US economy and the global economy -for the best part- is run by consumers. And these consumers empower big corporations to exists. This whole so called economic system created by humans, and only make sense to humans, and is fully and wholly worshiped by humans, fuels the consumer cog wheel system to keep it running as long as no one steps out of it.

What if tomorrow everyone on earth realizes that they dont need “stuff” to make them feel happy, or to do something, or to make their life better? At some point in the past on earth, these big consumer conglomerates did not exists. So what if it was like that tomorrow. ZERO – what if there is zero interest by consumers to be a consumer tomorrow and for the next 30 days..

What if no one buy anything from amazon tomorrow, like amazon make $0 in sales tomorrow, what if walmart get no sales for their stuff (except for groceries) and what if no one buy anything for another 30 days, 6 months. 

Amazon would make $0 in sales for infinity. They might try ramping up their advertisements and marketing (to super power their effort to convince to their hardest how you need their stuff) until they run out of money. Their whole advertisements and marketing will have to be shut down because there would be no return in it because no one would be buying regardless of how much they advertise. The whole advertising and marketing efforts and departments would become pointless and will be shut down. The product developers (to develop things that they try to convince us, we need and we can not live without) would no longer be needed. Real spiders would start building cobwebs between amazon robots in distribution facilities.

For better part of the whole western world and now most parts of east as well are run purely by people being consumers. People, wanting to try the next best thing. Better phones (for example), that we are – consciously and subconsciously – told we need to have better life to take better pictures, to capture the moments. How we lived our lives for 1000s of years without the need for those better phones are beyond forgotten. Next thing we know, we are hooked into these stuff, these things like a drug addict, for their cool features (the definition of coolness is defined to us by these product companies, and have created in us a need that we need these features) 

If we are lucky we will realize, that all these stuff and the features, does not make our lives better. We have given them too much power, such that the other parts of our lives have gotten weaker, and that had made us wanting these feature and stuff more and more to compensate for the weaker parts of life.

We have given so much power to these consumer product manufacturers that it looks hard to imagine a way without them. And with that enormous power they have come to control more parts of how other people live on this earth.

When those companies only care about making more money off every person by selling stuff (stuff that they dont need in the first place) the fundamentals of our earths eco system is being threatened. All these stuff we need are made mostly from plastic, more and more plastic is created, every discarded stuff for better stuff leaves piles and piles of plastic to be decayed over the next 500 years well after you have left this earth. 

But some may say it is too depressing to think of this sad (yet real) side of life on earth. Why worry about the sad side when you should be enjoying the stuff right now. So we continue to consume the stuff made by stuffers, who try their hardest to convince the non-stuff users that the stuff is what they need to make their life better, to make it easier, to make it comfortable. Consuming the stuff that gives immediate happiness that fades away sooner than lines drawn on a stormy beach. Next thing you know, you are dying next to stuff everywhere that you have attached yourself soo dearly to and cant let go of, but you know you will not take them with you when you die. 

Next time you buy a stuff, think for a second, if you dare to spare a second of your busy life, do I really need this stuff to be happy. If you dont bother to look at the reality you may say “yes I do” and grab that stuff, so the stuffers can continue to make money and you be sucked into their stuffers vacuum for life, until you decide to step out of it. 

Despite what we think or try to convince ourselves, we all have a choice. Does stuff in our lives really need this much of our attention?

Lauterbrunnen valley in Switzerland is one of the best places I have been to where you can easily find the nature at its best display. This painting is from my trip last year and it is a great reminder to look back at while in COVID19 lock down.

These are the interim shot during the painting. This painting took me 2 months to complete as other things in life gotten in the way of importance.

Towards the end of the painting I spent several more days to further improve on the fine details of the painting. It is amazing how the fine little details add soo much to the painting and bring it to the life.

Switzerland is just breathtaking and every where you turn up in the great alps, is just another view worth painting. The painting of Männlichen is based on a photo i took from a point on a hike to Royal walk up in the ridge. I got up here from the cable car that I took from Wengen (also should note you can ride on top of this cable car.) 

Here are the progress shots of the painting as I documented them at the end of each painting session.

And the final end point of the painting.

Reflecting on the Progress

It is a relatively hard challenge for me when every time I must make the next painting layer. I think because of the overwhelming amount of details i must add to it. But what I realized is putting a base layer with relatively similar colors to actual image, I can cover a lot of the surface and not be overwhelmed but feel accomplished and in that moment not worry about having to do finer details. Once the surface is covered with a base layer it is easier to add finer details which further defines the structure of the painting to its realistic view.

This painting is available for sale at this moment and kindly contact me if you are interested in the painting.

Hello everyone I am Ashan Jay. I am not an extraordinaire or a smart genius, I am just an average guy who falls just like everyone else but learn from it and stand up taller and through persistence, move forward at an effort that is mostly comfortable to me. Long long time ago, I created EventON, an event calendar plugin for WordPress.

EventON was just a fun project at first. I used google calendar a lot but I did not like the idea of sharing my personal data with google and knowing they sell my data for marketing companies. So I created EventON for people to create events and also be able to own their own data instead of giving it to google. EventON is little over 8 years old today and have a great customer base of 47,000 amazing customers from all parts of the world.

By re-creating ashanjay.com, I am hoping to use this website as a portal for all my creations and other interests to sort of connect them together and to share knowledge about coding and everything that I have learned over the years of running EventON successfully. I also will be using this site to test out new ideas and prototype software I have in-development, to get feed back. In the mean time be sure to check out the gym countdown timer on the home page.

The commenting on this site will be enabled as I slowly add things to this. One thing I do ask is, if you have questions about EventON kindly use our eventON support system for those instead of contact form in this website 😉

A complaint free world by Will Bowen
The magic of thinking big by David Schwartz
It works by RHJ
12 Rules for life by Jordan Paterson
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
Tools of Titan by Tim Ferris
Steve Jobs autobiography
Finding my virginity – richard branson
The virgin way – richard branson
Influence by Robert Cialdini (audiobook)
The richest man in Babylon (audiobook)
Rich dad poor dad by Robert kiyosaki (audiobook)
Think and grow rich by Napolean Hill