antelope.buzkowski

Thinking

antelopeb — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:13 +0000

sometimes i think back to what i was and what i’ve become. i work every day to keep my family fed and i’d do it all for them again and again. but my 9to5 is not the end all be all for everybody. for now it keeps us good but i’m not sure if it will be that way forever and i’m scared sometimes that it won’t. then i’m also scared that somewhere in this i’ve lost me and then i’m not sure if there is a me to lose or if i should worry about that or if the very idea of losing yourself is totally narcissistic. what is me? what is the thing that i’m afraid of losing?

in a sense i worry the most about losing my edge. it’s my creativity that got me here, it’s my creativity and my skills that have me here every day. if i lose them i lose it all you know. i have to stay fresh and able to grow and produce. how do i do that in a situation where the 9to5 doesn’t let me? i can’t do that when i walk in these doors. i have to find someway to make it work on my own. i have to find some way to make it my own. i have to find some way to love it and to be passionate about it enough to pursue it every day. if i don’t i’m done.

i try to think about where it all started. where it all began. what brought me here to start with. can i ever go back there to reignite? i don’t know. maybe my fire is new. maybe i can reignite still. i don’t know. i know. i can. i will.

My desk…

antelopeb — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:06:53 +0000

This is my desk, my creative outlet while sitting through days of drudgery.

Influence

antelopeb — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:21:50 +0000

Sometimes we don’t realize our influence and how what we do and say affects other people. I know that I rarely realize this, even though I try to take other people into account with my actions.

Today, a co-worker was relating how he had planted some tomatillos and how great they were. After he was done he told me that he had only grown them because of me bringing him some from my garden a few years back.

It’s funny how you influence people and you don’t even know it.

Scheduling creativity

antelopeb — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:41:40 +0000

For most of my life, I have felt that creativity had to just… happen. If you tried to force it, you would end up with an inferior product. I’ve learned, however, over the last couple years that this is not true. We live in an on-demand world where creativity means being able to produce when we’re asked. Part of why I wanted to do thus blog was to get in the habit of producing on demand. However, time constraints and poor planning have caused me to miss two days again. The only answer is to schedule, because part of the exercise is findng time to do it every day, pre-writing is not an option. It has to be done then, not ahead of time. What can we do to be sure that we can be creative when we need it?

1) Discipline: creativity itself may need to be undisciplined, but there should be an effort to learn how to be creative in a disciplined manner. Doing it at the same time or at least every day us a good way to exercise your creative muscles.

2) Focus: creativity requires am ability to be focused when you need to. I reads book on fear once from a performance coach who taught people how to focus their skills through distraction. His techniques of centering and staying focused are indespensible (when I practice them!!).

3) Practice: how silly of me to even say this, but it’s true. Being creative is a skill and skills require practice to be honed.

How do I apply this? I’m going to be disciplined in my posting, and maybe I’ll even come up with some better material.

I am, however, two posts down now.

The old cloak

antelopeb — Sat, 29 May 2010 06:17:59 +0000

Love is like an old cloak. It covers you like nothing else can. The comfort, the familiarity, never able to breed contempt or distaste. No matter how many times you put it on, no matter how well you know it, it’s always as comfortable and wonderful as it was before.

Monkey ear lobes

antelopeb — Fri, 28 May 2010 06:00:29 +0000

Narcissist was a character in Greek mythology who was so in love with himself that he could not see the love of the beautiful Echo. He instead drown in the water because he could only stare at himself lovingly.

I’ve met people like that, you know. So self involved that they are literally unable to think that they could possibly do wrong. I mean, nobody likes to be wrong, I’m the first one to get upset at criticism, but to believe that I could do nothing wrong, that’s unbeleivable in and of itself.

I think that Tyler Durden had it right, we have raised a whole society of men who are little boys. A whole lot of people who have no interest in being adults. Responsibility is dead.

Creative pushups

antelopeb — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:04:27 +0000

It is a challenge every day to stay creative. Some days I look at code for 8 hrs straight. Some days I just can’t think about anything creative at all. Ack.

One thing that I find works well is doodling. I doodle all the time. I recently stuck some shelf paper on my desk. I doodle right on my desk now. It’s fantastic fun. I’ll post a couple photozs when I get it filled up.

Missed it by that much

antelopeb — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:42:58 +0000

I remember when I was a little kid. Kind of. Mostly I remember the shows I watched, I guess. I watched a lot of Nick at Night. It was, as I remember, the first true sub-station so to speak, since Nickelodean was the MTV for younger kids and Nick at Night was a station aimed at an older audience. I was at the time also obsessed with oldies, probably no coincedence.

One of the shows that I loved was “Get Smart”. Maxwell Smart and his shoe phone offered much entertainment for me every night I could sneak it in.

What is funny about my memories is that my actual experiences seem to have been replaced completely by the experiences of characters on television. I’m not completely sure whether this was intentional or if it was only because my real life experiences were completely uninteresting. It’s difficult to remember clearly with memories of Scrooge Mcduck clouding my mind.

I do know that in my adult life I have much stronger memories of my experiences and the people I’ve met. I know that 9 years ago I got married, and my wife has offered me a whole host of experiences in life that are rich and wonderful. For our anniversary we got sodas and ice cream at Whole Foods, then tried to get a bike share at a Bcycle Denver station. It only let us get one bike, so we both rode it around the parking lot we were in and then returned it. Absolutely pointless, but a ton of fun!! Much, much better than any TV show… Happy Anniversary.

Celebrity books

antelopeb — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:19:50 +0000

I was in the bookstore today buying stamps and I saw another celebrity book. It’s by that guy that I can’t remember who’s in a movie right now about somebody who does something big or crazy or completely out of the ordinary. It has a great soundtrack and in all likliehood some nudity and lots of drugs and drinking. In other words it’s not an art movie, and if you blew some stuff up it would be a Michael Bay film.

Anyways, this guy wrote a book. It got published. Somehow, his famousnessess makes him someone that I care about and his experiences are somehow valid and I should learn from them. But on the contrary, I don’t give a crap about him and somehow I think that there should be more to validity and respect than just being a guy who gets jobs in movies.

However, I will say that I would like to be that famous some day. Someday I will write about all my times with drugs and prostitutes in the seedy underworld of in-house graphic design. If only people knew the secrets behind those dull corporate forms…

Two post Monday!

antelopeb — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:11:50 +0000

I forgot my post last night. I know, a few days in and I forgot my post. So, today I will post twice. This one is a doodle I did for my web design intern starting tomorrow. I’m excited, but my wife informed me that I was being a little like a situational comedy in my absurd giddiness, I calmed down a little. However, I may still leave this for her tomorrow morning just because I like it. I’m skipping the parade though.