Personal Investment

My last post talked about what I'd like to do, creating stuff, and as I sit here thinking about stuff I'd like to do and working things out in my head, I'm also thinking about the things I could and should be doing as well.  On some level I can force myself to work, but on another, I can't exactly force my creative intent to unfurl before and within me.  My muse can be elusive, or perhaps hard to communicate with at times.

Something I've been rather conscious of lately is spending time drawing/creating.  I try to spend at least a few hours every evening drawing(usually), or at least working on something or toward something.  Even if all I end up doing is a sketch, at least I'm working towards something, practicing, doing.  Sometimes I can be a little afraid to even start because I know that the final result will fall short of what I hoped it could be.  It's not that my goals themselves are entirely unrealistic, but I often lack certain tools and skills which make them realistically attainable.

Just because I can't make something that's perfect, doesn't mean I shouldn't try.

This is somewhat important for me to remind myself of, because it's only through all of my attempts and "failures" that I've come to understand how I can improve and practice doing so.  I'm not an amazing artist, despite the fact that I've had a lot of time to develop, but it's also been a slow and half-hearted development for the majority of that time, because I was A) afraid to even try, and B) couldn't believe that I could truly reach a point that I wasn't pathetic.  This second part makes both parts into a self-fulfilling belief, or however you want to think of that concept.

I suppose I can't feel too bad about not doing a ton of "work" on Christmas, and I also did draw stuff for the last week or so pretty consistently, perhaps I'm being somewhat hard on myself.  I've already learned that if I make too many excuses for myself then I won't accomplish what I hope to, but I've also learned that setting realistic goals and respecting yourself and your own needs are important things to keep in mind.

So as my holiday message and a thought as we close out a calendar year- I encourage you to respect yourself and your needs, discover the person you want to be, and make realistic goals which guide you to that person.

Happy Holidays Everypony,
Alturiigo

On My Personal "Dream Job"

From videos to blog posts, all derived from late nights and endless thought, I've shared about my thoughts on what I want to do, who I am, what I want to be.  I've thought about "where I see myself in x years", and asked myself, "What do I do when I just do what I want?", and that's helped me look at it in a several different ways.  I'd like to share a little now that I've had more time to shape the understandings about myself that I have gained.

Making a living is kind of important, and while arguably there are many ways to "live", participating in general society pretty much requires finances.  That's more or less the extent of my drive for personal wealth- I mean sure having plenty of money would be great, but I have no desire to collect or hoard it.  I care about trying to be a good person, and for me, caring about how I work and what it says about me is a part of that, more so than how much money I make.

I love to create, to draw, to produce, to share.  I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, and through talking to others I've learned that I really enjoy helping others to reach for their own goals and see both the world and themselves a little more complexly.  Through creating, drawing, and sharing, I've found ways that I can try to encourage others while doing something that I love myself.  There's a living to be made for this, though it's not exactly easy and can require some luck for the circumstances to create a financial income.  This would be my dream though.

I would love to be able to spend my time producing content, so that I may not only share the things that I love and the things that I've learned, but to also create a greater means to be able to encourage others to be the best versions of themselves that they can.  I'd need to make a living through this to be able to give it all of my attention, but past the cost of living and career expense(art supplies, etc), I feel confident in saying that I would like to redirect gains towards helping others.  There are countless charities and programs that could use support all over the world, and even in my own small way, I would indeed like to help the idea of the world.

It's still hard to try to say this and take myself fully seriously, because while I respect artists, vloggers, bloggers, journalists- I also ended up feeling like those weren't "realistic jobs" when I was trying to originally think about my life goals.  Here we are now, many years later, and it's only that much harder to take myself seriously, despite all the hard work I've put towards this "dream job" - one that is not so far in the dream realm any more.  In some ways, this post is also about trying to take myself seriously by pronouncing it- by giving it shape and direction as well as breaking it from being limited to an internalized thought.

