Love the Things You Hate

Although we supposedly gained an hour over the weekend I’m certain this was merely a ploy by the government, to create a distraction, enabling them to steal an entire week. Either this or I have foolishly misplaced 168 hours somewhere. In which case I’m sure it will turn up in a ‘safe place’ somewhere, along with a couple of odd socks and a few marbles.

As you can probably tell any amount of freedom can be severely detrimental to the state of my mind. So despite regaining my thoughts over this ‘supposed’ week, on several occasions, to peruse Design magazines and inspirational art work Monday came as a relief! So the ‘surprise’ brief of giving a presentation on next week gave structure, momentarily, to my thoughts.

I have to say, surprisingly, I’m actually looking forward to the prospect of delivering the presentation next week. In the past, like many others, I have greatly disliked and tried to avoid presentations whenever possible. But, as time has gone on and I’ve gained more experience in presenting I’ve grown to like them. This may also coincide with my ‘love the things you hate’ policy I developed a while ago, which I will now explain.; A long time ago I figured if I trained or evolved myself to like the things I hated life would be a lot easier and more enjoyable. Really ‘dislike’ was really only a matter of my own personal preference (within reason) and served little function other than to make things worse than they seemed. As we all know everything has its pro’s and cons and so by focussing only on the pro’s the world seems quite nice, sometimes.

Therefore, by looking at the presentation in the same way you can see in fact it is a joyous and up-lifting experience (or at least its not as bad as it seems)!! So here’s a list of the pro’s of presenting;

• You’re in control (you have the power)!
• You can make a difference to someone’s hour/day/life by what you say (whether it’s the knowledge you give them or just a smile)
• You in turn have gained knowledge in researching the presentation (which you’re likely to retain because you have to know it so thoroughly)
• You gain self confidence
• You increase you’re employment prospects in the design industry
• You have the opportunity to show off your personality
• You feel a real sense of achievement at the end

So by ignoring, or at least excepting the negative side to a presentation you can look forward to it, I hope!

In terms of progress leading up to this momentous day things are going quite well. I’ve found lots of research on the internet and I’ve found it pretty interesting. My main task at the moment is cross referencing what I’ve found with paper based sources. This is proving to be a bit of a problem as the local library isn’t that fantastic, but hopefully I’ll overcome this somehow.

Other than that my sketchbook is slowly developing and I’ve purchased some lovely colouring pencils which I’m very excited about. I’ve also got some design books on order which I’m sure will make for good bedtime reading. So tasks for this week are;

• Annotate up to date in sketchbook
• Finish presentation before the weekend and practice
• Ensure I have sufficient paper based references