life

Destined For Great Things (Arnold, The Eduation of A Bodybuilder)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

This is a story in progress.

It’s not finished yet because… well, I’m not dead. Yes, I realize that’s something of a graphic and incredible overstatement of a point I haven’t even made about the importance of living in the moment, but I suspect you already knew that dear readers.

today-i-will-live-in-the-moment

I’ve always wanted to be better. When I was a boy, I imagined a better life for myself, something far behind the loving family environment of my middle-class upbringing. It was a typical and uninspired belief for a white kid in a first world country, in a province on the rise. I had everything going for me. I should have been happy to have what I had available to me and just ease into a life of what was supposed to be full of comfortability.

Politics, gender norms, and cultural appropriations aside. Of course. Of course.

But as I got older, I couldn’t shake that feeling. I tried dammit, I tried. I suspect it started around junior high school, but this isn’t a post about my story, no. It’s a story about following a feeling.

To indirectly quote from the first episode of Netflix Original – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

And I noticed an acceleration of strangeness in my life. A continuing series of intense and extraordinary events, which, up until a certain point, seemed unconnected, with the exception of each being separately bizarre.

Perhaps ever day before then was, for the most part, been humdrum and inane, my life a mundane, unvarying slog through unfulfilling jobs, shallow depression, and boring, boring sex.

And then suddenly, everything changed, and my life became a swirl of interesting activity.

This is a story about one of my heroes. Well, it’s a story about the story one of my heroes wrote about his own story. Still following me?

Reading Into It

This month, I decided to take a book off of my own shelf for The Reading List. A book which I have been meaning to read before I ever even had this idea of undertaking a project to expand my mind and demonstrate a way to get myself thinking creatively often.

I did this to show you, that you too can achieve results if you set up a reading regimen for yourself AND want more than just success. That’s why every month, I use the Reading List for another book to read and another artist for you to consider in your own personal journey.The 5 L’s of Language give us LIFE (Biographies/Art/Music) LOVE (Classic Fiction/Non-Fiction/Graphic Novels) LEARN (Business/Leadership/Self-Help) LABEL (Philosophy/Sociology/Psychology) and LEET (The Internet).

This month is all about LIFE, because it’s almost the end of the year, I’ve seen another wave of personal growth and it’s in the holiday season that I purchase most of my movies. Which reminds me of one of my favourite actors – Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I Have a Headache

It might be a tumour…. no, it’s not a toomah, it’s not a toomach, at all.

Arnold Schwarzenegger co-wrote this great book called Arnold The Education of A Bodybuilder with Douglas Kent Hall in 1977. This is well before he had broken into Hollywood and definitely before he was the governor of California (remember that?). Arnold had already taken the international bodybuilding scene by storm – First he became Mr. Europe, then Mr. Universe, followed by Mr. World and shortly thereafter Mr. Olympia.

He did all of this because he wanted to be the best bodybuilder in the world. Not the best of the season or best of a particular year. His vision was for a perfectly balanced and well considered champion that was undisputed by the world at large. He worked hard and challenged himself every day to accomplish over 18 titles in bodybuilding. Over time he has acquired several businesses related to practice and education of future generations of bodybuilders.

Schwarzenegger is one of my heroes because he knew he achieves results before he achieved them. Yes that last sentence is a bastardization of the English language, but that’s the point. You have to work at the rules before you can break them proper. Work them over, and over and over. This man has continuously committed himself to his vision, lived his life while in pursuit of goals he wanted to realize, and believed he would do what he wanted. And he has.

What this has to do with the arts is both everything and nothing. It’s nothing if you choose not to be effected by others success and see inspiration in the world around you. It’s everything if you want to be an artist and see that no matter what the stakes, I will be a cultivator of the arts for you. This always has been and always will be digital curating at heart.

And I too am destined for great things. A theory for now.

Tim!

 

John McCrae (Remembrance Day)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Remembrance Day is an especially trying time for veterans and surviving families of war. They recall the good times and the bad, in particular those members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty.

This day has been in place for almost a century now – It was established on November 11th in the majority of countries to honour individuals and recall the violence sieged during World War I and resolved with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28th 1919.

