There's two things that are pretty interesting about this whole business. The first is that I knew from the moment I woke up this morning that I would end up here. I planned to come and post. It has been my routine for the entirety of 2008 so far. I live a day, and then I begin the end process so I can live one more day. The contacts are out, the whitestrips are in. I'm here to post. We all knew it'd end up like this.
The second interesting piece is how very traditional and normal this seems to me. As far as my subconcious goes, I've been doing blogaday forever. It has always been the norm for me to sit down before writing in my journal and bust out a post. I know that this has only been going on for 10 days, but underneath higher reasoning, this is just the pattern as it's always been.
I tend to do that, I find. I adapt myself to the current situation and give myself to it wholly. Very soon it becomes my natural style. Days when I'd run after school, I'd feel like I'd always run right after school. Now that I'm not, it feels like that's always how it's been.
It's just interesting how very quickly I forget the way things were in favor of being better suited for the way things are right now. I'm sure that this way of being has its ups and downs. It does lead to forgetfulness, which is damaging. It's easy to forget the three years I spent on the nerd team, or all the races I've run for cross country. It's easy to forget what sophomore jazz band was like. All the forgetting, I think, makes me better able to succeed in the environment I'm currently in, so it's not all bad. I'm not running around super emotionally wondering where my youth has gone, or what happened to the good old days.
And I don't think that I've forgotten, but the good old days just aren't constantly on my mind. I don't sit down to post and think "You know, this is significantly different than how the vast majority of my life has gone. Weird." I just sit down and post like it's normal. Things aren't forgotten, they're just not part of the processes that are natively running in my mind. When something triggers them, they can still come forth.
But here I am, feeling pretty comfortable and secure in my blogaday routine. Rolling right along.
Interesting to note is that it's 1:40 AM, and there is an official no one online for messenger. This hasn't happened in a very, very long time. My contact list has an official 69 contacts. A few of them are duplicates. Some are on missions and haven't been online in a year and a half. Some are people I know very well and never talk to online. Others are people that I've never met but share similar interests who I used to talk to but don't ever talk to now. Some are people I don't really talk to in real life and will never talk to online either. Of all my contacts, I'd say that there are 10 that I actually talk to with messenger. I could prune the list, but I don't necessarily see the need to.
In junior high I used to pride myself in having a maximum of 25 contacts. Me and Jason would talk online, and he'd be like "Hey, how many contacts do you have online?" and I'd say that I had three or four, and he'd say he had nine. He always had more contacts than me. I never felt like I had the shorter end of the deal though. I'd rather have 25 golden contacts that I actually talk to and care about than 60 that I don't.
This online communication is very interesting business. A lot of my life has been played out with the help of MSN messenger. I don't regret that. There has been much good done. There's also been some bad stuff done too. It's got its ups and downs. I believe that it, like everything else, is about balance.
I remember how last year Harward made the statement that messenger wasn't really a valid form of communication. He said that no real meaning was ever transmitted, and that we were all just wasting our time. I didn't stand up and say it at the time, but I strongly disagree with that statement. I've seen it happen, I've been there. Meaningful stuff does happen over msn messenger.
And I think that that's one thing that an older generation is going to have to come to terms with. The way that we are meeting our needs is changing. We are adapting. There are people who embrace it and people who reject it. For a very very long time I rejected social networking sites as a matter of principle. I still vehemently reject myspace. There will come a time when I do create a facebook account though. That time will not be for a few months at the very least, however. But it's a decent tool that I think will help fulfill a need, so I'll go for it.
This blog is a prime example of something that couldn't really have existed seven years ago. Realistically, it could have happened seven years ago, but probably not for free and probably not this easy. 15 years ago, this wouldn't have ever happened. But just because this opportunity has only been made available to me in the past 10 years doesn't mean that it's illegitimate. This blog has meant a ton to me. Individuals that classify all blogs as useless and irrelevant are probably good people, but I think they might be a little misguided. I used to be one of those people I think. Not necessarily with blogs or any of that, but classifying all of one thing as useless without any back up.
Let's be honest. I don't understand dance, at all. I've done a very very little bit of it. I've danced at region dances, and I danced in the day of celebration. I enjoyed both of those experiences a lot. I don't understand why some individuals devote so much to dance. It's not something I really get.
But at the same time, I can respect it. I think in my younger days I might have said that dance was stupid, or dance was worthless, or dance was etc. etc. But now, I can recognize that it fulfills a need of whoever is dancing, and therefore it's probably a good thing. I don't get it, but I can respect those that do. I'm not going to classify something as terrible without ever really being there.
Which leads to two points that I've discovered. I believe these points are true. There's a chance that they're not, however. It's just something that I think. If I'm wrong, well, I'm wrong, and I'm functioning and making decisions based upon fallacies. But isn't that the case with every idea that we have? Every feeling about life, every "Yeah, that's how this works..." is vulnerable to that same judgement. It's what we think, but it might be wrong. We're willing to accept that. We will take the risk of being wrong and exercising in fallacy if we've got a chance of being right and understanding. That's just how we roll.
