Recently in General Life Category
An experience I just had makes me question whether or not people understand the concept of being polite in public anymore. In a university library, on the first floor, behind the book racks you would think that there would be an air of quiet and a relaxed academic environment… well, mostly there is. Now, add to that a person diagonally to the right behind you by maybe 6 feet chomping on corn chips. Also, to that add someone who has not turned off their Windows system sounds or bothered to mute their laptop, but sounds like they are navigating through their entire file tree. Now, on the opposite side, a few more feet back, add another person typing on a keyboard that is obviously not soft touch with her long fingernails hitting the keys in a rapid pace. Also, said person is on the phone. The academic usefulness of the environment has just fallen several points.
What has happened to being polite in public? Maybe I am just overly considerate, but if I have to eat in a public place that isn't a restaurant, I tend to pick foods that are quiet (and usually have low aroma, but that's just paranoia), and I always mute my laptop sounds, just because not everyone needs to know when I have mail (yeah, that was the other one, some guy logged into AOL and had mail, I shouldn't know this information). I can't really complain much about the nails and the keyboard, just situationaly unavoidable, and I probably sound a little loud on my keyboard as well since I tend to type based on emotion. Talking on a cell phone in a library I guess is more of a peeve than being rude, but at the same time, libraries are places to read, work and reflect. It is what it is for the purpose of some isolation.
As a person that is being rated more and more often lately in varying areas and on multiple sites, I am starting to really despise the star rating system. First of all, the system is entirely anonymous from the recipient's perspective. This means that it isn't possible to determine the difference between the overexciting rating of a friend or the hateful ratings of an enemy. Second, it is too easy for someone to rate something that they have not seen/used, just assigning a rating arbitrarily. Finally, if someone gives 1 star, you know they didn't like it, but how useful is it to know someone didn't like something? It puts things into a situation of thinking that people don't like it, so therefore, just give up, as opposed to having actual comments and being able to respond to those comments by making changes to the way things are done in the future. Without an opportunity to improve, sharing artistic or technological creations with the world is pointless.
Once again this year my mother is participating in the highly commercialized Christmas season and as always she is bugging me for "the list". It's that little list I am supposed to work on starting in July and turn into her sometime before the first week of November. Well, in the 20-however-many years I've been making this stupid list, I've never been on her schedule with it. It also never fails that I have no idea what to put on the list. It feels a little short as well as short-sighted.
http://images.livecurt.net/blog/ChristmasList2009.pdf
I don't know where to go with it, and I have very little enthusiasm for it. As if it's not bad enough that I have to make the list, she will still be obvious about what she is doing because of questions she will ask. Its just no fun, and on top of that, lately the whole receiving gifts thing has started to annoy me. If I don't need anything, then I don't need anything, but of course, she will do the frivolous thing as she always has.
Like sucks when you are unaccomplished. I have for a long time been easily depressed by my own inadequacies when compared to other people, at some point recently I got over that and am no longer worried about how I compare to other people, because if I spend all of my time trying to develop into the type of person that I happen to be focused on at any particular moment, I will never develop into my own person. I take to jealousy easily still, but I try to not let it bother me too much. My concerns at the moment are related to the fact that I feel unaccomplished by my own standards. I feel that I should have accepted a passion in life at this point and that I should be running toward it, but it seems that as soon as I open myself up to let one of these passions in to be "the one" I begin to experience self-doubt and have anxiety over the idea and find numerous reasons for why that particular passion isn't valid in my life. I love photography and I desperately wish to pursue it as a career, but yet I am working on a degree in Psychology. Why is this? Shouldn't I be in a degree track for Art, or perhaps even Journalism? Or do I follow Psychology for another reason? Will learning to understand people help me become a better photographer? I can't say for sure, but I am going with the degree because it feels right and I should really finish off this whole degree thing so I can move on to bigger things. My difficulty comes from my inability to function completely independently, but yet my resistance to following any type of leadership blindly. In my life I have acquired a lot of knowledge, some of it contradictory to itself, but all of it relevant to a successful life. I have experience in computer science, arts, psychology and a number of other areas, why can I not figure out what works best for me? I hate this feeling that I should constantly be changing things. I want to set out on one course in life and make it work. I want to be a photographer and I want to finish my psychology degree. That is who I want to be. There are other traits I wish to have, but none relevant to the central goal.
I'm not sure I entirely understand this post myself, but I feel like I need clarity in my life. I have a direction I want to go, I have focus for it, but I feel like I am lacking a compass to find the direction I wish to point. Perhaps the answer is in more education? Perhaps not.
I have just been thinking about Project 365 in a more administrative capacity than usual. So far, I have made 33 days without missing a day, but I still have to repeat that 11 more times before the end of the project. My question is now this: What is to happen in the event of a missed day? What about if there is a loss of photos due to technical issues? There are many things that COULD go wrong. The best answer I can come up with at the moment is a representative image as a "substitution". In this concept the missed day would be made up as soon as possible after the original day. For example, if a day is missed due to illness, perhaps the day you are well, you take a photograph of a medicine bottle or something similar. This seems to work well in theory, but how does it work for the project based on its own rules? Is a substitution day a cheat? I think it would be silly to have to start the project over after getting into it and being reliable, and then having a day missed due to illness or other responsibilities.
