It is the weekend, stereotypically the few days in the week, where a person can relax. Where you no longer have to associate with people that you are forced to spend time with during the week. Your time is your own. Or so we believe.
The idea of a weekend is getting more of an ideal, a concept, in that it isn’t as freeing as we are lead to believe. The majority of jobs in modern society do not stick to the traditional working week, so you no longer get the sense that the weekend is sacred. Which is not a good thing. What ever your job, people need time to log off and relax, something that in our busy lives it gets harder and harder to do.
I guess, that people have to make a bigger effort to make sure that they don’t waste their time off. So people play sports, go shopping or just spend time with loved ones. It helps if you do something that you enjoy, or with someone you like. I’ve found that If you have something to look forward to, on your time off, then it can make an unbearable working week seem a lot better.
————————-
These last few blog posts may have come off as preachy, but I like to think of them as advice. I know that when I have had difficult times on the past, blogs giving advice has helped me. So in the hope that one person can make sense of my ramblings, I post these entries.
It doesn’t take much delving into my online life, to realise that I use the internet and social media a lot. I put a lot of ‘myself’ out there for people to see. Whilst this may be an over-exaggeration of some of my qualities, it is not as true to myself as it is sometimes made out.
I like to have a level of privacy about my life, despite the fact that I share it online, via various services. I have things that I have no problems with sharing because it is mostly just whining about something of no real importance. But, sometimes I think about it, and I am not really sharing. Whilst some of the input garners a reaction from maybe 2 or 3 readers, the majority of people who see what I read, just ignore it. And, it makes me wonder why I do focus on making input on a regular basis, if it is just to be ignored. If I post something big an emotional, and instead of the help I crave, the only vision I have is of tumbleweed blowing across the webpage. I think that is why I don’t post too much truthful aspects of my life, because I am not like that. Ironically I am quite introverted in nature, and have always been really shy. So the idea that some stranger knows the inner workings of my mind, kind of freaks me out.
I suppose, as much as I do things like blogging as a form of expression for myself, there is always the need for it to connect with someone. To get a response from someone who feels in the same situation as I am in. It is not something that happens very often. But when it does happen, when I get a comment or email for someone who agrees with what I say, it feels great. It feels that my tendency for over-sharing has some kind of purpose. And it means a lot, that someone could not only be bothered to read the trash I write about, but they bothered enough to comment.
I guess, no matter how much I pretend this is ‘just for me’, it is always nice to feel get a shout back from the abyss of the internet.
Whether it is reading Facebook updates or talking to people face to face, there seems to be a lot of people complaining about the situation that they find themselves in. As if pointing the finger to something else, makes it easier to deal with where they are now, and that they don’t find it satisfactory. Is pitting on the blame on someone else, really making a difference?
I’d say no. It is like avoiding the thing altogether. Pushing the blame of your current life may make you feel better about the situation, but it makes no difference to the actual place you find yourself. To change things, you can’t hedge your bets that someone will pluck you from your mundane workplace and make your dreams a reality. Because, be honest, that will never happen. Only one person can make your dreams come true, and it’s you.
So I’d advise on taking accountability on where you are, and start dealing with things. If you are not happy about your job, for example, find out why your not happy and change it. Don’t expect everyone around you to know you are unhappy, if you are not willing to voice it. People are not always as intuitive as we would like, so give them a hand.
If it is your workplace itself that is the problem, then search for something else. Or even find something that makes you happy, outside work. Sometimes we can be over stressed at work and it purely is because our only focus is on work. Whilst that is needed sometimes, when your life revolves around work, and work isn’t satisfying, it can be pretty damn depressing. So give yourself something to smile about, whether it’s getting a new hobby, or giving yourself ‘me’ time, it will help you feel better about yourself.
If you don’t make an effort to make your life better, it won’t be. You could end up stuck, and pointing blame elsewhere isn’t going to fix it. Be your own hero. Live for today, and make it your best.
I usually spend time online, mostly catching up on videos and blogs, and sometimes creating my own content. I like the idea of communicating with people who are from different places in the world. It is something that feels even better when someone comments or passes on what you create. Whether they say something direct to you or not, it is a great feeling knowing that you may have made some kind of connection with someone else. And that great feeling spurns me on to both show pass on the joy with others (by commenting on blogs/videos) and it also inspires me to create more content.
The issue is, especially with the internet, you can find that your time will be eaten up rather quickly by doing things. I have easily lost hours at a time just faffing around online, and I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who does it. I guess I can feel guilty that I log on to the web to check a few things out, and I end up staying on for hours after one site leads to another, or I get in a conversation with someone.
