Category: internet

Feeling Good

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Feeling very good and motivated about myself this week. And as such, I have taken the route of preparing a few posts in advance. This is something that has worked for me before on Tumblr. As I found that I am experiencing fits of inspiration at the moment. Which is great when I have days that I want to do everything and feel so motivated. But then, as the week drags on, I just want to watch TV and not deal with anything. I become lazy, and nothing gets done. And it is the same every week. So, as I have been feeling motivated, I thought I would try and use the queue post feature.

As said before, this is a technique I employ regularly on Tumblr, when I want to post loads, but also don’t want to bombard people with my useless ramblings. So, I write my heart out for 2/3 posts, on various topics, and schedule them to post on different days. Whilst, to some people it is considered a cheats way to blogging regular, I think it is an essential tool if you have a busy life. It means you can relax knowing that your blog is being updated regular, and you are not stressing about creating different content. Because if I do blog when I am work, it tends to be the same old piece moping about my shitty mental health issues. Which is necessary sometimes, but it gives a rather one dimensional view of myself. Something I don’t like. I do care about what kind of image I portray through this blog and other avenues, and I think that poor planning is why it has fallen a bit flat.

Hopefully if I can set out certain days for doing certain things, I will get more time to do what I want to. Because, all that happens is that I look at all the stuff on my ‘to-do’ list and freak out. It seems an unmanageable amount of stuff to do. But, by focusing a few hours or so on doing a few bits at a time, I can focus completely on another task. And it makes me feel oddly in control of things, rather than things being in control of me. I wonder, if other people use queue-type techniques when it comes to posting online, and whether you think it helps with your work load.

Unsocial Media

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am going through a strange time with my relationship with the internet. For years, since I started blogging, I have found myself thinking more about what goes on when one posts things online. It has always been something, that has felt like a huge sense of relief for me, but recently, that hasn’t been the case.

When I post something, it has been done because it is personal to me. There has been some thought in my head, which has made me want to communicate how I feel about a certain something. It has always proved as being a very therapeutic way of organising my thoughts, and has previously helped relieve a lot of stress, so I can focus on other things. But, recently, I have found that what I post has been getting negative comments. As if I post personal things because I want attention. As silly as it sounds, attention is the last thing that I have on my mind. I have found before, that by sharing my own experiences, other people can sometimes feel not quite so alone. Because when you are experiencing difficulties in your life, it is easy to feel completely alienated from those around you. So, when you read about someone feeling as bad as you are, it can be quite comforting. In fact, when I was struggling with depression, it was reading blogs and online forums that helped encourage me to get help. So to me, social media is fantastic, because it can help people get the support that they may not have the courage to get from those around us.

Recently, I decided to do a major life change, and try to change my eating habits, I joined weight watchers. Something I have never done before, but felt encouraged to do so, by checking out fitness forums and things. On these sites, there are a lot of help points, to try and help you get motivated.  One of the points was keeping a foodlog. By posting photos of food on instagram and Tumblr, it reaches the online community, which can support you in your efforts. Seeing how sharing online has helped me before, I thought that this would be an excellent way to keep note on what I am eating. As if I feel too embarrassed to post about something I want to eat, then it is a sign that I shouldn’t be eating it. To me, this makes sense. I have a habit of eating without thinking about it very much, most of the time, I am not even hungry.

This sounds a very postive change, right?

The biggest social network is Facebook. Where people seem to take offence if you post something personal to you. Particularly, as with depression, it can come in cycles, people start complaining that it is done for attention. So when it is something personal, these off-hand remarks from supposed friends, hurt. The same thing happens when I started posting about photographing food. I am called names because to these people, food isn’t something that is deserving of their Facebook feed. Because, if you didn’t know, Facebook is exclusively for stolen memes, game requests, pictures of children and drunken nights out. People are very intolerant of Facebook. I believe this may be because some of the people ‘friends’ with you on there, aren’t really your friends, they just want to spy on those that they shared a college class with once. On every other website, if someone doesn’t like what you post, they unfollow. For some reason, that doesn’t happen on Facebook, people just post vague complaints about the content posted by folk they follow. It’s laughable, really.

