Leaving Breadcrumbs for the future

Ever hear people encourage to make a brand? Or to make as many connections as possible? Or to have a portfolio with various examples of work? 

In today’s world, where making a website is about as easy as making a cheesecake and where we workers are competing with each other in the millions, one might see why building a reputation would be just what might make you hired. 

But not everyone has the courage or the personality type to make those connections or to be as outstanding. 

With technology constantly evolving, so are our online identities. Just like how we can have celebrities whose name are unusual and occasionally fictional, we everyday individuals have made tens, maybe even hundreds of virtual identities by the time we get out of university. 

So, when we do get a job, does that mean that we have to review all of the names/identities/aliases that we had made up until that point? In a recent seminar that I attended, the speakers talked about our online usernames having a significance in what it is what we do or what it is that we’re passionate about. 

Following that train of thought, we would be able to use our odd username/email/aliases to our advantage somehow? Could bob2000 represent how involved one is in the world of technology? Could a meme found on DeviantArt act as an example to turn a bad situation into a good/funny one? Could a tweet represent how blunt one is? 

As of right now, I’ve got more questions than answers. As I try to figure out what to do with my life, I keep finding myself reflecting my choices over the years, about what I chose to say on social media and on the Internet in general. Hopefully, the breadcrumbs that I’ve left won’t leave my potential employers too disoriented. 

Running, never stopping

Ever try to create a new habit? Ever have a series of success? Ever find that the new habit fades away, to the point of which it’s gone?

Somehow, it feels as though I haven’t written anything for the entire semester (even though it’s only been a month and a half), and I actually became stressed on not writing anything.

Finals just finished for me this semester, and next semester starts as early as January 6th (I think), and so, I have a lot of… residual stress? The finals are always a stressful time, but I never took the time, during the second half of the semester, to calm down or to relieve some of that stress.

As a result, it accumulates. Nail-biting, lip biting, irregular sleep patterns, high levels of alertness, massive bad cold (again) – classical stress symptoms from Psych Class. Moreover, the number of distractions that my imagination made? It was on overdrive – I made a story of Virtual Reality crossing Fictional Doctor Who and Reality, I made a story of Alice in Wonderland and Criminal Minds – the list goes on (none are completed as they were forgotten over time).

So, what to do after the finals? Take a breather. I’m the kind of person who calms doing simple things, so I got myself an art-therapy book (wish list – DOCTOR WHO colouring book) and started turning scrap paper into little boxes to be used later for stuff (very useful). I also got a new camera and took the liberty of discovering the Montreal-equivalent of Diagon Alley (Keeping my word to two folks I met, I’ll leave it to you to find out where it is)

Oh, and of course, get back to blogging! As I mentioned before, I tend to calm myself doing simple tasks and writing these posts actually do calm me a bit (or distract me). I hope to continue it into the 2016 and find new ways to manage this accumulation of stress (suggestions? Comment!)

The Unusual Weather & Influence of Media

Ever watch a movie where the setting consists almost entirely of rainy environments? Ever see such a movie where bad things happen? 

  There’s something about a rainy morning in autumn that gives me a bad feeling. Maybe it’s because I watch too many shows that take place on or around Halloween. 
I’m usually the kind to feel calmer when watching rain, but hearing almost nothing and seeing almost no one… Flags are raised in my mind. 

Times like this make me think about the influences that the media has on the audience. With so many movies taking place around Halloween and the autumn season, many might have grown somewhat cautious when it becomes rainy, cold and/or approaches October 31st. 

Any other time and I would like the change in scenery, but I can’t help but think of all the bad things that happened in movies…

But they’re movies. Sure TV shows have Halloween episodes as well, but they’re all stories that someone wrote. There’s no way that any of them will come true… Right? 

 

Minions – the species that live to serve (Review)(Spoilers)

Normally, I start the posts with questions, to peak the readers’ curiosity, but with minions who are probably 3 feet tall, what questions would there be to pose?

The movie is about a species of small, yellow creatures of whom seem to have a lifelong goal to follow the most evil person around… all the while they have the purest of hearts. The movie takes place before they meet the “evil” villain Gru of whom is in Despicable Me.

Among the many minions, three rose to the challenge to find a boss worth following – Kevin, Bob, and Stuart. They looked far and wide, finally finding themselves hitching a ride to the Villain-Con and becoming underlings for Scarlet Overkill, named to being the first female super-villain.

Ignoring the fact that there aren’t any females among the minions and that they never seem to age, the minions can be reminder of certain human aspects.

I’ve heard some stories where some people almost always have a soft spot for bad boys, which is explained by the thought that that person could turn good given time. While the movie explains that minions live to serve, maybe they are just looking for someone in need of help. If anyone’s seen Despicable Me, the minions are assigned simple tasks, like cleaning or building, and Gru seem to have grown a soft spot for them. Minions seem to be social creatures, working together to get the job done and having fun while doing it (which Scarlet really doesn’t like).

