Tag: internet

Tuning In

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Music is a constant in my life, and it is probably the same with anyone reading this. Of course, you may not actively seek out to listen to music, but it is still there. It is in the shops you visit, it accompanies your favourite TV shows and is on the radio station you listen to in your car. It is everywhere. Music is that one think that helps give everything rhythm.

A lot has changed in how we get music, to purposefully listen to.When I was wee, people taped songs off the radio. Something that was a bit of an art-form, if I were to be honest. Trying to get as much of a song as possible, without the voice of the station DJ. I remember swapping my tapes with friends, as everyone had different mixes. It was fun, and I could see myself listening to the Pepsi Chart show, spending the large portion of my Sunday, waiting for my favourite songs. I was young and daft, but weren’t we all

As soon as I had my own money, I would by music magazines and any album (at that point CDs) I could afford. The thrill of new music, and getting to read the liner notes made me feel like I was getting a snippet at a band I liked. It wasn’t long after that things changed forever. The internet came into public use, and friends I knew started using services like Napster and Limewire to download songs. It was the first time, for many, that they could access an artist’s entire back-catalogue with a few clicks, and it didn’t cost a penny. I, myself, tried Limewire, but a virus and incorrectly labelled music files, caused me to opt put of that option. I still liked my CDs.

Eventually things progressed. The torrent sites were forced offline or became unreliable, and online digital music stores like iTunes, reaped the benefit. However, with today’s faster internet speeds, people are opting into streaming content. To the stage, where most radio stations stream live content from their websites. It means that you can now pay a monthly fee, if you want to, and stream your favourite artists to your games console, smart TV, mobile, or almost every device that can get an internet connection. It is getting to the stage, where a lot of people who consume music, don’t even need to purchase it anymore. I find that sad.

I use streaming services,  like Spotify and Amazon Music, but I use them for either ‘music-on-the-go’ or to find new music to listen to. The last few albums I purchased, was for artists that were on my recommended playlist on Spotify. These services are smart, they know what artists you listen to most, and give you new music based on that. It’s very intuitive.

I am friends with a lot of musicians, all of which make the most money when someone buys an album or some other merchandise. So, as a result, I have always bought music.I like to try and get the physical CD, or even vinyl record, to put money back into an artist I enjoy. I think that is only fair. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks the same. For every legitimate streaming site, there are 3 or 4 illegal streaming services. Now sites like Putlocker maybe are more about movies and TV shows, but the point still stands. Is it really fair to enjoy something, but not pay for it?

Maybe it is because I have been stung by people wanting things for free, myself. A few years back, when I was on my last year/ just left college, I tried to get a graphic design business up and running. It was actually the main reason this very blog was started, to promote the development of my new company. Unfortunately, it didn’t take off quite like I expected. I struggled getting clients, because I was on my own, and had no experience. But I would get interest from people, mostly from established local companies, requesting some work to be done. Unfortunately, these people wanted everything done for free. I kind of excepted this was going to be part of starting up myself. I had a part-time job, but stepped up to full time, to pay for bills and things. The people, who wanted the free labour, would send me emails when they knew I was working (I gave every perspective client my work rota, so they knew when I’d be available). I would finish working a long day in a call center, and would have several emails from people, all sent during that day, asking why I was ignoring them. I was working, my phone was off, and I couldn’t access my private emails, something I had already explained. I would get dog’s abuse off these people, who said that they were doing me a favour. But I worked on, and sent them the final work and they refused to acknowledge me.  They had previously said that the publicity would be good for me, so they shouldn’t have to pay. It was horrible. I lost all confidence, and to-date, I kind of put everything on hold.

And that is why, I don’t think I could sleep at night, knowing that I was taking in the work of other creatives for nothing. So no Kodi boxes for me, you can keep your ‘chipped’ Sky systems, and I’ll pay for what I can afford. And I will appreciate it all.