With the bad experience with Facebook, I stepped back. Because speaking about any of my feelings is still so hard, to have it treated so harshly is horrible. So, I took it time to think about it. These comments that people post, are about that person’s hang-ups, and they reflect more on that person than they do me. I also have to try and toughen up, and that I have conviction to write something, then I should stand by it 100%.

A Confession About Online Expression

~ Sue ~ 2 Comments

I spend a lot of time online. Which is evident, if you follow me on any social network. I used it as an outlay, as a way to let of some steam. And most people I know, appreciate why. But some, do not. They dub me an attention seeker, and disregard what I feel and express as nonsense, as a result.

I turned to the Internet when I first suffered from depression, about 5 years ago. I didn’t know who to speak to, and I didn’t want to let anyone down. It sounds ridiculous, but when you observe the people closest to you doing well, and getting on with things, you feel pathetic that you can’t do the same. So you don’t speak to those around you, for fear that you get pointed out for being as childish as you feel. So, I turned to the Internet. To blogs and forums. To places I could interact with people, and not feel so alone in my dilemma. I started writing blogs about my life, and used sites like MySpace as an accompaniment. I complained, i laughed, I spoke about the things that noone around me understood. I found friends, whose kind words advised me through some difficult times, because they had experiences similar.

Depression and anxiety never truly leaves. As a person, you have to recognise signs and learn how to deal with it. Which can make the condition bearable. However, as a person grows and changes, their mental state also grows and changes. You find yourself in situations which you can’t explain, you try to find a logical answer, but it doesn’t come. You can find your anxiety creating problems in work, and in general life. But, trying to get others to understand that you don’t know what’s wrong, is difficult. Especially in work places, or situations where people want to help.

People can mis-understand the lack of answers, as laziness, that you don’t want help. It’s not that a person doesn’t need or want help, they just don’t know what it is that is wrong. It’s like being lost in the middle of a field in a thick fog. You can’t see where you are going, nor the direction that you need to go. And every day is the same. A new day brings a new field, and sometimes the fog is thicker than other times.

And that’s where I am. A field filled with fog, and I need some clarity. Sometimes writing clears that fog a little. Be it short tweets, Facebook status updates or blog entries. It gives me the chance to try and wrestle with my emotions without fear of embarrassment. There is not confrontation, which I feel is my big problem. I am at the stage, where I fear that every person I talk to hates me and wants to scream at me. That is a horrible place to be. I don’t know how to silence these thoughts, and noone I ask for help seems to understand.

Writing is my way of saying what I need to, without the confrontation. And that is the main reason I do it. I’m just not used to people I actually know reading what I think, so the confrontation ends up happening. And yes, ‘how are you’, is confrontational in my head, because I don’t know how to answer you, and I panic.

Initial Aspirations

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

When I started this blog, I had many ideas and thoughts of what I would use it for. It would be a creative blog, where I would post images of what I had made, and use it as a promotional tour for my business. In retrospect, I think I aimed a little high.

Firstly because being at college, and struggling through a few years of forced creativity, has lead to me going from one artistic mental block, to another. Secondly, I just am far too scatter brained to make my blog about one thing. I maybe should organise it better, but nothing in my life is very organised, so it maybe wouldn’t reflect ME if it wasn’t a bit of a mess. Some excuse, right?

I have always been an over thinker. A person who seeks importance in the most stupid and trivial things. My interests in things can get intense, but will also suddenly wane after a short period of time. I want to express my love and experience so many different things, that I always find myself looking for ‘something else’. Whilst some things such as favourite bands, movies and books will stay with me, I can’t exclusively care about a favourite thing. I think that liking new things can be a challenge, a challenge that should be welcomed.

Because I try to be interested in so many different things, I find that what I want to talk about changes every day. One day I will want to talk about Benji Madden sneaking into Scotland without my knowledge, the next day I’ll be talking about some political land mine. Whilst this leads to me being very sporadic, I like the idea that I have a place to express my thoughts in a accessible manner.

