After hours of deliberating I finally muster enough energy to manifest these words into existence. I type my first draft, I don't write with my hands fast enough to capture my thoughts. To get to this point is somewhat of an achievement. I'll have this done in a few minutes, I can feel it. This paper is already mentally written. I've just got to keep my flow going fast enough to get it all out before I get distracted. Just hit a snag, I've gotta remember where I wanted to go with this next. My creative process always ends up like this. I spend 99% of the time planning and 1% executing, that ratio always seems to work out for me.. Another snag. I'll go pick up the guitar and see if I can think through it like that.
My fingers started to hurt so I'm back. The guitar is a funny thing for me. I've been playing since I was 15 and the number of times I've actually played with an audience is in the single digits. I don't so much play real songs, as I just let the fingers on my left hand walk around on the fret board, and the finger on my right hand get to dance on the strings. It always seems to slow my thinking down, from the hyper velocity of consciousness to the snail's pace of reality. So here I am again, I'll get into my pre-planning.
When I'm issued any sort of project I tend to go through the same initial phase. Panic. There's a part of me that wants to make everything I do into a masterpiece. So I'll start to visualize the end stage of production, the one I'm doing right now. The actual execution of whatever needs to be done. Then out comes the paper. It's gotta be paper, nothing else works. Nothing else has the flexibility and speed. I'm never organized when I take notes. Organization has no place in my brainstorming. I tend to draw erratic diagrams and place text which has no meaning all over the place. I've never taken notes the same way twice. Once I have a diagram of what I want to do, I pack the notes away into a folder and I'm done with them. I don't look at them past this stage. They're only going to slow me down now. I know why I do this, I need to get the ball rolling. I need to give some sort of production based commitment to the assignment as soon as I can, or I'll forget its ever been issued. I have tried to look at things from this initial stage, but trying to decode the almost cryptic text is a near impossibility.
Now we enter into stage two, waiting for the idea to boil. This is the weirdest part for me. I'll sit around thinking about a project seemingly non-stop from the time it's issued until about 20 minutes after I turn it in. I don't actually work on it for the majority of that time. Instead, it crops around in my consciousness. Rearing it's head every so often, and like a block of marble I take a little chip out of it bringing more form, more refinement. I think Michelangelo once said that very phrase in so many words. I can't tackle ideas full force, I need to work little pieces of them out before I move out of this stage, this part of my process. What I end up with is a completely formulated mental thought, I have completely visualized and completed the project. Every little detail is accounted for. Once I get done with this, I smoke a cigarette and start to worry about the due date.
I try not to smoke inside, I go outdoors, I let the brisk air combined with nicotine fill my lungs and clear my head. I use the time to write this sentence and the ones following it out in my head. I remind myself that this is due in less than three hours, this is the only motivation I have to work on it. I put things off until the last minute because I enjoy the pressure. I shouldn't say minute, sometimes it's hours or days, depending on what I have to do. I only allot myself enough time to complete the assignment, do a quick double check, and print. So now I'm finishing up, I'm winding down. I can feel the paper beginning to complete itself, my thoughts are almost done pouring from my brain. This little time near the end, is somewhat of a relief. I check the spelling, find a few errors. I hit save. I'll need to print this later in the library. I close the window, I've finished.



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When the topic of generations is brought up, it is sometimes hard to realize that you yourself fall into one. The generation before me, 'generation x' was clearly different than me. These people were much taller than me, and because of this I looked up to them, and mentally separated them into a unique group. Little did I know that my generation, dubbed 'generation y' by some, was also getting separated into it's own unique group as well.

I'm twenty-three years old. I don't know exactly when the cut-off for generation y starts and ends, neither does anyone else really. The amazing thing about generations, once you figure out what the definition of them is, you can fall right into it even if you're chronologically a few years off. I have a sister that falls more into the hippie generation of the 60's than the generation x that she was born into. I personally think I fall into my generation, although it should be known. I hold a certain bit of distaste in some of the social classes and acceptable behaviors that have been reinforced as of late. So, let's get started.

The major contributing factor to any generation since the 1970's has been media. It can take the form of radio and television from the 70's right up to the 90's, where television won out. For my generation it's the internet. We've got a myspace, and we watch youtube. We don't talk, we instant message. Need some food? Order it online. Want to watch some television? Television is too old, do that online too. Movies? Online. Need a diploma? Well, you can get that online too. Ever thought of being a minister? Go get ordained online. Google that. Many of us are even forming relationships, romantic relationships. Online. We have created, and enjoyed our on-demand culture. My generation embraces it far too much.