 

To Share Or Not To Share

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I really haven’t had much to say, which I haven’t posted in almost a month. Well there are things that are in my head, but no anything I particularly want to voice on the internet in a public way. In fact I just haven’t mentioned things at all. This sounds a little bit strange, especially coming from someone who uses blogging and the internet to work out their frustrations, but it is true. What it has done, is make sections of the internet, completely separate from what has been going on offline.

And I think that it is important, knowing where to draw the line with posting personal things online. Like, I have always used the internet to vent, to let out those annoying wee things that grate on me. But, I will not go into discussing a bad situation where someone else is involved. It could be to do with family or friends, but it is for me to share something, that whilst personal to me, is also personal to them. I mean, if other people are like me, my parent’s have me on facebook. The last thing I would need is someone talking about a personal situation that had me tagged, and that my parents could read, especially as it may be something that I didn’t want to share with them.

But, that is one of the best things about the internet. You can decide what you share. You might might be obnoxious and funny, but through Facebook you are simply funny, due to not sharing absolutely everything about yourself. It can be dangerous too, as you may never truly know someone you are friends with online. You can only virtually know whatever side of their personality, a person is willing to share.

When I write things on my social media accounts, sometimes I feel bad for the people who follow me. Because I can get so wound up and angsty, and they may never know why. I’ll just post those annoyingly vague updates about ‘some people are dicks’, and leave it like that. I know it is annoying, but sometimes, my anxiety gets me worked up over nothing and I need to vent. That is why there are sometimes no specifics about a situation, just that I am feeling crap, going to buy a cat and live in solitary confinement for the rest of my life.

I have been training myself to kind of push past any feelings of anxiety. Like, to allow myself to cry my eyes out over what ever non-event I am panicking irrationally over, but then when calm afterwards, pick up a book or listen to music. I do things that make me feel better. And then I can try and get things done (sometimes successful, sometimes not). These actions maybe don’t sound like something that require training, but it did. For years I would have a panic attack, and dwell on the cause for days. Causing more panic attacks, and a general feeling of complete loss. I have spent 2016 teaching myself how to power through the tears and the struggling to breathe. And whilst I still have A LOT of anxiety problems, it is a lot rarer these days, that I will lose a complete weekend to endless panicking over everything.

If I post every little panic attack I have, I think I would have no friends left. Even less, if they knew what I had panicked over. So sometimes, it is good not to share everything. But because I have had a bad few weeks, I decided it was best to just not share anything. Because as much as my new coping methods help me, I was going round in circles, and couldn’t even think straight to write properly. But, hey, I am posting. Progress is progress.

Socially Over-networked

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

The problem with trying to create a lot of content online, is that sometimes it can get too much. Motivation, as well as inspiration, can disappear. Which is great. Particularly when you try to give yourself a target, such as I have, where I am trying to write every day. This means that things can become too forced, to the stage that writing is something that I really don’t enjoy anymore. I know this, because it has happened to me before. And, because I also like drawing, my ‘creative slump’ can also effect that, and that is my manner in dealing with stress out of the window. Annoying.

That is why I have been quiet on here for a few days. I thought I’d take some time out, which isn’t a bad thing. That is a new thing I am learning, knowing when to take a step back. Because I haven’t before, and it’s caused me to completely stress out. Which is the total opposite to what I want writing to be for me. Because, it is something that helps me chill out and organise the nonsense in my head. To the point that I don’t know what I’d do without it. I think I feel suffocated, which is bizarre because it’s just rambling online, really.

But, the internet has become something that has taken over our entire lives. There is not a day that goes by, where we don’t use the internet for something. Even if I locked my phone and laptop away, just doing my job at work involves network connections that use the internet. Nothing would work, in fact, my job wouldn’t even exist. And that is quite scary. But, however scary it appears to be, it still doesn’t mean anything compared to actual experience of dealing with real people. And as real people, ourselves, we should never forget about the way we feel. Sometimes, it is too easy to be dragged into some battle on facebook or Twitter over something that doesn’t even matter. Whilst, I know I try to shrug things like that off, it is not always that easy. The best thing is, realise when things start to bother you, and try to take yourself out of such situations when they arise. That is a good thing about the internet, there is always a block button.

