Vulture I think your focus was just fine taking the kids to the park and THAT may be why the encounter occurred rather than as a lesson to be more prepared only if you get my drift. Perhaps you and he will meet again for now though your focus on the children is neat.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

ah thanks for this!

i started where you suggested. sofar the material i'm finding a bit more "functional" than MBT. Tom seems to favor outlining his model as a concept, to one of offering functional use, at least in my reading sofar (starting in book 2. only around page 150.)

the Seth material is a bit more functional, which is exactly what i'm looking for for the moment. i think i might stay on this track for as long as it yields fruitful thoughts, then head back to MBT.

the idea of the limiting power of beliefs is what i'm focusing thought on at the moment.
quotes:


if i were to do this, i currently seem to believe, in relation to the job situation:
more money will offer greater freedom
more money will offer greater happiness
my current job situation is not offering me creative fulfillment

some more beliefs, that seem to be building the above:
a father's job is to provide. if i am failing at that, or inadequate, i am failing as a father

my children should be insulated from economically limiting factors (they should eat healthy fish and meats, and have available to them all tools to facilitate their growth.) if i cannot provide that, i am failing.

i should be able to support my wife independently, so that she can spend time as the primary caregiver. failing that means i am failing in my role as a husband.

my beliefs of the "father figure" are built upon measurements i have made against my father and other male figures in my life and in my culture.

given the logic of seth, my beliefs are limiting my world. applied that to my specific case, my belief that i am failing is causing me to fail, and be unahppy. my belief that a situation as mine should breed unhappiness is casing the unhappiness. the belif that my situation is failure is causing the failure, i guess.

this still doesn't seem to directly affect what i'm perceiving day to day. i don't perceive that i am a "bad dad" overall, as i recognize i am an excellent teacher and upbringer. my kids are happy, healthy and well adjusted and open with me. i recognize that i am not a "bad" husband, as my wife is loving towards me and wishes to spend time with me.. either i am terribly good at compartmentalization, or my problem is directly in relation to my beliefs of money?

beliefs about money:
money means freedom
money means security
money means health
money means opportunity


all of which feed into the role of provider, and freedom. so then, again, using seth's logic, my beliefs set me up to believe that the absence of money equates to the absence of the above. the relative absence of money in my life means that i believe that there is an absence of freedom, security, health, and opportunity for me and my family? when i "measure" my PMR, i conclude that there is a decided lack of money in it. that measurement informs my belief. that belief projects "out" into the world, from my consciousness?

i am reflexively defensive of these beliefs, as i can not seem to help to believe that money DOES mean those things, and the absence of such DOES mean the absence of those things. to my intellect, it is a fairly easy 1 to 1 connection. i have not seen any evidence to refute that yet in my life. money does not equal happiness, no, but money does equal the power to attain growth, freedom, and heath in the PMR, which leads to happiness...

there is also a secondary belief i has come to my awareness. abundant money does equal negative character, or selfishness. i often find myself becoming jealous, hateful, or overly judgmental of those with abundant money. i find myself telling myself that they are not truly happy, that they are not enlightened, and that they are selfish and small minded... hrmph... i much like that personal quirk of a belief. it allows me to feel better about my situation, as well as superior as a human being, by proxy of my opinion. the pain caused by my PMR and its lack of money, is "soothed" by the thought that abundant money would not bring happiness either, and would probably make me something i hate now...

Your honesty and awareness of your own beliefs puts you in good stead for reading those books. Beliefs are pretty much the whole thing when it comes to practical application of the ideas. One of the keys seems to be identifying and resolving contradictory/conflicting beliefs. The reality we create is a product of structures of beliefs every bit as intricate and solid as we experience - and the intertwined nature of beliefs is what makes it hard to just "turn one off", as many others may be relying on that one, must as, say, an entire cathedral might depend on a certain foundation elements. But that doesn't mean the foundation can't be changed.

The "limiting nature" of our beliefs is a two-edged sword; while some beliefs may seem purely limiting, others are the source of the solidity, consistency, stability through which we explore freedoms. I think of that game of chess; that the bishop only moves in diagonals can be called "limiting", and yet the beauty and creativity of the game is depends on that and other mutually agreed-upon limits (which brings up the nature of joint reality, which Seth deals with thoroughly too in other books).