We work on a system of instant effort equals instant reward, it frustrates us when this same concept doesn't translate over to the real world. This is why some of my generation is falling off. In many situations, you have to put out consistent effort over a long period of time to reap a seemingly small reward. Now, people want the lottery. They want that scratch off money. The free stuff. Thinking totally about today and not about tomorrow. It concerns me that I'm entering my mid-twenties, and I still don't hear anyone talking about planning for the future. My generation believes very strongly that the future is a bleak and dismal place, and there's nothing they can do to fix it. We've watched the world become a progressively worse place in our time spent in this society. Most of us, those who haven't succumbed to the consumer lifestyle want to fight it, but we don't think we have the power to.

Instant rewards do not translate over to politics. The biggest form of political clout my generation has come up with so far is the online petition. This will not solve anything, political change is one of those things immune to most immediate changes. Most of us think that by tacking our name on to some petition with 900,000 other names to legalize marijuana we'll actually get it legalized. Worse, we're in the position of being angered when it doesn't get legalized, thinking the system has just completely let us down. Delusion is pretty big in my generation too. More and more I see a growing group of people that fall into what I like to call super-consumers. They're complete and total advertisements for some product. What product? Whatever was on television. They spout celebrity gossip like they're getting paid for it. They hold the Academy Awards in higher standing than the presidential elections. Unfortunately, this celebrity culture has gotten humongous in my generation, way beyond anything I thought was even possible. It's almost unhealthy.

The birth of the corporate-super-individual, that is what really defines my generation. Everyone has this overwhelming belief and drive that they have to be unique. No-one conforms anymore. Reinforced heavily by the media is this idea that we must be unique in order to succeed in life, and corporate America has stepped right in to provide us the means to be unique, on sale. People believe that their clothing defines them as a person, and as such, they use fashion to show their uniqueness. Most of the time they're buying brand names, out of some national chain. Given the delusion of an individual style, the corporate style. People have gotten overly consumed with outward appearance in my generation. Nearly everything has turned to this state of ultra-superficial judgement, because people have stripped so much of their personality away in order to become little snowflakes on the outside, they're left with a very empty version of themselves on the inside.

Don't get me wrong, my generation is in no way doomed. However, my hopes for it have slipped greatly. We're lazy, my whole generation. We're slackers. We're falling under the huge weight that the world has placed on our shoulders. Artificially placed, I might add. Our generation is defined by what television says it's defined by. We're advertisements, we have collapsed beneath the giant consumer engine that drives our service based economy. My generation is the byproduct of a polluted world, not only the air, water and food, but the airwaves are polluted with public relations campaigns, the subways are polluted with beautifully designed adverts, and the people are polluted with the delusion that these thing will make them happy. We need to snap out of the digital bliss we've created, and wake up to the real world.

Cleaning this up, for some reason it's incredibly hard for me to write journals on a regular basis. I think I always feel the need to write a few pages.

So what am I up to?

Developing my DIZZIA, GREGORY M. website. That's what I'm up to. Should be done in a few weeks. Luckily I have the help of the code junkie / super genius Sean Chatman. Without him I'd be lost getting this puppy to fire up in a web 2.0 application.

What else?

Oh yeah, I also figured out why I chose to go into design recently. Not only was it just a skillset I developed and naturally fell in to as a kinda default. I think design can be as artsy as a piece of fine art. It's just so subtle, so hidden. When a design is really good you can never place why, but there's a whole madness of geometry and mathmatics going on behind the scenes to pull off a successful piece of design. I personally think that's beautiful. The kinda mechanical clash with romantic thinking that stimulates all of your senses, and can even influence your thoughts. That's why design is so appealing to me. You can actually change the world with it, if you try.

Time to update this again.

I find myself always filling in the last part of this first, the part with what I'm drinking, eating, watching, singing, smelling, etc. Just ends up easier that way, since it changes about 8 times during the course of this journal entry. Well, other than the mood.

So, wilson woes yeah? I submitted a ball design.. several ball designs to be exact, to wilson a few months back. Wilson being like, the wilson company in that movie with tom hanks, or could you call it the wilson character?
Originally going into it, I didn't think I had any chance of getting any kind of approval for my designs. Designing a soccer ball is just about the hardest thing imaginable. Try to picture what I was using (I don't think I can post the template for legal / non-disclosure reasons) But this template, was insane. 32 panels, laid out in 2d. They all interconnect, but most of them don't actually connect on the page, so what you have to do, is estimate how to stretch a shape across two panels, print out this ball diagram, grab an exacto kniife to cut it out, avoid the temptation to slit your own wrists, cut it out, then assemble the ball to see if this works. There's no easier way. The people from wilson even told us that they did it like this there. So shit, here I am a recovering web designer, trying to design in 2d, for 3d.
What. The. Hell.

