Theme 75: Symmetry

In my work, I try to encourage talking about mental health in very small ways... positive messages that might be used by people as little reminders.

The rates of depression and anxiety are going up. How do we address that in our work?

You should save all your ideas. I haven't seen the start of my notes in a couple of years.

Whenever I go out for Italian food I always get the spaghetti late, I had to call them out, they forgetti my spaghetti.

There's no right way of making comics.

I made the executive decision to just watch Spongebob all day... I probably have a back-catalogue of a thousand Patricks.

One of the things I like to do with my pieces is always challenge the notion of space, movement, implied movement... Movement is life.

Bartering is not dead.

Understand what skill does and what it means to work in the outside world... now you're competing with everything else.

If you want it, you have to get it. You cannot rely on anyone else.

One, no one owes you anything. Two, no one invited you into the art world (ie. no one owes you anything).

If you play baseball and you come home with your uniform without dirt, then you didn't play.

life is define by the opportunities, even the ones will miss

If you don’t respect yourself and you don’t show that you respect yourself, nobody’s going to respect you.

For me, movement is life.

No one owes you anything.

Balance can be kind of boring.

Hay que tener un balance entre la simetría y la asimetría y aplicar en el arte pero también en la vida.

El que todo el mundo te reconozca como artista aveces es peligroso.

En el arte siempre te tienes cuestionar. Cada día debes cuestionarte

Crear la ilusión óptica de un espacio virtual.

Hay que creer en si mismo

Muchas de mis obras han sido accidentales.

Hay un balance entre la simetría y la asimetría

We've had some very real failures and we never really knew where we were going or who we were trying to be. We just knew that we wanted to collaborate, we had this desire to collaborate in this life, on this work and in whatever form that takes.

Doing the things you're good at can lead to really awesome opportunities if you follow through - saying yes to things.

So what the f*ck does it mean to follow the energy? Some people call it synchronicity, some people call it the Law of Attraction, other people call it just when just line up. But because of this month's theme, we're going to call it symmetry.

So following the energy...this is the part where we talk about our nonexistent business plan and how we've made it 11 years.

But you're always slowly trying to acquire just a little bit more, totally boot-strapped as we can grow this business selling prints.

Let's look for people who we can support and who can support us that will be there with us at the end of the day.

Let's try to invest in the people that pick us up when we're down, that remind us of who we are. People who know that we are not our brands. People that remind us that we matter exactly as we are.

The Internet can be great, it can be awesome. At its best, the Internet is a tool that gets to us real people and real connections.

It's really easy to get lost in the sea of approval seeking online.

When someone gives you the gift of their time and their presence, in person, that is a gift that you cannot rush [...] It has to live in your heart.

Be present with somebody. Take the time and care to create the compassion that is required to make a lasting connection.

I can't remember most of what I've written, but what I can remember are the conversations I've had with people in person, face to face.

Real life matters, what happens on the Internet matters a whole lot less.

The biggest thing that I've learned is that people matter, work matters a whole lot less.

Eventually, I realized that the seismic shifts that happened in my life changed the things that made me feel safe. They changed the things that made me feel happy and fulfilled.

These moments of disconnect where you feel you've grown and you've changed... they sometimes become louder than the voice in your head that tells you that you should just keep going and doing the things that you're supposed to do.

This is me marching into the unknown having no idea what I'm doing, but knowing that it's the right time to make this move.

The biggest honor of all is that I've had the ability to create a space where I felt safe. A place where I felt safe to take risks, to admit my mistakes, to dream big, and to really be inspired by the people that matter the most to me.

There is nothing that makes me happier than sitting down and talking face to face with people who make things, who aren't scared to take risks, and who have strong opinions about the things that they make.

We seem to really like to grip about time management with people, but it's very rare that I overhear co-workers or colleagues being like, "so how do you fit in alone time?"

We understand the frequency, the cycle, of that restoration activity with sleep. And I realized it is the same with some of these other things.

It's like saying, you know what? My life is crazy right now, so I'm not gonna sleep for five days, but then I have a two-day window where I'm just gonna sleep the whole time for two days, 48 hours, done, catch up.

Some part of my brain understands that taking a two-week vacation in the Bahamas or whatever, some sunny, beautiful place, isn't going to make up for the things that are massively missing in my life.

