Creative Processes

Hi guys! Welcome back!
I'd like to begin this post with an apology for my extended and mostly self inflicted hiatus. I would like to explain in a roughly two part description, without being too wordy, what it is like to be an artist.
I write, this blog, short stories, books (though I haven't finished any yet) and I also paint. In short, I'm not sure I much deserve the title of artist, but I suppose I am one, as I don't believe there's a better word to describe what I do. In even shorter terms, I create. I transform something which only existed in my mind into a physical form, words, paint. Then, unless I hate what I have created, eventually I show it to someone else. Someone else being usually my family or close friends. I would say what I create is generally well received by whomever I show it to and usually is accompanied by a comment along the lines of "How do you do that? I could never do that." I'm never much sure how to take this comment because 1) Have you ever tried? and 2) What I did wasn't impossible because I did it. When I, or another artist for that matter, show work to someone, there's always a multi-level processes. We, I speak for them too because I'm assuming they are human and not always sure of themselves, the artist, see far more than the viewer could ever imagine. I firstly see the idea I had in my head, which never transposes itself to the canvas or the page exactly the way I wanted it to. Then I see the flaws. I could have put a different color here, or used another word there, or maybe I should have held my brush differently in that place? I shudder to think what my canvases would look like if someone took that digital paint stripping technology to them see what's under the layer of paint you, the viewer, can see.
John Greene, an incredibly well known and published author, once admitted he often feels insecure about his writing, and the general public (ie Twitter, Tumblr) freaked out. They looked to all his success, all the ~feelings~ he made them feel, and they couldn't understand how he could be so insecure about his writing. But I completely understand where he's coming from.He knows what he wanted his work to be. He can see which words he could have used to convey his idea better. I have exactly the same problem. And I don't have millions of people reading and critiquing my work. So that, lovelies, is more or less the first part of why I have been away from my blog for so long. I want my blog posts to be a certain way and I feel they aren't and sometimes they make me incredibly irate and I have to step away from my laptop so I will continue to have a laptop.
That being said, it's amazing when I create something other people can read or view and like. It's a wonderful feeling stepping back from a painting or a story and thinking "Damn, I did that. I made something other people can enjoy." Yes, I'll see the imperfections and I know that what I wanted the piece to be in my head is not how it came out, but sometimes it comes out different but still good and it's really extremely exciting.
Now I am going to read over my blog post for grammar mistakes and not let it anger me and then publish it. Creating is hard.
A.
"Art is never finished. Only abandoned." -Leonardo Da Vinci 

My Thoughts On Generalization

OK. Let's start with the backstory. So I was scrolling through Buzzfeed tonight, because it's Saturday night and I don't feel like going out, and I happened across an article entitled Woman Charged For Allegedly Ordering Her Pit Bulls To Attack A Man In The Bronx. The story went onto describe how said woman set her two dogs loose on a man after an "exchange of words. I'll link the article at the bottom but it's really not important to my point. Read the title of the article. Attached to it is far more than the mere facts of a news report. I'd really like to focus your attention on two words. Just two. Pit Bulls. Pit Bulls. As you read the title, you already are forming an opinion about the dogs and the woman and the attack that happened, before you've even read the article. Bear in mind, this is a news article. Yes, the news slants a story a certain way, but it shouldn't. It's a news article and therefore fact, and should be treated without bias. That's beside the point though. The point is, these dogs couldn't help their breed. They couldn't help the stamp of terror and aggression that society has placed on them. They attacked someone after their owner told them to. There was absolutely no reason for the Buzzfeed reporter to mention in the entire news article, especially not the title, that the dogs were pit bulls. Saying that the dogs are pit bulls takes emphasis off the basis of the story, that a women ordered her domesticated animals to attack another human, and puts emphasis onto a breed of dog that has an unfortunate stereotype of being naturally aggressive. A stereotype that's reinforced by stories like this. The reporter could easily have used one word to describe the pit bulls. "Dogs." How hard would that have been? Easier than typing "pit bulls." Would it have detracted from the news report? Not even a little bit.
In my freshman year of college, one of my RA's gave me what I can only describe as some of the best social advice I've ever gotten. "If mentioning someone's race isn't important to whatever you're saying, why mention it at all?" Not mentioning an unimportant physical characteristic is the best way to combat intolerance in a world that's trying to break free from stereotypes and unnecessary hate.
Dogs. Not pit bulls.
A.
For your viewing pleasure.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/bronx-pit-bull-attack#.psKJM1gaQk

678 Reasons To Stop What You're Doing And Do Your Life Differently

Please enjoy this scenic picture of somewhere I've never been as I feel that it illustrates my point.

