Foreword

Greetings! I'm Molly. This is my first blog experience and I'm pretty dang excited about it. There are a variety of reasons why I've decided to embark on this pseudo-assignment.
I'd like to make it clear that I am not an aspiring photographer, and I don’t pretend to be. Some of my closest friends and family are exceptionally talented in that area, but I can’t say it has ever been a genuine passion of mine.
Onto business. Recently, many of my Facebook friends caught my attention with albums titled “30 day challenge”, in which they followed a list of topics via photos that defined them. All of this for a period of - you guessed it - 30 days. I wanted to pursue this in my own way by making my own ‘list’. (Side note, I have planning this for the past few weeks; likely driving my roommate crazy by scrawling ideas onto paper in the middle of the night.) Regardless, I am excited for my ideas to come to fruition, and truly hope it turns out the way I have been imagining it. I invite you to leave comments on anything I post. I have always been a firm believer that knowing what everyone else thinks, does, in fact, matter. It puts things into perspective and allows us to be well-rounded individuals, which is definitely a quality I would hope to be recognized as.
One primary hesitation I have about this project is ultimately how self-centered it is. Completely. It can be chalked up to self-expression, art, or anything else… but in the end, things like this are primarily concerned with “me” and “I”. I struggle with this in an age of social media. Since the time I had a Myspace at age 16, I began this practice (we began this practice) of showcasing ourselves and finding endless ways to portray how unique we were. With Facebook and Twitter, I find it to be a double-edged sword. I want everyone to see… and yet, I don’t want anyone to see. Sometimes, all I really want, all I really need, is an outlet to mass-communicate my rawest emotions on a medium where no one is guaranteed to see it.
So…yes; with this project, I admit to being yet another self-dissecting 20-something. But I was programmed this way, and I have discovered a lot of important things as a result. This is about being honest with myself, regardless of all outside influences. This isn’t for you or for them, this is for me. It’s a time capsule. How will I feel tomorrow? In a week? a month? A year? Only time will tell.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Day 9: Sometimes, I really wish I would just

stop talking,
and listen more. 
          Here's the dilemma: we all talk more than we listen. For many, the ratio of talking to listening is drastically uneven, and I am no exception to this trend. On a personal level, I almost feel as though I have become this way because I believe that society expects instant answers from us, at all times. Technologically speaking, things like e-mail, cell phones, skype, social networks, and text-messaging were all designed with the same goal: get a hold of anyone, anytime, anywhere. With this in mind, I subconsciously feel pressure to come up with answers on the spot, even when having a casual face-to-face conversation with a friend.
       There's another part to this: I need to slow down and think before I speak. When I was in 1st grade, I remember being recognized for being one of the best readers in my class, along with one other student. For years, adults and those older than me would comment that I had a high vocabulary for my age. I was constantly devouring books and learning new words.
          I never get those compliments anymore, and I definitely do not deserve to. Within the last few years I constantly find myself stumbling over words, using vocabulary incorrectly, and finding it difficult to articulate exactly what I mean. I honestly worry that I am slowly losing my mind and my grasp for language. It’s almost a little unfair that I was apparently so well-spoken at an age where I had topics of little importance to discuss.


So, here's to listening. 
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMarch 9, 2011 at 8:15 PM

    maybe dementia is slowly creeping in...probably need to do more crossword puzzles and sudokus

    but your right, and honestly sometimes talking is a form of listening right? to be able to respond shows that you listen

    ReplyDelete

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