Decision Trees

As I have gone through life, I have always examined the decisions I have made that have left me in a negative situation. I go over them in my head, scrutinizing everyone and seeing what different paths I could have, or would have taken. I think we all do this, in one way, or another, as a kind of learning process. I just realized that the when everything works out and I am the happiest with the outcome of a long set of decisions, it is mostly when I am completely following my instinct, my gut, my heart, or whatever you want to call it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have gotten stuck due to lack of knowledge, but the things that has stopped me from following my instinct the most, are my insecurities. I am done with that. I know what I am capable of and I know that if I don’t have a skill and I really need it, or want it, all I have to do is take a class, or read and practice said skill and I will go back to following my heart. It is not that easy to know what to do in every situation, but if you follow your first gut feeling, you will end up in a good spot. If you are wrong then you need to work on analyzing that decision, so that won’t happen again. Usually if your gut leads you down the wrong path, then that usually means that you need to learn something. I go back home and analyze the F— out of it! Then, I research on that stuff and learn what to do if I am ever in a similar situation again.

If you think about your decisions as a natural progression, it might look like a bunch of branches. Eventually you have a tree. I know that the decisions that I have made for certain parts of my life have left me with some pretty ugly looking trees. I am currently in the process of fixing those dudes. Like my eating habits. That tree is literally looking better and better as of late. My architecture tree has now been replanted because it was really dying already. I am happy that I am now fixing all my trees, so that eventually, I could have a full forest of wonderful looking healthy trees.

I am back

This is the first of many more blogs.
Working and being unemployed are both hard. When you are working, you are stressed out about deadlines, bosses and clients. When you are unemployed, you are worried about job leads and bills pilling up. What is funny is that the bills pile up even while you are working. Lately, I have been keeping myself busy working on projects. I need to focus on my portfolio more; that is for sure. I have also been traveling a bit because for some reason, while I am working, I find it hard to plan a vacation amidst all the madness.
Tim Ferris said in an interview that “if people don’t believe the messenger, it does not matter how good the message is.” I found this interesting because I had been thinking about art for some time. I was listening to the new No Reform mixed tracks and I thought this is good stuff. It took me back to my problems in Architecture school. I remembered when I would get “stuck.” This is what I would paralyze myself with:
What is the next move?

Do I even have it in me?

What if I do it and it is crap?

I need to learn form Z better so that my stuff could look better.

Never did I just smoothly crank out shit! It was always stopped with a barrage of second guessing myself. Now fast forward to today and listening to the No Reform tracks I thought man these are good, people will like them. I told Maria and she said, they do sound good, but there is a lot of good music that no one ever listens to.
That is true. I am certain that there is tons of art, music, poetry, that is good, but no one ever sees, hears, or reads. That is what I think people must get over in order to create. In order to create one must stop second guessing themselves. I am sure any artist will tell you this. I have heard some musicians say that they write music for themselves. I think that is passion. If no one ever listens to it, it must not matter.

So back to good old Tim Ferris, the truth is, if you don’t believe in yourself as a messenger, then you will never let yourself create anything of value. In turn, no one will believe in you as a messenger!

keeping proactivities

After the last post my company layed-off 10% of the people.  guess who was in that 10% percent…? that’s right yours truly and now the challenge continues.  I am very happy that this happened to me now that I have been pushing to move mountains because I have the momentum, right now, to just add this to the pile!

being proactive

I have been really into self help: Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris, and Stephen Covey.  Man! Has my life changed!  I have been motivated like crazy.  Started actually doing stuff.  I mean this gym thing was just the beginning.  Now i am  working on income producing activities (within the law), and Maira and I are buying a house.  It is crazy.  I have no fear.  You might think I’m crazy because of the economy.  It is crazy, but we will pull through.  If I don’t, what is really the worst that can happen?  I have even defined that based on Tim Ferris book, and I know we could tough it out.  Both Maira and I can!

I am too busy getting stuff done, to even worry about failure.  I am just pushing to make things happen.  I know that all i need is to make everyday count and if I fall, really push to not let myself stay down!! I really recomend that if you are having some kind of mind block, like writers block, or life block, you get into this stuff; it is not bad at all.