So whilst my initial plans for this blog haven’t come true, I still am happy with it. I have made this blog my online ‘home’ for the last few years, and I have become very attached to it. I find that WordPress is a great blog host, and find that is the best managed blogging site on the net. Trust me, I have tried almost every blogging site going. I like everything from the multiple platforms you can blog from, to the twitter feed. I think that the simplicity of using the service, has been crucial for me staying here for so long.

I guess I am feeling very retrospective. Whilst the majority of people I know say I waste my time writing a blog, I will always scoff in their faces. If a person has the freedom to express themselves without fear, no matter how they do it, they will never waste their time.

Check Your Sources

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

In a world where news is dominated by what is on the news overview onGoogleand the trending topics on Twitter, it is becoming harder for more traditional news outlets to remain relevant. Do people have to pay for what they want, or is free news part of a person’s rights?

I have just watched Page One: Inside The New York Times, which as someone with an interest in media and it’s progression, was something that I have been meaning to watch since it came out last year. It shows a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at one of the world’s most established and popular Newspapers. It was not what I expected. It showed that the Journalistic giant had made mistakes, and that it was struggling in the world of modern day media. But for a printed paper, created in 1851, the fact that this publication can still sell over 2,000,000 copies in a day, is phenomenal, no matter how you look at it.

The one thing that was highlighted in the documentary, was how the drop in advertising revenue, and the reader’s want to get free news, was damaging the paper. It is said, that papers who print, lose money with every copy of a paper that they publish, as the cost of the paper needs to be affordable, for people to buy it on a daily basis. In the past, this loss was covered by the money that advertisers paid to be included in publications. As the Internet has become stronger over the last 10-15 years, companies began to start up their own websites for promotion, which was cheaper and began to lean less and less on the traditional printed media. In a world, where profit margins are becoming thinner and thinner, you can see why companies would follow the path of self-promotion.

This caused a problem for newspapers, like the New York Times, which found that their main source of revenue was disappearing. It meant that changes needed to happen, and the paper and it’s journalists would need to be more interactive with it’s audience to try and stay relevant. This involved an introduction of a website where journalists could record corresponding videos with their articles. Readers were invited to comment, and share their views, and the company began to catch up with it’s competitors in other media, such as TV. This way of publishing stories helps newspapers get a broader, even worldwide audience. Whilst this seems like a more affordable way to spread the news, but there was still a big gap in revenue, due to advertising loss. This is where the site installed a ‘paywall’, which would ask heavy users to pay a fee to continue using the site. This model has proved very successful for many online services. And has helped plug the gap in revenues, created by the drop of advertising.

And that is what a lot of people have a problem with. Why pay for something when you can Google the news for free. Google is a site, which like the way newspapers used to operate, is funded mostly by advertising revenue. The issue with advertising revenue, is it gives the reader the belief that they are viewing something that is free. Accept, it isn’t really free. Google gets paid by how many people use the service, as advertisers will pay accordingly to feature under certain searches. When up to the ‘top 10’ of results you get on google, have paid for that high ranking, you begin look further into what you’re using. That every click that you make on a google site, is collated and sold to marketing companies. You then begin to wonder, are sites like Google really free?

Another problem with the internet, is that the source is not as important as it used to be. You search for a news topic online, and will click on the one with the snappiest headline. More often than not, the photos and story may come from a single source, a source which be mentioned somewhere at the bottom of the article, if you’re lucky. And this mixed nature of ‘search engine news’, means that all sources and all work just becomes a big muddle. Where as in print, you can sometimes say, ‘I’ll read the Daily Star, because I want to read nonsense’. Or the Independent for more serious news. That definition between different publications isn’t so relevant when you Google search, and just pick one out of hundreds of results. It’s like written journalism is losing its definition.