Sometimes, I wish real life had a block button.

 

 

Lost In It All

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

Just looking at the Internet today, not searching for anything in particular, just looking. Something that I don’t do very often. I am good at commenting on everything, and putting in my two cents on whatever is going on. 

Sometimes, I think we get too much information thrown at us, mostly by the Internet. It gets a bit hard to process it all. It is also hard to distinguish what is important, particularly on social media. Twitter and Facebook have a habit of promoting the useless twaddle that fills up the gossip sites. If you like that kind of thing, it’s okay, nothing wrong with it. But how can you tell what’s important when the going-ones in I’m A Celebrity is given more promotion than the story about Parliment voting to bomb Syria? 

It just gets a bit overwhelming at times. Like information overload. The press has always had the finger pointed at it for over-hyping one story, to mask over another one. A way of attempting to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. And that made a lot of people bored with the press, and turn to sides like Twitter and Reddit for more direct news. But when companies can pay for an allocated number of retweets, how honest is what we actually see? 

That’s what I sometimes think about, and to be honest it freaks me out sometimes. There are so many different ways to get information these days, and a lot of the time, every take is slightly different. So what has been added for effect. Is that ‘first hand source’ really telling a true story. You never know. 

As good as the Internet is for finding out information about the world we live in, sometimes I think it would be easier if all the web was used for was Netflix.

Happy Blogmas

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

It is the first of December, which is giving me a reason to try a new challenge. And that is to try and blog every day in the run up to Christmas. 

This is a thing which has been occurring online for the last several years, with both bloggers and vloggers (video bloggers) taking on the challenge to create new content every day in the run up to Christmas. Everyone who I’ve spoken to, seems to have enjoyed taking part in the challenge previously, so I thought I’d give it a shot. 

Why?

Well, when I look back at 2015, I don’t feel that I have achieved too much. It feels like just another year where I have become overpowered with lack of inspiration and motivation. It’s been a bit of a damp squib, if I were to be completely honest. So, I thought that rather than just complain about failing ‘everything’, that I would give 2015 an opportunity to go out on a high note. 

I have struggled all year with writing, drawing, everything. And that really gets me down. But, I am still here, and up for turning things around.

So, wish me luck. 

Disconnection Notice

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It has recently been made abundantly clear that my, once passionate, love affair with the internet is going through a rough patch. I am becoming frequently frustrated to the point of putting my phone’s internet off, so that people can call me if they need me, but I don’t get interrupted by the constant Facebook and Twitter updates.

Yes, I am at that stage where I am avoiding the other party of the ‘relationship’. Normally in that situation, you would change how you walk to work, or try and hang out with different people. Try and create some space between yourself and the other person. However, when your relationship is with such a thing as the internet, it isn’t that easy. Actually, it becomes so overly dramatic that a relationship with a real person would have probably been easier to deal with.

I mean, everyone has been in ‘that’ relationship, where despite loving that person, everything they do winds you up the wrong way. Where you just want smack them on the head, and you can’t really tell them why. So, you try and put some space between you both. However, saying you ‘have a sore head’ doesn’t stop the internet. It is everywhere. Everything from restaurants to tampon companies have their own twitter handles. If you liked one craft page 2 years ago on Facebook, the site recommends events near you every 2-3 days. Sometimes I feel smothered.

But that’s not even the worst bit. When I was at my lowest point, the internet came to the rescue. It showed me that I was not alone in feeling so rejected all the time, that I could voice how I feel, and all seemed awesome. But, obviously, fairy tales don’t actually exist, and reality happened. When I say reality, I mean people who like to spread hatred from behind vague avatars. This was a nasty streak in the internet that I never foresaw. It wouldn’t happen to me, we are so happy together. But it did.

