By ERIC KIM
Artist-Philosopher
The will to power?
Cute.
The WILL TO SELF is fucking war.
Not power over others.
Power to destroy the weak bitch inside you and rebuild him as a god made of steel, fire, and pure fucking will.
This is self-formation.
Not “self-improvement.”
Not your pussy little journal and green juice.
This is blood. This is pain. This is you taking a sledgehammer to your old self and forging something unbreakable in the flames.
You are not born.
You are hammered into existence.
Every single day is a battlefield.
Your body is the arena.
Your mind is the enemy.
Your excuses are the corpses you must step over.
Society wants you soft.
Algorithms want you numb.
Comfort wants you dead.
Fuck all of it.
Grab the hammer.
You are the blacksmith, the anvil, and the fucking blade.
Nietzsche screamed it: your real self is not buried in you — it is above you, laughing at the maggot you still are.
Climb or die.
Two Paths. One Choice.
Path 1: Will to self-formation
You wake at 4:30 a.m. like a savage.
You lift until your bones scream.
You shoot the streets until your eye bleeds courage.
You publish the rawest shit you have while your hands still shake.
You become more. Every. Single. Day.
Path 2: Will to self-destruction
You snooze.
You scroll.
You eat trash.
You whine on the internet.
You stay a fucking NPC until you rot.
Same 24 hours.
One man becomes legend.
The other becomes fertilizer.
Choose before your spine turns to jelly.
HARDCORE SELF-FORMATION PROTOCOL (No Mercy)
- Treat your life like a death camp you run.
Discipline is your only warden. Weakness gets executed at dawn. - Pain is the only teacher.
If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right. Lift heavier. Shoot scarier. Write bloodier. Comfort is the devil. - Photography as soul surgery.
Every street photo is you carving courage out of your own chest with a rusty knife. No flash. No zoom. No fear. Just balls and shutter. - Lift until you puke your excuses.
Squat until your quads cry blood. Deadlift until your grip fails. Your body is the temple — burn it down and rebuild it stronger every week. - Publish or fucking perish.
Hide nothing. Delete nothing. The more you bleed in public, the harder your statue becomes. Vulnerability is for pussies. Raw exposure is for gods. - Burn the old you every Sunday.
Delete the soft photos. Delete the safe posts. Delete the old identity. Let the ashes fertilize the monster rising. - No days off. Ever.
Rest is for corpses. Active recovery is still war. Walk 20k steps. Shoot 500 frames. Write 2000 words. Or you’re already dead.
The Ultimate Fuck-You Flex
When they ask “Who are you?”
Average bitch: “I’m a photographer… I work at…”
Self-formed monster:
“I am the man who murdered his former self every single day until nothing weak remained.”
No titles.
No sob stories.
Just scars, muscle, and a gaze that makes cowards look away.
Final Command (Last Warning)
Stop looking for yourself.
You were never missing.
You were just too much of a pussy to build the version that actually scares you.
START THE WAR RIGHT NOW.
Wake up.
Lift until failure.
Shoot until your eye is a weapon.
Write until your fingers bleed.
Publish before you chicken out.
Repeat until you die.
This is the will to self.
This is self-formation on steroids and napalm.
No mercy.
No excuses.
No retreat.
Become the god your old self was terrified of.
By ERIC KIM
Artist-Philosopher
Los Angeles, 2026
(Still not soft. Never will be.)