I’ve also heard, since childhood, that we all need someone to look to, which the minions do by following and serving one villain after the other. Something I’ve noticed is that villains tend to be not only very resourceful, but that they’re also very creative in the development of plans (who else would think of creating a shrink ray to steal the moon? or to camouflage a pyramid to hide it in plain sight?). Minions, as silly as they might be, can learn – like children – and work hard to follow their idols and to maybe impress them with what the kids/minion had learned.

Despite the cuteness and the odd, gibberish-like language of theirs, they are learning from their idols and they have the potential to help others thrive as well. Thinking about it this way, kids having an idol, whoever it may be, learn quickly and try to copy what it is that they do in the hopes of getting a sense of accomplishment. Those idols would inspire them to investigate some aspect of the large world of which we all live. Being looked at by a child, being idolized by them, means that they are hoping that they can be like that idol sometime in the future, no matter how far that future is and no matter how hard it takes to get there. (Just remember, they need to be encouraged by the telling of stories like these)

(Child = 孩子）

Creating Alternate Realities

Ever watch a TV show and invent a character that would be in the series? Ever watch a Movie and imagine a sequel or a side-story that fit well in that reality? Ever read a story and imagine “what if”?

Being a bit of an artist and a bit of a nerd in many aspects, I find myself creating an OC – an Original Character – in each series that I watch or read. As the characters are created, I realized that they resemble to each other in terms of their pasts and personality.

It’s almost like creating alternate realities because it’s the same character with little tweaks here and there – one was an amnesiac, one was a pirate, one was a mage, one was a detective and one was affected by a particle accelerator explosion. The best analogy is with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles, where a group find themselves having to travel between worlds, sometimes dimensions to gather a friend’s scattered memories. The only difference is that, on most cases, these OCs would never meet the other and finding them fighting alongside each other.

With the most recent movie being Terminator: Genisys, I find myself writing a story that would take a place between the years of Skynet’s activation and John Connor being converted into a Terminator. A story in which yet another OC would be created in a different time and a different world. A story in which people stopped taking life for granted, making sure that they lived to see another day. A story in which humans no longer lived in a peace of overall peace.

The question now is, why? What’s the point of creating these mirror images of a character? Is there such a strong desire to live in a world so drastically different from here? Is there something so intriguing about living in a world where every day is different, all contributing to something big in the end? Is there something inside that wants to live everyday towards getting close to a certain goal and to have an official ending?

Sherlock once said that to create a disguise is to create a different version of ourselves. Would that imply that every character that is create reveals a different version of our personality? The Doctor often says that we humans are controlling, that we often to seek an understanding in everything  and that we often seek to be to accurately predict the outcome and, therefore, the future. The Doctor also said that we’re all stories in the end, that as time passes, we’ll be remembered by what we leave behind.

Writing the story is long and slow, that’s no surprise. For a few moments in time, the world is different and there’s something to work up to. For a few moments, time is slowed and the surrounding world would come to life. That is, until something or someone brings back me back down to Earth, like my phone that isn’t connected to Genisys.

Well, Genisys is supposedly going to come into existence in 2017. That’s two years from now (and counting). I wonder if the world will change that much by then.

“Ever wonder what was going on in someone’s head?” (Review) (Spoilers)

Ever wonder how someone is almost always smiling, even when everything might seem at its worst? Or wonder how someone could have the shortest temper, getting angry at the smallest thing? How someone could come up with lots of worst-case scenarios and is prone to high levels of stress? Or maybe there’s someone of whom thinks of only the negative, insistent that nothing will go as they would like it to go?

Inside Out is a movie that demonstrates what goes on in someone’s head, specifically with their emotions. I remember hearing that, while there are many emotions, most can be derived from a few main ones: Happiness, Anger, Sadness, Fear (Personally, I’m not sure where Disgust comes from).

Seeing it, the difficulties of the teenage life come to mind. First of all, there’s the physical growth spurt. Second of all is the fluctuating hormones. Thirdly, we tend to try to be more mature than we actually are. Fourthly (maybe most important of all), we’re in a new environment with different teachers, different kids, and a different school altogether. Fifth and maybe the final, with the new environment, we might be forced to find new friends and might be left alone to make our own decisions, which might be something new to us.

Becoming a teen is no easy feat. There were stories that stated that reaching 16 meant adulthood in the past. Neuroscience and Biology might say otherwise, with studies that suggests that teens wouldn’t be fully matured until 21 on average. Nowadays, some places say that 18 is the legal age while others say that 21 is the legal age.

So, is that what all teens are aiming for? To become an adult as soon as possible? Or maybe they’re like Riley, who wants desperately to go back to a time and place where everything was happy, where everything stayed the same and she didn’t have to worry about anything changing.

Even as we become adults, not everyone has a…. harmonious balance of their emotions (that’s putting it lightly). Some might still have their Anger being actively engaged in daily activity. Some might have the other emotions struggling to pull Sadness off of the console. And some might let Joy lead the other emotions everyday.

Either way, Joy, Sadness, Anger and Fear are crucial to an individual’s understanding of the world. And you know what – maybe Disgust represents our instincts that are deeply ingrained. Our memories are the foundations of different parts of our personality. We’ll have our down moments, but we’ll also have our up moments. I said that the five are crucial – that means that they’re crucial as a team because one or three can’t manage the console alone.

