Persistence and Determination

To me, there’s nothing more infuriating than a lost opportunity.  When I was younger, I would lament and feel sorry for myself when I didn’t get what I wanted. Thing was, I rarely went out and seized the opportunity to get it.  Really.  That doesn’t make much sense does it?  I’ve noticed that a lot of people bemoan the fact that their lives aren’t the way they want them to be.  But I rarely see people driving forward and really fostering that change necessary to make a real difference.  There is a certain amount of effort that is necessary to ‘just get by’ and there is about a hundred times more effort necessary to ‘make it happen’.  It wasn’t until I realized I was the only one that could honestly ‘make it happen’ in my life, that I really started to see the positive improvements and change happen. 

Someone recently said to me, “A great idea is the start, but those that are successful have persistence and determination.”  That is so true it’s hard to describe.  Never giving up is a hallmark of success.  It reminds me of a poster I saw long ago and always kept in mind.  I didn’t do the artwork for this one, but it is so apt for what I’m talking about I have to include it.  The question for today however is this, Can you persist through adversity to get what you want, or will you just give up?  Think about it…

Magically disappearing posts...

So I had a pretty good post written up here.  Posted on May 11th, and just like many things in life, it up and disappeared before you know it. Do you think it has something to do with it being Friday the 13th?  Creapy.   This reminds me that enjoying the moment and really appreciating what you have right now really counts for the most. Worrying about the past or the future really takes up a lot of energy and just sucks you dry.

So, appreciate the moment, because nothing is guaranteed. 

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

Douglas Clark
-Head writer, The Inspiration Engine

Closely linked to Creativity is the Inspiration necessary to create.  I've often wondered 'where' Inspiration comes from.  To be totally honest, Inspiration comes from everywhere, anywhere and nowhere.  At first this may seem like a cryptic and convoluted non-answer, but bear with me.  Life is really just a person's perspective.  It's the sum of all their experiences, knowledge, intellect, hopes, dreams, fears and relationships, to both others and their environment.  People see life through their own perspective, not Bob's, or Jim's, or Sally's.  If one were to remain isolated in their comfort zone, that comfort zone would shrink and they would be less and less likely to try new things, keep an open mind about different perspectives and generally become closed off.

This is where inspiration does NOT live.  Inspiration is closely linked to experience, variation and  emotional variance.  If you become exposed to more and more things, your understanding increases and the ability to see things from differing points of view grows.  The possibilities of 'what if' become stronger and it leads you to think in new ways.  Once the power of 'new' takes hold, Inspiration becomes easier.  All of the things in your life now take on the possibility of inspiring a new thought or idea, dream or scheme.

Try this:  Go into a room you have been in many times.  Look around.  If it all looks the same change your perspective.  Stand on the chair and look down.  Climb up on the counter and look around (please be careful).  It's the same room, but you're looking at it from a totally different and probably new perspective.  You changed your perspective of that room and your view of it changed too.  Keep that feeling alive and inspiration will come.

I believe in you.  It can happen.  Just change your perspective.

Thanks for reading.

What Creativity Means to Me

I believe that creativity is a quality that all people posses, but not all people embrace.  Creativity is that quality that enables a person to leap beyond the boundaries of reality into a place where everything and anything is possible.  Creativity, for me, is my way of expressing my views, interpretations and feelings, without having to conform to society or other peoples’ beliefs.  Perhaps it’s a bit egotistical to say, but when I create a story, or a painting, I’m the master of that universe.  The power of ‘what if’ is in my hands and I can see a world unlike anything else. 

Creativity is both a skill and a talent.  The more it is used and developed, the sharper it becomes.  I believe that all people can be creative, not necessarily as a writer, or a painter, or in any of the accepted areas of creative arts, but in areas they feel a calling to.  If there is a passion inside them that calls for creation, the desire to innovate or improve, creativity will follow.  It doesn’t matter if they devise a way to bring water to the desert or make a model air plane out of paper clips.  I think the newness with which a person approaches any subject contributes to creativity.

I also think that the term art is rather subjective.  There are so many varying views on what should or shouldn’t be considered art.  To boil it down to the most basic ideal, I think art is anything that can be appreciated for not only its practicality and functionality, but its beauty, appeal, and ability to evoke an emotional response. 


Here's a little picture I put together to get you motivated to create.  Hope you like it.

Don't forget to check out my online store: Myeccentrictees.com for funny tshirts!

Cute Things

So after many years of not having time or mental energy, I finally emerged from my unfocused fog and was inspired.  Sitting down with my daughter, we draw, color, paint, and sketch all the time.  Because of that, I started to get more experimental and try new things.  It had been a long time since I tried animal characters, so I just sat down and sketched out this cute little parrot.

I did the bird totally by hand with colored pencil.  The text was an addition with photoshop.  I think it turned out really well.  For it being a tshirt design, I'd imagine it for a little girl, but I'm sure the ladies might like it too.  What do you think?


Don't forget to check out my online store: Myeccentrictees.com for funny tshirts!

Inspiration born from drudgery!

After years of suffering through a 9-5 job, I decided to do something about the mind numbing boredom that invaded my life every day.  I have a good job, it pays well and the people I work with are great.  BUT, (yeah, there's always a but) I need to have greater challenges and more creative outlets.  I've always been an artist, a writer, a dreamer, storyteller and one to get lost in imagination.  That's the great part about being alive.  There is always a way to envision the world as something better, something new, something great.

My brother and I jumped into a tshirt design business.  Yeah, we're totally inexperienced, but so what.  Learning is half the fun, and besides, who wants a company meant to help with self expression being run by some corporate stuffed shirt or some really old or out of touch fuddy duddies?  Not me.  I'm not out to insult or hurt anyone, just come up with designs that catch your attention, make you think, or laugh, cringe, or snicker.  So yeah, there will be some shameless self promotion, but it's all in good fun.  I figure if we can all have fun coming up with designs and sayings for tshirts we'd all want to wear, why not.

Life is too short to waste and too long to waste time on boring drudgery.  I know this new company will be a LOT of work, but I'm hoping it will be a lot of fun too.  You only live once, and I'm going to make as much out of it as possible.

So, I'll post a new design up each week or so for comment or critique and we can have fun talking about it or coming up with an even better one.  So here is the very first one we came up with.  We call it Banana Dynamite.  It's totally silly but it was fun making it.  Those bananas are totally hand drawn as is the fuse.  If you check out the design screen on myeccentrictees.com, you'll be able to see even more detail.  Okay, so what do you think?

Don't forget to check out my online store: Myeccentrictees.com for funny tshirts!