The past week or so has been a roller-coaster ride of enough-sleep and not-enough-sleep as I navigated my way through finishing this amazingly-tight-deadline freelance project, finishing up stuff at work, and tidying up my portfolio as well as sending out my resumes. Those of you having some time to kill are more than welcome to check out my portfolio site at www.nikolastjhin.com – and comments and suggestions please! And those who have lobangs, you know how to reach me~! =)

Here’s what has kept me busy throughout the week or so. Fun stuff to work on! These are the 4 fashion spreads that’ll be going into my portfolio – the rest of the magazine are unfortunately very sub-standard (there was no time, and they wanted me to just stick with the original layout).

Looking back at these, they may not seem like a lot of work, but there are actually a ton of stuff that was done to the original photos to achieve this effect. The idea passed to me was to make these look like classic chinese oil paintings, but at the same time to keep the face recognizable enough for people to identify with. It’s been quite a satisfying experience! Now, I just need to get paid properly~ ha! (note: I really have to point this out – the quote: “I have failed over and over again, and that is why I succeed” is actually from Your Airness Michael Jordan, not from that Heng guy!) (no diss Ben, just pointing it out)

I have received some ‘question-mark’ comments in regards to me leaving St James. Ultimately, it all boils down to the fact that I don’t see myself gaining anything valuable from my experience here at St James. The time I spent here would be better spent else-where. While my 2 years at Lancer was tough and extremely hardcore, I learned a lot of things there, and it has been a valuable experience that helped me grow.

In my 3 months here in St James, I felt that this isn’t the direction where I wanted to go, so instead of expending more precious time, I decided to act right away and tendered. To some, that may seem rash, or unwise, or sudden. But to me, it was simply the only scenario that I can be happy with, and as such I took it.

I haven’t been exactly happy at work, and for some reason I can’t quite point out the reason why. It’s not the people. It’s not the work. It just doesn’t feel quite right. I had the opportunity to do some reading earlier today, and visited an old favorite that I have somehow forgotten recently. Steve Pavlina writes extensively in regards to personal development, and I enjoyed his articles very much. He talked about Lightworking here, and one of the paragraph stuck out to me, it truly described the situation I’m feeling at work!

For example, if you work for a company run by darkworkers, you may perceive that going to work at your job actually lowers your consciousness compared to if you just stayed home. Going to work is like entering an awareness-lowering cloud, inviting you to resonate with lower states of consciousness such as fear, greed, apathy, depression, and worry. When you leave work, you feel like you’re coming out of that dark cloud; it’s like you can finally breathe and be yourself again.

There! That’s it! And it struck me that the way I have been working here has been influenced by the people I work with, and as a result it has lowered my consciousness. All that starting work late and finishing early. All that 2 hour lunches and shopping around before heading back to work. It’s good fun. But its not work. Its more like retirement. And to be retiring at 25, earning a measly 2k plus a month, thats really just dumb.

I need a new job, one that can motivate me and help me grow! Action list for the week goes like this:
1. Finish up Zouk mockup and send application
2. Wrap up finishing touches to portfolio site
3. Send out resume to Jess and Christopher
4. Celebrate The One Month! *grins*

Those are the big ones, while the small ones are plenty:
1. Clean up room, again!
2. Work on Serene’s website
3. Work on Pam’s brochure
4. Scour the web for more prospective employer/clients
5. Send invoices! Get paid!