Day 160: Worrying during work tasks

Not so long ago I join a international NGO that needed a logo for their new brand. Initially I became part of their internal graphic design team where each of us contributed with our logo design suggestions. After a while the organisation management got tired of waiting for us to come with a acceptable logo and decided to outsource it to one of popular international design contesting websites. Each of internal designers got payed in our cryptocurrency but of course not as much as the designer that eventually won the contest. When the head of NGO then provided us with the source file of the selected new logo, I noticed that it was not in expected vector format that can be infinitely scaled but only a bitmap file in medium resolution, usable only for website and small printed publication. I volunteered to take over the task of vectorisation since I worked in pre-press for over 10 years and converting images from pixels to vector lines is what I am very skilled at.

During the process of vectorisation I had a massive backchat about many things. Firstly I was dissatisfied with the NGO leadership that did even not educate themselves about how final logo format should be before they organised the design contest. Then I was disappointed about my logo not being selected despite of me being very professional in terms of making sure that it would be scalable, applicable and easily reproducible. I was unhappy about spending so much money on designer who was so unprofessional that he or she did not provide the logo in clean vector shape.

After I continued with inspecting the source file of the logo I noticed that the elements that were to represent a plant were so unnatural that people would notice and criticise it when the logo would be reproduced on some larger canvas. I started to wonder if I should take the initiative and do the corrections that I considered to be in the best interest of the organisation or if I should stick strictly to the original shape. Of course I could send such questions to the NGO leaders but they were very busy and had quite long response time. And many projects were stalled and could not move on before the logo was prepared so there was also a time pressure. 

What I was asking myself during the vectorisation process was if my work will be accepted, recognised and rewarded or if it will be criticised and refused. So I was quite worried about many things and I felt confused and anxious. I was also not sure about what is the procedure to become clear about the things that I wanted answer to since I was not clear about the roles in the NGO or who would be the most appropriate person to query. I wanted to do a good job however all the thinking created a depressed feeling and heaviness around my eyes.

I started to wonder why I am having so much trouble with such a relatively simple task while some individuals in the organisation seem to deal with their task very easily. Then I finally realised that I remembered how my father constantly pushed and criticised me while I was working in his family visual communications company. I was the only one using the computer to scan the logos from the flyers or business cards that clients delivered and I had to vectorise them very accurately and as fast as possible.

The next step of my responsibilities was to engage in the pre-press, do colour separation and films for the screen-printing department that my younger brother was in charge of. And if I made a single mistake, which I occasionally did, but it was discovered only after several hundred pieces of deliverables were printed, it resulted in quite some material damage and massive anger that was clearly expressed by my brother and my father. So during my design and pre-process I was in constant fear of later being emotionally attacked and blamed for damages.

Despite my brother taking over our family business about 17 years ago, me not working there anymore and moving to different part of our country, I still occasionally do some design work for my father using Skype and screen sharing. Lately we go along quite fine but occasionally he still comes with his pattern of getting inpatient and emotions of anger that trigger unpleasant feelings within me. And I am getting so much tired of living in constant expectation when he will call me next and fearing that after I do something for him he will be unsatisfied with my work.

Such experiences engrained and rooted deeply into my body to the level where they influence also myself in unpleasant way when I am working for any other client or do other work that can even not involve computers at all. So I am now going to apply the tools of writing and sounding self-forgiveness and self-commitments in order to shatter crystallised patterns that limit my self-expression and creative potentials:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be afraid about what others will think about the results of my work. I realise that despite my work is a sort of extension and a part of me, the feedback given by others is often influenced by their projections and different kind of reasoning. When and as someone criticise my work and my mind produces thoughts like: “Oh no, they do not like me as a being.” I stop and breathe. I commit myself to in such cases breathe effectively, listen to the feedback within emotional stability and see if I can improve the result of my work so that it will serve end users as best as possible in a practical way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel pressured when engaging in a creative design process since it takes quite some time and inspiration to come with a good and fresh idea and then to also manifest it in a tangible form. I realise that despite of being pressured and not allowed enough time to creatively express during the period of me being employed by my father I am now my own boss and am able to take as much time as needed for me to be completely satisfied with the result. When and as I start with creative design process and my mind is producing thoughts like: “Time is money so you must hurry or the client will have to pay you much more money than needed.” I stop and breathe. I commit myself to find clients who value high quality design and are also willing to pay fair price for it so that I can focus on being creative without any kind of unnecessary pressure.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become depressed in cases when I do not know who in organisation that I collaborate with is responsible for what. I realise that the only solution for something that I am not clear about is to ask questions and get answers no matter how long it takes for me to be completely clear about whatever I need to know in order to move forward. When and as I am unclear about something and my mind is producing thoughts like: “Oh no, I will now have to spend time to write the questions and wait for the answers and thus the work will have to wait.” I stop and breathe. I commit myself to be aware that being clear about things is the most important in life and that I am diligent in making all the necessary questions and be patient at receiving the answers. And during the time while I wait for a needed answer for me to be able to move on with a project, there are always many other tasks that I can do, especially perfecting myself by writing mind constructs like in this blog post.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-perfecting tools within free online DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled Worry Wart from the Life Review series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answers to any imaginable question about life and this existence.