As for being practical, the Seth stuff uses the same paradigm to explain everything from the most esoteric treatises on the origins of "All That Is" (ATI) and the nature of consciousness to managing a broken, uh, toe :-) That is what i mean by "scalability"; the later books (one published latest, at least) are almost purely about practical application. As for Tom's work, i see them talking about the same substance, but with his and Seth's jobs are a bit different, in my opionion. I see Tom as working to expand a scientific paradigm that has gone frightfully fundamentalist - he's working with their terminology and range of tools to expand the aperture of science itself. Which is a spectacularly important ambition. I see Seth as at best translating material to illuminate our experience from a very different range of tools, data, and experience. I see my job as a little like Tom's, and yet when i really want to get to the bottom of something that the rigid approach is only encountering paradoxes with, for example, i tend to draw upon Seth; they complement each other, IMO.

Lastly for now: in your honesty, you mention the perfectly natural expression of beliefs we all experience at times: envy. Bravo again for your honesty. Of all things, the Dalai Lama's post of facebook yesterday was:

A strange thing happened....heh heh heh

Smells like feedback to me, and the system giving you a "let's play" bow (dog speak for let's rock and roll)

Ponder the saying....where there's muck, there is brass

any field that seems attractive on it's surface, has three guys chasing one job, which forces wages down

you get better return from jobs that are not "popular", arty, or identity building

open up your decision space to something apparently unpleasant...like, mortuary work, by way of example

that sort of thing will make you LOTS of money, keep you very grounded, and TOEists are not queasy around death

Or some better plan D that you can come up with

It's not what you do, it's how you do it, TOEwise

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

So, your beliefs about jobs are about what the employer should give you, not what you can give to the employer?

Meanwhile:

And then:

Why wouldn't you make an image of him? If 3D-modeling is what you do, then that is specific.

The biting part is probably about learning to not be afraid of things that look scary, or monstrous. Could be people, projects or organisations.

There is also a point being made about "needing a destination", and not looking for familiar comforting things like what "ganesh" might mean to you. If you want to be "the man in the house", overcome the fear of the monster, and do the work. The things that look cuddly can't help you.

Sorry if I sound like a palm-reader.

_________________
Johan

i've typically sought jobs that are unsavory, in the interest of greater pay for my education level. i've been a zoo pen cleaner, security guard, grocery store internal investigator, debt collector, and fisherman among other things. i've done those jobs almost exclusively for my adult and adolescent life.

i've reconciled with myself that this is not the stuff i want to do. to keep myself interested at a job or career i seem to need to be "learning" something new constantly. i've been doing what i've been doing for about 2 years, with 2 years of training and am not close to being at the limits of leaning for the field yet. couple the massive amount of information to know on the subject, with advancements in tech every year, i will be quite busy learning about my "trade" for the long fordable future.

it comes down to, doing this gives me satisfaction and keeps me interested. if there's some other field out there that can offer that to me, i'm open. it just seems to me that i've invested so much in what i'm pursuing now that discarding it for something new would be a waste.

-------



not exclusively. the concerns i have in my life now pertain to my obtaining what an employer can offer however, as a function of a pragmatic view of reality.

i am currently. me saying "what if i don't" was me testing to see the terms of the "contract." i was instinctively trying to avoid some sort of Faustian contract.

i'vee sofar modelled the bird and am messing with furs to achieve a feathered look. furs is an area of my program that i ahve not explored fully before. i know how the nodes work and how to adjust the attributes, but have yet had a reason to leverage that knowledge to some specific end. i'm also exploring some solutions to some lens effects i know nothing about currently, to give it a sort of HDR lit look as a final render.



this is a view i ahd not considered. looking reflexively back, i think i looked at it as a scary thing, as i could not understand it. "fear of the unknown" i guess. whether that is evident in my life i will have to examine more closely, and will.



i have a clear destination in my career where i want to go. it was formed mostly by gathering information on realistic possibilities for someone in my position. i think my "trip" is a similar situation. i did not know where i was going, i had limited information. my information i did have gave me a rough idea of where to go (Ganesha,) and to go from there to my final destination. it didn't have much to do with fuzzies, but was as stated, a function of ignorance. i literally could not go anywhere, because i did not know where to go "out there." the possibility exists that i am ignorant of further "destinations" available to me in my current field, but i doubt it. i've had 2 years to explore it, and feel i know where i can possibly end up from my current situation. i'm aware of the different fields in my skillet available to me. i will continue to keep an open mind about it however.

