This is something I have been thinking about lately, inspired by others telling me how they express themselves I got to thinking about how I express myself.
For you my readers the most obvious way I express myself is through writing, and you get quite an intimate insight into that on this blog, from the day to day posts about whatever is on my mind the issues raised in the news, and then of course there are my short stories which you get to read. The latter is an interesting point I should raise - my stories rarely portray my thoughts or feelings and they certainly don't touch on issues that affect me - not really.
I have never really wrote about being gay, mostly for the fact that its not that much of an issue for me I have quite accepted it a long time ago and this blog is meant to be an example to the world that you can be gay and have thoughts and opinions on anything and everything and not everything has to be about your sexuality. My short stories that I write have never really touched on sexuality either, that's not out of any conscious decision just simply a consequence of my thoughts dwelling on other things. The main focus of my stories tends to be the plot and the world the characters live in. Character development has never really been a strong point, I tend not to give back stories but instead let the reader get to know the character through the story - this is a shortcoming however as it creates quite 2-dimensional characters, granted in a short story that's not that much of an issue.
What all this has to do with expression is simply that writing is my main method of expression but as far as my works of fiction go, I do it in a manner that does not delve too deep into my psyche. The only forms of writing that express myself duly would be the opinion pieces I share. Beyond writing I tend to draw occasionally but it's never been anything that complex. I think the only other form of expression I would have would be my games and music. The latter being a key that can unlock any situation. No matter the mood you can find a piece of music that will match it.
As for games they have somewhat moved along an inverted bell curve for me. When I was younger they were a big part of my life then for a while they were virtually removed completely - while I studied Computer Science with Games Technology in University - but recently they have been reclaiming their presence and my love for them is growing. I advocate games as a method of expression for the simple fact that as with music regardless of mood you will find a game that matches it.
Some people: draw, write, compose music, make comics, make animations, play an instrument, work-out, work on self-defence disciplines such as kung-fu or boxing, as well as many others. How do you express yourself?
Dreams
I find dreams fascinating for a number of reasons. One of the things I find most interesting is the conversations we have with people in our dreams. There are various theories as to how the brain deals with information, in particular how it deals with information about the individuals we meet and interact with. One such theory is that we create Internal Working Models of the people we interact with, we even have an internal working model of ourselves - or at least of the person we see when we look in the mirror, and the attitude and behaviours we think we express. As far as the model of ourself goes that one is pretty easy to prove inaccurate. Our view of ourself is warped, we are naturally biased in this respect. You only have to think about your "internal voice" the one inside your head right now that you are reading this post in - that is if you aren't imagining my voice which some of you will have heard.
The models of others however can be more accurate than we care to admit, maybe even more than the subject cares to admit but again this will depend on how well you know them. The more information about an individual and the more behaviour you observe the more detailed your model of them will become, to the point where you can imagine how a particular conversation would go. This is what I find fascinating about dreams, when we dream about others, if these models are involved which I assume they are, then you could have conversations with them in your dreams that would probably play out as they would in reality. Does this ever affect our behaviour towards them? I know it's pretty obvious that the more embarrassing you would find telling the person about the dream in detail, the more likely it would affect your interaction with them. Take the example of having a sex dream about someone you work with, if you don't know them well then that dream would for most people cause some degree of embarrassment.
The question of accuracy is perhaps most interesting however in regards to people we have limited interactions with. For example if you dream about someone you've never actually met, and never heard speak, how accurate could the voice you hear in the dream be? Would it even be a voice or would the meaning be intimated by your unconscious? Staying with the theme of sex, how accurate could the 'events' of your dream be to life? - again if you have never experienced this with the person before. I think most people will have realistic dreams that capture the moment in vivid detail, but how accurate can we be in dreaming of things that have not [yet] happened?
We will invariably incorporate our experiences into our dreams, and while we may not have any experience that directly relates to the individual in question, e.g. never having heard them speak, we do have experience of what other people look like and what they sound like. While we may pose that logically there would never be any real correlation between what someone looks like and what they sound like, we can at least agree that each of the binary genders male and female have an atypical vocal range and there are stereotypes that you would expect - e.g. male voices are deeper. The amazing thing about dreams is that the processing our brains undertake when we dream isn't carried out by the conscious mind but rather the sub-conscious meaning the range of conclusions and scenarios it can permute are a lot wider than our conscious mind, while we, here and now, awake, can not quickly conclude any correlation in our vast experience, the sub-conscious mind potentially can. Our sub-conscious while we sleep and dream can take our entire collection of experiences and present a scenario based upon them. So with dreams about things that haven't happened, how accurate can they really be?
The models of others however can be more accurate than we care to admit, maybe even more than the subject cares to admit but again this will depend on how well you know them. The more information about an individual and the more behaviour you observe the more detailed your model of them will become, to the point where you can imagine how a particular conversation would go. This is what I find fascinating about dreams, when we dream about others, if these models are involved which I assume they are, then you could have conversations with them in your dreams that would probably play out as they would in reality. Does this ever affect our behaviour towards them? I know it's pretty obvious that the more embarrassing you would find telling the person about the dream in detail, the more likely it would affect your interaction with them. Take the example of having a sex dream about someone you work with, if you don't know them well then that dream would for most people cause some degree of embarrassment.
The question of accuracy is perhaps most interesting however in regards to people we have limited interactions with. For example if you dream about someone you've never actually met, and never heard speak, how accurate could the voice you hear in the dream be? Would it even be a voice or would the meaning be intimated by your unconscious? Staying with the theme of sex, how accurate could the 'events' of your dream be to life? - again if you have never experienced this with the person before. I think most people will have realistic dreams that capture the moment in vivid detail, but how accurate can we be in dreaming of things that have not [yet] happened?
We will invariably incorporate our experiences into our dreams, and while we may not have any experience that directly relates to the individual in question, e.g. never having heard them speak, we do have experience of what other people look like and what they sound like. While we may pose that logically there would never be any real correlation between what someone looks like and what they sound like, we can at least agree that each of the binary genders male and female have an atypical vocal range and there are stereotypes that you would expect - e.g. male voices are deeper. The amazing thing about dreams is that the processing our brains undertake when we dream isn't carried out by the conscious mind but rather the sub-conscious meaning the range of conclusions and scenarios it can permute are a lot wider than our conscious mind, while we, here and now, awake, can not quickly conclude any correlation in our vast experience, the sub-conscious mind potentially can. Our sub-conscious while we sleep and dream can take our entire collection of experiences and present a scenario based upon them. So with dreams about things that haven't happened, how accurate can they really be?
