The Trap Vector Blueprint

UPDATE: No one really supported The Trap Vector, so I shuttered it in favor of continuing to work on The 8BitCubist

I've spoken about this briefly in other places, but I wanted to give a more proper explantation of The Trap Vector project. There’s enough information to go into that I’ve decided to break this posting into 7 parts.

This is the part where I define how The Trap Vector came to be.

Around 2011, I had just been laid off of my job at Rockstar San Diego, and I was beginning to become a little disillusioned with my career in the game industry and life. I had let politics wear on me, my family wasn’t doing that great, my social life wasn’t where I wanted it to be, and in general, I felt like I was fighting to stay afloat in quicksand.

I knew things had to change or I would fall into a pit of despair that I couldn’t pull myself out of, so I started changing course with a lot of my activities and really jumped into the fine arts, fashion, writing, improvement strategies/tactics, and started expanding my horizons.

I hadn’t felt that energized in a long time. In fact, the last time I felt like that was that time period in my life when my parents worked with me to expand my mind in numerous ways. It was a synergistic experience. I was that curious kid that wanted to see and learn everything I could. Over several years, they worked with me to give me powerful perspectives and insights on life. They had been to many different countries, met so many people, and seen so many different things that they felt it would be a shame for me to miss out on those experiences. That period of time stuck with me, and in my later years, the longing for those mind-expanding experiences came again.

Returning to the 2011 era, I needed to process what I was feeling/thinking/experiencing, so I developed a form of visual journaling that relied on an abstract language of forms and shapes. You will recognize the most prominent of those shapes as the arrow and the portal. These shapes came from various sources and don’t directly mean anything on their own, but they hold a lot of meaning for me. These representations are, after all, abstract.

For years, I maintained and refined this abstract language I was coming up with and came up with over 400 thoughtful concepts that have been archived and are now being released in the form of a fine art print project known as The Trap Vector.

- Benja -

I Need Change Agents To Actually Change Anything

Something is going on this year. I can feel it. While I can't put my finger on it, something changed once 2019 arrived. Do you feel it? I hope you feel it, because there's some good energy in the air. Not everyone is going to catch it though. Will you?

The Martin Luther King Jr Day week got me thinking about change and working towards a better future. I care about the knowledge and the work that I can do to make the world a little better place.

So how does one change? Like REALLY change? One thing I like to do it is implement a 'change agent'. I alluded to this concept with my New Year's post. But remember that a change agent doesn't have to be a holiday, it can be anything that works you. Any place, image, person, song, event, creedo, et cetera that symbolizes your concept of progress can help you get to that next level. Have that dream!

Think about weddings, uniforms, knighting, graduations, insignia, powerful memories, etc.

So my personal change agent was to finally appreciate a set of nearly four hundred abstract drawings coupled with moving out of my painting studio last year. Those two things together have come to symbolize an artistic shift in my head. Every time I see those drawings, I immediately think about how I've grown out of my art studio, and I get to creating some new ideas. And I've put those drawings on my nightstand so I think about them when I wake up and go to bed. Over time, they've started to become second nature; the change is setting in.

That artistic change has manifested itself in the print project known as The Trap Vector. The prints I've been creating from that project are available now. Your support and feedback is appreciated, so click that link and check it out.

https://thetrapvector.com

Take care.
- Benja -

I Have Been A Communications Fuck-Up For Decades

They say the first step in fixing a problem is to admit that you have one. Well, I'm saying it now: I don't think I've ever properly communicated very well for my entire life. I can trace bad communication back to my childhood. We were out at a mall, and I honestly wanted to show her a cheap plastic balloon set, so I tried walking outside with it. The hope that she would bring me back inside to pay for it. That didn't work out so well. I was legitimately confused when she and the store manager had a long discussion about what I was really trying to do that day. I was trying to communicate to my mother in a way I thought she'd understand. I expected her to say something like: "Oh look, young Benjamin walked all this way from the toy store to show me something!" Sadly, I didn't get the plastic balloons.

Fast forward decades later, and I'm still fucking up communication.

I generally have no idea to communicate properly, but in 2019, It's my resolution. As far as you're concerned, you will see me doing better communication with this blog. I've kept up a reasonable blogging schedule, so I think I can keep doing this without driving myself mad.

Alright. I've already got the idea for the next blog post, so I think we're getting somewhere.