there does exist a fear of the unknown in some situations. there exists a possibility for me to make less money than i do now, by taking a job that requires a commute longer than 45 minutes, as the extra time would add to childcare costs, and gas and car wear and tear. moving for an entry level job locally would be out of the question as well, as that cost i am mitigating from my time away/car expenses would be transferred to my wife. relocation to other areas of the country would not be out of the question however, as most have a lower cost of living than my current residence, so an entry level job would be an acceptable tradeoff. anyways, that fear is based on meeting financial obligations as a result of taking an entry level position and pay, in some area farther than 45 minutes from me. that does not seem to relate to the fear of the unknown however, purely, as it is basically a "fear of the unknown of meeting financial obligations in which mathematically it would indicate that i would not."

fear of the unknown however, in a general sense i will give more thought to, as it was highlighted in my "trip." there is some "thing" in me that reflexively fears the unknown however. thanks for the thoughts on this. i had not considered it previously.

Once I had a dream about a cat that was hissing at me. I put my fist in front of it, and it bit me, clinging on to the hand with the teeth buried into it. There was a strong feeling that the fear in the cat was as painful to it as the bite was to me, and I tried to convince it that I didn't mean to hurt it or scare it. It released and started to laugh. It looked like a japanese cartoon of a cat that is laughing, with tears flying, and we laughed together like that.


I understand.


3D-artists also compete with their outsourced brethren in china and korea. Volume-type work for game studios is probably mostly done there, in the few cases I've heard of.

The creative part is always where the value lies. Story-telling and character design, and so on. Learning to be super-effecient with the tools might not improve the big picture enough to make a difference because of the competition, whereas doing original things might. I don't know how that sounds to you.


Will it be just an image or an animated character?


I realise "skillet" is a typo, but: choosing a smaller skillet, lowers the size of the fish you need to catch.

So, don't invent limitations you then have to abide by.

_________________
Johan

this sounds ideal. however, as i understand it, prospective hires are judged on their technical competence. there's a lot of creative people out there, and showing that is a secondary consideration when marketing or targeting a job. the reasons are: "creativity" is not something that is directly marketable, as it is not as easily measurable in a new hire, as opposed to projected workload output amounts and quality. creativity in a portfolio cannot demonstrate dollars to cents productivity. this however changes with someone who has actually demonstrated an ability to output marketable creative ideas. see Todd McFarlane, George Lucas, etc... that would be something to develop much later in a career for me. Another reason is creativity does not come into play in most entry jobs, as you are working at the direction of the creative directors. you are implementing their ideas, and your creative ideas are often secondary considerations, or not at all.

there is however, some in-routes concerning creative problem solving and such things, as a demonstration of creative aptitude. this can come into play with a technical artist, or a texture artist. both of which i have targeted in my portfolios to tepid success.

outside of production for a studio, freelance, creative aptitude can sometimes weigh heavily to your favor, if the creativity is "pretty." in freelance, i've nabbed a few contracts from my still images, and other compositions that demonstrate creative vision above those i compete with. sometimes someone seeking a freelancer is looking for an "all in one" package from someone, and creativity figures into that.... however, more often than not, someone seeking a freelancer is just looking for someone to tie up loose ends or fix something within their pipeline on a temporary basis and for cheap... which is the bulk sofar of my contracts...

apologies to the long-winded responses, but your posts give me ideas to address, and help me formulate my own thoughts in a packaged manner. my responses are as much for the benefit of explaining to someone else my position, as it is for reexamining it for me :)



just a still for now i think. i don't feel the need to animate it yet or rig it. i may do so in the future however.




i'm hoping i'm not doing this currently. i'm looking for jobs in games, tv, video, advertising, and well... anything media/production that is looking for "3d." the limiter here i guess is the word "3D." wait, that's not true, i'm also looking for editing jobs using after effects. stuff like green screen composting and stuff like that... beyond that stuff however, my skills and knowledge are pretty limited.

What about those not actively looking for "3D" but would benefit from it?

