Own your Externals

One thing I've learned that makes a large difference in my productivity is getting myself out of the house and working at the cafe.  I knew that right from the get-go when I arrived home for the summer and it's been working beautifully.  As life would have it, not one but two of our cars shut down (and for the double whammy, one of them shut down in the middle of the highway while I was on my way to ACEN) and its looking like I'm without any transportation in a town that pretty much requires a car in order to get around or to said cafe.

There were a chunk of other things happening that I won't dwell upon here, but all in all, I was becoming pretty angry at things in life seemingly blocking me out of nowhere, and they were all particularly most prevalent and hardest hitting whenever I was going down a path I knew would eventually benefit me.

So I was walking around aimlessly at my Mom's house, thinking to myself, "Man, I can't do anything if I can't get out and to the cafe."  But it was then I had to acknowledge that both the car and the cafe are, when boiled down, luxuries.  I remembered an old Bobby Chiu piece of advice that helped me a lot through my struggles at even getting to Ringling:

• Don't let the external things in life dominate your situation and don't entrust and put your life in the hands of external situations because...
• Given the right shift in attitude and focus, you have what it takes to own your externals

It took me a while to realize all this.  Maybe the many privileges we're so fortunate to have at Ringling have softened me up.  The other thing I learned is that the greatest rewards are usually right around the corner when life decides to pile on and will only be there IF you put forth your best efforts to achieve them.  I mean, just look at the post I just made about how rewarding ACEN was regardless of the freak setback of having your car shut down in the middle of the highway right on the biggest day of the convention, amongst other problems?

There are a lot of other Bobby Chiu pieces of advice that fit the bill and help what I'm writting, but I'll leave it short and sweet: Don't let externals own and dominate your life and, if you keep pushing, the rewards will be there.

-EDIT-

Made it to the cafe after all!  Did plenty in the sketchbook, but here's some tablet stuffs