July 1st

“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.”

The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.

Storms and comfort zones, in this case I am referring to creativity and social media.

We are almost halfway to a new decade. We as creatives and artist and MUAs and models. Whatever your outlet is, we are always evolving. Which means that we are always thinking of new things to create and do. The problem is getting past the fear of how our “other than normal” art will be received. I’m not gonna down play it. It is a big hurdle. We want to keep our followers happy, we want to feel the “likes” roll in whenever we post stuff that we know will get received well.

But what happens when we want to try a new style? Shoot different subjects? Try different makeup colors? Get a new cosplay? Are we forever going to be stuck doing what we know is received well by others? Or will we try to expand our own creativity, and continue the search for people who will like us for us?

Thats why the quotes are “important” we’ve all used them at some point. And guaranteed half the time we’ve said them was to other people. Or when something that actually challenged us was in effect.

We will never know the true way to get out of a comfort zone, if we don’t get out of a comfort zone. Myself included, this month I am going to get out of it. And I’m talking social media here. Are we afraid of rejection? Of low likes? Of ridicule? Of “you shouldn’t wear that” or “lol” or “I didn’t follow you to see this”

We can’t know how it feels to experience that, if we don’t put ourselves in that experience. We can level up and gain xp if we are already maxed out in our comfort zones. And I know, it is scary. Nobody likes getting rejected. Nobody likes when they feel they aren’t getting the recognition they think they deserve.

But imagine the plus side!

What if you Gain a whole different group of people? What if you find more people who like you for you?

And regardless of the outcome, think of how you will feel when you do something you have wanted to do all along, but was too scared to?

I finally made myself get a Bored Panda account to post some photos on. I had been putting it off for a long time, because I was scared. I knew my instagram bubble knows who I am, And I feel safe In it. So putting myself on a new community to open myself up to more peoples views and opinions was tough.

The next morning I woke up to the first comment I saw. It simply said “lol” 

More time went by and a couple positive comments came in, so that was nice.

But regardless of the comments, I have zero idea how many people saw the post and didn’t say anything. I have no idea. 

But what I do know is that I made myself do something to level up. And that is what its all about. Strengthening yourself. Making myself a Pine tree in a storm. Preparing myself more to know how this feels, so I can get to the point where getting more and more outside my comfort zone is less scary.

I have been called:

Apeman

Monkeyman

So many derogative and negative comments I forget most of them.

The very first time I went to san Francisco with my suit, within five minutes of me walking around, some dude on a skateboard skated by and yelled out as loud as he could “N*ggerman!” 

All these situations are just preparing me for what’s to come. As an artist and a creative. People will forever voice their negative opinions. Because they can, and its super easy to say what you don’t like, as opposed to what you do like.

But getting out of our comfort zone and knowing the risk of receiving the negative feedback is XP

I want more XP, but it only comes from outside of comfort zones, and repetition.

It’s extremely easy for me to to give quotes out like candy. But until I actually live by them... experience just how it feels to get either praise and compliments. Or ridiculed and laughed at... 

how I process it, react to it, learn from it, and analyze how I feel from it... is what is actually helping me grow. The application. Not just the words. 

It’s a new month. Let’s gain some XP⚡️

Shoot I do Facebook ads. Every. Single. Time. I’m about to hit “send” I still feel a pang. A pang of “someone’s gonna say something dumb. Someone is gonna make fun of me. Someone is gonna laugh at my pictures.” 

But I do it anyway. Because I am stronger than what other people think. Or at least I like to think so. And by doing that this, is my way of “liking to think so”