Day 141: Cold Feet Symptoms, Causes and Treatments

This is my 5th consecutive blog post about cold feed or cold legs symptom that I have been experiencing for about last 10 years. I will be here showing you a way of treatment that addresses the root psychological or spiritual cause as the accumulated traumatic memories from the past. For you to understand the full context of this process, I invite you to firstly read my four related blog posts titled (1) The cause for cold legs, (2) Home remedy for cold feet, (3) Solution for perpetually cold feet and (4) Why are my legs always freezing cold. In this blog post I will be walking the next major memory imprint that attributed for me to lose my footing and grounding which manifested my cold feed. The event is me not being accepted to the graphic design middle school that I applied for and thus decided to rather attend machine engineer middle school where I experienced many traumatic experiences as described in my previous blog post. So instead of walking the next event in the timeline I am here taking one step back since I feel that this event is also very much related to me becoming disappointed about my life and creating a personality of suppression.

When I had to decide what middle school to enrol in, my primary option was the Design & Photography Middle School in Ljubljana city. Soon after I applied, I received a notice from that school that they received much more applications than there were available seats. I had to take qualification test which I to my great disappointment failed to pass. I was faced with decision if I am to wait for one year and try applying again at the same school or to immediately start studying at any other middle school where they had enough seats and I would be thus accepted without having to take any qualification tests. I think it was my parents to finally convinced me that enrolling into Mechanical Engineer class at Jesenice Middle School would be the best option since it is also a kind of design process which includes a lot of drawing. It seems to also be a good decision since my father couple of years ago started with our family business where we started to produce metal constructions for industrial air purification systems and other small products from metal for the Jesenice Steel Factory where most of the people who lived in the city were employed from.

Being turned down at design school was very depressing for me since I considered it as an escape from my parents who started to suppress me more and more. I was not allowed to go out in the evenings or at weekends and I was constantly needed to assist others in our metal shop. I did not like the smell and feel of the metal since there was a lot of dust and paint vapours that were created in the manufacturing process and the materials were very cold. I had no opportunity to express myself creatively during the production process and there were constantly short deadlines so I had a very little free time. Consequently I was not able to develop my drawing and design skills so that I would have a chance when competing with other kids who also applied for design school. Many had much better background since at least one of the parents was professional painter, designer, architect or photographer and my parents were none of such kind. I had to teach myself how to draw and paint without and family assistance and support. Deeply inside me I felt that this was the correct profession for me.

Several years after my father stated with metal related family business, he once visited innovation fair in United States as representative of Jesenice Steel Factory and decided to import computer controlled self-adhesive foil sign-making machine. I was very excited about that and during my middle school I started to experiment with this revolutionary technology that almost totally replaced manual sign-writing profession. This was a kind of graphic design process however instead of drawing with hands, I used computer, software and the mouse that very limited my creative expression and also influenced my mind in becoming very restless and stressed. Due to international recession in metal industry that soon followed, my parents decided to completely transform our family business and we completely switched to sign-making and screen-printing services. Since my parents knew nothing about computers and graphics, my brother and I became the main producers and my parents managed the business from perspective of providing clients, materials and performing accounting. However even here I was not able to express myself creatively since my father did not understand design and cherished only the speed of sign-making and screen-printing.