Now, a person’s nasty streak is easy to deal with. You can utter sarky retorts to their insults, or you just walk away. Yes, what they say hurt may leave a mark, but you can leave that one person. The internet isn’t a singularity, so dealing with any negativity from it, is a bit harder. If someone has taken to ‘troll’ something you have created, it normally isn’t just one person. And you also may find these trolls are a bit braver than what they would be in the real world, which means more cutting comments. I did what any sane person would do, I decided I needed time apart from the internet. I stopped going onto forums and writing blogs as often, as these places are where the negativity came from. Good? Kind of. When I did log on, I saw a lot of hate and the spread of intolerance. This is not the internet I had loved and used so heavily.

Who are you these days, dear internet? You are no longer the place that I go when things get to stressful. After allowing me to feel free, after so long hating who I am, you are now lampooning me for being that same person. A normal person would at least be able to explain their actions. And, as an adult, I wouldn’t need to rely on a person for EVERYTHING. My job exists because of the internet. I get my music and TV over the internet. I contact friends around the world on the internet.

Maybe I just need to change my relationship with the internet? Or maybe get in a relationship with a real life actual person?

Or not.

 

Ball Of Sunshine

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am happy.

For the first time in a long time, I am enjoying a period where I am experiencing a few more ups than downs. It is great, and not something I am used to. I am singing and laughing every day, instead of moping and crying. It is rather freeing being upbeat, it is like I am bouncing around without a care in the world. Nothing is getting to me, and it is a strange feeling.

The issue is. When you build your whole ‘internet life’ on helping you de-stress, what do you do when you don’t need to? I don’t feel the need to rant about things that have went wrong, because for some reason it doesn’t seem to be bothering me. Talking about it, may end up jinxing it all, but I feel that I should try to talk about it. No matter how much of a struggle it is, just because I want this blog to show an honest portrayal of me, and I need to show that people with depression and anxiety do have periods of happiness. It may not happen often, but it does happen.

So where did this feeling of happiness come from?

Recently I have been doing a job that I enjoy at work. I feel like I have a purpose. I feel like I can share my experience of the last few years in the business helping those less experienced. I am also taking an engineering course through a collaboration between my work and a local college, which is interesting. And then I have signed up for a Creative Coding class, through FutureLearn, which also looks exciting. It is the most ‘forward thinking’ I have been in a long time, and the way I am feeling shows that. Nothing may come of all that is going on, but my mental health is glad for the break. So forgive me, as I revel in being genuinely happy.

Inspiration

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It is important when you are creating original content regularly to have something that motivates you. Something that gets you into creating regular. I am one of those strange people, where it depends on my mood as to whether something motivates me or not. For instances, sometimes Netflix is perfect background noise to me doing my sketchbook. Other times, I’ll end up watching whatever is on my TV, and ignore whatever I intended to do. Sometimes music distracts me, that I need to work in silence, but most of the time music gets me pumped for work.

However, sometimes it helps to look around at other people’s output to get you creating. My list of blogs I read regular is getting bigger and bigger, and they do make me want to write for myself. Which is awesome. I try to read a variety of blogs, like technology, advice, music, books, fashion, gossip, anything really. The only thing I look for, is passion. The person has to really care about what they are writing about, so that a sense of honesty comes across in whatever they are trying so say. And, in turn, that becomes something that I wish to convey in my own blog. I hope that by reading this blog, that someone could get an idea of what I am like as a person. That’s the idea anyway. 

In the last year or two I have noticed that there are books and guides written on ‘how to make a successful blog’. I am guessing because keeping a blog is a really honest way break down boundaries between customers and businesses. But the whole idea of guides published by ‘experts’ no one has ever heard of is a bit vomit inducing, if you ask me. I am a person whose blog started as a way to express myself, so find the idea of people doing it for the sole purpose of making money as strange. I don’t get it. Pay £14.99 and have some guy try to tell you how to be successful in the blogging industry. That’s right, people think of it as an industry now. It’s strange.

