A Thing about Social Media

I don't know how many other people operate this way, but I'm only going to "like" a Facebook page if I can see that it's going to give me news feed content that I'm interested in looking at.  (If it's a page that's in the "interests" section in my profile (i.e. it's something I've "liked" in order to show off on my profile what I like, e.g. musicians, movies, etc.), I'll unsubscribe from their posts if I'm not interested in their noise.)

For example, a Facebook page for Twix.  I love the candy bar Twix.  I'm simply not interested in looking at goofy Twix-related Facebook posts--and the sad thing is, I didn't even look at the Twix page when I saw its ad because I've come to expect that kind of content from that kind of page.

Not everything needs a Facebook page.  You can probably expect that people who "like" the Twix page are people who are diehard fans of Twix already-- do they really need to be marketed to?

Desire

Once upon a time, I wrote a new blog post every day.  Then I took an arrow to the knee....

I wanna be blogging more often than I am.  It's not that I feel any obligation to other people--I'm fairly certain that nobody misses my posts.  Honestly, I get close to zero feedback on the stuff I push out to the blogspace.  I guess I just want to have something to show for all of the thinking that I do.  I guess I also want to feel like I'm brightening someone else's day with my thoughts and stories... well, let's take it one step at a time, eh?

Outward

Here's another personal update, and then I imagine I'll be getting into some more profound postings somewhat soon here.

I graduated high school at the end of May.  Anti-climactic seems to be the word for it, seeing as I forsook high school after my junior year and completed my first full-time year of college in mid-April.  I did feel accomplished when I had that diploma in my hands afterwards, but I'm afraid that what I'm always going to remember is a slight irked feeling at having to wear that silly square hat.

I got a job!  I start digitizing aircraft repair manuals on Monday.  My early college teacher was so proud of me when I told her that I got a job with an engineering company right after graduating from our engineering-focused high school.  I hadn't even thought of it that way.  I was just glad to have a job so that now I can pay for textbooks, video games and a good part of my mission.  I'm intending to make my career out of storytelling, not engineering.  (For all I know, I might end up spending enough time in the engineering department to call it a career.  I'm not picky as long as I get what I want in the end.)

Speaking of mission, it's getting more and more real now.  I still have about a year before I set off (give or take a few months, perhaps), but I've started attending a mission prep class, and I've talked to my bishop about moving up in the priesthood, and per his request I got my hair cut short.  (And since I'm sure some of you will wonder; I'm thinking England and Japan would be cool places to go, but what do I know?  I'm sure the Lord will send me to whichever mission he knows would be my absolute favorite.  That seems to be what happened to every returned missionary I've listened to.)

The oddest feeling I've experienced lately actually comes with the thought that I have now beat every released Kingdom Hearts game save one.  It's been easily less than two years since I picked up the first one.  Now I just have Birth By Sleep left before Dream Drop Distance comes out next month.  I love those games.

Oh, and I made that blog that I mentioned in my last post.  It's called Without Money, Without Price.  ^__^

Aaand that's all for now!

Coming Down the Mountain

Hello, it's been a while.

I've been posting over at deviantART somewhat more regularly, although there's hardly anyone there who reads those posts.  These past few months have been rough, and it was easier to write more random and personal stuff over there.  It felt more appropriate, I suppose.  deviantART is very much a creative, be-yourself site, whereas I still haven't entirely figured out what this blog is supposed to feel like.  xD

Now that school's out, I'm hoping I can devote some extra time to those story sites that I've linked to up there in the navigation bar (Heavens' Crossroads, Velvel the Venturer, and Cloud in a Bubble), and I want to write a book too.  And make a video game, and make money...

I've been filling out job applications for three weeks and I'm sick of it. XD  hopefully it won't be much longer.

By the way... I've been considering making a scripture study blog.  That will be the sixth blog that I try to maintain (including the story sites and the webcomic), but it'll be fun, eh?  X3  Got any thoughts?

College English Rant

Well I was gonna write a blog post here but then suddenly I found myself IMing three people at once.  Hold on a minute.

Okay, I'm back.

I've spent a horrid number of hours this week on this paper for my college English class.  I'm writing about the controversy over standardized testing.  As far as I can tell, just about every American who writes scholarly papers is opposed to standardized tests.  How do those tests still exist?

Part of me is like, whyyyy am I writing about standardized testing, when I could be writing about dragons and magic and adventure?  Another part of me is like, wouldn't it be so much more constructive to be building a video game right now?  And yet another part of me is like, can I go take a nap or something?

I am not a fan of this English class. But I have to take it and get a good grade if I'm going to get my degree.  Aside from that, probably the only thing I'm going to get from this class is some writing skills.  I guess that's a good thing.  I like to write--as long as I'm writing about something that interests me.  The things we write about in this English class don't interest me a whole lot.

/endrant

Valentine's Day Thoughts

From the Facebook posts I've been seeing, you'd think that Valentine's Day started six weeks ago.  o.0

Back at my old high school, I had a good friend in my creative writing class and every day we would skip to class together.  At one point during the semester she developed a romantic attachment to another friend of mine, and they liked to smooch.  So every day after seventh period, I would jog in circles around them while they smooched in the middle of the commons, and when they were finished I would link arms with my skipping buddy and we'd skip to class.

