We have 5 reasons why Trump would be a better supervillain than President. These include his narcissism, his continual promotion of violence, his value placed on being rich, and his willingness to torture people for the “greater good.”
To see the specifics, including audio of Trump demonstrating these characteristics, visit www.compulsivecreative.com/trump/
I very rarely need an artist cv (artist resume) because most my work is with organizations that know me.
However, now and then I get a request for my artist resume and maybe an artist statement. I imagine a lot of different types of artists will need to provide these on a regular basis to galleries, potentials employers, groups offering grant money, or organizations.
No matter how annoying it may be to create, remember that if someone requests your résumé that they find them helpful. Part of asking you for your résumé is to see you are a professional and if you are willing to do the work (like create an artist’s cv) to be a successful artist.
If you are an artist, it is fine to use a standard résumé template using Microsoft Word or other text editing program. However, since I am a graphic designer, I like to make my résumé visually different than my peers. Having a unique look that is creatively designed helps you stick out in a flood of résumés and makes it more enjoyable to read.
If you are not a graphic designer, don’t panic. I have a secret weapon that will make designing your résumé easy and a bit fun. It is called Canva.
Canva.com is a website that allows you to design different things right on their website with ease. Not only is it easy to use, but it is also FREE!
Your design is simply the layout of the résumé.
This includes:
Here is my design:
Next, you start filling in the design with the important information.
If you have any of these, they need to be in your résumé:
At this point, you have to look at your résumé and ask yourself a few questions.
If yes, add it. More importantly, put it somewhere that is prominent where you know the reader will see first. Upper left corner is usually the most obvious choice.
If the page is overcrowded, you must decide if you can make the fonts smaller or if you are better off cutting the least important information.
If you have too much open space, it can be distracting to read your artist résumé. You have a few options. First, you can increase the font size. You can also rearrange the text to make the blank space a natural part of the design. Last, you can add more information.
I tend to go for adding more information. Make sure it is still relevant to what you want to do.
Remember that your résumé is a reflection of your professionalism. If there are mistakes, spelling errors, and bad grammar, this reflects you as an artist.
I have another secret weapon. This one is for proof reading. It is called Grammarly.
grammarly.com is a free grammar check website, plugin, and browser extension. I am a premium user because spelling is something I struggle with. Grammarly helps me look smarter than I am.
If you are using canva, it saves it right on the website. This is awesome because it means you can access it from anywhere. You just need to sign into your account through their website.
If you are not using canva, I recommend saving it somewhere you can easily access and where it will not get lost. I always keep a copy on my Dropbox account.
Here is my final resume:
In this video, we see Tommy Edison, who has been blind since birth, respond to the popular request to draw various objects based on how he thinks they look including a cat, a car, and himself.
I found the video inspirational and decided to try drawing a self-portrait with my eyes closed.
These illustrations aren’t a test that will say what number you are on a personality scale. Instead, it is a fun list of questions to see what things you prefer over others and why.
These illustrations and questions come from the 2 Kinds of People Tumblr Page. If you go there, they have even more illustrations of two kinds of people.
As you look over the choices, think carefully about what and why you choose one over the other. If you do find any deeper meaning or have a fun thought related to this post, I would love to hear it in the comments at the bottom of the page.
I claim to be a morning person, but it still takes me forever to get out of bed.
However, I’ve been enjoying a new trick I recently learned about improving my energy first thing in the morning.
According to Amy Cuddy, our body posture can change the way we think.
Professor Amy Cuddy is a Social Psychologist that teaches Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Her research has found that these power poses affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain. These chemicals influence our confidence levels and overall mood.
To learn more about “Power Poses,” you can watch this video of Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk below.
I’ve been experimenting with Amy Cuddy’s technique of stretching out my body when I wake up in the morning and when I get up from my nap in the afternoon. It feels splendid to stretch after waking up.
Normally, I would roll over, maybe look at my phone, and get into a more scrunched up pose (fetal position). Now when I wake up, I tell myself I can lay back down, but first I need to stand with for 30 seconds with my arms outstretched and legs shoulder width apart.
In her recent talk at 92nd Street Y, Cuddy talks about how daily routines around posture affects who we are and how we feel.