Anyways, potential fallacy number one is thus. Anything that leads us to understand ourselves better is generally a good thing. That doesn't mean that it always is, but journeys of self discovery are usually good. This blog has helped me understand myself better, which has been great. High school helps us better understand ourselves. That's good too.
Potential fallacy number two is all about meeting those inner needs. Anything that helps meet our needs is generally a good thing. I always find it interesting to see how people have their needs met. I love our skill at having them met. Call it an evolutionary response or just plain out reasoning, but if our needs aren't being met, we will invariably change the situation to have them met. If a kid is in the drama organization because he has certain needs and the drama club is meeting those needs, and suddenly the clan stops meeting those needs, he's going to leave and go elsewhere. It's an almost automated process. We will go where we need to go to survive and flourish. I ran cross country for four years. It was beautiful. I love cross country. Part of the reason that I left was because the needs that cross country used to be meeting vanished to an extent. It was no longer a necessity, and so I took the opportunity to free myself.
A lot of things that wouldn't meet needs for me might meet needs for other people, I figure. There are reasons that people dance. I don't dance, but I suppose that if I had the same needs as those people, or if I had no other means to meet the needs I have, dance could work out.
I think the moral of my story is that one shouldn't judge an activity. Harward's premature analysis of messenger was a little surprising to me. I'm willing to wager that Hardward never had any needs met by msn messenger. But here I am, a functioning part of society, and I have. It's not for everybody, but it's clearly not for nobody.
We started a multimedia presentation in English today. I do love multimedia presentations. Nick pointed out that I was bound to hijack the whole operation to our group today, so I'm glad that we're at least on the same page. This is one of those places where I probably ought to draw the line further on their side than on my side, but it's very tempting to just say "Wow, check out this great idea, let's run with it!"
Multimedia presentations in school are always delightful to me. I remember that we used to do presentations in elementary school with Corel presentations, just doing slideshows. That was a really good experience for me, because it taught me a lot about it at a very young age.
It has been my experience in school that most people are not going to create an incredible multimedia presentation when given the chance. It's an unusual format for most, and that unfamiliarity makes stuff difficult. I see these projects as an opportunity to shine. When most people are struggling, I'm going to get out there and do my very best. I'm going to pull out something great. I love multimedia opportunities.
Multimedia, by its very definition, is cool to me. Multi, meaning many, or multiple, and media, the plural of medium, or the means by which we do something- in this case, transmit information. So basically, using lots of different ways to get a message across. Like we discussed a few nights ago, layers. Multimedia lends itself to incredible layering. That's why slideshows are so incredibly useful for teaching a class or a seminar. You've got the speaker doing his thing, and the slideshow backing up everything he says. It adds at least one more layer, and that layer adds efficacy.
Multimedia is cool because we can have so many layers. For this project we get to use pictures and audio primarily, but we'll manage to sneak a bunch of text in as well. The trick will be to consolidate all three of them into one effective message. I'm excited for the challenge. We've got an excellent group, and we've got some pretty bold plans. I do hope it works out.
You know what's an incredibly cool word? Intrepid. My online sources define Intrepid as: "resolutely fearless; dauntless". How cool is that? Resolutely fearless? That's incredibly cool. I really like the fact that it's resolute. One can be fearless on accident, or through ignorance. Resolutely, though, that implies that whatever this intrepid being is had to stand up, square his or her shoulders, and become fearless by choice, knowing full well what lay ahead. Intrepid, now that's a good way to be.
I do hope that blogaday is still functioning as well for everybody else as it is for me. It's surprising how very similar all these posts end up. I think that each night has had it's own unique content, more or less, but all the posts seem to be following the same general pattern. I'll start out by talking about blogaday mechanics-- wait a minute, have I authored this paragraph before? I sure did! Last post's last paragraph was about the same idea.
I find that if I talk about the mechanics of blogaday for long enough, something will generally pop up.Rahahaha. I think that's one weakness that my blogaday posts have though, the conclusion. I talk about blogaday for a bit, and then I'll usually hit on two individual ideas about life. And then I'll struggle to end the post. Though, I wouldn't really call it a struggle. Blogaday by its very nature is pretty free of struggle. If I wanted professional posts, there could be struggle. But I'm only doing this to talk and to understand and to meet the challenge I laid for myself. Whatever happens will happen. 20 terrible posts would simply be 20 terrible posts that taught me something about myself. 20 amazing posts would be 20 amazing posts that taught me something and might have done the world a little bit of good. I am doing this for many reasons, and I will not cease doing this until the time is right. Whether I produce gold or lawn manure, I will write.
-Me, like, last night.
And I think there's a sort of noble invulnerability and innocence in that. It's kind of like the ceilings of a few nights ago. Things that exist in a pure form, not relying on anything else to give them meaning, are pretty beautiful. I don't think that anything can really exist like that, not one hundred percent. But there is much to be said of finding worth in existing as opposed to finding worth in your critical acceptance by others.
Well friends, it draws late. It's blogaday day 10, hooray! Halfway there. That's not a bad feeling. Calling 20 days was awfully ambitious. But once again, I'm really glad that I did it. It's been a great adventure, and I'm excited to see what tomorrow brings.
Have a good night everybody. Good luck with the things you're facing in life. Keep your head up, we're gonna be alright.
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