In case you didn’t already know, the poppy has become synonymous with Remembrance Day due to the poem In Flanders Fields. I read this poem, and about this poem when I was growing up. It was a pretty big deal in school because it was written by a Canadian physician by the name of John McCrae. McCrae was a Lieutenant-Colonel that served as a soldier in World War I and a surgeon during the second battle of Ypres in Belgium.

McCrae was an artist through and through. He was an author and a poet, but he didn’t make it through the end of the war unfortunately. He died of pneumonia near the end.

It’s a beautiful poem, and one which reminds us all of the urgency of the war, and the eternity that the dead moved into. It’s rather sobering, but I think worthwhile to read and remember. An exemplary instance of the power of art.

‘In Flanders Fields‘

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

As for the inspiration, it’s a rather touching story once you shed some light upon it. And though I don’t remember the exact moment I heard this poem for the first time, I do recall that it was during my secondary education, and that the concrete walls which shaped the school around my peers and I, was rather cold and old itself. It served as a great backdrop to learn that McCrae likely wrote In Flanders Fields shortly after the funeral of his close friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer.

Helmer had been killed during the second battle of Ypres. The battlefield was home to countless poppy flowers which featured in great numbers and even in its cemeteries. Thus the poppy grew in popularity because of this poem.

Though it has been quite some time since this war broke out, there have been others since and many more brave men and women who’ve fought for peace and given their lives doing so. Whether you are a creative professional or not dear readers, I think you can recognize rather easily that art has a place in life, and that without art there is no heart. So please take some time tomorrow to honour those who died so that we might live. It’s important, it’s not just a theory.

Tim!

Your Weight In Gold (Postconsumers)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

We live in an age where most people in western society have more than enough. If you really stop to think about it, all we require to live is air, water, food, and shelter – everything else is unessential.

Now, many people would argue that the standard of living in Canada dictates what is enough to get by. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Better Life Index, the average Canadian household brings in $40,000 net each year. Which is slightly higher than the OECD average of $38,000 CAD.

Wellness Factors of Life

I for instance, am just below the national average all on my lonesome. But that’s not a clear indicator of excess. Where you live, what you eat, and how you spend the rest of your money will be a contributing factor in your lifestyle of choice. And let’s be perfectly honest, whether you are a creative professional or not, but definitely someone who is in the midst of the hustle, pursuing their passions with the intent of making a living at it, you will definitely feel the pinch associated with living below the standard of living most enjoy. But what happens when you start to “make it?”

To give it even more consideration – where you rank housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance in that beautiful mix that we call living are big factors. And they vary from country to country.

When you begin to ask these questions for yourself, you’ll get a better idea of what you should be doing as a creative professional to live in health and wellness. And in fact, these themes just might be the beginnings of an area of exploration for timotheories readers in the coming months.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves friends.

Right now I want to focus on the concept of living with enough. Much like the spiritual concept of being enough, living with enough is important for you to stay on the creative path and block out the white noise of life.

The Path To Post-consumerism

I want to introduce the concept of post-consumerism. Post-consumer waste is that which comes after a consumer of a material stream, Wikipedia’s words, not mine. Examples include, but are not limited to, packaging, fruit skins, meat bones, dust, weeds, outgrown toys, feces, clothing, advertising materials.

In other words, it is the garbage that people discard: the stuff that ends up in the dump, poured down the drain or thrown away as litter.

Now postconsumers.com is a website that addresses the concept of post-consumerism in a practical way. The practice of purchasing as a form of therapy, the media machine, feeling love for objects, are all topics that Postconsumers tackles on the regular. Quite frankly, people can very easily become addicted to consumerism and it will have negative impacts on their health, communities, and satisfaction. And we haven’t even considered how it impacts education, environment, jobs, housing, income, and governance.

So my first question for you dear sweet readers is this – are you falling into the vice-grip that is an identity determined by your things?

Seriously though, do you think that brands are important? What about trends and styles? And hello, have you considered that vacuous hole in your life yet? The one where you think having more of something will make you more important or “better.”

Think on these things my friends, as we begin the journey of exploring what that can mean as a creative professional. For now, I’m out of theories, and also a little weighed down. Might need to shed some couture.

Tim!