It's frightening to face the possibility of reaching for your dream, and I can only imagine it would be much much more so for people whose very identity and existence goes against "expectation" and acceptance.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

The Beautiful Imagining of Life

The beauty of life is in the horizon, where the journey becomes the destination, at the end of a rainbow, feeling without knowing, happy tears, dreams of tomorrow- the never-ending realization that the only thing we have is now, and it’s already gone; a reality we cannot touch, but only imagine.



Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Pledges and Resolutions

I was in 4-H for a little over 8 years, and I've recited the pledge quite a few times. I don't know that I would say that I didn't believe what I was saying, but recently it really kinda struck me.

I pledge my Head to clearer thinking,

My Heart to greater loyalty,

My Hands to larger service,

And my Health to greater living,

For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

As far as pledges go, I feel like this one keeps it simple and positive. I like that. I was making a pledge to think critically, be true to what I believe in, try to help others, and use my strengths and self to help those around me. Sure that's a re-wording, but that's also how I felt and feel about it, and those are ideas that are important to me.

I bring this up because the approach of the year's end is often a time to think about the next year, the future. Many people make resolutions for the new year, quite similar in concept to a pledge. It had actually been a few days prior to this thought on pledges that I was thinking about making some pledges for the upcoming year. Here's what I have on my white-board right now-

• Take Myself Seriously
• Deadlines, Responsibilities, Agency/Capabilities
• Spend My Attention Productively
• Focus On Things Important To Me
• Be Aware Of How I Spend My Time
• Actively Encourage Others
• Help Others See Themselves Positively
• Encourage Positive Perspectives
• Be The Version Of Myself I'd Like To Be
• Create, Post, Draw, Create, Create
• Share More, Share Better
• SPEAK UP!

I can at least try to be the best version of myself that I can be, for myself, and most of these things really do fall under that. Taking myself seriously has a lot to do with that, being able to believe that I can be the person I want to be. Actually that's really important I think.

Remember this: Take yourself seriously, believe that you can be the person you want to be.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

This and That

A variety of blog/vlog post titles, including many of my own, use This and That; I'd like to share some of my thoughts about that briefly.

Context is something that is unavoidable, and is also unique to every individual, at every given moment.  You are continually gaining more context for things, and also shaping your existing context.  Without being able to assume a universal context for something, it can be difficult to talk accurately about it.  This is where having a comparison or lens to approach the subject becomes a little more useful.

Using another something to compare or contrast with your original subject provides a few parameters to "frame" your subject, and hopefully give direction and "effective limitations" to the context of the argument or discussion.  The world is complex, and I feel as though providing a boundary for the conversation helps enforce the idea that there is much more that can be discussed and considered valid- in other words, by saying "let's look at it this way", it arguably supports a notion that you could "look at it that way".
Note: This touches on an invalid argument that "good begets evil, right demands wrong", which does not accurately convey the complexity of human experience, our reality.

I think I have to cut that train short, because it becomes a difficult argument about open-discussion/free-speech against "empowerment by acknowledgement" and "agency by validity", which are difficult concepts but not wholly wrong by any means.  The world is complex, and any discussion can be difficult to navigate, and I think that brings me back nicely to the topic of the post, the usefulness of parameters for discussion.

Having a lens or frame for a discussion allows you to discuss something complex in a simpler way, but by nature presents itself as a limited view of the subject(s).  This is also useful because it takes a large, complex machine of context and gives you a potential sight into how that machine might work.  We do this all the time as we learn about the world around us - we use what we know to figure out what we don't, we compare, contrast, we observe and we create.

Just remember, you can never see the whole of something through any one lens.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Humanity and Public Welfare

Note- I use quotes around words and phrases to distance them, I don't seek to be as literal as possible, but rather evoke the sense of the word.

First off, this is not necessarily a thorough examination of broad "political" concepts, but intended to be a thought-share about the relationship these have through intent, aside from additional effects and ideas they carry.  This may be broad at times(as intended) and is obviously based on my understanding and experience, so with that in mind, let's go forth.

