Wakey wakey

July 21, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am up early today. Makes a nice change, to me missing the whole morning to being asleep 😛
The main reason I was awake so early, was because a butterfly was flying up against my bedroom window. I have no idea how it managed to get stuck inside my room, and why the first time I noticed it was at 6.30 in the morning. I just opened the window and let it out, cause I remember that you aren’t supposed to pick them up, cause the ‘dust’ comes off their wings, and apparently it can cause issues with them being able to fly. Actually, the dust on their wings is tiny little scales used as protection, so predators can’t grab a hold of them.

Another reason I am awake, is possibly because I am eventually getting a new mobile today. Something which I have needed since I dropped my Nokia in a pint of juice a few months ago. The poor phone is like completely dying, it can’t even hold on to a call, it keeps cutting people off. Considering I think I drowned it, the fact that it is still working at all is some kind of miracle. Anyways, due to my need to access my emails when I am at work at Sky, but not being able to access them through the work pc, I am thinking about getting a Blackberry. We’ll see what happens when I go to the shop.

My Dream

July 20, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I like to think I have the motivation to do this.

But what if I don’t?

What if I fail at this worse than anything else I have ever done?

You can work hard at life and get nothing.

It happens to people everyday.

I tell myself that it is achievable.

But wasn’t I always told, not to lie.

If it all goes wrong, and ends right now.

I won’t be here, to see it burn to the ground.

Cause seeing the ashes of what could have been.

Might just be the end of me.

Blog sites are no.1

July 14, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

As a run-on from yesterday, I am still thinking about why I love the internet so much.
I mean, yesterday I ranted about how the internet is blamed for bad parenting. But as I said I use the internet mostly for blogging, so it has ended up being an important source of self-expression for me. Although I do have a lot of friends i know purely on line, a lot of them were made through sites like LiveJournal, which I feel has the best online community of all other blogging sites.

Although sites like Facebook are designed to help you socialise with people online, I think that it is ultimately fairly shallow in that it is very hard to judge someone based on their Facebook profile. I mean other than a few blurbs about them, and random comments, you can’t actually tell how that person things. So on blogging sites, you naturally write a lot, and this really shows at least some of your behaviours and attitudes. And, call me self-centered, but that’s what I think all these personal websites are there for, so that you can easily create your own little piece of the internet. And facebook doesn’t really allow that, as there is no way to even express yourself through the colour of your profile, I mean even Bebo had that.

So in my opinion my blogs come above any other site, because I like to feel that someone can accurately see who I am and what kind of person I am. And you know that if you make friends on these sites, you know it is because they agree with what you say or you talk about the same interests.

Tumblr is a tricky one. I like it and all, but I can’t help but think it is mostly kids slagging each other off publicly. All that tacky ‘drama’ should be kept on Facebook. But in essence, I think that’s what Tumblr is trying to be, a bit like a blog site, a bit like Facebook, and a bit like Twitter. It hasn’t decided what it wants to be just yet.

Caught in the Interweb

July 13, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I, Sue Buckle, am an internet addict.
I can admit it. *It was hard*

Honestly though, people seem to be demonising the internet. Blaming it for the failings of their parenting, ‘OMG, that perve took our little girl away’. First of all, people need to understand, the internet is no more dangerous than being outside, if you take away the stale air.

Teach your kids to be vigilant where ever they go. Don’t blame the internet when you allow your child to have a computer in their room, and let them use something you know nothing about. As a parent, you need to teach kids, don’t think its funny to start up a facebook page for 7 year old Sarah, and complain when she is talking to perves.
Kids think everyone is out to be their friend, just like a puppy, and the only way you can get it to behave is to train it well.

If you were a parent, you would check what friends your kid made online, just like you would do if they were playing outside. If you don’t check up, you lose your right to complain.

The thing I don’t understand, is that there are plenty of safe social networking sites aimed at kids (like Club Penguin), where every message sent and all users have their activity through the site checked. Because to be honest, Facebook was not made for school kids, its for the over 25 market. Which are still the people who spend most time on the website.

And the worst thing is, the panic button installed on Facebook. Do you really think that kids aren’t going to abuse that. I mean we are talking about the chance to get someone you don’t like banned off a site. To a kid, that may seem funny, like a good windup. And to be honest, these perves, aren’t thought to be a threat. I mean if a guy says he’s 12, why should other 12 years fear him and press the panic button. Usually the kids aren’t aware of the issue, untill they attempt to meet up with the individual in real life. No buttons in the world is going to stop a teenager contacting someone the want to.

So the focus should not be on the website, which is nothing but a platform for meeting new people, it should be the parents who are willing to push the blame to someone else. Education is a powerful tool, use it.

I was told to never talk or accept anything of strangers, and that translated to the internet. Its what you tell your kids, if you tell your kid not to bother you, and to piss off, they will look for attention off anyone.

I don’t think the internet is this evil monster. I think that if you don’t disengage your brain, the internet is fun, and over the many years as a user, it has done so much. It has been somewhere for me to vent, to find new friends, to contact people I love and to share my art. And with my reccent 2 day absence from the internet, I had comments of people worried about me and things which (for once in my life) made me feel part of something.

And is that a bad thing?

July 10, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am motivated.
Finally.
Ok, well still not completely, but I am doing work in my sketch book. I have been doing drawings and things in the book within the last few weeks, and am finally starting to feel good about the way I express myself again.

I know, it sounds like history repeating itself, but this wasn’t just me not being able to do work. It was more like, I had been stuck so long, I was losing my main method of expressing myself. For those who have never exprienced anything like that, it is like cutting off a limb. And at least with disfigurement, there is a route of action to resolve or better that situation. It’s not so easy fixing something like expression.