Where this causes a problem, that whilst the bigger publications like the New York Times and The Independent can sent journalists to specific areas to cover important stories, smaller, less serious publications can’t. This means, that you can get ‘piggy-back reporting’, where smaller outlets will rehash another publications story. They report news and events, without any first hand coverage. This leads to second hand stories, which can lead to inconclusive reports and no checked sources. The only way that true, first rate articles can continue to be published, is if people start to pay attention and pay for what they read.

Because when all the newspapers go under, a loss in advertising for Google, could send them down the pay route that News outlets are currently used for. Nothing in life is free, especially not the Internet.

So check your sources, and help them, or they will stop being reliable.

Content Error

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Adding personality and uniform to my online self is hard. I find I am struggling to keep things interesting. I am currently in a state where I have so much in my head that I want to say, but I always seem to be writing the same things constantly. Which, whilst being quite freeing to myself, it does end up that I post the same old grumblings day in and day out.

I love writing, I always have. But I am finding it harder and harder to keep up any momentum with interesting posts. Sure, I am great at moaning about my life (or lack of it), but I struggle in making things interesting for readers. I guess I have to start ‘feeling’ what I write again. I know that sounds strange, but I feel that I seem to have been really honest on here before, and the reaction kind of shocked me. The internet is full of people who give hate for no reason, and although it is easy to say that people should expect the worst, it doesn’t prepare for the hate that can be angled at you, for just posting your own thoughts.

And when I have received hate, it has shocked me, and kind of made me a little hesitant in posting so much. Which is sad. As mentioned I love blogging, and feel that it is a good way for me to talk through the issues in my mind. So I have just held back, and been posting a lot less than what I used to. This is something I regret letting happen, but it did. I am going to try and get back into things online, which means I need to start thinking up some interesting topics.

I am doing a ‘Sketch-a-day’ challenge, so I am going to try and post some of those pages, and see what happens.

Currently Listening to: Wicked- Defying Gravity

All Change?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Changing your website seems to be something which is rather fashionable right now. Every website or internet based product I use seems to be doing an end-of-year update. Whilst, this is something I know is important, to keep sites feeling fresh, I just seem to see it happening a lot right now.

Maybe it is just the services I use. It’s not like the service provided by these sites are changing, just how I find things. It involves a change of habit, and those aren’t always so easy to change. I think that people’s negative opinion of change stems from the fact that people in general, are afraid of change. So, in defence, any change is met with an over-bearing sense of hostility, as if acting in such a way will get rid of the change that is threatening them.

Which as noble as your anger is, it doesn’t make the slightest difference, as change is going to happen. It is a hard fact of life that nothing will stay static forever. So the quicker you can accept change, the happier you will be. I mean, there is enough stresses in modern-day existence without creating more stress over nothing. I mean if YouTube stopped you from viewing and uploading videos, then fine, but they haven’t. Just changed the layout. Yes you have to learn new paths to get what you want, but the stuff you want and need is still there. So no need to be angry and vengeful against the site’s creators for trying to make things a bit different. Change happens to us all, so try not be so untrusting of it.
Listening to- Miss America by The Fates (watch the video below)

PS- Umm… the snow at the bar at the top is playing with my eyes. So strange.

An Online Life?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Coming under the realisation that everything from watching TV to keeping a note what book I am reading is done online, I am trying to think if I am spending too much time online.  I guess the realisation was part of watching this video on youtube.

It is from 2009, so the issue with over saturation may be worse. In fact, the people who I know, who now use sites like Facebook, have increased since 2009.  OK, a lot of people don’t seem to use these websites that much, and use them as another way to contact friends and relatives. And there is nothing wrong with that. The services that are used, tend to be free, and are so much more appealing than paying a phone call or meeting up, where you need to buy food, coffee, etc. But the issue is, which is what is covered on many avenues both online and off it, that we get so much more information from people that we may not be of particular interest anymore.

It makes it harder to decipher what is important, so that we should care about it, and what should we be ignoring. Everything from estranged school friend’s photos from a night out and alerts about browser games to heart felt messages from a friend in need. They are all posted with the same level of importance. And with the high volume of information, would a person look into their Facebook timeline enough to get the information to help their friend?

