I found a super cool acronym today so I thought I’d share it. The acronym is SUCCESS. Here it is, along with my little interpretation of it:

S = sense of direction ( knowing the goal you want to achieve and defining it)

U= understanding ( gaining all the information possible to make decisions)

C= courage ( I’m not speaking of courage in that cheesy heroic ‘Peter Parker/Spiderman’ kind of way… It’s a more practical and planned type of action where you look at options, identify the one with the positive outcome and determine that path for yourself)

C= charity (charity was actually derived from the Latin word for Affection… It’s being able to show that .. To be able to collaborate and co-exist harmoniously because let’s be honest, you’re most likely to be a part of a work team where ‘charity’ becomes salient)

E= esteem ( appreciating your self-worth)

S = self confidence ( confidence is built on success.. You need to be able to form the habit of remembering past successes and forgetting failures. Perhaps not entirely forgetting those failures because we need them I provide impetus to succeed. It’s more the idea that we shouldn’t let those failures inhibit potential success)

S= self acceptance (we need to accept ourselves the way we are. Stop trying to be someone else. Everyone has their good and bad…. Just because we have those negative qualities, they don’t own us. We’re not solely defined by our negative qualities)

I’m in the process of trying to apply this acronym to my life. I know, I know… it sounds like a whole heap of things you need to check off. My first step would be to try to succeed in minute goals, so that I can move onto enormous ones… For now I’d like to be able to achieve great grades in my media course and above that, be able to apply my knowledge of the networked media to my experiences outside the subject.

I want to take a moment to address the seriously concerning fact that not enough people are smiling nowadays. I know you’re thinking, “she’s a little kid, doesn’t understand that we all have too many problems to worry about smiling” . I acknowledge we all have problems and I acknowledge some of us have problems beyond anything I could imagine. However, it seems people have a permanently begrudged look attached to their faces. Others, I register only blankness staring back at me. It’s become almost unnatural to smile. So I thought I’d undertake a little experiment on the train. I continually smiled to myself, I smiled as I looked out the window, smiled to passengers beside me (not in that creepy way you’re imagining). The amount of confused, irritated, uncomfortable faces around me was quite amusing. Since when did it become weird to smile at the world. Since when did it become weird to try to share some of your happiness ( I’m getting good with this cheesy stuff). We are creatures of pattern and I’m afraid we’re trapped in this cycle of- for lack of a better word – blankness.

You can’t tell me I’m too much of an optimist…

Now, if after reading this you’re still thinking I’m some overly optimistic and naive girl who hasn’t yet experienced problem and is speaking from a lack of such experience then I urge you to read this article on the scientifically proven benefits of smiling.

The Watts reading this week, I think, is one we can all, as humans living in the 21st century, associate with. We have a dependence on technology now. It’s oddly becoming a natural element of our world. We look at these mediums ( computers, phones etc) and we feel a kind of connectedness from which we cannot separate nor exist without.

In my search for more information on this reading, I, again stumbled upon Jackie Matthew’s blog which I found particularly interesting in terms of the painting which, in my opinion, perfectly embodies the essence of the Watts reading and its relevance to our current status within this ‘age of technology’.

SOOOOOOOO Here’s a list of my top 5 movies ( I’m warning you now, if you haven’t watched these you HAVE NOT LIVED <– yes the capitals are necessary)…

1. THE PRESTIGE (here’s a lilinknk to a synopsis to help you out:

2. LAW ABIDING CITIZEN

3. TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU

4. THE ILLUSIONIST

5. FACE OFF

My work here is done.

P.s I’m still adding movies to this… so I’ll just contradict my above statement and say my work here isn’t done. (damn, it was an awesome line though).