Emotional Memories
Most memories are passé, almost static if you will, they inspire little more than a fond feeling of nostalgia. There are however those special memories that in themselves can be something minute, but attached to them is a string of others that often brings on a flood of emotions and feelings that instantly transport us back to the place we were in our minds when the memory first happened.
Whether it's a song or a piece of Music you associated heavily with one person, or a Movie you loved as a child perhaps, that smell of food you haven't ate for years that only your grandma could seem to perfect - all these and more are associations, a stimulus invokes the memory which by association brings on the flood.
While I lived in London there were a few people I got to know, shared things with, became quite good friends then through the trials of life end up parting, sometimes amicably sometimes not so much. There were landmarks we went to see, clubs we had been to, bars we would frequent, and places we would grab something to eat. Around London there is a map of my memories and there are places that I can visit, or even just see pictures of and those memories come flooding back. I was aware of this so much to the point that I had a handful of places in London that I loved, which I vowed I would never take anyone to - for want of not spoiling my enjoyment of them and to this day that vow has been kept. The most notable would be my favourite place in Chinatown which I have only ever been to alone. There are fond memories, and I have often thought those places I love and have never shared could become so much more meaningful if I got to share them with someone, while my younger self would vehemently protest, as I have grown I have opened more to this idea, there is so much that I want to share, but recently I have come to realise I don't want to share it with the whole world, I want to share it with someone who will be my whole world.
There is a lot to be said about these memories, namely that breaking the association is perhaps one of the hardest things to do - I guess in many ways the emotions attached govern the association more than the memories themselves, in that line I can only imagine that a stronger emotion would be the only way to break the association, by replacing it with something better. This is in many ways a metaphor for life, the bad experiences of our past can be replaced by the good experiences we share in the present. I know this may sound cliché and some may protest that "nothing makes it all better" - but that may be a short sighted judgement, the future after all is unknown and we can only ever see where we want it to go or where we think it might, but our thoughts can influence the path, so try and look to a positive future filled with the dreams of today that will become the memories of tomorrow.
My mentality has changed over the years and in its present incarnation it is very much one that has come to accept that there will be certain things that remind me of certain people, those memories may not be happy, or they may be happy but sad at the same time, but I shouldn't fight this so much - a memory cannot harm you and it cannot control you if you do not let it. So I have come to accept that all that my life up until today is as it was always going to be, there are many things that could have been done differently but I could never have had it any other way. Everything has been leading up to my life, my past, my present, and my future. What is done is done and what will be will be. Let's see where this goes.
Whether it's a song or a piece of Music you associated heavily with one person, or a Movie you loved as a child perhaps, that smell of food you haven't ate for years that only your grandma could seem to perfect - all these and more are associations, a stimulus invokes the memory which by association brings on the flood.
While I lived in London there were a few people I got to know, shared things with, became quite good friends then through the trials of life end up parting, sometimes amicably sometimes not so much. There were landmarks we went to see, clubs we had been to, bars we would frequent, and places we would grab something to eat. Around London there is a map of my memories and there are places that I can visit, or even just see pictures of and those memories come flooding back. I was aware of this so much to the point that I had a handful of places in London that I loved, which I vowed I would never take anyone to - for want of not spoiling my enjoyment of them and to this day that vow has been kept. The most notable would be my favourite place in Chinatown which I have only ever been to alone. There are fond memories, and I have often thought those places I love and have never shared could become so much more meaningful if I got to share them with someone, while my younger self would vehemently protest, as I have grown I have opened more to this idea, there is so much that I want to share, but recently I have come to realise I don't want to share it with the whole world, I want to share it with someone who will be my whole world.
There is a lot to be said about these memories, namely that breaking the association is perhaps one of the hardest things to do - I guess in many ways the emotions attached govern the association more than the memories themselves, in that line I can only imagine that a stronger emotion would be the only way to break the association, by replacing it with something better. This is in many ways a metaphor for life, the bad experiences of our past can be replaced by the good experiences we share in the present. I know this may sound cliché and some may protest that "nothing makes it all better" - but that may be a short sighted judgement, the future after all is unknown and we can only ever see where we want it to go or where we think it might, but our thoughts can influence the path, so try and look to a positive future filled with the dreams of today that will become the memories of tomorrow.
My mentality has changed over the years and in its present incarnation it is very much one that has come to accept that there will be certain things that remind me of certain people, those memories may not be happy, or they may be happy but sad at the same time, but I shouldn't fight this so much - a memory cannot harm you and it cannot control you if you do not let it. So I have come to accept that all that my life up until today is as it was always going to be, there are many things that could have been done differently but I could never have had it any other way. Everything has been leading up to my life, my past, my present, and my future. What is done is done and what will be will be. Let's see where this goes.
Sunday Shuffle
Every Sunday I will post the first 6 songs my iPod throws up on Shuffle mode.
Rhythm Of My Heart - Rod Stewart
Dance Me To The End Of Love - Leonard Cohen
Little Black Book - Belinda Carlisle
Too Much Of You - Kelly Osbourne
Chemicals Collide - Boys Like Girls
Rhythm Of My Heart - Rod Stewart
Dance Me To The End Of Love - Leonard Cohen
Little Black Book - Belinda Carlisle
Too Much Of You - Kelly Osbourne
Growing Your Own Food
After watching BBC News Magazine's feature on allotments I got to thinking about the concept of growing your own food. For me the idea sounds intriguing, I know for many it would not be entirely practical if at all to grow your own food but perhaps self-sufficiency shouldn't necessarily be the goal, if we all grew just a little bit of any food really then the collective impact would ease the strain placed on our already exhaustive exploitation of resources.
When you think about it, we live in a society of waste. I would estimate some 90% of us will have access to ground whether that be in the form of a garden or a communal area or what have you, which most of us use for flowers or in my mind the completely useless lawn of grass. I say completely useless as a lawn essentially gives you nothing of great value, it does not help the planet breathe to the same magnitude several trees would and if anything it costs you money to maintain through the price of the electricity or petrol or other fuel you use to power your lawn mower. Scrap the lawn and build a small enclosure of greenhouses or plastic equivalents - you can buy these made from recycled plastic bottles.
If we put the ground we currently use for superficial aesthetic displays to some practical use we could make a difference together. If gardens filled with vegetables or fruits either in the open air or in greenhouses became common place we might even make a profit from our endeavours. Certainly one would expect the food we grow and consume to amount to a saving in the long term after you discount the initial investment.
