rest of the year is a crapshoot. (There are other things I can write too! I used to write for the Helium.com website. I could start to do that again, not that it's anything that I'll make job-like money from, but it's a discipline to make me get focused and write.)
So, according to the tenets I've just laid out for you, was today a successful "work" day? No. I did not do a photoshoot (or work on photo projects) and I did not get to a cafe to write. Even though I did publish some photos tonight, and i AM writing right now... so it's a half successful "work" day. Or maybe less than half because the work I did, am doing is kind of half assed. I'm only writing in my blog, and the photos I displayed are not part of any grand project. Photography in general feels half-assed all the time now. I'll blame that a lot on Instagram. my satisfaction in calling myself a photographer is judged by how much i contribute to Instagram. which is never going to make me money.
That is another vein of discussion I can go into. Is anything I do that does not lead to making money "successful"? In my sad example of a half-powered life (half powered because of the devaluation I suffer from due to my mental illness) success is only of any worth if I create activities that have structure and get me to be someplace doing something. Getting out of the house is success. Even if I just go for kratom energized walks/hikes/bike rides/bus/train rides I have achieved success over the demon of depression.
So today I succeeded in taking my mom out for lunch and driving her to a place where she likes to look at Halloween decorations. Bringing joy to another human being is successful, yes, i think so.
Comments