As I had initially stated within my very first blog post: although open to this new experience, I found myself cautious as to the ‘unchartered waters’ that is the networked media. Having not had much experience with the process of blogging or reading other online blogs, I found myself in a difficult position in that I wasn’t accustomed nor did I have sufficient knowledge of the foundations of blogging. At that point however, I had acknowledged the blogging process as if it were a structured step-by-step task. I soon discovered – from Adrian Miles’ ‘unlectures’ and my fellow bloggers- that this was the inappropriate way to approach these blogs. It was a realization that exactly typified the epitome of this course: Experience happens when we question our assumptions. Therefore, the ultimate challenge I found personally was to push aside the structure that had been so ingrained within me throughout my schooling life, and allow for my rather uncontrolled personality to be a direct influence of my work.

I found myself pleasantly surprised when the casualty of my natural speech came through easily in my blogs. Ironically, it was the factual information that I found rather difficult to integrate into my blogs in both a witty and engaging manner. For instance, I spent an extended period of time devising an interesting strategy to refer to the double loop and single loop learning information so that my voice does not vanish amidst the facts. Throughout my process of blogging and the experience I gained I’ve found it much easier to integrate both my voice and information in an interesting way, which I discovered by asking friends to read the blog and comment on both factors. I’ve also been able to find the appropriate balance between my unpolished thoughts and the claims I choose to make in my blog. Despite the blogs being that of a casual space, everything we publish remains on the networked media forever therefore, we must encompass the ability to validate the claims we make

(this is where hyper linking proves particularly useful) Furthermore, I found the technical side of the blogs less challenging than I had assumed. For instance, linking out to other texts and embedding videos into my blog proved simpler than I’d imagined. In reading over my blogs -specifically comparing my last few to my first- few I see a remarkable difference, not only in the content, but in the coherency in which that content is organized. I’ve developed my writing skills through the process of writing the things I want to discuss. Through encompassing the freedom of writing about my interests, I’ve found that I’ve in essence, become a better and developed into a more compelling writer (something that was not a strong point for me throughout my years in school).

I certainly found blogging to be an activity that I have enjoyed most throughout my time in my media course. Not to delve into yet another philosophical rant, but I found myself becoming more and more confident through this process of blogging. It is indeed a space for one to express ideas and thoughts that do not correlate with any of my subjects. It is a space where the individual can speak freely, without the constraints of formal speech and structure. It is a space where one can simply let their consciousness wonder off onto the page. Because, within contemporary culture, we have become so centered around structure and organized rules, we tend not to acknowledge the genius of letting ones consciousness take over and fill up the page on which we write. Personally, all of my greatest ideas have stemmed from my expansion upon the unpolished ideas within my stream of consciousness.

I will continue to write blogs outside of this subject because, as clichéd as this sounds, it is soothing. It’s a space where you can get everything off your mind so that you sleep a little better at night. It’s a space to argue what you believe in. It’s a space for documentation. I’ve come to truly appreciate the amount of uses one may get out of this blog if they lend themselves to its unmethodical and almost chaotic nature.

I’ve always found the thought of speculation to be purposeless. Looking back on that I’m also severely judging the idiocy of my past self. The benefits of this blogging process is that it sparks an incentive in us to want to speculate, to question, to theorize about the world around us (rather than passively absorb all that we are told). This speculation process is, to me, a salient factor in foreshadowing the future of humanity, the society we exist in, and our interactions within it.

Finally, I’d like to point out my favourite blog, which is that about the ‘essay’. I’ve applied the idea that, within an essay, both you and the reader discover something new together you hadn’t previously known. I extend this notion to blog writing. For me, the simple process of blogging has encouraged me to speculate to a point in which I am learning something new through the creation of every blog post.

🙂

Remember when you’d rush to a video store in hopeful search for your favourite new thriller/romance/ comedy? The one you’d been oh so patiently awaiting for months on end. You enter the store,  $6.50 in hand, a huge smile on your face THENNNNNNN  you hear the dreaded words : ” sorry, we only have a copy and it’s rented”.

* cue melancholy, heartbreaking( I’m thinking ‘end of Titanic’ style ) music.

BUTTTTTT  WHY????????????