1) However you're living right now, you're doing it wrong, and you need to listen to me to learn how to live it better. Please enjoy the cliche picture of two happy people living life more happily than you.

2) Clearly listening to me will help you live your life more better. Here are two more happy people listening to me and having a better life.

 67) Sometimes you are sad. Being sad sucks. Here I provide lots of advice to help you be less sad and more happy; be less sad. Here is a picture of sad people to show that people can be sad.

149) I'm providing lots of advice on how to be happy again!! Just be happy! Yay!!! Please enjoy this smiling picture of someone I have never met and whose story I do not know to illustrate my point. Again. Be happy. Or otherwise you suck.

1119280) Keeping reading my blog so you can be less of a horrible person and more of a contribution to society. I have all the answers. That's why I made this blog post. Because I'm winning.

Please enjoy this last picture of a scenic place I have never been too and I have no idea where it is but I thought it was uplifting so I pasted it in here. Uplifting thoughts. Life changing decisions. Yay.

I'm a troll.
A.

Ode On The Death Of A Favorite Toy Thrown Out By A Heartless Father

I'm 20 years old, sitting in my parents bathroom in my childhood home, and I'm crying about a stuffed panda. Let me tell you though, this was not an ordinary stuffed panda. 
I firmly believe I earned this panda. At the ripe old age of six my parents took me to another one of our churches rummage sales. Of course, we didn't actually go to the sale. We went to the sorting days before the sale when people brought in their cast off items and we had to make sense of the mess. On a Tuesday night, I discovered Amanda. She was sitting on the table with all the other stuffed animals in the back corner of the old gym, where the stuffed toys always sat. She was roughly three feet high, permanently placed in a seated position with one arm slightly crooked and the other out straight. I decided she was mine and it was destiny. However, I had three brothers and at the time, I didn't even have my own room. My parents were not about to let a three foot panda bear into their house. So six year old me did what six year olds did best; I begged. My parents refused. I carried the panda bear in my arms, I had to use both as she was too big for one, for three nights straight. Every night we got to the rummage sale I would run and see if someone had bought her before the sale even opened. At some point on one of the later nights a giant teenage boy and his friends with baggy pants walked by. He scratched Amanda on the head and told me "Pandas are cool." I was convinced it was fate. Eventually my parents, probably my mom, gave in. For what likely amounted to five dollars, Amanda was mine. I had won the fight and I deserved to keep her. She sat on my floor for years, first my shared room and then my own room. I bought her panda children whose names all began with L. Luke, Lily, Louis. Eventually she had to go live in the attic to make room for my super cool teenage self. 
 To return to present day. Today I learned that my father, in all of his wisdom, TOOK AMANDA TO THE DUMP AND THREW HER OVER THE WALL OF NO RETURN. My parents are moving and clearly I would not want a giant panda any longer. I am heartbroken. Amanda was a good, kind panda. A loving and patient mother. It breaks my heart that she is somewhere, probably ground up by a giant incinerator, feeling hopelessly un-loved. That's the feeling and emotion kids put into the toys they love. Amanda was my good friend, as you can tell by the fact that I'm still sitting on my parents cold bathroom floor typing away on my phone. Toys, to children, are very much alive. Remember that as you become an adult. 

This one's for you, Amanda.

A.