11 Ways People Die Before Death (Cross Talk Ep. 9)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Death is a difficult thing to write about, I think. After all, I’m still alive and so I have no life experience (death experience?) with this particular topic. Films have addressed death since their inception in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that more honest portrayals of death started to come to light. Much like sex, drugs, and rock n ‘roll, filmmakers have slowly opened up and arts and culture have become more accepting of these harder to digest themes.

For instance, one of my favourite movies about death is The Fault In Our Stars, which is full of love and beauty, but is also a very real in its depiction of the nearness to death that the two leads are experiencing.

But when we record an episode of Cross Talk, we want to present a nuanced view of whatever topic we set out sights on. So why would we treat death any differently. We wouldn’t, is the answer – because we think using our brains is important.

you-brain-is

With that made clear, we are going to explore a lot of great examples of the nature of death, in film on this episode nine of Cross Talk. You want to know more, dear readers? Well how about I lay it out for you?

We’re going to share an example of a character that can’t die, but not for an very obvious reason, associations of death and greed, an animated movie death that changed a franchise, whether we are really alive, dead or somewhere in between, if death is as unique as life is, and two movies that explore the idea of what we might do if knew we couldn’t die OR if we knew when we were going to die.

Just a quick disclaimer, Singh won’t be present for this episode, but we do give him a shout out, so please stay tuned for his next appearance; and as always, I’ve included a direct link to the full video for you here, but because we have the ability to embed vidoes you can click through here. After all, wouldn’t want you to waste any precious life overexerting yourself watching episode nine of Cross Talk!

I’m out of theories for now, but please check back tomorrow for an album review that is full of lemonade and bae. It’s a heart breaker for sure. Please comment, subscribe, and share this with friends. We want to hear your feedback!

Tim!

Checks And Balances (Ryan Andrade interview)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

After some much needed time away from the lab these past two days, I’ve had something of a breakthrough. I realized that not every solution calls for immediate action, dear readers. Sometimes an opportunity will present itself at the last moment, and allow you to regain balance taking you towards the direction you should be headed. Want an example?

Okay. For instance, dating is hard.

It truly does take a lot of time, effort, and energy to go out and meet new people. And if you put all of your willpower into your dating life, the rest of your life kinda falls by the way side. Which quite frankly won’t win you any points with romantic interests in the long run. Unless they too are running into life obstacles and are themselves overwhelmed. But living that way will lead into a whole host of different problems, and likely a messy finish. It’s better for you to have your own shit together (or are at the very least regularly working on your goals), and make some time to pursue romantic relationships. As things move along, you’ll find that the quality of dates you have improve because you can spot red flags in potential mates earlier in the courtship.

But what the heck does this have to do with timotheories or even artist interviews?

Good point dear readers. Well, a lot if I’m being perfectly honest. Creative professionals are not exempt from the challenge of maintaining balance in their lives. I might even argue that it’s more difficult for them to do this because there are less obvious resources available about how to start an art related business then there are for other commodities. Artists have to deal with intellectual property issues, and a considerable amount of ignorance on the value of their work.

Which is exactly what today’s interviewee strives to clear up. His uncanny ability to work his own interests into all facets of his life are a great example of what we should all be doing in order to find and maintain balance.

Ryan Andrade is a journeyman welder who loves the arts. He’s made the time to pursue a post-secondary education while earning a trade and travelling in from Ft. Saskatchewan on an almost daily basis. His down-to-earth mentality of working and keeping things technical without getting hung up on explanations of his art or worrying about what it means, allow him to keep up with the work.

I think you too will enjoy what he has to say about the theme of balance and what he does to follow his own heartbeat. I’m gonna take a note from Ryan and stop right here. I’ll let the interview speak for itself.

And as always, if you want to check out more timotheories interviews or the Cross Talk series please visit our YouTube channel.  And please, please, please share this post and of course subscribe to both the blog and channel!

Now let’s get down to business – Ryan doesn’t have much in the way of social media at the moment. So please send an email to timotheories@outlook.com and I’ll get in contact with him for you.

Lastly my sincerest thanks to Ryan for being rad, real, and ready. See you tomorrow with an album review that’s features an angel and probably my favourite one of the year.

Tim!