It helped me realize that so many of the details of my life...I'd advocated and I'd gotten creative about how to get them in my life.

Don't just think of work things, think of any activity that makes you feel pumped. Or your version of pumped.

In case restorative and growth don't really fit how your brain thinks of those two states, I encourage you to come up with your own words.

Psychologists kind of think about it as growth versus restorative states. I call it progress and self-care.

There's a lot of neuroscientists that essentially think of symmetry as these two things...dopamine and endorphins...and then on the other side...serotonin and oxytocin.

But here's the weird thing. It's 100 years later. Most of us here have pretty different workplaces, right? And we're still using the 40/60 [working/free hours per week].

Anyone know how many hours a week on average we work in the U.S.? It's 47. 47 is the average.

The brain is so forgiving and it’s seeking change. We just have to create the pattern and the new habit.

We have to stop saying and believing that talking about race divides us.

How are we tone policing today?

Awareness is the key agent for change. We have to be aware in order to know how to move forward.

My highest aspiration has been to seduce myself & the people around into a deeper & more complicated love of the reality in which we find ourselves.

We have to give until we can't give anymore...then give some more.

When we move up in life, it is our duty to turn around and help somebody up along with us. Through support, through guidance, and through forgiveness.

Your personal values don't have to be sacrificed. They can be perfectly aligned with everything you do in life.

Perfection isn't just symmetry. Symmetry isn't just perfection. It's about human connection. It's about reciprocity. It's about harmony. It's about 'get what you gift.'

What I have found is that the businesses that admire the most share the same three pillars: community, service and culture.

Wherever there's imbalance, there is balance. Wherever there is imperfection, there is perfection. Wherever there is authenticity, there is beauty. Wherever there is asymmetry, there is symmetry.

What I have found is that when you design something that is perfectly symmetrical, you can design people out of a space—whether you mean to or not. What I've found is that when you design something that isn't perfectly symmetrical, it becomes inviting, it becomes tangible, it becomes inclusive. Inclusivity breeds community.

What we did with A Cup of Commonwealth is we threw out all the 'rules' of business. And we said 'hello' to intentional chaos.

At the end of the day, it's about showing, not telling. People can see through it. They can see through carefully curated photographs. They can see through fake verbiage. They can see through empty promises. They can see through hollow missions. They want to KNOW you. That's the whole idea of connection.

There's beauty in imperfection. There's beauty in asymmetry.

If there's something you don't like about yourself. Or if there's something you don't like about the world, you can change it, or you can accept it. But if you accept it, you have to deal with it.

What's good for community, is good for business. And what's good for business, is good for community.

Symmetry...it's about 'you get what you gift.' What you receive from this universe is completely aligned with what you gift to this universe.

Symmetry...it's not just about mathematics. It's not just about science. It's about human connectivity. It's how we connect with one another, how we connect with the universe. It's about reciprocity. It's about harmony.

Symmetry is a sense of harmonies and beautiful proportional balance.

When we focus so much on the tiny details, we lose a huge amount of beauty.

If anything exceeded the limit, then it will turn into a disorder.

You have to notice before you can address.

We should live lives that are deserving of our calling and our purpose.

Anything that inspires you towards creation can inspire you towards creating more just circumstances.

When something’s beautiful, it often inspires you to create.

Fairness isn’t always fair.

Everything has a purpose. You can’t have the good only; it’s the good and the bad that come together to make us who we are. That’s the symmetry of hope.

Real change happens when the people who need it, lead it.

All that misery, all that pressure equipped us to be the solution to the problem that we saw in our community.

All the hopelessness, all the despair that I endured up to that point in my life, it suddenly took on a meaning. It became fuel that I would use to push me forward in life.

I needed to take control of my life. I could no longer stay on this escalator heading in the wrong direction, heading to a downward destiny. I had to stop, turn around and not walk in the opposite direction that the escalator was taking me—I needed to run. But I couldn’t run alone.

We find symmetry in buildings, photography, architecture, design, the Hadron Collider, and nature.

Symmetry is all around us. It is experienced and expressed through many different forms of human action and creativity.

Guilt is a very self serving emotion.

Awareness is the key agent for change.

Racism and oppression are a white people problem.