Abusive Relationships

I'm about to get very personal with the internet. You have been warned. Obviously, I'm posting this semi-anonymously. I'm going to keep real names out of this post and, if you happen to know me and the people mentioned, please refrain from passing judgement. I am writing this post because I believe it may help someone.
A lot of people tend to define an abusive relationship on whether or not one person is being physically hurt in someway. That's the easy way to see a problem. Harder to spot is emotional abuse because people may be very good at hiding it.
Some background on me. I come from a stable family, parents married for going on 28 years this September. I have three incredible brothers whom I have witnessed defend me from guys who were bothering me. I have a pretty strong sense of self and a really strong personality. I'm not really the kind of person you can push around. And this still happened to me.
I recently got out of a relationship that looking back on, I could borderline consider abusive. I was with the guy for over a year, but we'd toyed with a relationship for about the same amount of time so let's call it even and say this guy had some part of my heart for about two years. Said boy, we'll call him Greg, and I had a pretty healthy relationship for a while. Towards the end of our relationship was when things got crazy. There were signs he wasn't as mature or ready for real commitment as I was, but of course I didn't notice them until after we broke up.
Some warning signs ladies:
Does he discourage you to do the things you want to do by saying you'll never be able to do them?
Does he make you cry?
Does he comfort you when you cry because of him?
Does he even acknowledge you when you cry because of him?
Does he get upset at you for needing him?
Does he point out your flaws and nitpick at them?
Does he make you feel as though you'll never be able to change and you'll be this imperfect and flawed person forever and you'll never be able to change that?
Does he promise he'll do things and never do them but get upset at you when you promise to do something and never get around to it?
Does he call you a bitch? Are you crazy and psycho?
Is there a double standard? 
Does he still tell you he loves you after putting you through all of this?
If you answered yes, you're probably in an abusive relationship.  Sure, some of it may be your fault. But, in the immortal words of Louis Armstrong, "It takes two to tango." It took me about a month of this treatment before I decided I'd had enough. It was a mutual agreement, messy, incredibly messy, but still a mutual agreement.
But, you say, he might change. If I could just do this better then he'll change. This is all my fault.
You still have a voice. You can still stand up for yourself. You can walk away.
But, you love him. You know he loves you. You cannot walk away. He makes you happy.
Yes. Yes you can. Someone else can fall in love with you. There is happiness outside of him. I know it doesn't feel like it. My heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest. I'm still getting over the confidence issues I know were not there before I started dating Greg. I still think of him. I still have yet to forgive him. But I'm working on it. I'm getting there. Other people still find me attractive. I went through all of this and it's made me a better person. I'm not sure how happy I am right now but I'm not crying daily because of how someone's treating me. You can do it too. I believe in you.
A. 

This Is An Internet Rant. I Apologize In Advance.

This post is going to be a little bit of a rant. Maybe a lotta bit more than a rant. I am extremely annoyed at the internet at the moment. You have been warned.
Last night my roommates and I decided to stay in and have a Just Dance extravaganza. (I do apologize to the people in the apartment below us; we shook the building quite a bit). The apartment possesses two wii controllers and houses four people which means that two people were sitting out per term. Because we're college students and incapable of making conversation, I spent a lot of time on my phone waiting for it to be my turn. Whilst scrolling through my Twitter timeline, I happened across a certain post by Sincerely Tumblr. Given the name, this particular account mainly reposts snippets of Tumblr blogs and, as I cannot get into Tumblr, I generally enjoy following them. This time though, I just got really really annoyed.
Somebody, I don't know who, posted a picture of two eyebrows, one done up or "on fleek" as the kids say, and the other just a normal eyebrow. A harmless picture. No. It was not harmless. Not. At. All. Some poor unfortunate Tumblr users (I assume male based on the comments but bear in mind this is Tumblr so I have no idea) commented that they liked the natural eyebrow better. Hallelujah, one might think. Some guys have decided women look better without makeup. No. This is Tumblr. You can never do anything right. Some girl decided these guys needed to be brought down a peg. She (again, we're assuming the user is a she because Tumblr) went off on these poor users for stating they enjoyed the natural eyebrow. Didn't they know girls wear make-up to feel pretty and good about themselves?? Didn't they know girls don't wear make-up for anyone else but themselves? Women don't need the approval of men to feel confident in themselves and couldn't the men understand that?
I am so disgusted by all of this I don't have the words.
I cannot tell you the amount of times I've heard how a man's comment can destroy a girl. Personally, I had a guy tell me my forehead was too big once, something I had never even thought about before, and now I live in mortal terror of having a forehead the size of Africa. People seek approval from others. That's just the way it is. That does not mean, though, that anyone deserves to be ridiculed for what they think looks good especially if it is different from your own opinion. My best friend likes guys with tattoos. I'm not a fan of tattoos. I'm a fan of the clean shaven or slightly scruffy jawline. She appreciates a full beard. Does this mean either of us is wrong? No. Do we tear each other to sherds for having different opinions? No. Does this mean that I get upset when a guy has tattoos or a full beard? No.
My point is, people express themselves differently. They're allowed to do that. You're allowed to have an opinion on the way they express themselves. You are. Don't give me that look. What you may not do, is judge them. Tell them or yourself that they are in anyway wrong for having that opinion. (Obviously, we aren't talking extremes here. I'm not sure the way Ed Gein expressed himself falls into the category of "allowing someone to be entitled to their opinion." Look him up). You especially may not inform someone you don't know over the internet that their opinion is wrong. You are telling someone you do not know that their opinion is inferior to your own. Anonymously. On the internet. Where it will be forever. Be nice. Respect other people and their opinions. And be sure to have a thick skin when you put your opinions out on social media.
Ok. I need to stop. Rant over.
Scroll on down!
A.

