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I get asked a lot about the source of my creativity. Where do you get blog ideas from? Where do you get photoshoot ideas from? How about these posts status updates on Facebook?
Well, I like to be me. Have you noticed how my ideas are all over the place? I blog technology today then blog about honesty after three hours. That’s just me! Not only do you have to practice to be good, you have to keep doing something to keep it good! If you’ve worked out before, you’d know that you could work out daily and have ripped abs, but once that practice stops and you don’t keep up, it’ll all be gone no matter how much work you put in before. No more ripped. That being said, I love doing the things I love to do. I do things that you might laugh at or call weird, but I have my own rituals that I do just because. I’ve realized that whenever I do these things my mind clears up and I can do any creative project I have in mind with no worries. I touch objects, I isolate my self in an empty room with absolutely no noise and a lot of emptiness, if none of these are available for me at that moment then I tend to photograph insects or do close-up photography (macro), and do what my mind has planned until it’s all over and I can walk slowly back to my old position and pull what I had to pull off. I recently learned about Conan O’Brien’s rituals that include isolating himself at any empty corner of a room and that’s how he gets his thoughts straight. Just a different thinker here =)
What does that have to do with you? Well, a lot. Life today for everyone is based on what the other does, not based on what you do. I’m the center of my world. Everything revolves around me in my world. Why? Because it’s my world. It’s not my best friends’ world, it’s not my parents’ world. It’s my world. You should be yourself. If anyone around you is what you want to be then you’ve already failed. Your goal will become BECOMING them. Then once you achieve being them, what are you gonna do? “They” already moved on to new things and are accomplishing “their” goals. I don’t like sounding harsh with reality that just kills hopes, but I am a realist, and that just says what this all is about.
When I do my ‘weird’ rituals, I see stories in my head and I start envisioning scenery which deals as the purpose of reminding me later-on about the story, and no other purpose at all.
If you’re out there looking for someone to teach you how to be creative, I’ll be the honest one and tell you that you will not make it that way. Work hard, gain your spot, then work more. Once it’s all added up, you’ll get to experience what yourself enjoys, not what others enjoy. People don’t become famous before they are creative. Some do, *cough* Kim Kardashian. But unless you’re down to be best friends with someone who puts out more sex tapes in a year than Converse produces shoes in a life time *cough* Paris Hilton, then making your own sex tape, you won’t get enough attention. That bar is set too high. Lol. Sad reality of today. Congressman Weiner. Anyways, be creative. Kim Kardashian is one of the smartest business women I’ve ever heard of, with what she did to get attention and then showed everyone what she could do when she’s famous is just good enough. Do I agree with her “marketing” way? No. Draw and play the instrument you want to master and do what you do best, if it sounds and seems like you won’t make it because your style is different than others and yours sucks, that’s the sign for you to keep doing it and being different! One of my work for galleries involved a door picture taken upside down, and everyone went crazy trying to figure out why was a window put so down low? Turned out it was a door picture taken upside down. I laughed at the idea at first, but after execution that became one hell of a feedback magnet.

Be more, do more.

Good night,

Apo Avedissian

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To some of you, my title “you party while I work” will sound like a complaint; Actually, it isn’t. It’s the total opposite.
Let me clarify. I love this. I love writing. I love creating. This is my hobby.
Saturday night, what are you doing? Partying? Clubbing? I’m here getting work done! Why? Because I’m relaxing. My work is my vacation.

“What cause I been in the lab wit a pen and a pad
Tryna get this damn label off?” Dr. Dre

One of my favorite lines in music is this Dr. Dre line he performs in Forgot About Dre, featuring Eminem.

We sometimes like lyrics because we like the idea and the intention of it, but other times, you just happen to know what the artist is saying, and you know exactly what his position is on that topic.

Spending day and night for a week only to render a music video the way you want is what I do. Yes, OCD might have something to do with it. Perfectionism as well. But this is my work. Monster, anyone? My Vacation, go and brag about it. Haha. Alex Trebor there!

Why should I go and spend 2 hours at a hooka place when I can sit here and plan to open my own hooka place? (Just an example, no I am not opening up a new hooka place. I don’t even smoke to begin with.) I can get so much work done without having to be there. Asthma, anyone?

By now, I hope not everyone is offended because I am not targeting every single human being that goes to hooka places; hooka places are just an example. One of hundreds. My word is aimed at those who waste their full lives there and end up with nothing left. You might read this and say “I feel bad for them,” but truth is there’s a chance that anyone could just lose everything in a matter of seconds. Whether it’s fate or mistakes, it depends on your mentality, but at the end, there’s a way to better secure it not happening.

I have faith in a lot of people, and it’s sad when I see a few who lose their power and throw it on something else that does not give them any gain. It’s their lives, after all, and I have absolutely no right to “boss” them around. But it hurts seeing so much potential to create so much good, go towards the bad and gets wasted.

If you need advice, I’m always here to help. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not certified in anything, however, I do have personal thoughts, which you are not obligated to do or follow, and are more than welcome to just hear. If you are stuck between making a decision, ask me. If your friends keep bullying you, or if you’re scared from being called names, email me. I will try and help you become the cool one and get your name out instead of being pulled back. Don’t let negativity rule you. You’re your own self, after all.

Until then, good night.

Much love,

Apo Avedissian

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So, um, OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. Sorry. Gotta do the 5′s. (It’s way more complicated than that).

Hi there, welcome back here! One of the things I have to go through as a perfectionist is the fact that I have to do somethings in my own way in order to have a satisfactory outcome for me, thus the reason I can never pass a math test that requires me to show work, not only the answer. I will always get the right answer, but I always get more than half of the points chopped off because I don’t show the way the professor insists I need to show. Enough talking about math. Let’s talk about video games!

One of the first things I do with a video game when I get one is finishing the entire thing off the first day. Not done in a day? No problem. I’m pulling an all-nighter. Why do I do this? Because I want my game to be perfect. I need my game to be perfect. You can click on the thumbnail on your left here of Command & Conquer: Generals match I played recently. This is how I play. If I don’t do this, I can’t finish the other team. “I don’t have the heart to” might sound too innocent to be true. I need that perfect game. I need perfection. Look at the Counter Strike record I attached at the end of this post. I’m “GowWwaD”. Nice record, right? It will take you a couple of years to pull off that high of a kill/death rate (I’ve had a 40-0 strike a couple of times before this server), but the problem is I didn’t have a perfect game here. 100 kills to 3 deaths, and I still felt weird. I still felt bad. Not for the other teams, two from Command & Conquer Generals whom already had gone, but for my game.

Don’t confuse my perfectionism with Symmetry OCD, although I have to admit I do have some symmetry problems I am trying to overcome. I’ve lost a lot because of perfectionism, unlike many people think. I can’t insist how bad it can be at times. I need perfection. Notice how many times I’ve mentioned that? Yes. Because I need my point to be clear. I need my point to be perfect.

If I correct your facebook statuses or comments, excuse me. I am a grammar five-o. I’m sorry for that, but if only there were no “their/they’re/there” in our English, life would’ve been so good. People who don’t know how to use them piss me off. I’m sorry. Again. I don’t judge you. Well, I do.

You won’t notice all of this until the time we work together. Only then you’ll regret doing so, but in the long run, if you keep up and build that standard of yours higher than you started with, and connect it with mine, only then you will not only not-be disappointed, but regret the fact that you regretted the work at first. It’s all about art here. Video games were used here as an example I can show case to you without much explanation. Other things do exist, but they’re much more complex to explain than video games. Plus, who doesn’t like video games? =)

Much love,

Apo Avedissian