“Imagine a world where nothing is impossible” (Review)

Frank Walker: “Why now? Why Her?”
Athena: “Because she hasn’t given up.”

A world where anything could happen, where people weren’t afraid to try things out or to fail. Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face. 

In a recent article I read, the director mentioned that Frank lost hope not as he aged, but also as the machine he made counted down to the World’s End with what seems to be 100%.  

Thinking about it, Frank had many dreams and hopes and energy when he first came to Tomorrowland. He had enough energy to power a jetpack… With a little help from a machine. 

It’s like many of us when we were kids – we had dreams, we had the craziest of ideas – but then, we stopped. 

It was like we were all running to get to the end when, all of a sudden, the adults who were once cheering slowed us down and pulled us out of the race. All of that adrenaline, all of that dopamine, and that cortisol just suddenly stopped and along with it, the creative juice. 

As we would grow into teens, we would kind of stumble trying to find something that we could do, something else that we could run to without having other people stop us. As a result, some of us would just give up before even beginning (I.e. Frank). 

And finally, as adults, we stop our own creativity before it even gets a chance to flourish. Others are no longer a problem because now, it’s us who’s stopping the race before it begins. 

Watching this reminded me that growing up shouldn’t stop us from dreaming. We don’t need a secret place to not be afraid to try anything. We have the potential, the resources and the time to try something new. And just maybe, what we do can change the world and stop the counting clock.  

A Short Story – a bright moment of passing buses

Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about a very small moment, a moment that might easily pass by many of us, but something that I found to brighten my day, even by a little bit. 

It was a hot day, as it always was it Montreal during the summer. I had finished shopping at had gotten on board the bus, listening to Rachel Platten’s Fight Song. The trip on the bus was always long, so listening to music seemed like a good way to past the time faster. 

Then, as I started to look out the window, a school bus rolled beside the bus I was in. It wasn’t the full length, but rather the shorter version, consisting of only 10 rows instead of the 20 or so in the full one. At first glance, it looked empty, but then I saw two small heads at the back row. 

They looked to be coming from elementary school. One was dark skinned, but had her hair braided into pigtails while the boy sitting next to her was pale, almost white in skin, said something while adjusting his glasses. 

Curious, we kind of stared at each other for a while. I waved to say hello and the two waved back. I wondered what they were saying since the windows in their bus were closed and I couldn’t hear with all of the other noises. They looked innocent, oblivious to the troubles that their adult selves would have to later face, and discussing something while we waited for the green light. 

Normally, such a moment only lasts for a couple of seconds, but this lasted for a few minutes. As the seconds passed, I glanced back at the two kids. They were still looking at me, being curious as they were. I smiled mischievously and the girl smiled back while the boy next to her seemed to be growing anxious (maybe he thought I had something evil planned). 

The green light finally came and the STM bus went first. I showed them a peace sign with my fingers as I passed them, thinking that I wouldn’t see them again. It only took a second or so to realize that the school bus didn’t turn. 

When I saw the school bus catch up, it reminded of something that some kids would do. Without meaning to, the kids would turn the situation into a race, where they wanted to see which vehicle would go faster. Kids made almost any daily situation look fun. 

As the buses lined up once more, I saw the kids once more. I made a face of surprise, as if their bus was going to beat the one that I was in. I knew that the drivers had no idea of what was going on in the back of their buses, but I didn’t care. 

Finally, the school bus made a left, and we finally parted ways. When I looked back into the STM bus, everyone was still doing whatever it  was that they were doing. Some were listening to music, others on their phones and others still reading a book. 

For me, that little time seemed to be longer than it actually was. For everyone else, it was only a part of the time needed to get to their destination. I wonder how many of them noticed the school bus. I wonder if they saw the kids’ smiles and their curious eyes, looking out the window of their small school bus. 

You are what you think

Ever hear someone say that “all is right with the world”? Or “Why does everybody hate me”? Ever hear the Cartoon Jackie Chan yell that “Today is not my day!”? Ever notice that some say that the glass is half full while others say that it’s half empty? Ever notice that people see the world differently depending on their state of mind?

When I look at people who look down as they walk, I wonder how they see the world. Once being in their position, their view could be dull with no excitement, passing by the world without being notice, or it could be dark, where every person that they pass might be saying things behind their backs.

People who are walking by with a big smile or a bit a dance to their step might see the same world differently. Maybe it’s like in the movies, where they see everyone in the same state or they might tune out the rest of the world as they continue the rest of the world.

To say that one would know how the other sees the world would be a lie. If you think yourself to be happy and actually create stories in which you are happy, then it seems that you might actually be happy. As mentioned before, “no matter how good the disguise, it will always be another version of yourself.” In terms of thoughts, it would seem that thinking of yourself in a certain state might actually cause that state to happen from within.

To write a story where the protagonist is filled with a heated past is to contain a bit of that hatred within the author, even without meaning to. To become a pessimist, it only takes the picturing of all of the negative possibilities in every moment. To become an optimist, it only takes to see the world like Cinderella does – “Not to see the world as it, but as it could be”.

A Half Empty Glass (From ahermin at DeviantArt)