_________________
Johan

well, there is some of that to be found in the medical area. i have pursued that lightly in the past, but the truth of it is i don't have a portfolio with that type of focus. it would be hard for me to demonstrate as is that i can accurately model the inner structure of an ear for example. when i pursued that in a "sales pitch" (i guess you would call it that,) i found i couldn't really represent my skills to that particular field form my body of work sofar, so it never really went anywhere. this is on my list however of things to add to my portfolio.

there's also some bit to be found in the architecture and real estate field, but the same portfolio limits apply there as well.

there's a non-formal web developer guild that meets in my area monthly for drinks, that i plan on attending. i could do some webgraphics if needed, but that falls in the same boat as freelance type work. it's something i'll hit up the beginning of next month when they meet. they didn't meet this month because it "conflicts with valentines day." speaking of... this site doesn't have a favicon! it needs a favicon! below is one i made for the site if wanted:


its a jpg, but there's free converters online to change it to a .ico format for favicon usage.

i've also hit up family members and their businesses, and friends and explained what i can do. i have business cards that i've designed that integrate 3d into them too, so i even have a ready-made example of what it is i do for such occasions, and for said contacts to pass out for me too if they think they could benefit.

beyond that, there's seemingly not much i can do that would "pay off" in regards to my current efforts. there's the whole "diminishing returns" of time invested in pursuing work too. as is now, i get the greatest return by fishing through various websites listing contracts and bidding for freelance contracts, than i would by trying to find and research certain projects that may or may not be applicable to my skills, then pursuing that. i do keep an open mind however on things like this when i encounter them. i've pursued teaching some community school classes on using photoshop and other adobe suite products, but never really followed through.

I like the sound of medical image 3D as a direction to develop

Moving closer to parents to offload daycare?

Move to a very low cost region, if you can generate some income online?

That entry level job with the long commute may be part of the dues you will need to pay, even though you will be behind short term

Maybe the damn bird will become the key thing in your portfolio that opens a door, which would be pretty ironic

further out of box thinking
http://madhubber.hubpages.com/hub/plasma-donation

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

we currently live within reasonable proximity to the grandparents. they however all work and cannot provide daycare.

i realize the entry level thing is part of the "gateway" into some companies. the 2 entry level jobs i did make the cut on however were 1.5 hours away by car, and the same by public transport. the pays were day rates of 150 bucks, for 10 hours of work, which is... agh, ghastly when considering the commutes. i would have gone and stuck them out if i thought we could swing the finances, but reality is, we're running a very thin budget. we would have been knocked out financially after a month.

the medical imaging, i think will be the next thing i work on. i have the idea now of depicting the surgery of placing tubes in the eardrum, and the effects. we'll see when i get around to it.

----

i've come to some conclusions over the last week or so about my career. i thought back, way back, to when i stated down this path, and my original goal WAS to work from home as a designer. i didn't want to work at a studio at the time, until i started getting caught up in learning about the field. my original plan, or dream from probably 6 years ago was to work form home, own my own business, and build websites. i taught myself basic website design at the time, and decided it was not something i was excited about. i eventually moved into 3D, form the perspective that i wanted to "work on videogames." this opinion was formed from doing QA testing on flash games for about 2 years. i learned i liked the art, and the design process involved. QA suited me, but i learned all i could in the field in that time. i became disinterested with that aspect, but interested in learning other aspects. i still stuck it out for the pay however. it was then i thought i wanted to assist in creating games, thus the entry of myself into school for 3d...

after school, i pursued game studios in my area and outside, then advertising firms, then architectural firms, then film in that order. i eventually found myself doing freelance out of necessity. in freelance, i have found i like the variety of work, and the "wearing of many hats." talking with people i have met in the field of games, i have learned that 3D in games is a bit.. dry. there's not a lot of lateral design involved. it's mostly top-down and directed. the result is you can spend years making rocks, cars, or other things. if in animation, the same, you make thousands of walk/run cycles. this has tempered my search a bit learning about this. i have focused on freelance as a result. this decision was not known to me consciously i think. i sort of "gave up" the search for these jobs when i started getting excited about some of the contracts available for freelance, and after some conversations with acquaintances in the field.

what i don't like about freelance NOW, is the pay, and the quality of the jobs i'm working on. i seem to need to work on a project i care about, to derive satisfaction. the end product has to be something i'm proud of participating in. i'm currently finishing up some work on 2 iphone apps. they are boring, uninspired and dry programs with no inherent "vision." they're essentially disposable things. these projects, and ones like it in the past have sort of soured the taste of 3d freelancing in my mouth. i don't really like working on them, as i know my effort will be contributing to something pretty "lame."

in my searches for projects, i've seen some really great ones that i would LOVE to be part of, but could not land the gig. i've sort of forgotten about this. THERE'S STUFF I WANT TO DO IN FREELANCE! i just can't get it. or have not been able to get it in the past. i've sort of falsely surmised that it's impossible for me to do so, because of the hundreds of instances where i have not.