It feels like it has been days since any of my contacts on Flickr have posted anything. It seems like since I started my project I have been more interested in what others are doing and as a result I have managed to get into a state where I am looking for new content before anyone has a chance to produce it. I look for new content to inspire me, or just to occupy my time. Lately my own photos have been boring me, I suspect it's just because there are so many of them. I push myself to experiment on things each day, but somehow I am not being interested in the results as much as I should be. I like for others to look at my images and give me feedback, and I have not been getting that lately. Everyone will respond positive comments about the images when prompted, but that's not what I am looking for, I want to know if I am making mistakes, I want to know if I am doing something compositionally stupid and I want to know if there is something that someone feels is absent in my images. I don't publish my photos for people to stroke my ego and tell me how good things are, I have a boyfriend for that. I need to know the reality of my work. There are things that others can see in my images that I cannot, and that information is very important to my ability to improve as a photographer.
Just got the annual Halloween costume e-mail from Amazon and decided to explore the selection a bit. I am seriously starting to miss when things were better done. I looked at a variety of costumes, from Halo 3 characters (I think I might be one of those this year) to more traditional things like cowboys and cops. I understand that it is difficult to affordably create costumes, but some of the stuff people are coming up with is absolute crap. The cop and the inmate are apparently supposed to carry either plastic or rubber handcuffs. Who is going to have a good time with some goofy plastic shit, wondering all night if it is going to break. I remember cheap stainless steel handcuffs that I used to have as a child, and they were not particularly expensive, but they were better suited for a night of trick-or-treating, or even a Halloween party than the stuff currently sold. Biggest letdown with the cuffs is the sound. Rubber and plastic don't make the same sound and the effect is lost. Aside from the props, what about the costumes themselves? Fabrics used in their construction seem to be getting worse. I looked at some of the Star Trek costumes and discovered that many have communicators and pips that are merely screen printed. Is it really that expensive to add a few silver buttons for things like that? The costumes that are actually decent have a lot of pieces missing, such as the gunslinger, which I thought was kind of cool. To do that costume, I would have to get a hat, boot cut jeans, cowboy boots and a gun holster (it isn't included). I would probably also need to obtain a big-ass belt buckle. Among the most interesting and complete is the firefighter, it includes everything except boots, and I already have a pair of tactical boots, not that it would stop me from considering a pair of fire boots (Morgan's has them). Halloween just seems like it would be more fun if costumes were actually made decently. Anyone got any suggestions for what I should be?
About 7 minutes ago my step sister gave birth to a baby. The interesting thing about this is that with the empowerment of a BlackBerry, all of her friends and family have been kept in the loop on the events of the day since about 4am, when she happily announced that contractions suck, but epidurals rock. Since that initial announcement (which somehow I was awake for), there have been regular updates on dilation progress and other interesting facts as she progressed. It is interesting that she is in Massachusetts and I am NC, but yet, I still feel a little involved. Anyway, its pretty cool to have a nephew.
Jackson Xavier Stuart
I really don't like that my family has started venturing to the realm of the Internet. It was more than ok with they found their way to Amazon.com to spend $1000s per year on books and other crap they don't really need, and it was even ok when they began e-mailing me (once they figured out that the Internet is more than an electronic Walmart), I can deal with that. Now, we have reached the next phase. I decided to unhide myself on Facebook for a few weeks, just let myself be searchable instead of being stealth. I thought if there was anyone wanting to find me that didn't know my e-mail address, it would make that easier. A few days into this whole being not hidden thing I get a notification that a cousin that I really don't like would like to add me as a friend on Facebook, that one was simple enough, I just ignore the request. Now, my favorite aunt has decided to join the world of Facebook, and has requested to add me. This places me in a position where I really do not know the proper course of action. I like my family fine for the most part, but they have a tendency to ask questions about things and be overly nosey. If I let one of them in, then the rest will want in and as I was recently informed, my immediate family is now to a count of about 25 people (and apparently at least one more pending). There is info in there that would just be a little too much for my family to deal with, especially with things like this blog, and we all know how lovingly I have spoken of my family over the years in this blog. I guess this goes back to the old billboard metaphor, "Don't post anything on the Interwebs that you wouldn't want on a billboard". Well, I don't follow that too well, but usually I am bright enough to keep that type of shit under a different alias, but as of late I have been less interested in aliases, as they merely complicate things. I really don't know why I have such a problem with my family, I guess I just feel like they don't understand me, and giving them this level of access would only make things worse.
I am trying to figure out what this particular creature is. There was a group of about 10 or so on a grape leaf in the yard. They do not fly, swarm or even move particularly quickly. When in confinement, they do not look for a way out, they become really still, but once out, they tend to wander around aimlessly. They act a bit like ladybug beetles, but are a little bigger and have a more armored shell. They have 6 legs, 2 antennae, and 2 visible eyes. The body is black, but the thorax "panel"(?) is red with three large black markings and several smaller black markings around the edge at the midpoint. The underside is bright red.