In the video below, we’ve tagged it to start at her discussion specifically about waking up. If you have 75 minutes to watch the entire video, it is worth it. For those interested in improving your health both mentally and physically with proper posture, you will want to watch the full video.
As mentioned in the video, your posture after waking is “bi-directional.” Waking up in a fetal position and staying that way is less energizing, but as Amy says in the above video, “the people who wake up like this [in powerpose] are super happy, like annoyingly happy.”
Give the power post a try and let me know if it works for you.
Do you have any morning routines that help you get up in the morning?
I would love to hear them! Feel free to post them in the comments below.
A hand-drawn animated storybook poem about a girl who meets a robot at a ballet and has an existential crisis.
Written, Narrated, and Animated by Isabela Dos Santos.
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
-Cesare Pavese
If you asked me what I did in 2015, I only remember creating the Learn to Animate Course, celebrating my daughter’s first birthday, and being part of a Fizzle.co Mastermind Group… Other than that, the whole year is a blur.
I imagine that your year was the same.
We remember finished projects, big events, and newspaper headlines.
Our lives move so fast. We focus on the future, enjoy the present, and quickly forget the past.
If you want to remember what has happened in your life, it only takes a story, a photo/video, or some reminder to bring the past to the front of your mind. These little things bring back memories of how we became who we are and what we have accomplished in our lives.
However, we don’t always have easy access to these reminders when we want to reminisce.
Until now.
In App View
I heard about this wonderful little app while listening to the Ted Radio Hour last summer. I remember I was on a 3 hour (one way) drive to a magic show I was performing. Listening to the episode “Shifting Time” made me realize how much we forget about our day-to-day lives. In that episode, they talk about this cool app.
The One Second A Day app does what it sounds like. It helps you record one second each day.
The app sends you a reminder daily to use photos or images from your phone’s library, or you can create a new video in the app.
Other than the novelty of having a second of video each day, this is an excellent tool to remember and review your year.
Cesar Kuriyama is the creator of the 1 Second Everyday App, and he did a Ted Talk on the subject of using 1-second clips to remember one’s past.
As mentioned in the TedTalk above, we often have a hard time remembering random events without someone mentioning the story. It is also possible to have memories surface from photos and/or videos. That is what this app does. It gives you easy access to memories through short (1 second) clips.
Watching One Second a Day helps stir our memories of the year.
Some are important, and others are not. These include trips, fun happenings, celebration, sad experiences, news events, and overlooked daily activities. We are so busy with our future and sometimes the present, that is hard to get a grasp on what we have accomplished and how we spend our time. This app helps you relive your past in a quick and enjoyable video.
An unforeseen consequence of recording a second every day is that you start looking for things to do to fill that second. It doesn’t happen every day, but when I am out and about I might get an idea to try something new. Even if I have 100 excuses not to try it, knowing it will make a great second for my video increases my chances of doing it.
For example:
I was in Minnesota doing a series of shows throughout the southeastern part of the state. I was tired and by myself, which made me tempted to just sit around my Air B&B cabin. However, I knew this would be boring for the day’s second.I ended up going hiking for waterfalls which are plentiful in the area. The excuse to explore made the trip a lot more and had cool stories to tell people back home.
I get up in the morning looking for an adventure.
-George Foreman
This is the same reason why in 2016 I plan to do more reflections and forward views. These reflections are what some call monthly “Check-ins”.
Right now I am scheduling to do this every month. During the scheduled time, I reflect on what was accomplished and plan the month ahead. In the reflection part, having a video of every day will help me see the month on a day-to-day basis.
It is hard to envision how our daily activities add up to become our life’s body of work. This app helps visually show how that is possible.
In the Cesar Kuriyama’s Ted Talk (above), he makes a significant point about our recording culture.
When we are at an event that we are excited to be at, many of us have a compulsion to capture every moment with our smartphones or digital cameras. The result is that we are no longer in the moment, but instead seeing the event through a screen.
With limiting the recording to a second, we can capture the event without having to miss the experience. You know longer have to be the person with their phone out for an entire evening.
Note to self:
Record a second and go enjoy yourself.
