This might be turning into a daily journaling exercise, which is partly what I intended all along. I'm sitting in meditation again. It is 6.15, which means it took me 45 minutes to get into it. And that is because I did check my phone from the beginning.

There were a couple of things that came out of it, namely that I was able to find a bit more research for potential garment manufacturers. However, I'm reminded that this pattern of basically sourcing from middlemen is taking a couple of steps back from direct production, whether that's direct production here or through an actual manufacturer who doesn't really have a front end. Okay, so that's a bit besides the point though. What I really wanna get into is the fact that it was too hard to resist my phone this morning because yesterday evening I posted something new on Instagram.

It was a new painting. And I'm just so glad to be back in the fray of things because I was really getting tired of myself claiming or projecting a disconnected, I guess a projection is disconnected, it's an overlay, a one-sided interpretation of how things work in the world and my level of success in them without actually engaging. So let me break this down. The first thing is presentation.

I spent hours yesterday mocking up my painting because the fact is that I don't stretch my canvases until I need to. It saves me space and that's incredibly important because one of the reasons that I, one of the big reasons that I actually stopped painting is because I was so frustrated over the amount of physical space painting storage takes up and then how that relates to the transportation of paintings and how I just didn't wanna contribute to that kind of bulk. And it's actually what determined a lot of things about my return to painting, the techniques I use in order to not have to stretch them until necessary, the upcoming series of sewn flexible paintings that can be rolled up like a tanka scroll, all sorts of great things came from that frustration, but it took me years to come to terms with it and then also to start creatively engaging with the problem. So I spent a long time presenting the painting in a way that looked really clean and professional and it was amazing to see the improvement over the last couple of posts.

And that was really instigated by just looking at how a nice painting, how a painting, how another Instagrammer presents their paintings and how the shadows look and how the color of the wall is. And so it's another reminder that even though there is intrinsic learning, it's really helpful to have some guiding lights, some Northern stars where the improvement, or let's say, okay, if we can break this down into a rule, if something else out there is the best that you can see, then you definitely should learn from it and you definitely should improve your own work by following the leadership of that other work at some point. And this is, I think, natural to the learning process and to the creative development process. At some point, nothing out there will be as good as what you want.

And that's when you start to improve upon everything else. So there is this kind of actually reaching the edge and then moving into new territory for you. And it's an individual process. It's not objectively applied to the world, but it is where individuation really kicks into gear.

And for most of my life, there were things that I saw that I loved. And instead of just learning from them, I just kind of like kept trying my own way. And I mean, I wouldn't change a thing about my life, but I can say that there was a lot of stagnancy that happened. I was trying so hard to be an individual, but I was still a novice.

And I really don't think individuality when you're literally a collective agent is all that interesting. I think it only gets interesting when you are really within your own mastery and that mastery is built on the shoulders of giants. So I know that's a big parallel to draw when we bring it back to literally just staging a painting on a wall, but you can see where I'm getting at. I want these years or even I want this year to be defined by improvement and improvement is not improvement with blinders up.

Improvement is saying, if the best thing that you see out there already exists, then let that thing take the light and point to it, but also learn from it. Be open with who your influences are. Show those people and also show the world where you're coming from. And there's a delicate mix here of how to present that because you don't just wanna, you don't just want to create this kind of mental link in people that, oh, this person is just copying that.

No, you wanna show the whole palette of influences. And I think that that's where I want to try next is, okay, so I'm pretty happy. I feel like I'm at a point in my paintings where I am creating things that I don't think exist out there yet. And so if I feel confident in the visual side, the things that I really need to work on are the presentation of it and the network of it.

So how can I post things that other people want to share as opposed to just liking? How can I connect myself into a world that is all about sharing? It's very different from consuming. I think the consuming has its own kind of vectors.

And I do want things that people are just totally excited about. I do want to create things that people are just totally excited about. But I also want to experiment in this whole other vector of connecting to the ecosystem, of sharing the things that are beautiful and meaningful. And I'm really excited to now have this real-time interface with people so that, again, I'm not just projecting my own egoism or my own kind of, ah, I could do that.

I really wanna test all notions of self and action and ability with real feedback so that I'm actually growing, I'm actually improving, and I'm not just living in a fantasy world.

※Take what you need, if it brings you into delight※ 2027 weseeclearly CC BY 4.0 DEED