ERIC KIM

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How to Use Wealth

My thought:

It takes more wisdom to USE wealth (than to simply acquire it).

It is pretty straight-forward in accumulating wealth (live extremely frugally, have a higher income than your expenses).

For myself personally, I grew up poor and now (with the guidance of Cindy), I got many racks in the safe. Now the more interesting question:

How should I use my wealth? What is the ‘wise’ way to use wealth, and for what?

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Why Read?

Why read? My thought:

Reading is one of the best and direct creative stimuluses we can do in order to improve and quicken our own thinking.

I’m against the notion of “reading for the sake of reading”. Reading which doesn’t quicken you or spur you to action is bad.

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Play!

As adults what capacity have we lost? The ability to play! To play for the sake of play. To play with our super abundant energy. To play as a form of creative activity and outpression.

To play with no tinge of guilt or “pang of conscience”.

Playing is what makes us (super) human!

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The Art of Solo Travel

The art of solo travel: travel at your own cadence, follow your own internal rhythms. No rush, no obligations. Just do what you want to do, and don’t do what you don’t want to do.

No obligation to see tourist spots. Instead, using your travels as a means of self exploration, self understanding, self meditation, and self reflection.

Using your travels as a chance to disconnect, to spend more time by yourself in order to think, write, read, create, blog, photograph, experience, and reflect.

In short, spend more opportunities you can to travel and fly solo!

ERIC

TRAVEL MORE with TRAVEL NOTES >

What Pushes You?

What pushes you forward in life? What motivates you towards creative activity? What motivates you to wake up in the morning?

What pushes you to write, read, think, or create art? Do you create from a source or abundance, or from a source of need?

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How to Tighten your Feedback Loop in Photography

My thought on how to stay inspired in your photography:

Tighten your feedback loop between shooting, selecting your photos, and publishing your photos.

This will keep you prolific to keep shooting new photos, derive new delights from your new photos, and also be able to share your new photos (preferably on your own blog).

Simple ideas:

  1. Shoot only jpeg with an in-camera filter you like.
  2. Import and select your photos quickly and effectively. Experiment using iPad to import photos from SD card reader (lightning to SD), favorite your favorites and then upload them straight to your WordPress blog.
  3. Just use the jpeg files. Don’t worry about post processing. This will save you much time and effort, and free up mental energy to go out and shoot more new photos!
  4. The best feedback you can get is from yourself: whether your photos bring you joy or not. Otherwise upload your photos to arsbeta.com for real feedback and critique.

Why tighten your feedback loop in photography?

The upside of digital photography: instant feedback, which allows us to learn and improve at a much more rapid pace. Why not use this to our advantage?

SHOOT ON!

ERIC

Agitate

“Mens agitat molem.”- Virgil (Mind agitates [moves] matter).

Agitate comes from “ago” (Latin), which means to set into motion, to lead, to drive/propel/cast.

To agitate ourselves (self motivate ourselves to move, act, and to set ourselves into motion): isn’t this the goal of life?

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Abundant Leisure

Many of us desire more money, however I believe a better goal is this:

Seek to maximize your leisure hours and mental space.

Better to be poorer with more leisure than richer with less leisure.

Leisure as hours and emptiness of mind

Leisure requires an emptying of your mind. Fewer cares, duties, obligations, and responsibilities. Even if you had 10 hours of free time, as long as you got all these worries and concerns in your mind, you cannot leverage your time for creative, philosophical, or scholarly ends.

Or in short:

Seek more freedom and leisure to indulge your creative activities. Less concern with money, fame, and honors.

ERIC