Long story cut down... I designed about 5 balls, they were these intricate graffiti-trendy designs. One was designed to look amazing when it rolled.. producing a solid line and a dotted effect.. They shot them all down. They ended up choosing my "easy" ball. The one that took me 5 minutes to produce..
The one that was so simple any lay person could have designed it. The one that I brainstormed up with a couple of friends while smoking, that I won in a rock-paper-scissors match.. The one that consisted of a rectangle, with the words "Kick me" inside.
What. The. Hell. Again.

Now that same ball, the one that took no effort, the one that didn't implement ANY of the theorums or ideas that I'm paying tons of money to learn. That's the one that wilson is currently prototyping. That's the one that wilson is going to try to sell in stores.
Damn.

So the moral here, I guess. Design doesn't really take a genius, it just needs to be appealing. People would rather laugh than be in awe. People want to smile. So from now on, maybe that's how I'll design, with that smile in mind. Even in all of my critiques and all of my presentations, I'd rather see and hear laughter than have people be taken over by the beauty of what I've done.. It's really more rewarding than anything.

Onto some other topics.

I've been going crazy with buying up domain names. My new goal is to buy one a week. The only rules are that the domain names have to be short, stupid, and envoke imagery in someones head.

New domain names of the week:

kingofbeefjerky.com
peegenie.com

(pending)*********.com <-- this one stays secret until after the auction is over. I want it bad.

I think I'm going to be giving away kingofbeefjerky.com to my sister's friend Joe. Apparently Joe really is the king of beef jerky, he goes to meat auctions, buys whole cows, and jerkyizes them. I just have one demand, and that's that I'm allowed to do all of the photography and branding, to truly make him the beef jerky king. I'm picturing him... wearing sandals, shorts, t-shirt.. Then a crown of beef jerky.. With several stray dogs / cats all at his feet. This is the king of beef jerky I see when I close my eyes.. So it shall be the one that the world soon sees.

Now peegenie, that's an entirely different story alltogether.. There's an obvious route to take to make that one work, and that's the route I'm going to take. Minus the whole adult website watersports approach. So I started working up some sketches for it, the whole point of that site is to make it extremely pointless. It'll just be something you could send your friends to for a good laugh. Who knows, maybe some big porn company will latch onto the name and I'll end up selling it for a decent profit.. Who knows.

Quick fact: Landlords are douchebags.

Current project is pretty cool, I've got about 4 right now, but only one really counts. I'm putting together a calendar for my layout class.. Now the word calendar is pretty loose, what I'm actually doing is more like a timeline graph poster. The design I'm working with is 28x28'' It's got a shitload of datasets, and it covers the span of 23 years. I'd be more than happy to post it eventually to the general public, but for now it's going to stay private.. What is it? It's a record of every relationship I've ever had in my entire life. From the miniscule meaningless ones, to the ones that I could make short-films and write poetry about. Keeping that in mind, I name names.. and I give details (in sweet icon form), so that's why it's staying private, kind of to protect the innocent (in some cases not so innocent(you know who you are.)) I invision this as an almost necessity type design, something you'd get done once a year to let you know where you were at relationship wise..
By the way; I'll be making this modular and templatable.. I'm going to research the cost of printing all of this stuff at a somewhat large scale and packaging it (with stickers for the icons) So one day, you could be sitting at home assembling your own relationship calendar. Maybe at some point I'll prototype a 4x4'' version that you can hand out while on dates, just to let the other person know what you've been doing all these years. God that would make some situations so much easier.. Just saying "listen, refer to the damn calendar I gave you."

Last in the lineup for crap I'm dropping in this note has gotta be the fact that I'm gonna be having a birthday party friday.

It's been about 5 years since I've had an actual party that was enjoyable. The past few birthdays have kind of sucked. This year is gonna be way better. Terri has been given the power of attorney over my party/ social calendar for the evening. We'll be partying out at this chill uptown bar that happens to have a bunch of pool tables and cheap beer. Hooray.

Interested in stopping out? Well then let me know, I'll send an address. (don't want random peeps showing up)

That's it for now.

So, apparently you can't delete journal entries.. that or I'm just slow.
Just clearing things up for now...

New semester started, seems pretty lax compared to last semesters bootcamp with jdogg stanley..

Here's my class lineup:

Typography I - Seems easy.. too easy

Design Studio - Get to rebrand our library, make stamps, and do some kinda rinkidink third assignment. Again, easy.

Design Layout - Indesign tech class! Also suspiciously easy..

So I don't know if I'm just in shock from last semester and this is what school is really all about, or if I'm underestimating the difficulty of these assignments (who knows) Either way, this semester is gonna be a nice break.

I needed it.