I like the idea of being self sufficient and I certainly feel that governments should be more encouraging in this line, there are other areas such as solar power that could prove to be a significant opportunity. If the millions of homes in the UK were all to have solar panels fitted on their roofs the collective accumulation of energy minus our usage could result in a net gain in power, cutting our dependency on oil, gas, and other non-renewable sources of energy. If the collective capacity to generate energy exceeded our energy usage as a Country then we could find ourself in a position where we could have a new export - electricity.
When you think about it, we live in a society of waste. I would estimate some 90% of us will have access to ground whether that be in the form of a garden or a communal area or what have you, which most of us use for flowers or in my mind the completely useless lawn of grass. I say completely useless as a lawn essentially gives you nothing of great value, it does not help the planet breathe to the same magnitude several trees would and if anything it costs you money to maintain through the price of the electricity or petrol or other fuel you use to power your lawn mower. Scrap the lawn and build a small enclosure of greenhouses or plastic equivalents - you can buy these made from recycled plastic bottles.
If we put the ground we currently use for superficial aesthetic displays to some practical use we could make a difference together. If gardens filled with vegetables or fruits either in the open air or in greenhouses became common place we might even make a profit from our endeavours. Certainly one would expect the food we grow and consume to amount to a saving in the long term after you discount the initial investment.
I like the idea of being self sufficient and I certainly feel that governments should be more encouraging in this line, there are other areas such as solar power that could prove to be a significant opportunity. If the millions of homes in the UK were all to have solar panels fitted on their roofs the collective accumulation of energy minus our usage could result in a net gain in power, cutting our dependency on oil, gas, and other non-renewable sources of energy. If the collective capacity to generate energy exceeded our energy usage as a Country then we could find ourself in a position where we could have a new export - electricity.
Written in the stars - or in iTunes maybe?
I was listening to a playlist I have comprised of Madonna's Album Confessions on A Dance Floor, Hung Up the Single, together with Kelly Osbourne's Sleeping in the Nothing and Gwen Stefani's Love Angel Music Baby. I randomly hit shuffle to reorder the list and I saw the Track order and titles and thought by chance they seemed to almost make sense. So this is basically every song title in the order it appeared with some words added to make it coherent.
Song titles are enclosed in 'single quotes'
This is a 'Serious' 'Redlight': 'Don't touch me when I'm sleeping'. We live under the force of 'Entropy' within 'Suburbia', but you have to 'Jump' because of that 'One Word'. Don't worry, it will be 'cool', 'I Can't Wait' so 'What You Waiting For?'
'Push!', we have a 'Long Way To Go', for now we are just 'Future Lovers' waiting for 'The Real Thing'. Don't waste your life floating on the 'Edge Of Your Atmosphere', you have to let that 'Bubble Pop, Electric!'.
'Uh Oh', 'Sorry', I know 'The Real Thing' is hard to find, and you don't want to end up a 'Hollabeck Girl' but you need to know 'How High' you want to aim, before your worlds 'Crash' and youse 'Get Together', for now at least I could be your 'Secret Lover', but don't get 'Hung Up' on that 'One Word'.
'I Love New York', because I'm a little 'Rich Girl' but I get 'Hung Up' on life. People say 'Let It Will Be' but in this 'Luxurious' world no matter what you have you can always get 'Hung Up'. So come and 'Save Me', 'What You Waiting For?'
Don't get 'Hung Up' on the world as it is, or you'll fall into a 'Danger Zone' dreaming of 'Forbidden Love' you need to dress in your own style like those 'Harajuku Girls' and see the world you want it to be, as a visionary or a prophet, as 'Isaac'
Song titles are enclosed in 'single quotes'
This is a 'Serious' 'Redlight': 'Don't touch me when I'm sleeping'. We live under the force of 'Entropy' within 'Suburbia', but you have to 'Jump' because of that 'One Word'. Don't worry, it will be 'cool', 'I Can't Wait' so 'What You Waiting For?'
'Push!', we have a 'Long Way To Go', for now we are just 'Future Lovers' waiting for 'The Real Thing'. Don't waste your life floating on the 'Edge Of Your Atmosphere', you have to let that 'Bubble Pop, Electric!'.
'Uh Oh', 'Sorry', I know 'The Real Thing' is hard to find, and you don't want to end up a 'Hollabeck Girl' but you need to know 'How High' you want to aim, before your worlds 'Crash' and youse 'Get Together', for now at least I could be your 'Secret Lover', but don't get 'Hung Up' on that 'One Word'.
'I Love New York', because I'm a little 'Rich Girl' but I get 'Hung Up' on life. People say 'Let It Will Be' but in this 'Luxurious' world no matter what you have you can always get 'Hung Up'. So come and 'Save Me', 'What You Waiting For?'
Don't get 'Hung Up' on the world as it is, or you'll fall into a 'Danger Zone' dreaming of 'Forbidden Love' you need to dress in your own style like those 'Harajuku Girls' and see the world you want it to be, as a visionary or a prophet, as 'Isaac'
This is why I love the NHS
I awoke in the middle of Sunday night to find my stomach retching, moments later I was short of breath and the next thing I knew I threw up. I have vomited before, most people have. I have had gastroenteritis before, which for me was one of the worst experiences of my lifer, and when I was sick with it I actually cried when I threw up. This was different though, for a start it was unbelievably hot, at least that's how it felt, I assume this was simply the high acidity of the vomit. Whatever happened to me over the weekend to cause this, my stomach had obviously been working hard trying to break something down that it simply couldn't and after releasing an abundance of chemicals and acids to try and break it down it gave up and admitted defeat, what could not be digested had to come out, and it did.
Just after being sick my throat felt on fire, I drank some water and tried using mouthwash or anything to soothe it but to no avail. I eventually went back to bed in quite a lot of pain. I awoke at around 7 o'clock and my throat was still raw, my Tonsils were now the size of golf balls, I could not swallow without severe pain and the sensation that I was actually trying to swallow my tonsils, which caused me to choke and gag. Breathing became hard and every few moments my gag reflex made me feel like I was going to puke again. I went to the Doctor's surgery at 9 when it had just opened and they gave me an appointment for 10. I came back an hour later and the Doctor diagnosed the condition in all of 10 minutes. I walked out at 10 passed 10 with a prescription for Phenoxymethylpenicillin and Paracetamol, went to the Pharmacy straight away to pick it up and all I can say is thank God for the NHS, free drugs! and free prescriptions! [in NI anyway!], I took the first round and I have been doped up since. Thankfully my throat no longer feels like it is on fire. My Tonsils are returning to a normal size although they are still a little too big so they aren't healed completely. The Penicillin took almost immediate effect and I am grateful for that - I was actually quite worried, my Brother and my Father are allergic to Penicillin, Mum isn't though, and it appears that I am not either; I was dreading the possibility of having to get my Tonsils removed. I have another 6 days of the course of Antibiotics to finish.