Such environment created big frustration within me, I started to loose my mind and had to visit psychologist for the first time in my life. When I met my first girlfriend we decided to move together to an apartment quite far away from our family business in order to escape from the tyranny of my father. But he continued to press on me that resulted in breakup of my girlfriend and me couple of years later. I then decided to completely stop working for my father and work only as graphic design and photography freelancer. That finally enabled me freedom of creative expression and I enjoyed it very much. However I still used only computer tools for creative process and was not comfortable with hand-drawing. Internally I felt restless, my mind pressed me and also due to incredible shock when my girlfriend decided to break up with me, my passion switched from creating designs to discovering how human mind works and what is the meaning of life. Even though I still enjoy graphic design to this very day, I feel that I am lacking the basics of colour and design theory and core drawing skills that prevent me from excelling as a graphic designer. Thus I am thinking about how completely different my life would be if I would be accepted into design school in distant Ljubljana city where I would be safe from oppression of my father, probably also prevented from being bullied from classmates and definitely immensely supported in developing my deep design passion. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to compromise myself by taking the easy way and decided to study machine engineering instead of persisting and making sure that I study what I actually want. I realise that there are always the quick and the right options in life. Our minds tend to prefer shortcuts that create undesired consequences and time-loops while if we listen to ourselves/being the path might be longer and more challenging but also more fulfilling and satisfying. I commit myself whenever I find myself at the juncture where there are two or more option and my mind produces thoughts like: “Take the easy and fast way since why waste time and suffer!” to stop and breathe. At such moments I rather look within myself and see what I truly want and move towards that that goal no matter how long it will take and what obstacles I will have to face.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to blame my parent for influencing my decision about what middle school to attend instead of realising that at the end it was me and no one else who made the final decision about that. I realise that my parents tried to be responsible and did consider all the options that they saw however since I was not passionate enough about attending design school, they directed me towards decision that they considered to be best for me and at the same time also best for the future projected family business. I commit myself to when and as I am in conversation with someone about what direction to move myself considering the mutual plans and my mind produces thoughts like: “Your personal desires do not really matter since it is more important to fit in and do what others want from you.” to stop and breathe. I then communicate clearly and directly about what I feel is my life vision and mission with others and stand firmly on my principles.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel regret about me not immediately deciding to study at design school, believing that it would save me many years of troubles and assisting me in developing myself into much better and satisfied graphic designer. I realise that my imagination about how my life path would be and what experiences I would have if I would take middle school for design might be very different from what they would actually be. While design school should be supportive to develop design skills, I might still be experiencing there influences from authoritative teachers and bullies since no school is perfect and all in a way limit self in regards to full self-expression. When and as I look back to my options that I decided not to take in the past and my mind produces imagination about how my life would look like if I would take those paths, I stop and breathe. I then rather consider my current options and learn from actual past experiences to make better decisions that would compromise me as little as possible, where I would be able to express myself fully and where I would at the same time also be able to support all life as one and equal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that he best way to lear something is to enrol in some public school instead of realising that most public schools are based on the military way of disciplining and shaping of individual into obedient follower. I realise that best way to excel in something is to learn from the masters as apprentice and from their books and courses where they have shared their knowledge and realisations. When and as I want to learn something and my mind is telling me: “Look for the closest public school or university and apply there since you will get a certificate of completion that will enable you to get a good paying job very fast.” I stop and breathe. Within realisation that quality of public schooling is very low, diplomas do these days not mean much, permanent employments are thing of the past, I rather decide to be self-taught and study from many better and easier available sources of knowledge that would enable me to excel in my profession and thus enable me to take care for myself much more effectively.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that my core passion is becoming a designer and that this is what I absolutely must focus to develop myself towards in my current life. I realise that definition of a designer is very limiting and that I as a living being have many more potentials to express myself and to perform much more tasks that to only do graphic designs. I must consider that my desire to become a designer could not actually be my life mission but only a preprogrammed idea based on how I have been influenced by my parents and environment that they have created for me where creating with Lego bricks was for example one of things that I was given the opportunity to play with. When and as someone asks me what my life passion is and my mind would serve me a thought like: “Tell them that you are a graphic designer!” to stop and breathe. I then rather expand and explain what are all the things that I am interested in and how actually I am not limiting myself to any specific profession since I want to express myself in a myriad of different ways.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to resent public schooling system and teachers for influencing me in a way where I feel that I have been abused, limited and suppressed. I realise that also the public schooling system has many historical influences from governments to ideologies and individuals. People who become teachers have different starting points and abilities and combining all together, each class, school and national education system is a bit different and provides different experience to an individual pupil. When and as I think about my educational experiences and my mind produces thoughts like: “Those nasty teachers have abused and harmed me thus I have the right to hate them!” to stop and breathe. I then put myself in the shoes of every teacher that I have met and see that I would probably act no different that they had. So instead of wasting time by thinking about the past and feeling sorry for what I have become, I rather bring myself back here into reality and see how I can invest time into perfecting myself since this is where I have the power of making any real change.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-assisting tools within DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled The Natural Learning Ability from the Life Review series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answer to any imaginable question about life and this existence.