But whilst it has become the most common way for me to spent alone time, there are other things I do. I guess the way I and most others chose things like reading, TV or the internet to escape is because we feel that we need something to focus on that can help reduce stress. Normally, I guess that ‘logging off’ into something that we have an interest has become normal. It makes everything seem a little brighter, if you can fill sections of your life with things that your really enjoy. I think that it a fairly new-age concept, that people even need to log off. But then, I suppose the self-reflection maybe used to happen when people would make their own things or tend their garden. Any project which is solitary, I guess, can be a time of reflection and thought.
This is what makes doing something on your own so freeing and good. The focus on something other than what is causing you stress, is good. Everyone needs a release, and it can be anything. As long as it is something that you enjoy, you will find that even spending a small period of time on it, will change your mood for the better. And that is something that I encourage.
I am in the middle of watching The Devil Wears Prada, which is a movie about a girl who is trying to follow her dream as a journalist. To get to where she wants, she works as an assistant at a fashion magazine, where her boss is ruthless. It seems to focus on the story that as someone’s professional life gets better, their private life goes out the window. It is the consensus that it is impossible to have an equal balance of work and play, and the sacrifices that a person is willing to make to be successful.
The work and play thing, is something that I think is about where a person’s focus lies. If you focus on one particular thing, then everything else kind of pales in comparison, and it causes some things to fall away. It is natural, as there is only so many things a person can put their energy into. But it can be hard to find a balance between having a life whilst working at a career. It’s not anything that someone should feel particularly bad about. I guess that it can just happen sometimes.
My take on it is that work and success can lead to more money, and that is something that can lead to more opportunities. That, in itself, is something very freeing, that you can afford do things that you want to. That makes you happier, and I would like to think that would make me want to spend and try and push the rest of my life up to ‘speed’. But I guess, I am maybe looking at it with ‘rose-tinted glasses’, because my working life is getting better, I can see myself being able to afford to change my life in 2012.
That positivity is not something I normally feel at the start of a New Year, in fact I am normally very much the opposite. So I feel that I can take on the world right now, as stupid as it sounds. I have never had an exciting personal life to lose, so any change that happens is a positive outcome. I just have to cross my fingers that things work out in some sort of balance. I could do with a good year.
The end of the world is this year. So make it the best year you ever had.
In fact, if you think along that logic, of making the best of 2012, just because it may be the end of the world. The truth is, your world could end at any time. You may not wake up tomorrow, you could be hit by a car on the way to work.
Sounds morbid, but you REALLY never know how long you have left on this planet. So, you should go out and make the best of every minute you are alive. I think that people should push themselves to the max every day. Noone wants to be that person who dies sad, or reflects on their life upset at what they could have done.
It is normal at New Year to re-evaluate where you are, and what you have achieved in the last 12 months. This, more-often-than-not, leads to a depressive sigh of disappointment, as we wreck our minds to find ways we could make the next year more of a failure. But, there is no really want to change, most of the time, it is like we create a list of tasks, just because we feel guilty because our lack of achievements. The whole concept of breaking resolutions is a bit of a cliché. Why make a resolution, if you know you are not wanting to achieve your target? Don’t say you want to lose weight, if you don’t want to.
The main reason that people fail, is because they have no real want to achieve this task in hand. And if you force yourself to pick up something new, then it is more likely to make you quit, rather than start loving it. Don’t be hard on yourself, only make a change you have passion to keep to. Change is hard, but if you want it, you can do it. Doing something because you feel that it is something you need to do, not because you want to, is lining yourself up for failure.
So I wish you all a happy start to 2012, and hope that you do things that you want. If you are happy and feel content, it will spread to other people who. Joy is contagious, so make 2012 the most joyful yet, and live every day like it’s your last.
I have always lived by the ideal, that if you need help you ask for it. If you are struggling with something, go and ask advice off someone you know that has had similar experiences to yourself. Get thoughts and opinions, to help back up what you think, and to help get you get out of whatever funk you are in.
But I do have a problem. And it comes into play, when people ask ME for help. As soon as I feel someone looking to me for guidance, I get nervous, my brain panics and scrolls through 100 thoughts in a minutes. And yet, I don’t know how to react. It is the one thing I go ‘rabbit in the headlights’ over. Since my stance on sharing thoughts, it seems a little strange that I can over-react to what is sometimes a straight-forward situation. But I do.
Whether it is asking for directions (something I suck at, avoid asking me this AT ALL) or advice on general, I panic. I try to be objective, and give useful advice, but I get a bit iffy when I know that information is not what that person wants to hear. It mostly happens when someone is being treated like shit by their partner, and I try to speak my mind, but don’t want to hurt the person. Love is blind, and it also takes away all common sense as well, it seems.
So I struggle over the words, mostly because I have to figure out how to say things. I am a fan of the ‘positive sandwich’, where I say something nice, then nasty and finish with something nice. It seems to not make me feel so vicious. In theory anyway. But after I give out my comments, I then think that if I had said the negative on it’s own, would it have made a bigger statement? Would the message have hit home better? Sure it would hurt, but sometimes the most beneficial things in the long term, do involve some pain.