I have drawn, painted and written down things, ever since I was a young child, call me geeky, but these things helped relax me. And to have that taken away, it was suffocating. I felt almost restless. Like I couldn’t relax. So I sat and read Mice & Men, it was the only thing that I seemed to be able to sit still for. And I went on a few artists blogs and vlogs about scrapbooking. And I eventually, after almost 2 weeks, got my mojo back.

I sat and doodled a face at work.

Sounds like nothing, but I was so happy. I mean, I am planning to use my creativity as my career, so if it was gone, I really don’t know what I would have done. I have never had a creative block like it and I’m so glad it’s over.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

July 4, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

What is respect?
Respect is something that every person feels that they deserve. This is something which came into my mind after me and my dad had a ‘discussion’, where he raised his voice, but when I attempted of countering him by raising my own voice, I get accused of having no respect for him.

What is respect though, really? Respect is giving ‘kudos’ to those around you. It’s treating people well, it’s listening to their opinions, and accepting what they say, even if you have differing thoughts yourself. It’s not difficult, it is all about treating others the way that you want to be treated. It is a quality that is forever being claimed by various religions, especially Christianity. I remember as a child seeing that being kind and respectful, was being Christian. It isn’t, it is a part of human nature, which I don’t believe to be lumped as a religious action

Not that I am against religion or anything, but I don’t think that basic human behaviours should be tarred with some kind of cliquey movement be it religion or political. This is something that I believe strongly in, and it is a pet hate when I get told that certain mannerisms make me part of a certain group. But, that in itself is human nature. We find it easier to associate with anything, if we divide it into groups. So, its like behaving a certain way, immediately makes you become part of a social grouping, based on how people seem to stereotype each other.

Just like how because I was quiet at school, and liked to read, I was classed as a ‘geek’, and so many people I had this idea that I lived in a big house and listened to classical music all the time Where as my brother rebelled a bit more at school, and was called a Ned, mostly because I wore sports gear, without doing sports. And people would get that idea about him and hos friends, and automatically think that they were out to start bother, despite the fact that they weren’t.

Well, I happen to have gone on another rant about stereotypes. I swear that was not the purpose of this blog, but I have put a lot of time and thought in to it. *shrugs* It must be said though, I am rather good at this whole ‘going off on a tangent thing’.

Umm…..hey

June 29, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It is said that people only think of themselves when they are in a crisis, and that only people who think of others should be rewarded. But that is human nature. We are born with something inside us, which is there to protect us from things we deem to be risky. We are criticised if we think the world revolves around ourselves, when in reality we CAN only observe that which goes on around us.

Obscure sentences, or valid point,s I don’t know, but the topics I mentioned above, are what I have been thinking about today. So I suppose I should explain myself a little bit.

The whole ‘fight or flight’ part of ourselves is something there to protect ourselves against danger. But in civilised society, we are taught that it is respectable to reject our instincts to protect those weaker than ourselves. But what does that bring to ourselves? A sense of worth, a sense of knowing that you have done right by someone. So it isn’t really for that person you protect them. Its for your own satisfaction, makes you feel good, gives you a buzz. Does that not make heroes completely selfish, because they do these ‘commendable acts’ for themselves. No different from anyone else.

In fact, is someone who does not allow themselves get bullied into ‘heroism’, and look after themselves, not more heroic. They get called selfish, when it is other people who intrude in others’ lives to make themselves feel better. Which one is more selfish, they are both looking for pleasure and a feeling of purpose, but only the ‘hero’ uses other people to get that feeling of worth.

**Note: that is what happen when I watch the ‘no such thing as an unselfish good deed’ episode of Friends. **

The second thing was this trend of calling someone selfish because they think the world revolves around them. How is that selfish? Of course the world as we know it, revolves around us, because we observe it from our olace. So you form your own opinions and looking at it from when you stand. This isn’t selfish to think others are there to help you, as that is how we automatically think of them, seeing all interaction we have with people usually involves talking to one another.

It is an automatic usumption with the lives that we lead, that we are to think things revolve around ourselves, so why should we be made to feel guilty about it. ‘Think about others first’ we are told, but why? In this life too many people pass the buck and like to blame their failure on others, and I think that this is just another way of doing that. It’s like passing all your aggravation onto other people. Because your life is so meaningless you have to use any excuse to berate another, perfectly happy person.

Sometimes I think I should just lock myself in my room and be a hermit.

Sad days

June 26, 2010 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Looking through my blog, I found this entry, from about 7/8 months ago. https://sueriot.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/my-home-its-where-im-fae/

Why am I mentioning it. Well, I finish work tonight to find out that the Paper Mill was set on fire, and is basically destroyed.

This is something which marks the history of the town I grew up in. I always like the olf building, and how its two chimneys looked over everything. After a fire which lasted over 5 hours, the place is destroyed. 1914, the building was made, it was 96 years old, and it’s gone. This is weird, because I feel this sense of loss. I mean it was a building, none of my family ever worked there, why should I be upset?

Reccently I have really come to appreciate where I live, because of the countryside, and because of the history. History is what make places different, it gives places a sense of purpose. But at the moment, the powers that be, seem to be set on building houses on top of everything. That was what was supposed to happen to the site where the paper mill was sited. It was supposed to be flattened and turned into housing. Housing, not for the people of Fife, but for Edinburgh snobs. *sigh*

Anyways, the owners have been wanting it flattened for years. And it is suspected that it is an inside job, with the council stalling, as people wanted to turn it into a historical center. The owners had to pay for security, so the burned it down, and made the decision a lot easier.