Day 128: Gained new momentum

It is odd how I started to feel recently where I am not worried anymore about the lack of time to do all what I committed myself to do in a day. I have been regularly vlogging in Slovenian language now for 112 days and each week I would also record one vlog in English language. However I have not been doing any writing in the last couple of week. So now I have decided to also restart blogging however I did not want to commit to do only one or couple of blog post per month or week, I got incredible feeling that I will be simply able to write one blog each day.

I guess this is new feeling is the consequence of deciding to restart my graphic design services that I find very enjoyable since I am able to express myself and also earn money easily. In the past several months I have been focusing on developing a big project and was doing design work only for my father occasionally and the second source of money was from social support. I kinda did not want to do any other work since I wanted to focus on my big project. 

However this big project was such that that it required a lot of planning, organizing, collaborating and especially waiting. I was not able to move to the next step until I would be given a certain feedback from involved parties so this held me in a state of dissatisfaction. However as a designer I am able to get several design projects that take many days to complete and I can fill my day with the work tasks and I feel very fulfilled since I am doing creative work and express myself.

So despite of deciding to get additional work besides the big project that I am developing, I am now so excited that I see myself willing to write also one blog post per day with great satisfaction. It feels like I was suppressing myself all that time and now the clouds cleared and the sun begun to shine.

Related audio interview recommended for listening:

Finding my Calling in Life

2010 - Masturbation stop day 30, getting more realization, dating, earning money

It has been a few week since my last vlog and blog post, so this is to inform everybody what I have been doing in this period of time.

After I have been very active in vlogging, watching and commenting other's vlogs and Desteni open forum posts, I have received unexpected feedback from Desteni members and other people. They have exposed my starting point of vlogging and commenting not to be from oneness and equality, but from the point of judgement/anger, based on the knowledge and information. I found that to be true and I am grateful for others to expose my dishonesty. This is why I have deleted two of my vlogs that were from this perspective no valid at all.

For I while I have also stopped commenting and then continued with commenting again, but only to the extend of my personal realization. So I took advise to slow myself down and to take more time to realize what oneness and equality truly is. I have noticed that I have tendency to preach/judge and show others how much knowledge I have, so they would notice/admire/accept me. Thus I have become careful firstly to become one with other - to put myself in the place/skin/shoes of other - and make a comment as I would like to be commented/supported/directed if I would be in the position of that person.

I have been very active in watching the vlogs, blogs and forum posts in order to get more realization of how to be proper support for myself and others. I have searched for, discovered and subscribed to other most active Desteni member sites on the Blogger, WordPress and Multiply, which took quite a lot of time. So now I am continuing with reading other's past blogs, watching almost everyone's new vlogs, and sharing them to my FaceBook, Netlog and Twitter profiles. I have also updated Desteni Slovenia web site with FaceBook, YouTube and Blog links of all current Desteni members from Slovenia.

Today is exactly one month since I have stopped masturbating and watching pornographic movies. I had no great temptations and I was able to stop every sexual distraction in a breath. But when I caught the scene of some erotic movie while I was in the fitness, where they have large TV sets in front of the gym bicycles, I noticed that I got erection due to participating in the sexual thoughts, triggered by the movie scene. Then I focused on my breathing and the disappeared as fast as it appears.

For past three weeks I have had an online chats and phone talks with some girl who liked me, based on my dating site profile. Two days ago, she took over two hours drive and came to meet me for the first time in flesh at my apartment. We connected quite well and spent the night together. Her partner left her 6 months ago, after 17 years of living together, and she is now living in the house with his divorced some close relative and adorable 11 years old daughter. We'll se how this story will unfold in the future.

Regarding my income, I have been for past three weeks distributing the rest of my 15.000 flyers for my counseling services to the nearby cities. I have spent at least 6 hour on foot per day and inserted promotional material into the mailboxes, but I do not expect many customers soon. I've learned that this kind of business needs more time and advertisement to succeed. Because of focusing myself only at the counseling services for past several month, I have got myself in the deepest debt, so they also blocked my credit card for the first time in my life. This is why I decided to stop with promoting my counseling services and to restart offering my graphic and web design services. I have already got some order from some close relative, and I will start to offer my design services also to other companies in my area. I expect to get out of debt in a month or two, and I will also see, how much the participation in the Desteni Income Plan will contribute to my financial situation.
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