The Modern Woman

A couple months ago I was rereading Gone With The Wind when I got the lyrics to Anaconda by Nicki Minaj stuck in my head. The combination was such an odd one that I had to stop and think about it and this is what I came up with.
For those of you who have had the grave misfortune of not reading all 1400 pages of Gone With The Wind multiple times, or watching the three hour movie, I will give you an extremely brief summary. The story is set in the last dying days of the Old South. The Civil War is displayed from the view point of a spoiled and opinionated Southern Belle, Scarlett O'Hara. Scarlett, like the other Southern women around her, struggles to cope with the world she was raised in and knows, disintegrate around her. The women can do no more than watch helplessly from the sidelines. That was the Southern woman. She was helpless. She was ornamental. She was not expected to have ideas of her own. Scarlett is all but cast out from decent society when she becomes a career woman and takes charge of her own life. The women though, while ornamental, were the backbone of society. They were the neck of the household; anything they wanted, they could obtain, though it had to be manipulated through the head of the man. Women were highly respected and required the protection of a man. The young men were not allowed to call the young women by their first names without preceding it with "Miss" and even that act was one worked towards for months and could only take place after the express permission of the female. Marriage proposals were not accepted the first time, or even the second, but the third. Women were protected and men were expected to know how to protect them and treat the women like the fragile delicate creatures they were.
Contrast this with Nicki Minaj's recent Anaconda music video. The most known line of the song is "My anaconda don't-My anaconda don't-My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns hon." Obviously you can work out the sexual innuendo in this line for yourself. Nicki expresses that women have been empowered. They do not need a man to complete them. They are free to have ideas, to have their own goals, to do what they want, to sleep with whom ever they please. Men have accepted that women can think for themselves and are not, in fact, fragile helpless creatures.
But at what cost?
Objectifying a women in the Old South was done in secret. The "bad woman" in Gone With The Wind is not a part of society. Men of dignity do not enter her house or even entertain notions of doing such a thing. The "bad woman" made a choice not accepted in polite society and she embraces it, even though the rest of society can hardly stand to talk about her. Objectifying women was a hidden process in the Old South. Meanwhile, we have a famous pop singer objectifying herself for reasons known alone to her and the objectification of women is so commonplace that she's barely scandalous. However, no one can deny that what Minaj did worked. I know who Nicki Minaji is. I have watched some of her music videos, even if I lost interest half way through. She's built career for herself, like thousands of other women today, and probably made more money in a couple years than I will ever make in my lifetime. She's a career woman and I give her my respect for having the guts to put herself out there and make something of herself.
Women have gained a lot in the world of business since 1864. Unfortunately, I believe we may have lost on the home front. People's eyes bug out when I tell them I want a lot of kids and stay at home with them. Marriage is a suggestion rather than a social norm. Motherhood is prolonged until almost the last possible instant. Michelle Duggar is an oddity for welcoming as many children as she is able to have.
All in all, a woman's mind is far more respected today than it was 150 years ago, but I don't believe the same can be said for her body. We have given up respect for our bodies for respect of our minds. Now the problem is; how do we attain respect for both?
Scroll down for respect!
A