I mean, I would hope people would be honest enough with me. Life sucks, but it would suck even more if every person was sheltered from the truth. What do you think? How do you deal with giving or receiving advice?
Reading books, watching TV, listening to music, everyone has something that makes them want to better themselves. Something that makes you want to take on the world, and feel like you can win whilst doing so. This is something that is certainly not lost on me, as I try to gain inspiration from a lot of sources.
I am coming up with a problem though. I don’t know if it is a case of seeing ‘too much’ around me, or if it is because I just think too much. When you read a book you like or listen to your favourite album, they spur you on, as you try to emulate their success. But for success to be valid, there needs to be failure, to balance it out. Just like how you can’t get light without dark, you can’t get success without failure. And after thinking about this, I have been lead down the path that has me wondering if the balance between success and failure is applicable to the one person’s life, or if it is people who are deemed success or failure.
I guess it could be either, but my head tends to liken it to being a person by person kind of thing. So if someone is a failure, it means someone else can be a success. That always sounds a bit of a ‘glass is half empty’ kind of logic, and I guess that is always how I have thought. I have always preferred to look at the worst case scenario, rather than the best, as I feel it is a cushion for the disappointment I feel when things don’t go my way. Except, it isn’t a very good cushion, because it still hurts when I don’t do well in something.
There is a school of thought, that teaches you, that if you are thinking of the negative, you will not see the good things, for all the negativity. Now whilst I think that is a very valid point, is something that is very difficult to get round, when you are used to thinking in a certain way. To step away from the negativity, you need to re-train your whole way of thinking, and that is no easy task. Especially if you have been thinking in said way, for almost the whole 27 years of your existence.
I guess, I keep on trying. I keep on trying to be inspired, and change my mindset. I get days where things change for a few days, maybe even a week, but then it changes back, and I find myself back at square one. This back and forth is one of the hardest things for me to accept about myself. It’s like everytime that I reach a landmark, and really feel good about myself, something happens and I just fall back into a pile of self-doubt.
The good news is, that there are more good days, than bad days right now. Having a lack of motivation to be creative is a big weight on my shoulders. It has happened over the last few years, where I struggled hard with depression. It is a situation where I find myself, that I can’t be creative. I get ideas, but then think ‘what’s the point’, it’s not going to lead anywhere. And I think that is the thing that is derailing me the most. The fact that I can’t see where I am to go. I feel stagnant, that I am not moving forward, so what’s the point?
When you have thoughts like that in your head, it’s really hard to try and see the positive out of anything.
Music: Left Alone- City to City (feat. Tim Armstrong)
The start of another week. Already. Sometimes I wish that the time would slow down a little, as it seems to go too fast. It feels, especially at the moment, that I spend most of my time procrastinating or lying in bed. Lying in bed, procrastinating. *sigh* I have no idea why I am like this, but it means that I feel the passing of time so much more. Mostly, because I have these ideas, which go nowhere because I am too lazy to put these ideas into action.
There is a good thing. I am currently very energetic (possibly thanks to the coffee). So I am painting things for my Christmas cards, drawing sketches for a project I am helping a friend out with, and I even tidied up a little. This is crazy. I am NEVER that motivated, so I have to make the best of it whilst it’s here.
So I am watching Rosianna and wishing that I had friends who used the internet and valued it as much as I do. Yes, I value the internet. It is there for every purpose. It is there when I need to let any aggravation out. And, if needed, I will get feedback from the internet when I want it. And the thing is, I don’t know anyone who thinks that me having two blogs is a good idea, they don’t see why I would want to record myself for youtube. Sometimes I would like to spend more time with people so that we could encourage each other to make better web content. Because, that is what most of what we do online is. Creating content.
Even if you post a Facebook comment once in a blue moon, or you write a daily blog, you are packaging a piece of yourself for the world to see. To me, I think it is great, but I know a lot of people don’t think outside their own profile page. I think it is amazing that we can document our lives through these avenues of expression, and that other people can see what we have to say. I created my original blog over on LiveJournal, way back in 2005. And it came with me, on a large portion of my life. I know that if I had written such thoughts down in a book, the book would be lost as would the thoughts. So it is nice to have them to document who I was at that point.
I think that is where the perception of ‘time’ hits me. I look back at what I have done, and it doesn’t feel so long ago, and then I look at the date. I realise how much I have done between then and now, and just reflect on it all. Which is great. I mean, I blogged about when I used to self-harm. And as uncomfortable as it was to read all that, it is great to know that I can deal with things a lot better these days. It makes me feel like I have achieved something fairly major in my life. And that although, I had shared my feelings over the internet, it really doesn’t mean anything to anyone other than myself. It shows me that I can do things, if I stick to it. And that, is sometimes just what I need to hear.
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.
sueriot.com 