Deviant Music Recommendations from Conor Harrington
“Came across this yesterday from an old friend,” writes artist Conor Harrington (Juxtapoz cover #93) “and I’ve had it on repeat since then (nothing to do with the Betty Page vid, honestly). Deviant is an insanely talented DJ and producer with a sound from way out in the deepest corners of the human imagination.”
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The Lost Practice of Resting One Day Each Week
He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities. – Benjamin Franklin
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist.
Ask any physician and they will tell you that rest is essential for physical health. When the body is deprived of sleep, it is unable to rebuild and recharge itself adequately. Your body requires rest.
Ask any athlete and they will tell you that rest is essential for healthy physical training. Rest is needed for physical muscles to repair themselves and prevent injury. This is true whether you run marathons, pitch baseballs, or climb rocks. Your muscles require rest.
Ask many of yesterday’s philosophers and they will tell you that rest is essential for the mind. Leonardo da Vinci said, “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.” And Ovid, the Roman poet, said, “Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” Your mind requires rest.
Ask most religious leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for the soul. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i, and Wiccan (among others) teach the importance of setting aside a period of time for rest. Your soul requires rest.
Ask many corporate leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for productivity. Forbes magazine recently wrote, “You can only work so hard and do so much in a day. Everybody needs to rest and recharge.” Your productivity requires rest.
Physicians, athletes, philosophers, poets, religious leaders, and corporate leaders all tell us the same thing: take time to rest. It is absolutely essential for a balanced, healthy life.
Yet, when you ask most people in today’s frenzied culture if they consistetly set aside time for rest, they will tell you that they are just too busy to rest. Even fewer would say that they set aside any concentrated time (12-24 hours) for rest. There are just too many things to get done, too many demands, too many responsibilities, too many bills, and too much urgency. Nobody can afford to waste time resting in today’s results-oriented culture.
Unfortunately, this hectic pace is causing damage to our quality of life. We are destroying every sense of our being (body, mind, and soul). There is a reason we run faster and work harder, but only fall farther behind. Our lives have become too full and too out of balance. Somewhere along the way, we lost the essential practice of concentrated rest. We would be wise to reclaim the ancient, lost practice of resting one day each week.
To get back into balance, just consider the countless benefits of concentrated rest for your body, mind, and soul:
§ Healthier body – We each get one life and one body to live it in. Therefore, we eat healthy, we exercise, and we watch our bad habits. But then we allow our schedules to fill up from morning to evening. Rest is as essential to our physical health as the water we drink and the air we breathe.
§ Less stress – Stress is basically the perception that the situations we are facing are greater than the resources we have to deal with them – resources such as time, energy, ability, and help from others. We have two choices, either reduce the demands or increase our resources. Concentrated rest confronts stress in both ways. First, it reduces the demands of the situation. We have no demands on us as long as we have the ability to mentally let go of unfinished tasks. Secondly, rest reduces stress by increasing our resources, particularly energy.
§ Deeper relationships – A day set aside each week for rest allows relationships with people to deepen and be strengthened. When we aren’t rushing off to work or soccer practice, we are able to enjoy each other’s company and a healthy conversation. And long talks prove to be far more effective in building community than short ones on the ride to the mall.
§ Opportunity for reflection – Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. It is even more difficult to see the forest when we are running through the trees. Concentrated rest allows us to take a step back, to evaluate our lives, to identify our values, and determine if our life is being lived for them.
§ Balance – Taking one day of your week and dedicating it to rest will force you to have an identity outside of your occupation. It will foster relationships outside of your fellow employees. It will foster activities and hobbies outside our work. It will give you life and identity outside of your Monday-Friday occupation. Rather than defining your life by what you do, you can begin to define it by who you are.
§ Increased production – Just like resting physical muscles allows them opportunity to rejuvenate which leads to greater physical success, providing our minds with rest provides it opportunity to refocus and rejuvenate. More work is not better work. Smarter work is better work.
§ Reserve for life’s emergencies – Crisis hits everyone. Nobody who is alive is immune from the trials of life. By starting the discipline today of concentrated rest, you will build up reserves for when the unexpected emergencies of life strike… and rest is no longer an option.
Properly developing a discipline of concentrated rest requires both inward and outward changes. Consider these steps to reclaiming the lost practice of weekly rest in your life:
1. Find contentment in your current life. – Much of the reason we are unable to find adequate rest is because we are under the constant impression that our lives can and should be better than they are today. This constant drive to improve our standing in life through the acquisition of money, power, or skills robs us of contentment and joy. Ultimately, rest is an extension of our contentment and security. Without them, simplicity and rest is difficult, if not impossible. Stop focusing on what you don’t have and start enjoying the things that you do.
2. Plan your rest. Rest will come only from intentional planning and planning rest will come only if it is truly desired. Schedule it on your calendar. Learn to say no to any tasks that attempt to take precedent. Plan out your day of rest by choosing creative activities that are refreshing and encourage relationships. Understand that true rest is different than just not working. As the Cat in the Hat wisely said, “It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.” Avoid housework. Plan meals in advance to help alleviate cooking responsibilities. And by all means, turn off your television, e-mail, and blackberry.
3. Take responsibility for your life. You are not a victim of your time demands. You are the creator and acceptor of them. Refuse to complain or make excuses and start changing your habits. Remember, you are only as busy as you choose to be. Leave “if only” excuses to the kids. If needed, alert your employer about your desire for rest and tell them you will be unavailable on that particular day.