Since starting to use this app during the summer of 2015, it has become a sort of journal. Recording every day gives a more truthful look at one’s life. When I watch last year’s video, it reminds me of how great my life is. It also has days that were not so good.
My life is a series of awesome experiences with a smattering of bad events. Watching my seconds for 2015 is a reminder that I live a wonderful life with my perfect family doing cool stuff most days.
I am writing this post a month exactly after my grandmother died. We were very close and seeing the photos during the funeral brought back a lot of memories. My grandma passed away at the age of 95. Which means, I only knew her when she was between the ages of 65 – 95… Seeing all those old photos reminded me how much I didn’t know about her.
Can you imagine if she had taken a second a day for half her life? Sure, it would be almost 5 hours long. But I would have loved to have seen it, paused it at times to relive memories, and shared the exciting parts with everyone.
If I start filming a second of video every day, I look forward to a time where I edit it down to the greatest hits for people to watch at my funeral… A little morbid, but it would be a great memorial for who I am and the things I’ve done in my life.
“Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.”
― Mitch Albom
Does your email inbox stress you out? Mine does, and it’s time for a change. Time for inbox zero.
Inbox zero is just what it sounds like. It is keeping your inbox empty by organizing, archiving or deleting emails.
For your convenience, we have a video and text version of this article.
In this post, I’m going to show you how I went from over 1,500 emails to 0 in just 3 steps.
It took me 7 hours over 2 days to clear out my inbox. Let’s quick do some math. With 1500 email divided by 7 hours we get 214.29.
This means I was able to organize 215 emails per hour. It is important to note sometimes I watched movies while organizing my inbox. I did this because going through all those emails gets annoying.
Now that I’ve accomplished inbox zero, things are a lot easier!
Having a lot of emails is overwhelming, but organizing them is easy and quick.
I already had a system in place for my magic and balloon twisting business. These include folders for emails where I quoted someone a price, one folder for booked shows that need invoices, and a folder for shows that have all their paperwork filled out.
If a client asks for a price, I respond and put the conversation in the “price quoted” folder. If I need the information later, I can find it quickly.
Once the client agrees to the price, I move the conversation to the “need invoice” folder. I leave it there till I send the invoice and get a confirmation for the event. I check this folder weekly to keep anything from falling through the cracks.
Once all the paperwork is done and confirmed, the conversation is moved into the “scheduled show” folder. And once I completed the show there’s a folder inside that folder labeled “done” so I can look up old show information.
This process can be used for your own business if it is freelance work or service based.
Create a folder called “001 NOW” for all things that need to be done ASAP and place it at the top of your folder list. I place it at the top of my Gmail by putting “001” in front of the folder’s name. Google organizes folders alphabetically, and 0 (zero) is first.
And then a folder called, “002 SOON” for things that don’t have to be done right away but are important.
The last main folder is called, “003 Someday.” This folder is for are for all things that are not important and can be done anytime.
These folders are based off of David Allen‘s productivity system in his book Getting Things Done.
The rest of the folders you create will depend on the types of emails you get.
For example, I get a lot of education emails. This includes information related to online business, animation, balloon twisting, and the rest of my interests.
In the folder “Education,” I have subheadings. These subfolders often have folders in themselves
In the “Education” folder I have two subheadings:
Do this quickly. If you forget anything, you can add it later.
Below is a quick snapshot of my folders. Your’s will look different depending on the types of emails you get most.
The goal is to keep moving.
When possible, archive several emails at a time. If you recognize who they’re from or the subject, select them all and put them in a folder or delete them. Just keep moving and add more folders as you need them.
At one point I was using my phone to organize emails, but it was slower. With Google, you can cut down your time by using the search button and the ‘move to’ tab.
Make sure to celebrate when you make it to ZERO, it feels good!
Don’t take a vacation yet, we have one more step.
One of the first things you need to do is clean out the “Now” folder and start going through the “Soon” folder.
Regularly go through your emails. Schedule time to delete, archive or organize.
It doesn’t have to be every day, but pick a schedule that works and stick to it.
I am always looking for new tips and tricks to keep email under control. If you have a technique or tool that is working for you, please share it in the comment section for me and others to learn from.
Stick with it and have a creative day.
Jason Love