For the most part I feel a hundred times better - while the tablets are in effect. I woke up last night in the middle of the night in agony and had to take a round so that I could get back to sleep. I am therefore assuming the awesomeness I am feeling of being relatively healthy is caused by the tablets and my throat is still healing. I am at a loss, and so is my Doctor as to what caused it though. As a result, I am now on an almost liquid only diet, the only exception I have made so far was for some egg noodles and sweet chilli which went down a treat - I know some of you will think "You ate egg while you were sick? You're insane" and you're probably right but when I am healthy I am usually quite resilient with food, however my reasoning is that the infection is probably confined to my throat as that is the only place I have any pain. Despite my reasoning, for the mean time though it's chicken soup, and either water or Apple Lucozade. This is affecting what I can and can't eat, and for me that is a very VERY big deal, I am a foodie, I never stop, even when I have a cold or a flu I still eat, albeit I usually switch to liquid based foods like soups, but right now I can't eat crisps [potato chips to my American readers] because they are quite rough and they'll irritate my throat, curry as it is hot and will also likely irritate my throat, and dairy products like cheese are off limits as they interfere with Penicillin absorption and after all they are virtually entirely bacteria based after all a block of cheese is basically a block of bacteria, so I have to avoid that - egg has no impact as far as I know.
In conclusion:
Thank you NHS.
Thank you Doctor.
Thank you Sir Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered Penicillin.
Just after being sick my throat felt on fire, I drank some water and tried using mouthwash or anything to soothe it but to no avail. I eventually went back to bed in quite a lot of pain. I awoke at around 7 o'clock and my throat was still raw, my Tonsils were now the size of golf balls, I could not swallow without severe pain and the sensation that I was actually trying to swallow my tonsils, which caused me to choke and gag. Breathing became hard and every few moments my gag reflex made me feel like I was going to puke again. I went to the Doctor's surgery at 9 when it had just opened and they gave me an appointment for 10. I came back an hour later and the Doctor diagnosed the condition in all of 10 minutes. I walked out at 10 passed 10 with a prescription for Phenoxymethylpenicillin and Paracetamol, went to the Pharmacy straight away to pick it up and all I can say is thank God for the NHS, free drugs! and free prescriptions! [in NI anyway!], I took the first round and I have been doped up since. Thankfully my throat no longer feels like it is on fire. My Tonsils are returning to a normal size although they are still a little too big so they aren't healed completely. The Penicillin took almost immediate effect and I am grateful for that - I was actually quite worried, my Brother and my Father are allergic to Penicillin, Mum isn't though, and it appears that I am not either; I was dreading the possibility of having to get my Tonsils removed. I have another 6 days of the course of Antibiotics to finish.
For the most part I feel a hundred times better - while the tablets are in effect. I woke up last night in the middle of the night in agony and had to take a round so that I could get back to sleep. I am therefore assuming the awesomeness I am feeling of being relatively healthy is caused by the tablets and my throat is still healing. I am at a loss, and so is my Doctor as to what caused it though. As a result, I am now on an almost liquid only diet, the only exception I have made so far was for some egg noodles and sweet chilli which went down a treat - I know some of you will think "You ate egg while you were sick? You're insane" and you're probably right but when I am healthy I am usually quite resilient with food, however my reasoning is that the infection is probably confined to my throat as that is the only place I have any pain. Despite my reasoning, for the mean time though it's chicken soup, and either water or Apple Lucozade. This is affecting what I can and can't eat, and for me that is a very VERY big deal, I am a foodie, I never stop, even when I have a cold or a flu I still eat, albeit I usually switch to liquid based foods like soups, but right now I can't eat crisps [potato chips to my American readers] because they are quite rough and they'll irritate my throat, curry as it is hot and will also likely irritate my throat, and dairy products like cheese are off limits as they interfere with Penicillin absorption and after all they are virtually entirely bacteria based after all a block of cheese is basically a block of bacteria, so I have to avoid that - egg has no impact as far as I know.
In conclusion:
Thank you NHS.
Thank you Doctor.
Thank you Sir Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered Penicillin.
Celebrities and Private Lives in the Public Eye
Should Celebrities be allowed to have a private life when in public? By this I mean, should they be able to do whatever they want in public or should the try to present themselves with a level of respect and decency that is expected of everyone else?
Personally I think 'privacy in public' is an oxymoron. I believe that no matter who you are famous or not you should always be aware that while you are in Public anyone can and will be watching. I think in public people should conduct themselves with a manner of respect regardless of your standing. I think when celebrities complain about their lack of privacy in public places that is an expectation of special treatment because of who they are.
I believe, anyone with a level of public influence has a responsibility to set an example. Children and impressionable adults for that matter, do not base 100% of their behaviour on their parents and parents are not present 100% of the time in a child's life. It is a fairly basic psychological principle that as we interact with others we base our behaviour on that of others we see around us.
I think in any job where public presence is part of the remit you should be expected to conduct yourself accordingly. There have been a number of cases involving celebrities and their twitter accounts, now arguably Twitter is the ultimate example of how people treat privacy in public. There are millions of conversations between people made openly back and forth between accounts, which i have mentioned previously on this blog, anything you tweet other than through Direct Messages can and will be seen by the world. In the same way you wouldn't necessarily walk down the street where everyone knew who you were and say something intensely personally - for a non famous person the easiest example here would be to imagine living in a small town where everyone knew each other and everyone knew you, in that situation you wouldn't walk down the street with a friend and have an open conversations about say visiting the Gynaecologist and some rash he was giving you advice on, while in ear shot of people around you.
Personally I think 'privacy in public' is an oxymoron. I believe that no matter who you are famous or not you should always be aware that while you are in Public anyone can and will be watching. I think in public people should conduct themselves with a manner of respect regardless of your standing. I think when celebrities complain about their lack of privacy in public places that is an expectation of special treatment because of who they are.
I believe, anyone with a level of public influence has a responsibility to set an example. Children and impressionable adults for that matter, do not base 100% of their behaviour on their parents and parents are not present 100% of the time in a child's life. It is a fairly basic psychological principle that as we interact with others we base our behaviour on that of others we see around us.
I think in any job where public presence is part of the remit you should be expected to conduct yourself accordingly. There have been a number of cases involving celebrities and their twitter accounts, now arguably Twitter is the ultimate example of how people treat privacy in public. There are millions of conversations between people made openly back and forth between accounts, which i have mentioned previously on this blog, anything you tweet other than through Direct Messages can and will be seen by the world. In the same way you wouldn't necessarily walk down the street where everyone knew who you were and say something intensely personally - for a non famous person the easiest example here would be to imagine living in a small town where everyone knew each other and everyone knew you, in that situation you wouldn't walk down the street with a friend and have an open conversations about say visiting the Gynaecologist and some rash he was giving you advice on, while in ear shot of people around you.
Sunday Shuffle
Every Sunday I will post the first 6 songs my iPod throws up on Shuffle mode.
I'm In Love - Starparty
Club Can't Handle Me - Flo-Rida feat David Guetta
Perfect Enemy - t.A.T.u
Life Goes On - LeAnn Rhimes
No One Needs To Know - Shania Twain
I'm In Love - Starparty
Club Can't Handle Me - Flo-Rida feat David Guetta
Perfect Enemy - t.A.T.u
Life Goes On - LeAnn Rhimes
Segregated Media
About 20 years ago in the UK there were 3 main Television networks, BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. BBC had 2 channels BBC One and BBC Two. ITV and C4 had 1 each. With 4 TV channels there was little choice as far as which channel to watch was concerned, however these channels broadcast an eclectic mix of content that ranged from Sports, News, Drama, Comedy, Entertainment, Music and Documentaries among others.
Today we have Digital Television. Freeview is the prominent free to air television service in the UK which has between 30 and 50 channels depending on your area and coverage. With Satellite and Cable services like BSkyB and Virgin Media Respectively there are hundreds of channels on offer. All these services still include the original 4 channels. The original networks have branched out however, BBC now has several channels as do ITV and Channel 4.
We have at our disposal today a vast array of TV channels. Many of them are specialist channels that deal in one type of programming only. Music Channels, Sports Channels, News Channels, Movie Channels etc. This vast array of channels seemingly providing choice conversely seems to be depleting the number of channels that offer mixed content. Take BBC for example they now show most of their comedy shows on BBC Three and most of their Documentaries and Arts programmes on BBC Four along with some Drama. As we move along this trend it's hard not to stop and ask the question of whether or not we will lose channels that broadcast Homogenised Media and move to a set-up where we have Segregated Media where each channel follows the 1 Channel : 1 Type of Programme scheduling structure.
Do we risk losing exposure to new content? In my previous posts I have said that one of the biggest problems I have with the Internet is that many of the websites and services that run over it make it too easy to fall into content bubbles. Watching a video on Youtube with related videos linked at the side you can easily end up in a cycle of related videos that lasts hours, but during that time you are often seeing the same type of content - there is a lack of diversity. By Youtube's very nature you have to know what you want to look up to find what you want to watch. Recently Youtube announced that it was hiring new content creators to make original content in a move seen by many as an attempt to create a more traditional TV Channel based experience where content is scheduled. It seems to be that one service [the Internet] is moving 'backward' in mimicking TV while the other [TV] is moving 'forward' in mimicking the traditional model of content online.
My fear is that Segregated Media will ultimately be the end of traditional TV, with the Internet taking up their old model of content combination it is preparing to take the reigns, TV will be replaced by the Internet and Segregated Media may be the final nail in the coffin that does it.
Today we have Digital Television. Freeview is the prominent free to air television service in the UK which has between 30 and 50 channels depending on your area and coverage. With Satellite and Cable services like BSkyB and Virgin Media Respectively there are hundreds of channels on offer. All these services still include the original 4 channels. The original networks have branched out however, BBC now has several channels as do ITV and Channel 4.
We have at our disposal today a vast array of TV channels. Many of them are specialist channels that deal in one type of programming only. Music Channels, Sports Channels, News Channels, Movie Channels etc. This vast array of channels seemingly providing choice conversely seems to be depleting the number of channels that offer mixed content. Take BBC for example they now show most of their comedy shows on BBC Three and most of their Documentaries and Arts programmes on BBC Four along with some Drama. As we move along this trend it's hard not to stop and ask the question of whether or not we will lose channels that broadcast Homogenised Media and move to a set-up where we have Segregated Media where each channel follows the 1 Channel : 1 Type of Programme scheduling structure.
Do we risk losing exposure to new content? In my previous posts I have said that one of the biggest problems I have with the Internet is that many of the websites and services that run over it make it too easy to fall into content bubbles. Watching a video on Youtube with related videos linked at the side you can easily end up in a cycle of related videos that lasts hours, but during that time you are often seeing the same type of content - there is a lack of diversity. By Youtube's very nature you have to know what you want to look up to find what you want to watch. Recently Youtube announced that it was hiring new content creators to make original content in a move seen by many as an attempt to create a more traditional TV Channel based experience where content is scheduled. It seems to be that one service [the Internet] is moving 'backward' in mimicking TV while the other [TV] is moving 'forward' in mimicking the traditional model of content online.
My fear is that Segregated Media will ultimately be the end of traditional TV, with the Internet taking up their old model of content combination it is preparing to take the reigns, TV will be replaced by the Internet and Segregated Media may be the final nail in the coffin that does it.
Emotions Running High
Call it happiness, call it joy, call it pride or call it whatever you want, for me I just call it emotion. When something becomes so moving that you have to cry. I felt compelled to write this post after seeing this photo-reel on BBC News on The Crying Games.
The London 2012 Olympic Games have been emotional for many people, within the sideshow captions you will see a quote that a Freeview survey of 2,000 viewers of the Olympic Games found that 2 out of 5 had cried watching the games and I would like to hold my hand up and say I am one of them. Not one of the people who took part in the survey, but one of the people who cried watching the games. There have been a few moments actually where tears have fallen, the opening ceremony was the start of it - literally - when the Olympic Athletes nominated seven young athletes with promising careers to light the Olympic Cauldron in unison, I welled up with tears of pride. I also shed a tear of joy when Andy Murray beat Roger Federer a month after his Wimbledon defeat to claim a Gold medal, I saw that as redemption for Murray and the scenes of Murray hugging a random kid in the audience who asked him for a hug just epitomised the entire experience for me.
The London 2012 Olympic Games have been emotional for many people, within the sideshow captions you will see a quote that a Freeview survey of 2,000 viewers of the Olympic Games found that 2 out of 5 had cried watching the games and I would like to hold my hand up and say I am one of them. Not one of the people who took part in the survey, but one of the people who cried watching the games. There have been a few moments actually where tears have fallen, the opening ceremony was the start of it - literally - when the Olympic Athletes nominated seven young athletes with promising careers to light the Olympic Cauldron in unison, I welled up with tears of pride. I also shed a tear of joy when Andy Murray beat Roger Federer a month after his Wimbledon defeat to claim a Gold medal, I saw that as redemption for Murray and the scenes of Murray hugging a random kid in the audience who asked him for a hug just epitomised the entire experience for me.
Forgiveness
As far as Karma is concerned, you should try to forgive anyone who has wronged you and not hold hatred towards them. The belief is that they will receive what is due in time for their behaviour and their actions, as well as the belief that you as an individual should not continue to harbour hate and resentment as this will attract tragedy to your life.
Now, I don't know if I can completely agree with these principles to live your life by. Certainly I will agree that you should try and avoid harbouring hate and resentment as these emotions will eventually consume you and affect your decisions in life - I believe when bad things happen we should deal with them and try to move on as best we can.
However I can't agree with the idea that you should forgive people for anything wrong they do against you. There are many things I would try to forgive, and I would like to think that I am a somewhat reasonable person and willing to try and understand most things, however for me personally there are things which I can not forgive - ever. I don't believe this is an example of a short temper or impatience and I certainly don't believe it is a lack of giving others the benefit of the doubt or an opportunity to redeem themselves.
For me the simple fact is that for everyone there will be certain things they can't stand and there will be certain things they don't like talking about or don't like to do. I think that anyone who continuously ignores this is being selfish and ultimately exerts an oppression over you. I don't believe when people make the same mistake repeatedly after multiple warnings and reprieves that they should be forgiven perpetually. There has to be a line you draw where you have enough and everything is lost, no amount of sympathy will be given and ultimately you must exert for yourself the demand for respect you deserve - if that means treating someone harshly or with a completely uncensored attitude then I believe it is justified. Just as a Judge must be true to the law when passing judgement on an individual I think personal beliefs and behaviours sometimes need to take a back seat and you have to treat people with the level of disrespect their ignorance has earned.
Now, I don't know if I can completely agree with these principles to live your life by. Certainly I will agree that you should try and avoid harbouring hate and resentment as these emotions will eventually consume you and affect your decisions in life - I believe when bad things happen we should deal with them and try to move on as best we can.
However I can't agree with the idea that you should forgive people for anything wrong they do against you. There are many things I would try to forgive, and I would like to think that I am a somewhat reasonable person and willing to try and understand most things, however for me personally there are things which I can not forgive - ever. I don't believe this is an example of a short temper or impatience and I certainly don't believe it is a lack of giving others the benefit of the doubt or an opportunity to redeem themselves.
For me the simple fact is that for everyone there will be certain things they can't stand and there will be certain things they don't like talking about or don't like to do. I think that anyone who continuously ignores this is being selfish and ultimately exerts an oppression over you. I don't believe when people make the same mistake repeatedly after multiple warnings and reprieves that they should be forgiven perpetually. There has to be a line you draw where you have enough and everything is lost, no amount of sympathy will be given and ultimately you must exert for yourself the demand for respect you deserve - if that means treating someone harshly or with a completely uncensored attitude then I believe it is justified. Just as a Judge must be true to the law when passing judgement on an individual I think personal beliefs and behaviours sometimes need to take a back seat and you have to treat people with the level of disrespect their ignorance has earned.
Inflated Statistics
The population of the London Metropolitan Area is just shy of 14 million. Having lived in London I can believe this, simply because I have witnessed the vast numbers of people that populate the city. The population of my home town where I was born is 27,000 - I find this harder to believe. I find it hard to believe for a number of reasons the first few would be that, I don't believe the infrastructure to support that many people exists, I know quite a few people there and so do my family and close friends, I know the theory of six degrees of separation but I don't think I can number 27k with just 1 degree, but I could have known the name of any passing person, or at least a friend at most would know if I didn't. The other reason would be the lack of large crowds and the relatively sparse level of housing. While there are many housing estates when you consider the number and the occupancy it would be hard to push any population figure beyond say 5 to 9 thousand.
The population of the city I live in at the moment when you take in the urban area is approximately 24,000 and again I find this hard to believe mostly for the same reasons above. These are just two examples of statistics of which I question the accuracy. The population of the UK overall is 62 million. The population of Earth is supposedly 7 billion. The wider you make the scope the more seriously questioning the statistics is taken. Question your local population figures and you're probably laughed at but question the 7 billion figure for the world and people wouldn't be so quick to laugh as there are legitimate arguments against these figures as they are deemed to be approximated - there has never been an all encompassing "world census". The question is whether your local population figures and invariably the amalgamated figures that comprise your country's overall population are accurate.
Let's try something else. If you google 'anything' you will see "displaying results 1 to 20 of 2,420,000,000 results" - 2.4 billion results - really? Now if you actually go beyond the first page of results - I know, welcome to a world rarely seen - you'll find there's a limit to how far Google will go. For 'anything' Google let me go 77 pages.
Now, forgetting the fact that page 77 has less than 20 results on it, if we multiply thee 20 results per page it presents you'll find that the most search results Google presents for the term is typically 1,540 that figure is a far cry from 2.4 billion. Now I don't doubt that there are a lot of web sites online and I don't doubt that Google has indexed a lot, I do doubt however whether Google really has cached 2.4 billion pages, and that's a trivial example you can try yourself, you can find lots of searches that will return higher "results"
What is at question here is whether or not we can truly trust these "statistics" and whether they are accurate or vastly inflated. Google uses a page rank system. It's search results are initially like that of any other search engine - quite useless really. Google re-orders its results based on the popularity each result. This is hard to demonstrate without going to great lengths. The people who will have experienced this first hand will be people who have built their own websites. When you search for something that no-one else has searched for before, Google is rather useless. If you start a new business with a unique company name and create a website, Goggling your company name for some time along will return nothing - even if you have a name that is a Googlewhack - a search term without quotes that will return only 1 result - your new customers have to find you through your content, not your name. So if you were a company selling bicycles then people would have to search for your company name and a keyword related to cycling. The more popular your site becomes the quicker it will rise up google's ranking and appear at the top.
The relevance this has to our discussion is that Google at the end of the day is not a search engine that presents billions of results for a given term, it presents results that other people have clicked for a given term. In order to keep that momentum going you need to feed back the search term and the result you clicked, if one result eventually becomes more popular then it moves up. Now for the question - if you only ever see the top 1,500 ish results for a given term, and they struggle amongst themselves for the top spot, how can you be sure that beyond those 1,500 Google really has listed them all for a given search term? The moment you introduce another single keyword to your search, effectively you have a new set of results, one that mixes the old set and the new set for that word.
Now before I leave you I want to give you two new terms to add to your computer vocabulary. They are "Surface web" and "Deep web". The Surface Web is comprised of every website that search engines can reach. The Deep web is comprised of every website that search engines can not reach due to technical barriers - mainly log-in only sites which have not given search engines access, dynamically generated sites that present content on request etc. There are methods to make these web sites available to search engines but the majority are not. The surface web is quite small in comparison to the deep web. The terms were coined Mike Bergman as this New York Times Article will explain: Exploring the Deep Web that Google can't grasp.
According to WorldWideWebSize - a site which estimates the size of the web based on amalgamated data from Yahoo, Google and Bing.- there are currently around 8 billion web pages. WWWSize uses two metrics:
GYB - Google, Yahoo and Bing
YGB - Yahoo, Google and Bing
The first engine is sued to retireve a data set, so in GYB Google is used first, then those results are checked against Yahoo and Bing and the final set contains all entries that Google listed that both Yahoo and Bing listed. YGB does the same, but starts with Yahoo, retrieving its entire set first then reducing it based to entries that both Google and Bing contain. GYB and YGB result in different set sizes due to the fact that Google 'indexes more pages' than Yahoo
In both scenarios above you effectively remove the inflation and see the pages that each search engine can verify exist. So, if the three working together can at most find 8 billion pages that exist, should you really believe Google when it tells you it found 2.4 trillion results for your query?
Just for fun if you like, see what the highest number of results you can get Google to say it found. I'll set the bar for you with "a" which returns 25.27 trillion results apparently.
The population of the city I live in at the moment when you take in the urban area is approximately 24,000 and again I find this hard to believe mostly for the same reasons above. These are just two examples of statistics of which I question the accuracy. The population of the UK overall is 62 million. The population of Earth is supposedly 7 billion. The wider you make the scope the more seriously questioning the statistics is taken. Question your local population figures and you're probably laughed at but question the 7 billion figure for the world and people wouldn't be so quick to laugh as there are legitimate arguments against these figures as they are deemed to be approximated - there has never been an all encompassing "world census". The question is whether your local population figures and invariably the amalgamated figures that comprise your country's overall population are accurate.
Let's try something else. If you google 'anything' you will see "displaying results 1 to 20 of 2,420,000,000 results" - 2.4 billion results - really? Now if you actually go beyond the first page of results - I know, welcome to a world rarely seen - you'll find there's a limit to how far Google will go. For 'anything' Google let me go 77 pages.
Now, forgetting the fact that page 77 has less than 20 results on it, if we multiply thee 20 results per page it presents you'll find that the most search results Google presents for the term is typically 1,540 that figure is a far cry from 2.4 billion. Now I don't doubt that there are a lot of web sites online and I don't doubt that Google has indexed a lot, I do doubt however whether Google really has cached 2.4 billion pages, and that's a trivial example you can try yourself, you can find lots of searches that will return higher "results"
What is at question here is whether or not we can truly trust these "statistics" and whether they are accurate or vastly inflated. Google uses a page rank system. It's search results are initially like that of any other search engine - quite useless really. Google re-orders its results based on the popularity each result. This is hard to demonstrate without going to great lengths. The people who will have experienced this first hand will be people who have built their own websites. When you search for something that no-one else has searched for before, Google is rather useless. If you start a new business with a unique company name and create a website, Goggling your company name for some time along will return nothing - even if you have a name that is a Googlewhack - a search term without quotes that will return only 1 result - your new customers have to find you through your content, not your name. So if you were a company selling bicycles then people would have to search for your company name and a keyword related to cycling. The more popular your site becomes the quicker it will rise up google's ranking and appear at the top.
The relevance this has to our discussion is that Google at the end of the day is not a search engine that presents billions of results for a given term, it presents results that other people have clicked for a given term. In order to keep that momentum going you need to feed back the search term and the result you clicked, if one result eventually becomes more popular then it moves up. Now for the question - if you only ever see the top 1,500 ish results for a given term, and they struggle amongst themselves for the top spot, how can you be sure that beyond those 1,500 Google really has listed them all for a given search term? The moment you introduce another single keyword to your search, effectively you have a new set of results, one that mixes the old set and the new set for that word.
Now before I leave you I want to give you two new terms to add to your computer vocabulary. They are "Surface web" and "Deep web". The Surface Web is comprised of every website that search engines can reach. The Deep web is comprised of every website that search engines can not reach due to technical barriers - mainly log-in only sites which have not given search engines access, dynamically generated sites that present content on request etc. There are methods to make these web sites available to search engines but the majority are not. The surface web is quite small in comparison to the deep web. The terms were coined Mike Bergman as this New York Times Article will explain: Exploring the Deep Web that Google can't grasp.
According to WorldWideWebSize - a site which estimates the size of the web based on amalgamated data from Yahoo, Google and Bing.- there are currently around 8 billion web pages. WWWSize uses two metrics:
GYB - Google, Yahoo and Bing
YGB - Yahoo, Google and Bing
The first engine is sued to retireve a data set, so in GYB Google is used first, then those results are checked against Yahoo and Bing and the final set contains all entries that Google listed that both Yahoo and Bing listed. YGB does the same, but starts with Yahoo, retrieving its entire set first then reducing it based to entries that both Google and Bing contain. GYB and YGB result in different set sizes due to the fact that Google 'indexes more pages' than Yahoo
In both scenarios above you effectively remove the inflation and see the pages that each search engine can verify exist. So, if the three working together can at most find 8 billion pages that exist, should you really believe Google when it tells you it found 2.4 trillion results for your query?
Just for fun if you like, see what the highest number of results you can get Google to say it found. I'll set the bar for you with "a" which returns 25.27 trillion results apparently.
Sunday Shuffle
Every Sunday I will post the first 6 songs my iPod throws up on Shuffle mode.
All God's Children - Belinda Carlisle
Sally's Pigeons - Cyndi Lauper
Call On Me [Red Kult Remix] - Eric Prydz
Speakerphone - Kylie Minogue
Lose My Mind - The Wanted
anti-Social Networks
With my latest 30 day posting challenge wrapped up I thought I may as well explain now what has been going on with me in regards to social networks. I would not at all say that I have become anti-internet or anti-networking but in regards to Social Networking I have definitely moved myself into the anti-Social Network camp.
There are many who believe that Social Networks in reality breed anti-social behaviour, and I would have argued against this view for years when I was a member of various social networking sites, but I think as you gain a little more perspective on their use you do have to stop and think about what you want to be on a Social Network for and what you gain from doing so. We can start with Facebook as I axed that recently. Now as I explained elsewhere you can deactivate your account, and reactivate at any time - I didn't do this though. I actually deleted my account, which is a two step process, you request deletion and then get a confirmation, that tells you your account has been marked for deletion, you have two weeks to change your mind. Two weeks pass and if you didn't log in then the account is deleted. I did this for mine.
I first joined Facebook in 2006 when I was at University, when Facebook was a closed service, you had to be a student at a University that was part of the Facebook network and you had to have an Academic email address in order to sign up. Facebook was very much for students. There were a lot of networking features, each Network had its own Network home page so my University had one, you could easily find people at your University, I met a few through it and I engaged with the people I went to Uni with on it. Over the years the purpose of Facebook has become more and more ambiguous for me, slowly it moved to the point where I really only logged in to see what other people were up to, check messages and reply to anyone that had contacted me.Then came Applications mainly Games I played a few of those but I have the Android versions of the ones I played now. I have other ways of contacting the people I want to speak to and as for posting things to Facebook with the Public nature of the site even with privacy controls the motivation has very much died. My blog serves the purpose of letting me publish things I want the world to see, and there is no ambiguity here, there is no access control you see everything and anyone can comment, it's simple and I am conscious of the simple guideline: "If you don't want people to see it, then don't post it".
Twitter has been the same as Facebook in essence. Google+ however was an interesting endeavour and in the end I realised that it wasn't for me, the reason being that it was far too easy for trolls and other negative commentators to trawl. With a blog you have to go out of your way to find it, that or it will be something you discover in passing and bookmark for later. With social networks you tend to log on with the intent of engaging. I don't mind if people read my blog and don't comment, I'm not really here for comments, although they are appreciated, they aren't the reason I blog - and therein lies the main problem with social networks, the reason many use them is because the comments, the likes, the retweets, the favourites, the +1s and the reposts are the reasons many people use social networks. They want to feel popular and they want to showcase that popularity to the world or to their world. I have never been one for fame. I would much rather have fortune, I would much rather have happiness more than anything, I have never seen popularity or fame as a means to that end so I have never sought it. In my life I was always quite private, and it was my time at University that flipped that side of me to become one that was quite Public, there was a freedom and a sense of liberation in being that way but I have gained insights into the kind of people who treat anyone with that attitude as a piece of entertainment, as something they can watch or "play with" in other words: the more open you make our life the less sincere the people who look into it will be.
To that end I am reverting to my teenage self in many ways. The last 9 years of my life are being undone and I am becoming the private, quiet person I once was, the type of person who spoke to others when spoken to and only told others what they asked, if you don't ask I won't tell. This blog will remain a window on my life and the level of openness I have exhibited on here will remain constant but as I said in my About Me section, if you want to know more you'll have to ask me, and I have very much made that a requirement more than a suggestion now, you won't find me on any social networks, you won't be able to find out things for your self so if there is anything you want to know, you really will have no other choice but to ask me.
There are many who believe that Social Networks in reality breed anti-social behaviour, and I would have argued against this view for years when I was a member of various social networking sites, but I think as you gain a little more perspective on their use you do have to stop and think about what you want to be on a Social Network for and what you gain from doing so. We can start with Facebook as I axed that recently. Now as I explained elsewhere you can deactivate your account, and reactivate at any time - I didn't do this though. I actually deleted my account, which is a two step process, you request deletion and then get a confirmation, that tells you your account has been marked for deletion, you have two weeks to change your mind. Two weeks pass and if you didn't log in then the account is deleted. I did this for mine.
I first joined Facebook in 2006 when I was at University, when Facebook was a closed service, you had to be a student at a University that was part of the Facebook network and you had to have an Academic email address in order to sign up. Facebook was very much for students. There were a lot of networking features, each Network had its own Network home page so my University had one, you could easily find people at your University, I met a few through it and I engaged with the people I went to Uni with on it. Over the years the purpose of Facebook has become more and more ambiguous for me, slowly it moved to the point where I really only logged in to see what other people were up to, check messages and reply to anyone that had contacted me.Then came Applications mainly Games I played a few of those but I have the Android versions of the ones I played now. I have other ways of contacting the people I want to speak to and as for posting things to Facebook with the Public nature of the site even with privacy controls the motivation has very much died. My blog serves the purpose of letting me publish things I want the world to see, and there is no ambiguity here, there is no access control you see everything and anyone can comment, it's simple and I am conscious of the simple guideline: "If you don't want people to see it, then don't post it".
Twitter has been the same as Facebook in essence. Google+ however was an interesting endeavour and in the end I realised that it wasn't for me, the reason being that it was far too easy for trolls and other negative commentators to trawl. With a blog you have to go out of your way to find it, that or it will be something you discover in passing and bookmark for later. With social networks you tend to log on with the intent of engaging. I don't mind if people read my blog and don't comment, I'm not really here for comments, although they are appreciated, they aren't the reason I blog - and therein lies the main problem with social networks, the reason many use them is because the comments, the likes, the retweets, the favourites, the +1s and the reposts are the reasons many people use social networks. They want to feel popular and they want to showcase that popularity to the world or to their world. I have never been one for fame. I would much rather have fortune, I would much rather have happiness more than anything, I have never seen popularity or fame as a means to that end so I have never sought it. In my life I was always quite private, and it was my time at University that flipped that side of me to become one that was quite Public, there was a freedom and a sense of liberation in being that way but I have gained insights into the kind of people who treat anyone with that attitude as a piece of entertainment, as something they can watch or "play with" in other words: the more open you make our life the less sincere the people who look into it will be.
To that end I am reverting to my teenage self in many ways. The last 9 years of my life are being undone and I am becoming the private, quiet person I once was, the type of person who spoke to others when spoken to and only told others what they asked, if you don't ask I won't tell. This blog will remain a window on my life and the level of openness I have exhibited on here will remain constant but as I said in my About Me section, if you want to know more you'll have to ask me, and I have very much made that a requirement more than a suggestion now, you won't find me on any social networks, you won't be able to find out things for your self so if there is anything you want to know, you really will have no other choice but to ask me.
Breaking The Circles
Show me where I belong tonightGive me a reason to stayNo matter if I go left or rightI always come back to your love
This song is one from my childhood, one that I have shared with a few people over the years. When I hear it, it inspires moments of nostalgia where I look back and think, where are they now? I say that for the singer more than anyone else, Samantha Mumba seemed to drop off the face of the Earth but then again a lot of teen artists did that too.
Your love for me came as a waterfallFlowing inside me like never beforeYour love for me, something I didn't seeBut baby, I know better now
So as for me and my Nostalgia, I am happy enough with my memories. I remember the good and the bad, which has lead others to say I focus on the negatives in life, I would argue however that remembering the good and the bad helps me to try and prevent myself from repeating past mistakes - whether or not I am successful in doing so is another matter entirely.
On that note I will leave you with another Nostalgia ridden track!
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