i've concluded that there must be an issue with my website. my shit just isn't "up to snuff" to get those gigs i want. my focus should be on tearing my site and demreel apart and building them back up anew. as is, if i were to look at my representative website, i can see that the content is good quality, but the presentation is bland, or unimpressive when matched up against a firm's site. i have to go back into flash and kick some stuff around, and come up with some impressive presentation options...

looking at my competition, those that land good gigs, are design or art firms. not individuals. their sites are mostly awesome, with many interactive elements, and testimonials. there's not much in there displaying technical aptitude of the members, it's all flash and bang and "impress," instead of demonstration. mine has little interactivity, and little testimonials. my site is still mostly geared to getting a "job" than it is attracting clients. i display my technical aptitude on the site, in with my creative stuff. if my plan is to freelance this bitch, i need to get rid of that as well, and focus on the creative stuff. clients don't care or even know enough about the field to comprehend the technical content i have on there. i have in my demoreel a breakdown of the wireframe of a car, and a room, as well as a breakdown of the texturing elements of a character. to a client's eyes, this is meaningless and unimpressive, as they really don't understand it. to a recruiter or HR, or an art lead, it speaks well though of my aptitude.

if i'm to get good contracts, i have to make a firm-like site, not a "employee" like site.

this sofar seems to be the most straightforward line for me. the thing blocking my progress to achieve what i believe i want to achieve, is determined. it's luckily just one or two things as far as i can tell now, my representative website and demoreel. this makes me feel a bit better about my situation.

my ultimate "dream" goal has seemed to coalesce into the following: work form home, buy a house in a semi rural area with lots of land on the cheap. learn about carpentry and masonry, and improve upon it. the only unknown here is my wife. she's got a good job where she is. to achieve the "dream" she would have to find a job in that semi-rural area of equivalent cost of living pay. she has not talked much about finding a different job or much along that line. we're expecting our 3rd child this summer, so things will have to wait for a while on that effect. in that time, i can re-make my website and reel, and work on some better representative content to target a client's eyes...

i suspect that with my current workload it will take mayb 2 months to achieve that... mayb 3 depending on how much more i have to learn about flash to achieve what i ultimately come up with.

there's also the FEAR of the unknown in here. the thought of supporting a family on the transient elements of freelance is a bit frightening. it's a hurdle, and it is one i have come to the conclusion as something that is holding me back form pursuing it. i tell myself i "don't want to freelance," and a large part of that is the fear of this unknown income. what will i do between projects? what will happen to my family if i can't make enough money one month? what will happen if i can't land enough in a year? what will happen if i make a lot in one month, and over project my earnings and get into a hole the next couple months? on and on and on... it's scary. i don't currently know how to overcome this thought. it is as far as i can tell, one of the larger elements holding me back within myself. the onyl way i can conceive if "fixing" this fear, is having my wife have a steady paychck substantial enough to pay a mortgage and bills, and my income being supplemental and used towards college funds, home improvement, and acquisition of house assets... but that's asking a LOT from her. i can't foresee this being a reality as well, as her field is a bit specific as well, and finding something that she's doing now somewhere in a cheap cost of living area may be difficult. also there's the pride. i'm male, and that means i make the money for the roof over the heads and the food on the table, and all that... also, as said earlier, that's asking for a lot form my wife, to ave all that on her shoulders while i get the freedom of not having that responsibility on my shoulders. it wouldn't be fair. so... i guess short of a functional solution to my fear, i'm left having to face it...

Isn't 3D imaging (programming it) important in the development of Virtual Reality systems being developed in this VR now?
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

depending on what type of VR you are talking about, yes.

as is now, and how we think of VR, 3d assets are important. most any object you see from a phone commercial, gollum, videogame, or google maps use "basically" the same image creation tech.

in the very near future, we'll probably move towards things called VOXELS instead of polygons the current standard. depending on how the creation tools develop with them and rendering engines, they could really open the doors up on realtime realism for things like VR!

we now sort of make things from "surfaces" basically planes that we program to do different things. we basically "stitch" together a mesh of some object we want to make, from these planes, then tell the planes to behave or look certain ways. VOXELS are not planes, but essentially more like cubic atoms!

Virtual Reality is going to be big I think getting in on the ground floor would seem proactive. :)
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.