Let me offer a minor portion of the insight I found in Chris Anderson’s ‘The Long Tail’. This “economy of scarcity” is being overcome by what Anderson calls the Long Tail, that is, the “new economic model for the media and entertainment industries”. I personally like to think of it as the ONLINE SALES SENSATION ( better yet, the OSS). We’ve entered an entirely revolutionized world of economics!!( I know, you’re thinking Hell yeah!!!!!) Because of this online sensation, not only does the entertainment industry  drastically increase its profits ( as opposed to video stores like Blockbuster, which only have the capacity to hold, say, 300 movies,therefore resulting in a limited profitability) but we, as fanatic moviegoers, book readers, art admirers (This may be  a very slight generalisation) can experience this virtually (excuse the pun) unlimited era of availability.

Shame… I kind of enjoyed my weekly visits to blockbuster, which regrettably (although relevant to this blog) closed down due to insufficient profitability.

I was sitting here on the couch thinking about communication (I know, doesn’t get any more specific than that). Here, I think the one primarily distinguishable feature between face to face communication and online networking: a statement you hear out loud, depending on the tone, the speed at which it’s spoken, the facial expressions accompanying the words, -and so much more- can stay with you a lifetime while, on the opposite side of the spectrum, a quote you read online, in my opinion, can’t offer that effect on the individual. To see human interaction as a mere transferal of information from one body to another is to throw subjectivity out the window. The way we express our words with our physical gestures, our facial expressions and our vocal characteristics becomes in essence, almost equally important to the information we choose to transfer.

I won’t lie, I definitely found this weeks readings somewhat difficult. So I figured, ‘Hey, why not take this opportunity to read some other blogs?.’ I found Jackie Mathews elaboration on Hypertext considerably elaborative which helped my understanding of the realm of Hypertext discussed by Landow, George in his, ‘Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization’… I can absolutely appreciate the technological advancement of the Hypertext. There’s no doubt to the simplicity of clicking a simple button and obtain the exact information you wish. You can’t do that in books. It’s a little harder… You’ve got to physically get up – which we all know is so unbearably straining on our poor lazy muscles- walk allllllll the way to the bookshelf in search for an endless encyclopedia of a considerable weight which alone isn’t worth the extra knowledge. But there’s something about a book that Hypertext will never satisfy. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I like that you can take a book anywhere and read it… you develop a connection with this physical object because, within it’s torn and damaged pages, lies an endless world of possibilities that you imagine within your mind through an interaction with the words on the page. I don’t know what it is about the online world… It’s somewhat different. Hypertext allows you knowledge with one simple click, that almost inhibits your ability to imagine… it almost inhibits your subjective interaction with the words on the page… But hey, I’m still learning about all this stuff… perhaps my opinion will change.

I experienced a really interesting phenomena (if you’d call it that) over the weekend. I was in the Gold Coast, my dance team had performed and we were all waiting anxiously for results. I’d predicted third place, I was pretty sure I had it right too. Judge gets up, grabs the microphone in what feels to be the longest 3 seconds possible:

“Third place” … not us

“Second place”…not us

I’ll stop right there. I know you’re all waiting anxiously to find out the result, as was I. But i just want to describe this moment to you all; perhaps because I myself haven’t quite wrapped my head around it. I’d went into nationals thinking, ” Third place”. I’d watched all the teams and still concluded, “Third place”. Everything changes when they’ve called out third and second. All of a sudden I found my heart racing at a billion miles per hour as I thought, “maybe we did win”.

“First place”… not us.

You’re probably thinking what the hell I’m trying to get at writing this Blog. I don’t want to be a victim of cynicism but I have and I am certain I will experience a multitude of these moments in my life. I’m not simply talking about expectations and disappointments. No. I’m talking about the way life sometimes makes you think you’ve hit the jackpot. It then turns around, laughingly as it comments, “oh, you were so close”. I don’t blame life. I don’t blame us either. I think it’s some kind of innate predisposition within us to throw logic out the window and replace it with pure hope at times like this. Despite all this, I’m never gonna stop hoping. I’m never hear the judge announce “Second place” and think, “hey, maybe next time”.