I will keep you updated on my accomplishments.

working title

I feel good now a days.   I am eating healthy and going to the gym on a regular basis.  I also stopped the intake of large amounts of alcohol beverages.  In turn, I am now considered the “go-to” designated driver.

This is a huge change in my life. I guess I was tired of always feeling shitty and not getting shit done.  Now everything is on the up and up.  I am just ready to do more stuff.

Eating is not an easy thing to change.  But I just asked my bro Freds to tell me how he does it and he said i have to eat protein and cut carbs.  He then gave me a magazine article filled with 30 rules backed with studies.  The rules include things like eating eggs for breakfast and eating sugarless oatmeal as a mid morning snack.  So i started on the things that i could do and i started going the gym and I got sick. I went to the doctor and he told me i need to eat more balanced meals with fruits and a lot of veggies and not too much fish.  There were some nights that i would only eat meat for protein. That is a no no. The Atkins is not a good diet.

So now i follow my common sense and read and research to eat good.  in the morning i eat compex carbs like oatmeal, or whole grain bread and eggs with strawberries or karrots.  i always eat another meal at 10 and lunch. I eat whatever has lean meat and no simple carbs (patoto is the worst). Then another fast meal at 3 and one before i hit the gym that is usually like a snack for energy. Dinner and maybe a late night snack.

To work I always take granola, string cheese, oatmeal, various fruits,  non fat yogurt and anything else for my meals at 10 and 3pm.  I never go hungry anymore EVER!  If I feel the slightest pinch of hunger I eat!

The weekends are FREE!!! I mean I don’t care. I enjoy the food so much more. I earn it for a week of being good.

So the thing about the gym was that I never went.  After I got home from work, i kicked off my shoes and relaxed, then when it was time to go, I always had an excuse.  I decided to go right after work.  3 days a week because that is realistic.  That is exactly what I do now and its been over a month that i haven’t made an excuse.

About the gym thing, I told a good friend (e) about what i was doing and he was so interested, that he decides to join me and now i got a partner.  This is very cool.  I didn’t even care about it, I was so determined to go on my own. But this is a support system that came out of nowhere.

My wife then decided to join me in the way I eat and that makes everything fall into place.  That was the most exciting thing.

This is not a quick fix. this is not a diet.  This is it. This is how we will live for the rest of our days.

I am happier that ever about this and I will only continue to reap the benefits!  Beach…  here I come!

working hard

so yeah I have been a bit of a workaholic lately.  Getting things done for work. I took this last weekend off. That was rejuvenating experience.  I know that these things are something that are so generic that You could find a million post about this.

I worked hard and i took a vacation to relax.

Lets examine the first part of that sentence.  Working hard – what does that mean? some people would argue that one should work smart not hard. To some people doing Heavy labor is hard work and sitting in the office all day is a piece of cake. I know i speak for myself when i say what I do for a living is stressful and hard.  For now the compensation is better than anything else I would likely be doing.

The second part of the sentence is one that could be looked upon with many different perspectives as well in the movie Office Space the main character talked about his dream of doing “nothing.” That is what he would rather do than work.  so I gues he would be happy to take time off and “bum it” at home.  I on the other hand would rather spend that time on the beach or something that is related to the outdoors.

To conclude this blog I ask you why do you go to work every morning?  What is it that motivates you to do the things you do.  That is really what should be the deciding factor in your decision to dedicate your life to a single proffesion.

write, sketch- sketch, write, write.

Spending the whole day at the beach is the most amazing thing.   I went with my wife and Family, and it was great.  It just makes me think about everything with a different perspective.  Nature and all that.  so the fireworks were nice but the waves were much better.

I had to visit the doctor two weeks ago and I found out that my health was really crappy.  I had already cut the crap out of my daily intake and started to exersise.  To little, to late. Now, I have to do that along with cutting out the alcohol. It was good that i went to get checked out cause that makes me conscious of what harm i caused my body with all the fast food and drinking.

so i hope all of you learn from me and cut out the crap before you realize … to little. to late.

Ranting and Raving

Right now I just want to write, so from now on these posts are not going to be in any way restricted by the parameters set and things that will make me put a hold on writing. I want to write more and hence forget any rules I set forth for my “blog.”