Yes, I had a strange childhood.

I observed them over the weeks with an odd feeling in my stomach as they cuddled and smooched and bought roses and teddy bears for each other, and then they suddenly broke up one day.  My poor skipping buddy was in tears, her swashbuckling smooching buddy seemed no worse for the wear, and a little voice in my head was saying to me, "I knew this was going to happen."

The next year I met a girl whose presence made me feel like I was flying on a rainbow cloud with a bottomless bowl of golden ice cream, and I seriously considered asking her to be my girlfriend.  Actually, I'm not sure I even really considered it.  I just really, really wanted to be her boyfriend.  The only thing that held me back was a commitment I made the year before to not have a girlfriend until I come back from my mission and start looking for someone to marry.

Here's my thinking.  I expect that at age 21 (or maybe up to a few years after age 21), I will take an awesome woman to the temple and we will be married together for time and all eternity.  Done right, that love will grow stronger and deeper every single year--deeper than any teenager will ever know.  If I have a girlfriend in high school and then break up with her, in twenty years I won't have anything to show for it.  I will look back at that period of time and think, "That was really lame.  I should've done something else with my time."  If I have a girlfriend in high school and we don't break up, I run the risk of having my first child early, and that would throw my plans for the next several years out the window. There is the possibility that I could marry my "high school sweetheart", as some happily married couples I know have done, but the odds of that working out in this crazy generation are low enough that I don't want to try for it.

There's another side to my opinion of Valentine's Day that I haven't been able to find words to express adequately, so I was grateful to find this quote floating around:

“I am satisfied that happiness in marriage is not so much a matter of romance as it is an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one’s companion. Any man who will make his wife’s comfort his first concern will stay in love with her throughout their lives and through the eternity yet to come.”
-Gordon B. Hinckley

That echoes my philosophy pretty well.  From where I'm sitting, romance seems to be awfully glorified in today's world, but it doesn't make the relationship much stronger.  Romance and love are different things and they're too often confused.

I think that sums it up.

I am shamelessly waiting a few years to select my one and only Valentine.  I'm not interested in this Singles Awareness Day thing either, because I have friends to keep me company.  I'm single, but I'm not alone.

'Twould be nice to get some extra candy, though... Ah well, 'tis the price I pay for my way.

Silver Skies

The sky was overcast today; covered in silver clouds.  Silver is my favorite color.  The air was just a slight bit chilly if you stood out in it long enough.  It was not hot and not excessively cold, and the horridly bright light in the sky was not there to give me a headache.  I do appreciate the sun, but I'm also kind of sensitive to it, especially when I'm reading a book in the car.  The silver sky promises soft rain, and invites me into a reflective mood where I learn through assembling thoughts together.

My own life has been cloudy lately.  Between my Eagle project, the service hours for my community-based learning class, homework for my English class, and all the little things I attend to, I haven't felt like I've had much time for the things I really want to do.  But now that I think about it, I haven't truly defined my own desires.  I just have halfway-constructed ideas up my sleeve; ideas to be refined in a period of reflection.

As I walked beneath the silver sky today, I thought about the figurative sky of my circumstances.  I wondered if, for integrity's sake, I should be grateful for the clouds in the latter sky as I was for the former.  If my best learning happens beneath the silver sky above me, would not my greatest growth come during the cloudy times of my life?

While these silver skies last, I shall make the best of them.

Half-Eaten

I've got this thing going on where something will seem interesting to me until I get about halfway through writing about it.  I just start to feel like it's not worth talking about anymore, so I dump everything I've written into Evernote and move along with my life.

This seems awfully weird to me.

I feel like this post is too short or something and I need to think up more thoughts to add on to these ones, but I'm just going to go ahead and post this before I totally lose interest again.

Rebeginning

I have decided to scrap the original purpose of this blog, because it wasn't motivating me like I thought it would.  I am going to target this blog towards everyone who finds me interesting, and I will simply be me.  I originally intended to write about really deep topics, but now I will talk about random ideas I have along any lines (as shallow or deep as they may be) and whatever else I find interesting.  I hope y'all have as much fun reading it as I will writing it!

Putting Ideas into Pixels (Part 2)

I got back to Heavens' Crossroads like I said I would in my last post.  I'm thinking of not pushing myself to post there every week, since I do have other writing projects to work on.

The spring semester started last week, right along with the new year.  I made a goal for 2012 that involves doing a lot of writing, and then I'm also taking English 2010 this semester.  This particular English class focuses on critical thinking and persuasive writing.  I feel like I'm a moderately good writer -- good enough to get an A in a typical high school English class without learning much, but certainly not good enough to drift through this college class with a great grade.  By the end of the semester (mid-April) my blog posts might sound less like rambling and more like professional writing.  X3

Have you ever thought about how when you write, you're basically just putting a bunch of squiggles up for display and hoping they mean roughly the same thing to everyone else as they do to you?  Not only do we resort to these desperate measures, we spend years in school learning how to do it better.  Expressing ideas must be REALLY important to us.  Or most of us, at least.