Marriage: A Controversy

Florida became the 36th state in the Union to legalize gay marriage today. In light of that event, I thought I'd write a post about it all.
A couple weeks ago I was skiing for the weekend at a resort in West Virginia.  I couldn't get a girlfriend to be my ski buddy, so I found myself spending the entire weekend with my dad. This was fine with me. My dad and I have an excellent relationship and, as I spend most of my time at college or camp and away from home, I treasure every minute I get to spend quality time with him. A bit of back ground on my dad; he's got a PhD in History and spends pretty much all of his time thinking about what's going on in the world and how it's going to affect him. We got onto the topic of gay marriage while 30 feet in the air, our legs dangling off the ski lift. 
While my dad and I don't exactly see eye to eye on the topic of gay marriage, personally I don't really have much of an opinion one way or the other as long as I don't have to do anything I don't believe in, my dad brought up an excellent point. His very unnerving factoid was that he has never seen any statistics on how many gay marriages there have been since it was first legalized.
Once I got home after the weekend and warmed myself up, I powered up the old laptop and did a quick Google search. Now, gay marriage has been legal in the US since 2004, when the state of Massachusetts decided to legalize it. That means, that since 2004, if you were gay and really wanted to get married, you could move to Massachusetts. I did a quick search after that to find out the number of gay marriages there have been since 2004. Firstly, it was a little murky to find the actual number of marriages. About the fourth link down, I found one article by a place called Pew Research Center. This article did hold exactly what I was looking for. It  gave me the numbers of gay marriages to happen in each state, there were nine at the time, that allowed gay marriage, withholding Maryland and DC. The number they gave me? 71,165. Over a time span of about nine years, 2004-2013. The Numbers from 2014 hadn't come in yet. I then ran how many marriages happened in the United States in 2013 into Google. The first link I came across told me exactly how many marriages happen a year, how old the bride commonly is, how old the groom is, how much money they spent on the wedding. The number of US marriages a year? About 2.3 million. Multiply that number by 9, and you get 20.7 million marriages. I then divided 71, 165 by 20,700,000, a trick I learned in grade school to calculate my test averages. My number? .00343. That's .003 gay marriages to happen in the US since it was first legalized.
It isn't that gay marriages aren't happening. It's just that the demand for them isn't as high as the media would have you believe. It isn't even close. It's virtually a non issue. I'm sure, if you happen to spend any time on any social media platform with young adults, you've seen the image of the two little old ladies who got married in their 90s after decades of waiting. You know multiple celebrities, like Ellen Degeneres or Neil Patrick Harris who are gay and have gotten married. I'm not saying that you shouldn't believe in gay marriage if you do or stand up for it. I'm here to say that gay marriage is drastically over publicized and given far more media attention than it deserves. Focus your energies on a cause that affects a much wider percent of the population, like racism for instance, and work on erasing that. Gay marriage isn't going to go away and it will probably become legal everywhere eventually, but affects too small a percentage of the population to justify all the hype. Do your research, find a cause you believe is worthy of fighting for, and don't just go with the flow.
Scroll the day away!
A.

I'm Already Struggling

It's already hard for me to continue to write for this blog. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I'm going to take a stab at several reasons.
The first reason being that a blog post is a creative undertaking. You have to think about what you're going to write and how you're going to write it. You also have to think about the reader. Are they going to like it? What if they don't? What if they do? I feel putting yourself out there creatively is much harder than anything else because firstly, it's very subjective and secondly, there's a little bit of yourself in said creative act. Therefore, if someone deems your creative endeavor bad, it feels like they have also condemned a little piece of you to be bad and that's a very frightening and disheartening concept. Nonetheless, here I am and I don't know if this is good or bad yet.
Not knowing where this blog might be going is another concept I find hard to deal with. Generally, the end is always in sight. The semesters over, I just have to make it till then. College ends in two and a half years and then I can move on. Anything so tangible being so uncertain is a little hard to wrap my head around. Of course, I have no followers as of yet, so I wouldn't be letting anybody down if I stopped. Well, except myself.
Lastly, and I think I'm going to make a whole blog post about this next week, I'm an internet kid. I grew up in a world where anything I wanted to know or find out about was at my fingertips. I could always find something funny to watch or something cool to learn about. Basically, the internet has always been easy. This blog makes the internet hard.
We'll have to see where this goes.
Scroll along for the ride!
A.