Among all the other things, I believe there is a common intent that helped shape the concepts of Socialism and Communism, and that's what I'd like to explore.  Here's the thought - the intent to encourage a society in which the good of the whole is an acknowledged and supported concept.  One of the biggest aspects of both of these systems that is a symptom of this, is the attempts to redistribute wealth.  While Communism and Socialism are in many ways very different, they both include mechanics which effectively redistribute wealth in more... "authoritarian" ways, perhaps.

Here's where my thoughts continue; when discussing things that pertain to public welfare and social programs as aspects of "government", this tends to cause subjects of the conversation to become "Communist" or "Socialist".  When discussing the idea of the government taking a larger role in public healthcare, the conversation has a difficult time avoiding the label of Socialism, and this is not just limited to healthcare, but rather is limited to the aspect of "government".

I believe the idea of government came about to help enforce and shape societal tendencies and "rules", in some occasions with the hopes of the broadest sense of good.  Socialism and Communism approach their intent by using government as a means to shape and enforce, through laws and/or taxes, a society which focuses on the "good of the whole" - which I won't get into but has a ton of ugly arguments as a concept, so it's not a blanket "good" argument.  Again, there are many many differences here between Socialism and Communism, but that is it's own discussion as well.  There are many ideas of what is "good" and "right", and while government is arguably a symptom of "cooperative intelligence", I feel it fails to address range effectively by focusing more heavily on average, and thereby fails to accurately address the needs and will of the governed.

What gets lost is the intent, the wish, the hopefulness - where it came from, a positive place, even if it's "naive".  If our culture as humans was to think about humans and humanity as a whole, and to invest in our species as a whole, these ideas would seem arguably unnecessary.  We are becoming more and more of a global entity as humans, and our image of humanity and identity as a species is becoming more important now than ever.  Our success as humans may very well rest on our ability to work together as a species and overcome our greatest obstacle - ourselves.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Crowd-Sourcing Public Welfare

I have plenty of ideas, and some of them I like to think aren't so terrible.  One such idea was the concept of an entity which helps to transparently partner businesses with charities and community prgrams.  This thought occurred to me while thinking about a business called BoxLunch, which contributes based on sales, with "Every $10 you spend BoxLunch will help provide a meal to a person in need" according to the website.

I thought this was pretty cool, because while other companies offer opportunities to donate extra money with your sale or with specific purchases, this integrates the charitable idea into the business model.  This is something that is admirable to me, I like to think of it like crowd-sourcing public welfare.  And I don't mean that so much in the sense of actually funding a welfare program,but rather that as a people, we are looking out for people.

It's good and well for companies to do this, but something that can be difficult is determining whether or not the entity is actually contributing, as well as whether the charity is legitimate or not.  While I would love to see the majority of businesses trying to participate in community programs(as many do), it's something that can be easy to claim and harder to prove false.

With Kickstarter and Patreon, I think about the fact that increased accessibility and presence has helped entities with smaller presences find their smaller audiences.  This is a big part of our world today, the ability for the Internet to give a larger potential presence and allow greater outreach and connection.  Google One was an app that partnered with charities, checked said charities, and helped users give small amounts and encourage other users to give.  I mention these things, Kickstarter, Patreon, and Google One, because to me they are a demonstration of the ability of crowds, not entities, to achieve large goals.  One of the ways I believe they help do that is by the ease of being able to contribute, compared to without these systems.

This idea then, would be like crowd-sourcing charity, but from businesses.  It could possibly be as simple as the business signing up to participate and selecting a rate of participation, which would in turn earn them the status as a particpant in valid charity.  The transparency is the biggest concern I have, but I think there's a potential here.  It looks good for a business to give back to the community, and something like a simple logo or symbol can help them easily show that(imagine like a little blue + or heart they could put by their logo or something).  The task would be to help partner charities and businesses together, but to also help support that as a common practice.  How would we do that?