But, prepare for shock as I reveal a slight contradiction, I have today a magazine on blogging. The difference I found in the magazine, Blogosphere, was that it wasn’t selling itself as a ‘complete guide’ or. ‘how to blog professionally’. It is sold as part of the blogging community, with articles written by various bloggers. Every member of the team producing this relatively new magazine has their own blog. There is a lovely straight forward casual tone to the magazine, rather than the teacher-student tone of a lot of the ‘how to’ guides.  I found it very similar to the blogs that I read every day, as upon reading it, I became very motivated to write this very blog.  

Do you create regular? How do you get motivation to do so? 

Blogosphere magazine is available at WH Smiths for £4.00 an issue every month. Alternatively visit http://www.blogospheremagazine.com for more information. 

Having Fun Isn’t Hard, When You Have A Library Card

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Nothing beats reading a new book, particularly when the sun is out and you have a cool drink in your hand. That is what I have been doing today and it is my kind of heaven. A playlist of favourite songs in the background as my bare feet play with the grass in the garden. It’s relaxing and is always when I read the most. 

The thing is, you can’t simply purchase every book that sparks your interest. I, for one, don’t have the financial standings to get EVERY book I want. Which is depressing. I have started avoiding book shops unless I have £30 or so to spend, because I have no restraint. Seriously, it’s like I have no control. But to quench my thirst for new reads, I head to the library. 

I have grown up using my local library, from researching local history for school projects, to using the free internet when I didn’t have it at home. I frequently rent out books, where I find I am more varied in my selections. There’s no worry if you don’t like a story, because you haven’t paid your hard earned cash on it. It has made me a bit more adventurous, as my library tries to stock Scottish authors, something that wouldn’t stick out so much in Waterstones or the supermarket. 

Every town around here has a library, which has become important parts of local life. Where people who don’t have computers can access the Internet and connect with relatives or find jobs. There are story time groups and reading challenges for kids. It really is my favourite place. And it really opens up the world for everyone, and it costs nothing. And, let’s be honest, how much stuff is free these days? If you are a bookworm, like me, I recommend checking out your local library and select a random book.

You might be surprised. 

Saying Nothing

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes it’s hard to find something to say. There are thoughts flying around in your head, but nothing you want to share outloud.  In a world where every inch of life is shared on the Internet, how do you make the decision on what is important enough to ‘make the cut’ onto Facebook or Tumblr? What thoughts are important enough to be made public knowledge? 

Personally, I know that my brain doesn’t stop, and my thoughts can become quite a mess to muddle through at times. And as a person who likes to write about their feelings, it can become particularly annoying to know what is good content and what is just rubbish. I know that a lot of what I talk about on here may seem like rubbish to many, but it is therapeutic. It helps me to carry on with my day-to-day life, I can focus easier when all the bumpf is out of my head. 

But that’s it, what I share, the bumpf, is just thoughts and musing that I have. I don’t really like being to honest about actual details of my life online, because it’s private. And because when it gets down to the details, it usually involves other people. And that’s the thing about sharing details, sometimes they aren’t just yours to share. But your thoughts, they belong to you. You formulated them at some point, and they, unlike actual life details, wholly belong to you. So, I find it easier to share thoughts. I write them down, then I can select what I want to write down. That way, my blogs and social media aren’t swamped with the ‘poor me’ that usually takes up my mind.

I think a lot of people, particularly on Facebook, share every little detail. And whilst seeing tidbits of people’s life is cool, i don’t need to see arguments with the neighbour down the road because they pissed you off the other day. Too many people have huge family fall outs because of rubbish someone posts on Facebook. I just don’t understand why anyone wants to display such information online. Maybe it’s because I have always used social media to help myself personally, not to gossip or start fights. And I do think there is a distinction, although some might not.