The Happily Ever After Complex

So, you watched the final episode of How I Met Your Mother. If you didn't, stop reading because I'm about to spoil everything for you.
I watched the final episode, and like most humans with a heart, I was annoyed. I desperately wanted Ted to actually stop chasing after Robin and move on with his life already. I wanted Robin and Barney to work out, and not just because I'm in love with Neil Patrick Harris and I want his on-screen relationships to work out just as much as I want his off screen relationship to work out. Personally, I was pulling for Robin and Barney to have a long and happy marriage with a surprise baby. I also didn't want The Mother to be DEAD. Essentially, I wanted everyone to live happily ever and that just the problem. No one really lives happily ever after. Ever.
I feel like most of our television shows and movies depict everyone living happily ever after. The hero accomplishes the long arduous task. The boy gets the girl. The girl gets the boy. Sure, some semi-important character, Fred Weasley, Dumbledore, Prim, Augustus, might have died, but the Dark Lord was vanquished, the corrupt government was toppled, love triumphed. There is rarely an ending of any story that leaves everyone in despair.
How I Met Your Mother took all the growth and development the characters accomplished through the years and threw it away. Barney regressed to his womanizing ways, Ted never let go of Robin, Robin bought back all the dogs she'd gotten rid of.  I think, myself included, that everyone was annoyed that the writers threw out the progress but, what everyone was more annoyed about, was the fact that Ted and The Mother and Robin and Barney never got to live happily ever after. Life is unhappy and hard enough without having to see the people you live through vicariously onscreen suffer as much as you do. However, I think the writers of HIMYM were really onto something. Life isn't flowers and roses and happiness. I don't know what it's about, but it isn't that. So there's no reason why our entertainment needs to reflect that. In the end, what's more thought provoking and what can you take away lessons you can apply to your life? An unattainable happily ever, or a real life scenario you can truly relate too and struggle with?
Scroll Away!
A.

College: The Ups and Downs

Here I am. About to finish my third semester of college. I'm actually supposed to be working on several different assignments, all of which are due this week, but I'm listening to One Direction, surfing the internet, and writing this blog post instead. Go me. But seriously guys (speaking to the huge number of people that are reading this, of course) college is a tedious time. Don't get me wrong. Higher education has its perks like being on your own and being able to do your own thing. See, that's exactly my problem. I'm on my own. I don't mind being able to do things for myself but college is a very lonely time in my life. I'm a naturally talkative and outgoing person in a group, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel like I have no one to talk to and no one to share anything with. College is truthfully a very selfish time in your life. Think about it. You use other people's money (generally) to work on a career path that will be all your own. Other people's problems don't matter to you so much because your struggles, will I get an A or a B on the next exam?? are so much more important. Life doesn't give you a whole lot to be proud of or invest in and you're too busy trying to pass to go find out what you can invest and be proud in. Personally, I believe college to be very overrated and over priced and, while I'm trying to make the most out of this experience, it's hard to keep it from being an unproductive and isolating time. But those are just my two cents.
Keep on scrolling!
A.

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

I've started this blog because I need a creative outlet that has the potential for being read by someone else. I want to be held accountable for what I say and do on this blog because at this stage in my life so much of what I do is frivolous and not meaningful. College is a time in your life where you are frequently doing a whole lot of nothing and I go crazy like that. I need something to put creative energy into. I paint a lot and that's great but I'm very self conscious about what I paint so I don't really share it with people or put myself in a position where I can get any feedback from anyone. I'm also not very good at the internet so I couldn't Tumblr or Youtube or anything like that. I believe blogging could be very beneficial for me because I have a lot to say and, if you're reading this when you're probably supposed to be doing something else, you have time to read. With that said, welcome to my blog. I hope to be able to spread positivity and give my frank opinions on the world around me.

Scroll on back up!

A