I have been thinking about a lot of shttt. Relationships, Design, work ethic, there is all kinds of stuff that I think about while I draft at work. Also, I listen to some good podcast, all the twit.tv stuff and I found a new one about skeptics. I can’t listen to any rev3 stuff because our IT guy didn’t like me looking at that so he blocked it.

Now, moving on to something that I have been thinking about:

Now I’ve drawn a blank… screw it I am sick and tired of the lack of imagination and the waste of my artistic abilities. I find myself sketching through notebooks a bunch of doodles that don’t make any sense and have a lot of creating fonts that i will never use to create a cool design with.

I fill my head with all these distractions and still manage to finish what is required of me at work. It makes Tim Harris’ book The Four Hour Work Week seem to make more and more sense.

The thing I am pissed about is that nothing comes out of all that the podcast that are informative. I write notes sometimes in my note pad, only to be forgotten, along with the crazy babble that I doodle. The notes are mainly surrounded by my mindless cursive of my surname STEVE!!! I always scratch that and write ESTEBAN around it to make me feel better.

I am self diagnosing my self as a crazy person that writes his name over and over to cover up any potential that he might have to actually accomplish great things.

Now what do I do? How do I start working towards something that I could be proud of? As apposed to the piles of doodles in notebooks supplied for note taking in meetings before the meetings?

This is an endeavor that I think could get me in trouble. I should be more focused on the job and less focused on anything else. Sometimes the job is very demanding and requires me to remove the headphones and really focus, but most of the time this is not the case. How do I avoid negative reaction to my attempt at creating something great without causing anyone around me to be alarmed? Maybe they will react by overloading me with things to do.

Who knows? It’s a catch 22. I think I am going to start buying audio books about structures and other stuff so that when I go back to school I will be ready for structures. Maybe some History and conceptual design stuff. I think even some stuff about getting my architecture license. That might be it for now, but what about my doodles?

still dreaming

My last post was not well thought out. First of all, I didn’t even answer the question. I just stated that i would like to have the decision making ability that I feel I lack… and TOTAL POWER!!! HAHaHA

A dream job is a job that besides pay and job security, it meets other needs. It fulfills the need to be proud of what you accomplish. It stops you from having those bad days when you don’t want to get out of bed. For a person in pursuit of a goal, it gives them the freedom to accomplish their goals – in an out of the work place.

In my case, my dream job is a job that realistically wants to create great design and stand out amidst all of the obstacles we face.

Obsticles which include:

1. Budget

2. Time

3. Clients

4. status quo

The list goes on and on, but I digress, these obstacles are what make our job what it is. We must live with them and figure out ways to push good design through their crutches!

My dream job is not too far away. I need only to finish my personal goals and continue my professional ones. The one thing about this that really excites me, is that my comfort level has been raised. I never thought about having a dream job before; I only thought of getting one and keeping one. Even if I hated getting up every morning. and of course power is nice too…

dreaming

A whole bunch has happened since I last posted. The biggest being, our new apartment. This is huge for me because i am closer to work and school. I have more time to do things and my wife is happier.

With that said, I have been far too distracted to think about new things, new thoughts and new ideas to share here. As you may have figured, I am all about trying to overcome obstacles and figuring out what makes us do the things we do. I am trying to self-analyze my lack of motivation and in turn accomplishment.

I feel that I have gotten to the root of it and am on a mission to change my mental wiring. This, as everyone knows, is a daunting task. So here I am thinking that I am well on my way and some one completely knocks me off my rocker.

What would you do to make your job a dream job?

To me, a job is far from dreaming. When it comes to work, dreaming is the farthest thing from my mind. If you know me at all, you understand that if I start thinking of dreaming and working together, you will find me on a couch like the “IDC Grizzly,” (in school i used to sleep on a couch and my snoring earned me that nick name).

I am still trying to figure this one out. I really want to write a good answer to this for myself. Good design, Great design, Design period.

creating something exiting within budget and other constraints. It goes back to my idea of survival through design. I need to become more secure with the idea that I can create good design regardless of the constraints. I need to approach this subject head on and come up with an answer.

I am sorry if this doesnt make sense. But the answer is:

to create my dream job is to be great enough at what I do, to the extent that no one questions my decisions anymore starting with myself.