Probably not. We just blend all the nonsense into one thing, and if it isn’t at the top of the page, we just don’t see things. So, there is truth in what the video above states about our attention span. But the one thing I do disagree with, is the dislike of reading which is lengthier than the average status update. Maybe it’s because I fell in love with the internet, through using forums and blogging sites. And that is still what I do. *shrugs* So I guess, I am part of the exception.

I use social networking A LOT. Seriously, think I am kidding, follow me on twitter. I like the fact that I have different things on different sites. A lot of things get shared on Facebook. But that is easy, because Facebook is very good at linking together with other sites, such as YouTube, GetGlue and well, WordPress. So it adds more personality, in that it shows my blog posts and what videos I like, but it is, ironically, less personal. I don’t have to access Facebook to post things, and a lot of the time, I don’t go near the place.

But then you have Smartphones, with access to all the social networks.  It makes it even easier to tweet what is on your head, and use FourSquare to show where you are. It sounds strange to most people, but to some it is great to meet people. Why? When in Blackpool over the summer, I went into a bar and checked in using FourSquare. FourSquare posted through Twitter, that I was at such and such pub. And the next thing I knew, Tanny, a girl who saw my tweet, came and introduced herself, and said that she, like me, was alone in this pub as her friends were passed out at her hotel. We had a drink, went for food. I made a friend.

Yes social networking gets bad press, but used well it can bring people together. It goes beyond function, and becomes magical. My relationship with the internet, is as well rooted as my relationship with music, which is the love of my life.

Pending NaNoWriMo 2011

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It is quickly approaching that time again when thousands of writers undertake the task of writing a 50,000 word novel through the month of November.

Yes. November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I did attempt this challenge last year, but I think I got to about 18,000 words and I just got so stuck. I missed a day, and then two days, and then it all pretty much fell apart. I think it is an interesting challenge, and it would be such an achievement to reach the end of November knowing I had written a novel. Please visit this site to sign up, or for more info.

So in my second year, I have decided to start to prepare to writing every day. So am going to do a Post-A-Day, in a bid to inspire myself. I think it will be a big help this year, as last year I was going in blind, and was unsure of the actual volume I had to produce. As much as you try to imagine having to post over 1,500 a day, it is hard to picture until you actually do it. As you will know if you have read this blog before, I have no problem with speaking my mind and writing about anything. So I can’t imagine this post a day thing to bother me. But I say that. I do post frequently, but it comes in spurts.

So, wish me luck on both post-a-day and NaNoWriMo. And if you read this, let me know if you take part in anything to try and challenge yourself.

A Friend of Mine Just Found My Old Youtube Channel.

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

The Youtube channel I can no longer access, due to some reason or other. Basically I did loads of vlogs and videos and it’s now closed off. I tried to fix it, but it was easier to start a new channel.  So I did.

But the old channel and it’s videos are still up, and someone I went to school with found it, and emailed me about it. I wish what she said was complimentary. But she effectively told me to step away from a computer and not make vlogs because it indicates I have ‘no friends or a life’. It was nice.

I am fairly tolerant to people who smirk when I say I like to post vlogs. All I think is ‘well, they don’t know what they’re talking about’. Which is true. To make a valid comment on a particular subject, you do need to have at least some experience on the subject. So, I didn’t take it too seriously.

Then I realised I know noone else who posts videos on youtube, and that made me feel special. The kind of special I feel may be different, depending on how you look at people who make Vlogs and express a lot on the internet. And when I say express, I don’t mean that you post a daily status update on Facebook. So I do put a lot of myself into making videos, running forums and obviously blogging. And because of this, they are all very personal to me. And to have someone who I have not spoken to for YEARS, berate what I love did hurt.

Anyways. My new Youtube channel can be found here. I have today uploaded 2 videos from Rebellion Festival, which I went to at the start of August. The videos are of two bands, Septic Psychos and Strawberry Blondes. I had no camera for the rest of the festival, because my battery died on my first day.