Freeform.

Creation starts in the heart. Michael Korda, whom Wikipedia calls “one of the most influential people in the business of book publishing”, is quoted as saying:

“Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you derive from what you do.”

I’ve had a printout of that quote taped on the side of my dresser for weeks now. It’s where I can see it from my desk while I work. There is something subtly beautiful about your unconscious mind absorbing an empowering quote like that over a long period, and I believe that’s what’s occurring in me. The truth of this quote has hit me again and again. It just makes so much sense. If you enjoy what you do, then you will naturally be motivated to do it well and continue to improve. And after further reflection, I believe this is how it was meant to be with humans in general. On a perfect planet, everyone would have a job and set of responsibilities that they felt naturally motivated to do instead of being motivated by fear as they often are. On this kind of planet, everyone would have a job that was a natural extension of their inborn talents and preferences.

Obviously, that’s not the planet we live on. We live on a small blue green planet orbiting third in a series of eight planets (speak not of Pluto) on the outskirts of the western spiral arm of a beautiful galaxy which may or may not have a black hole in it’s center. On this tiny rock we call the Earth, people often carry a job for many years (orbits) that they do not feel passionate about, and may even dislike intensely. But these people carry these jobs because they have surrendered into believing in a forged painting of reality. People seem to think, “There is job scarcity right now. I should just be happy with the job I have.” The problem is, this thought is based in fear, which means the chances of the person actually feeling that their current job is part of their life’s purpose is next to nil. I’d like to echo what others have said because it resonates with my experience of life: Find your passion. A life lived is worth living courageously, and it’s better to live courageously than to live a “safe” life with your soul dying quietly inside of you.

I was blessed; I found some of the pieces of my own heart puzzle at a young age. Before I began this little blogging adventure, I created another site. This site contained some of the best creative output at the time. Much of this creativity manifested as a myriad of desktop wallpapers and icons, among other things. I love working with 2D graphics programs like Photoshop and 3D graphics programs like Bryce. I will always remember the joy I had tweaking every last pixel of the website’s layout and color scheme. In fact, I would go through alternating periods of web development for a few months and then content creation months after that. I loved creating, and I loved art. I still do. But that site only received about 10,000 hits during its entire 3 year existence. Why?

The short answer is that I didn’t know how to network back then and sites didn’t know either. To be perfectly clear, I am not disappointed in 10K hits. I’m actually proud of it, yet I sometimes wonder how many people might have benefited from my work but never got the chance to find out about it. Today, it’s easier. Blogs actively advertise your new postings for you, and their dynamic nature allows for content to be added hundreds of times easier and quicker than the process I had to go through back then. How would you like to manage HTML tables every time you wanted to add an icon? Today, this problem is solved through software like WordPress which is used to run this blog and Gallery2 which is the foundation for the newest feature of this site.

After much research and some stimulating experiences with the Linux command line, I have a little gift for you all. I present to you the
Byteful Gallery.

For your viewing pleasure, the gallery contains an array of digital artwork that I’ve created since the 21st century began. (Seriously, they just make the cutoff date.) Along with the wallpapers is a very different flavor of art, though it’s still art in a sense. I could fill an entire entry about the game called Starcraft, suffice to say I played it for years. I was never very good at it, but I loved creating maps. The maps, while only being pseudo-3D, were a unique opportunity to literally play, or more accurately battle, in the worlds that I wrought. For those of you who still play this game, I hope you find some value in these maps. Everything on the Gallery is provided free under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative license which means you’re free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the works as long as the use is noncommercial and you attribute the content to Byteful. For more information, checkout the license.

To wrap up this wonderful cocktail of an entry, I’d like to clarify that the introduction of this gallery does not mean that blog postings will stop, far from it. The Gallery is simply another extension of my creative nature, and there is more to come.

In any case, I hope you enjoy using this content as much as I enjoyed creating it.