4. Embrace simplicity. Embrace a lifestyle that focuses on your values, not your possessions. It is difficult to find rest when the housework is never finished, the yard needs to be mowed, or the garage needs to be organized.
5. Include your family. It is much easier to practice the discipline of concentrated rest if your family is practicing it too. The fact that this gets more difficult as your kids get older should motivate you to start as soon as possible.
6. Live within your income. A debtor is a slave to his creditor. It is difficult to find rest for your mind when you are deep in debt. The constant distress of your responsibility to another may preclude you from truly enjoying a day off. It is possible; it’s just more difficult. Don’t overspend your income, live within it.
7. Realize the shallow nature of a results-oriented culture. If you live in a results-oriented culture where productivity alone is championed on every corner, rest is counter-cultural. And thus, the saying goes, “If you rest, you rust.” Rest may even be seen as a sign of weakness by others. Unfortunately, that view of humanity’s role in this world is shallow. It is true that many of the benefits from concentrated rest are not tangible; but then again, only a fool believes that all good things can be counted.
Rabbi Elijah of Vilna once said, “What we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so.” The implication is clear. We could live lives that produce countless widgets, but we won’t start living until we stop producing and start enjoying. Capture again the lost practice of resting one day each week and start truly living.
Read more from Joshua at his blog, Becoming Minimalist, subscribe to his feed, or check out his new ebook, Simplify.
35 Amazing Traditional Art Paintings
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By Obaid ul Rehman
Traditional art has always been the source of inspiration for many artists and designers. With its conventional look and feel, it appeals your visitors and let them amaze on your creativity and artistic skills. In this post, we have piled up an inspiring list of some great Traditional art and paintings for you.
I would suggest you all to take a close look at these master pieces; as when you browse them in detail, you will notice that they are the marvel conceptions of the artist who use his skill and creativity at his best to get this amazing result! Let’s take a look and see yourself.
Beautiful Traditional Art Paintings
I Fill Desert with Uselessness
Typography Mania #19
Typography Mania is a weekly post series that comes around every Wednesday with the best of Typography work on the web, from videos to images everything is full of great design and inspiration. Check out this weeks Mania and comeback in 7 days for more.
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Make sure to click on each image to go to original location where you can check out more work from each artist and designer.
Videos
Helvetica is an independent movie about typography, graphic design, and visual culture. The movie is an exploration of urban spaces on important cities and also a fluid discussion with good designers about the options and the aesthetics behind the typo. Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication.
"This movie is a lesson about typography"
Images
Vote for Me | by
Dominic Clifford
Know Your Limits | by
Dominic Clifford
Maples Too Motel | by
Dane Royer
Don't Worry | by Orignaux Moose
From the Type Project Series | by
astrodub
Prcssd. Santa Monica, CA. 2010 | by
eyetwist
Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs | by
Skeptical Beowulf
Hand - Drawn Four | by
garytherough
Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble | by
Annie Matronic
It's an Hold Up | by
Renato Pequito
Read | by
Bradguy
Not Far | by
Bradguy
Ready Set Type | by
D McArdel
Holograms | by
Vincent Viriot
Illustrated Type | by
David Maclennan
Illustrated Type | by
David Maclennan
Illustrated Type | by
David Maclennan
Illustrated Type | by
David Maclennan
Give Me What I Want | by
Robert Missen
SubTone | by
Jarr Geerligs
CMYK | by
Markie Darkie
RGB | by
Markie Darkie
CK | by
Markie Darkie
I will honor the spirit of the text | by
Jeremy Rojas
About the author
Hi! I'm Paulo Canabarro and I'm here to post some really cool stuff for you, if you have any ideas or any requests please get @ me - pvpcanabarro@gmail.com you can also Follow me on twitter!
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30 Fantastic Architecture Renders
If there is something that can bring value for a project even before it's done I can say that are the renders. It's a way to show to the client how it will be the final result or at least show him something near to the real thing. I love this feature, but some people abuse of it, and have the gift to transform simply renders in realistic photos!
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There are lots of render softwares today, but to reach a good result, just choosing some elements, textures and colors it's not enough. Like the photos, the use of light and angle of the render I believe that are the key points to get a beautiful and realistic image. And as a huge a fan of 3D and architecture I selected 30 images from several styles that are the most impressive renders I've ever seen!
The Creative Illustrations from Denis Zilber
You probably already seen some of these around... and if you like artworks filled with creativity, colors and sense of humor, so I guess you probably liked what you've seen and you also probably wondered who was the artist behind those arts. So here we present you Denis Zilber, a very talented artist from Ramat Gan, Israel who is into illustration/animation and have some pretty nice artworks at his portfolio. His caricatural style makes his artworks really fun to admire.
We will present here a selection of some of Denis' work and we really recommend you to check out his portfolio and his blog for further artworks and info. I hope you like the selection. Enjoy. :)
Creative Spaces: Photography by Paul Barbera
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Above Second Gallery
Huge congratulations to my good friend Jasper Wong who just opened Above Second Gallery in Hong Kong! He and Wu Yue (Paris) christened the space with a show just over a week ago! I am really excited about this because we have something planned (and it involves all of you)!
Peter Baker
More photos from Peter Baker. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Pooh Sticks
Pooh Sticks by Lenny.