Our attention is one of the most valuable commodities as a crowd, and how we spend our time and money is incredibly important.  There's a (hopefully) growing movement to be more aware as consumers, and doing this is actually productive - corporations need your attention to thrive.  If an environment could be encouraged to exist in which consumers sought exclusively "giving" businesses, we could create a culture in which large sources of monetary flow helped to contribute to the well-being of the community which supports it.

I'm not going to say this is an easy thing to do, or that it would "solve" problems - rather I would like to propose the idea for conversation and direction, because I would like to understand how we can help create a culture in which the sum of money was for people, humanity.  I understand how corporations come to exist, and how competition works, but it's hard not to feel like the distribution of wealth has gotten a bit fucked.

I'd rather not argue about whose fault it is, but instead try to talk about ways we could maybe be better as people and work toward a world that's a little better, a little bit at a time.

Trot On Everypony,

Alturiigo

Edit:  Came across these tweets from a little over a year prior to posting this

Bec's Design Progression

So for this post, I'm gonna go over how Bec came to be the character she is now, and some of the choices for her character design.

One of my earlier drawings of Bec

I wanted to eventually introduce a secondary "main character" to the Echoes Saga, and after watching Samurai Champloo I took to liking a fiery spirit to counter Kelly's watery, fluid nature.  While she had originally started from a lot of ideas, the Bec she is now came after exploring my ideas about the character and how she fit into the story.

I wanted Bec to be a lot like Kelly as far as being an Archon goes, but was struggling with how I was going to express that.  While Kelly's expression is through art, I wasn't sure that I could make it work to have her "cast" through dance or song, which are two important things to Bec personally.  She doesn't express herself in her own music, but dance is something more expressive for her.  One of the first times Kelly and Bec really connect, it's after Kelly interrupts Bec, who had been thoughtlessly dancing while dealing with her emotions.

Bec tends to be withdrawn
and standoff-ish

Bec enters the story upon transferring to the same school as Kelly after the death of her own parents, being moved to stay with her aunt and uncle.  Bec's father produced music and she got her love of it from him, and while I hadn't thought about the professional career of her mother, that is where she inherited her love of dance.  They were financially sound, and Bec went to a private school when they were alive.  She resented the uniform, and often wore her favorite sweater over it.

Music, dance, and her old uniform are some of the things that Bec clings on to emotionally while trying to cope and continue after losing her parents.  She never had to think about how to dress for school before, she didn't wonder about if people would like her(she never cared, but still), she had a routine, a life.  While she wasn't a ball of sunshine before, she always did appreciate the life she had, and loved her parents very much.  That was all gone now.

Bec tends to be a little more toward the shy or distant side, but she is also a very passionate and excitable person.  The way she wears her hair was a

Bec channeling that fiery spirit

design choice I made early on to try to help convey her withdrawn nature.  While she may be shy in some ways, that is not to say that she's terribly concerned about what others think.  If she doesn't like you, she probably won't bother with you.  If you do something she doesn't like, she's likely to let you know, for better or worse.

As far as Bec's expression of spiritual power, I settled on the notion that she had a powerful fire spirit that had been bound within her(possibly a lineage trait), and she could channel it in varying degrees.  Bec hasn't been doing this since she was a child, and doesn't learn it about herself until after knowing Kelly for some time.  After an event where Bec is abducted by a bloodmancer, she is awakened to her own powers, and the spirit within her.  She sometimes struggles to control the spirit if she channels too much at once, and its fiery and consuming nature becomes harder for her to stop.

Because at some point, this is bound to happen in the story

And that's Bec for you.
Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Revisiting Old Pictures

I've been trying to do a lot more drawing lately, and have been successful.  I've also been looking at old stuff, and have gone back to them with a pen and a little more direction/intent.  Some I tried to rework the original, one I just redrew.  The first is a comparison of one of my first drawings to a more recent one.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo