Happy Sunday to mother’s everywhere today. To celebrate (in a probably than likely artistically cheesy way), here’s some rhyme to give out my message this year to all the mums around the world:
Those that carried us from the start and carried on since then.
Those that fed us and kept us clean, changed, rearranged and many things unseen.
Those that paid out and others made to ensure we had what we needed over the decades.
Those that helped us walk, speak and play both physically and socially for the everday.
Those that bailed us out or listened to what we had to say.
Those that looked after our friends in sometimes when told “Muuum, go away”, but carried on all the same and let us have our way.
Those that may sometimes boss us around and tell us about our wrongs and how to come around.
Those who helped to pave our way and those who support us even when things fray.
And for those that maybe don’t get to say this to your mums all of the time, use today to celebrate be it in gifts or actions or rhyme.
Because whether she’s in the next room or looking down from ‘out there’, no matter your age, your place, your time, your mother will love you and always be there.
Hope you have a wonderful and blessed day wherever you and you children may be and remember that one wouldn’t be without your other.
So as a follow up in some degree of my musings a few weeks ago in “Dear World…”, something has been stirring in the various universes of Social Media again. It’s always been there, but many people don’t usually notice it. Now people do know about it though, it’s interesting to see the exposure of people covering stuff up recently. What I’m talking in relation to is the discrimination of people based on race, religion and sexuality.
Politically, it’s hard to ignore the way the American border is under question with the Trump administration threatening to close it off to anyone whom happens to be from a certain country with a certain faith. It’s happening the other way too, particularly with every other conflict mentioned in the middle east at the moment being based around faith. And I can’t fail the mention the controversy on both sides surrounding the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.
Entertainment and the media (our supposed means of escaping our current world) aren’t safe either. The recent exposure of YouTube with it’s ‘Restricted’ content filter removing a lot of LGBTQ+ content has hit blogs and social media around the web recently and for film, music and book buffs in the last couple of years, it’s noticeable that artists of these fields are seen to be really pushing their inclusion of diversity to noticeable levels (often counteracting the point) such as pointing out characters as homosexual or a specific gender in films or overdoing/poorly planning characters in books and films. Now, whilst it’s great that people are being more inclusive with their work, it’s not something to stick a neon sign on as if you deserve a reward for doing it. The whole idea around diversity settling issues with gender, race and religious equality is that it is just that, equal. Holding up metaphorical neon signs to go “Look, my film has all female main characters!” or saying things like “in my adaption, I made sure that X was bisexual and reinterpreted Y as an Asian person” isn’t really going to do anything other than shine a light on them because of the features and barriers you were apparently trying to remove and provoking the argument back again for your audience.
Everyone is entitled and everyone has the right to an opinion, even if you don’t agree with it. But if you differ, it doesn’t give you the right to go forcing yours upon them. Many people believe that by enforcing their broad opinion, they’re doing good in the world (such as blocking Muslims from entering your country, banning sexuality because you thought it wrong or persecuting your own people for not following your particular strain of the religion). Let me ask you this honestly, just how is that benefiting? How does that solve the problem you think you’re having.
Neutralisation follows a number of definitions. The greatest one though, means nobody against anybody, rather than merely eliminating those who might compete with your interests.
But that’s just my opinion and if you have a differing one, that’s totally fine. Just don’t force me to change mine is all I ask as I would say not to take my post as fact either.
Whatever you think, just sort yourselves out world. I’m tired about hearing all this globally childish playground bullying in my news online, on TV and on radio (so much so ironically I’m almost relying exclusively on my curated RSS feeds in feedly to let me know the going ons in the world). Get your *ahem* selves together, grow a pair of your respective genitalia (whatever you identify yourself as) and keep the concept of Compressors, Filters and Gates in mediums such as video and audio production for processing data rather than trying to use those tactics in the real world and learn to negotiate rather than dictating who you think is right (because who in reality can moderate the moderators?)
That’s not much to say this week since Technology seems to have formed an alliance of gathered again me, from my desktop environment flipping or and wiping the equivalent of a start menu on me, to trying to reinstall and the getting corrupted, to the new OS installing but won’t boot, to the boot repair fixing the startup but again corrupting an important role that caused the new OS not to boot and also how ignore the USB drive I need to ‘rescue’ the system and the raspberry pi u have upstairs for backup refusing to install extra software that might help make aforementioned USB force the laptop to boot it on account of an ‘unknown error’.
So this week I’m writing this on the WordPress app (which only just runs ad my running low on memory due to LG and Android’s bloat ware hogging about 65% of capacity after updates).
That’s probably the most extreme thing that’s happened, but it’s situations like this you just want a hand grenade to throw arms walk away slowly with a fresh start.
Who knows, the week might pick up if I commit enough good in the world. Maybe.
As humans, we all need a break sometimes. I don’t like to admit it sometimes, which can only be backed by the terms often used to describe me: dedicated, a workaholic, a machine, sad or passionate. As much as it’s great to keep churning though, it’s good to know when to stop before you body decides to do it for you and after a week of battering followed by an amazing leaving do for my good friend and former colleague (in the same place of work that is) on top of working on my hobby of these blogs as well as doing the everyday tasks of looking after myself and my flat (which when you live alone you realise how much you’re responsible for).
Given I had a pretty busy Thursday and a long Friday, plus the outing and my body now had the fun job of picking up the pieces, I was quickly put into Maintenance mode for the day and whilst this hampered many efforts for what I wanted to achieve for the weekend and went against my former uni self’s prophecy that “sleep is for the weak” and that lazy days were a waste of time, I certainly feel a lot better for it and if anything have more drive to achieve what I want to achieve this week and further forward!
So, I know it’s a little short this week, but if I have any advice to anyone who’s reading this week, it’s if you feel great, keep going and if you’re feeling tired, take a break. It doesn’t feel like it at first but you’re body will thank you when you’re raring to go again. And for those outstaying their welcome in chillandia, get back to it! There is such thing as too much of a good thing and if you overdo the relaxation, you won’t appreciate it as much anymore and if anything it may start to undo your motivation to keep moving forward!
Happy Sunday all of you and once you’ve had some time to reflect, go get em for next week, even if it’s just a single step!
We’re all on a journey somewhere in our lives. We all have hopes, dream, aspirations. But getting out there and achieving them? That often seems to be for a select few. They call them the inspired and the motivated.
Now I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say I struggle with motivation sometimes (considering writing a 2,500 word essay with references was a common challenge at uni, you can imagine having the drive to do 2k a week for you guys doesn’t always come on tap).
If you feel the same and you need a boost, a video I watched 4 years ago to the day (according to the Facebook Application) was this wonderful video by code.org encouraging people to learn to code:
Or, if you’re more of a sports fan, how about something along the lines of BBC Get Inspired? And I shouldn’t need to mention a certain bearded man with a motivation speech that I’m surprised that Nike haven’t sued him for yet…
Whatever your passion, there’s always someone or something out there to get your head out of the sand and your backside off that lazy chair!
Usually the biggest problem is wondering “what if?” or questioning the value of it. That’s okay, if it’s a mere doubt, don’t let it sit and fester (as that only drives you further into doubt), address it and talk through it with your friends. Often hearing their answers can inspire you to get back on your feet. If your doubts are too many to mention or you can’t see the way out, ask yourself – “is this what I want to do?”. If you can’t say yes, use that to ironically drive yourself away from it and go and do something new you feel passionate about.
Whilst it’s quite the cliché, it is true that they say we’re “not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time”, and this applies to your work and your hobbies too. If there’s an opportunity out there to do what you enjoy, why not do it? Just a thought…
If there’s not, is there perhaps a way you could influence these opportunities (a change of scenery or lifestyle or social circles?)
The journey to next Sunday may feel a thousand miles away, but as the old Chinese proverb still states, we’ll only get there if we’re willing to start with a single step.
I’m not meaning to jump on any sort of bandwagon (especially since my post concerns more than what’s happening YouTube), but considering the conversation is buzzing in in web now seems like a better time than any to give my two pence on the issues we’re facing in society today. And by issues I mean the racism, the accusations and the general disrespect and discrimination of other’s opinions.
Now, I know the voice of one person on a fairly young blog with a small readership won’t make much of a dent on society’s way of thinking, but it’s good to get the conversation out there in these turbulent times if we’re going to have any chance of resolving it.
Respect is something that every human being is capable of producing and if you want it, you should give it.
Opinions are something else everyone has the right to posses and you don’t have to agree with everybody’s opinion. But you should respect it. Whilst it can be argued that facts are formed from an agreed set of opinions at the time of definition, the terminology isn’t reversible. Opinions are not fact, so (in my opinion) you should never force them down each others throats as if they were.
It seems surrounding (but not accusing them directly) the recent world events of the conflict in the east, to Brexit in the UK and the inauguration of President Trump’s Administration it seems these basic rules have been forgotten and the concept of “labels” has turned from adjectives to describe the interests and personality of people to nouns to define a class of people on the basis of their beliefs and opinions.
This is wrong.
Just because somebody has a particular opinion or happens to have a little more melanin in their skin, doesn’t mean they can be associated with a stereotype. Just because someone has black skin doesn’t make them a gang member, nor does a women wearing a burqa mean she belongs to a family of terrorists. When you have no solid evidence on your personal claim, it sounds pretty obvious right? So does that make it OK to call a Brexiter or Rupublican a racist? Or a guy that happens to wear Burberry, but whom is just stood in the street a chav? or perhaps a videographer makes a poor choice of subject matter to mock a particular issue an anti-semite?
Of course it doesn’t!
We are all human beings at the end of the day. We might come from different backgrounds and sometimes we make mistakes in hurting each other through ignorance, poor judgement or misunderstanding, but that doesn’t mean we can be put into a box and assume that our entire personality aligns to that one belief.
If you have read any Dystopian fiction in your time or even high fantasy, you should already well know that these labels don’t last and the people who follow the association are often made to look like fools. Just because Slytherins were described as “cunning folk [that] use any means, To achieve their ends”, doesn’t mean everyone in that house in Harry Potter were automatically evil. As Harry explains to his son Albus in the film adaption of the Deathly Hallows, “You were named after two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was the bravest man I’d ever known.” If you’ve not read the story yet, I won’t spoil it for you by explaining, but if you have – you know. Other popular stories long prior and following this have tried to show the same message such as Katniss Everdeen of the poor District 12 in the Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent trilogy whom transformed from her Abnegation beginnings or even the actions of History Wiping Winston of Minitrue in Nighteen Eighty Four.
There’s nothing wrong with people being a little different to yourself. So somebody you meet is a vegetarian and you’re a meat loving omnivore. That doesn’t mean you two can’t be friends, just respect each other’s boundries and values and don’t try to convert each other to your side. I myself am a Linux user on computers after changing to it from a couple of years ago. That doesn’t mean I think any less of Windows users (considering I still use it 5 days a week at work). I’ve never been a fan of Apple’s interfaces on iPhones, iPads and macOS and yes I have a bit of friendly banter and joke with the 5 people in the office that use a Mac in one way or another and most of them being iPhone users too or possessing an iPad, but we never ridicule each other for our choices, nor do we seek to prevent each other from having these experiences in our lives. So why is it okay for others to do that on a larger scale in politics?
Why is it okay to stop people coming into our country? For women to discriminate men for things and say it’s not sexist because they were like that in the past? To attack people because they don’t follow the same lifestyle nor pray everyday to the same god you do? Because it’s not.
It still makes me wonder with many people living off and referencing fiction, even in the digital age through watching TV or on demand services like Now TV or Netflix how people were happy to apply some of the principles of these into pop culture, but never quite grasped the message.
For those that are happy to preach and label others, let me ask you 3 questions. What are you achieving? Where’s your evidence the person you’re labelling is who you say they are? And does this mean we can label you as a ‘moron’ if it turns out you’re wrong? I really hope for your sakes your answers will be along the lines of ‘nothing’, ‘none’ and ‘no’. Because as YouTubers such as Boogie2988, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and Philip DeFranco all state, we aren’t the identities and labels people are putting on us. We are humans, with feelings and opinions and if we all want to get on in this world, we have to realise we don’t all agree all the time. But with respect for each other’s opinions without agression or hate and malice, you might just get some back next time you say something that’s against the grain.
And if you’re really not sure about a something, don’t just follow the crowd or blindly back the source that’s telling you. Do some research of your own and form your own opinion from purely that. For instance if you want to tell me terrorism is formed as an Islamic order based on what all Muslims read in the Qu’ran, show me the verse(es) that explicitly say that. If you believe that all chavs rob houses and people as well as deal drugs, show me all the CCTV evidence you can get your hands on. If you think Pewdiepie is anti-semite that’s publishing this in his videos, show me the specific source videos in full.
Disagree with anything I said? Cool, Let me know calmly in the comments below why and what your own opinions are and, if required, some source evidence to back up anything you claim as fact.
And next time you want to raise an issue or opinion about someone or something, as John Agard would put it:
come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu min
…then tell me the other half of the story.
Finally, I’ll leave you with the English version of a Danish TV network advert I discovered through FBE’s REACT series (which I then sourced and watched in it’s full original form) that sums up my long-winded opinion on all of this:
Respect isn’t a right some of us are born with. It’s something we can all give out and something we can all earn. But we can only all earn it, if we all learn to give it out.
In most working lives you’re expected to take a bit of time off for yourself and on my week this time I thought I would pay a visit to Nottingham to see my dad and his partner as well as a few childhood friends.
After living away for each period of time it’s often nice to go back to your roots and in my case (granted at least one thing always changes) it feels like you can get back to lose line you never left.
Trying to continue your current life with your old one however doesn’t always work out. For instance, when i came home from undergraduate university life, it was often tricky getting back into living under a parental roof, not being steps away from the nightlife and feeling a little less independent. In this its year’s case, it was tricky trying to keep pace with posting and catching up with friends (and also finding that signal wasn’t as readily available for Friday’s failed live blog).
In this case I’ve learned the value of planning further ahead and taking protected time to prepare in the case type not going to be there (though I’ve spent that previous week playing catchup elsewhere).
You can can then use your time when you are off to actually be, well, off. Time to relax (or if you’re like me and usually need something to do: reassign), reset and perpare return feeling renewed. This is the stage in at now ready to return to work, but always with home in mind, working and achieving to a point when a break is needed and the cycle begins again.
Relax/Reassign, Reset, Return, Renewed, Repeat. If you’re a working machine, try it out. You might just surprise yourself.
After many weeks, there often comes the time for things to come to a head. For many today of course that follow American Football, this will be the Super Bowl kicking off in a couple of hours.
For people playing sports in their own respective teams may have been participating this weekend or even today.
For others who may have had experiences I’ve described in the posts over the last couple of weeks may have now made their decision and now must take actions based on it.
Whatever your current situation, taking on your game day always requires a quick pep talk to ensure you have the right tactics – not only a win for your team (be that work, sports or family and friends) but also an accomplishment for yourself.
Admittedly this is a little hypocritical coming from the guy who either works it out as he goes, or makes a plan and then 99% of the time will deviate from it for whatever reason. But for those that are more organised or could probably benefit from some sort of idea of what’s going on, creating a game plan for yourself will often help alleviating the scary prospect of excess thinking on your feet should something unexpected happening.
How you do this, depends on what you need to achieve. If it’s like me trying to write blogs and to keep up with it on top of a job and life, then perhaps some scheduling may benefit. I myself after obtaining a free promotional wall planner am taking the responsibility to prevent things from running away from me like in weeks past by using Mondays to try and plan the week ahead where possible for content and where possible strike out ideas for the future weeks. If you’d like one of your own, one I would recommend that I used to have have hung on my wall in my student house as a warden (until the frame broke) – a whiteboard version that allowed you to build up whichever month it is, write out your plans and when you get to the last day, you can wipe it off and start the next month – saving you a bit of dosh in the long term!
If you’re more of a person that needs something a little more portable, consider a trip to your local stationer and invest in a planner or a diary to keep your ideas and commitments in. For the digital types a cheaper alternative is to make use of the base apps on your smartphone such as the synchronised Google Calender on Android, Calender for iOS or the calender app on BlackberryOS.
Other great tools include planning applications online (Evernote, Todoist and Trello are personal recommendations I’ve tried in the past – not sponsored!) as well as working on team platforms such as Invision and Slack (again, not sponsored but would happily recommend – wouldn’t say no to a sponsorship though 😉 ).
As you outline your game plan, be sure to work out any contingencies to ensure that you have every base covered in some way, even if this is just a list of what to do if things don’t work out.
However you choose to come up with your own schedule or plan, I wish you an amazing week and if you’re watching tonight like me, regardless of whom you back you have an amazing game night!
Another week has passed and more big news has come. I wasn’t joking about life’s great junction and it seems a few more people have reached theirs.
Now one thing to remember is that the choices these people make can sometimes affect other people too – such as a driver changing into your lane in front of you or your favourite watering hole closing down temporarily because the landlord decided to move to work at the brewery that owned it – and sometimes this may present opportunities to you and suddenly before you know it, it’s your turn to go left, right or straight on.
How you proceed is of course, up to you and it’s you that you should be looking out for. But it really gives you a numinous feeling knowing that the butterfly effect can even crop up in your everyday decisions.
I find this idea fascinating sometimes (and if you’re still reading this 3 weeks into the topic, I can only assume you’re either humouring me or are interested in the same manner) and how similar it can relate to media such as ‘choose your own adventure’ books and recent video games such as much of the Telltale collection of games, DONTNOD Entertainment’s “Life Is Strange” and Supermassive Games’ “Until Dawn”. Running through these media not only allow good replayability and good value for money, but let you answer that “What If?” curiosity that many of us posses. If we were allowed a rewind superpower or the ability to quickly press “reset” on life and to replay from where we last saved, our lives would be perfect!
Or would it? I suppose it would be theoretically impossible to be right for everyone as we would have to have infinite parallel timelines to satisfy this, where in only one or a small number of the outcomes would allow us to be happy (not that we’d know unless we had a magical TV channel selection like in Rick & Morty). But even if only one or a small number of us had the power to change and re-change the world over indefinitely, would we appreciate the perfect life? Would we eventually know what perfect was given nothing will have gone wrong in so long that we can no longer appreciate what ‘wrong’ is? Who knows, but thankfully having both right and wrong in life ironically allows us one constant in our dynamic day to day lives that we so often managed to take for granted.
So whilst we might only get one go around and we often can’t see all of the outcomes first, we know that many people before us had to make this decision and we won’t be the last to either (unless a number of certain world leaders all make the decision to type in some given codes and launch some pretty world ending stuff, then that might be, but hopefully that won’t happen anytime soon!), so if it’s your turn, go ahead and give it some thought, but be sue to make it before those lights change and the opportunity passes you by. And if you’re not the best decision maker, maybe have a look at some of the suggestions above to give it a practice – over time you might just surprise yourself.
I’ll see how my story goes and if any junctions may or may not come up for me in the meantime.
This week has been a bit of a roller-coaster. From the rising and falling of day to day workload to the emotions about a dear colleague at work moving onto a new place and leaving our team.
On the one hand I’m happy for the new challenges moving on from the relentless workload of the last few months and the opportunity to do different things each day and happy our dear colleague can do the same.
But at the same time we have a little sadness with the team breaking down a little bit and the knowledge that whilst we all move forwards, the sobering reminder that the things around us are as dynamic as we try to be and that not everything always moves at the same pace or in the same phase as us.
We’re often told that there’s a time and a place for everything – often conveniently a short time after we’ve said something at a bad time – but it’s meaning rooms true on many more occasions in life. You can plan opportunities for months at a time only to nearly miss the opportunity of doing it. Similarly you can take a risk that doesn’t work out and whilst it’s you should have waited a little longer before acting.
Once half of the battle in life is making progress. The other is knowing when our where to take the actions that lead to it., lest you looking back on it in the future and feeling remorse. Sometimes it takes skill and experience to get a higher chance of getting it right, other times is total guesswork and faith, but making the choice is often better than ignoring it and remembering that justifying sitting something out is different than not bothering to decide at all.
So have a think when the next junction comes up for you: go left, right or straight on. When you consult your ‘map’ or experience from your journey you’ll be able to decide easier. Just remember that when the light turns green, it will change again eventually, so don’t miss your turn or you’ll never move forward (and like driving, will inevitably drive those behind you insane for loitering).
