Thoughts

People always tell you to 'write what you know' and it's incredible how many great works of literature have been influenced by the author's background and experiences. I struggle to write prose and I think it's that Dorian Grey argument, sometimes you can't share things that have too much of yourself in them, sometimes art is the outlet for which one can best represent oneself.

It's then interesting to consider why somebody wouldn't want to share that, why we're not all Walt Whitmans - celebrating ourselves, our lives and our achievements, Writers in general are either egoists or painfully introspective and analytical, which makes perfect sense when you consider the complex nature of some of the thoughts and emotions that they inject into their characters. How would suspension of disbelief prove possible if those thoughts and emotions had not been experienced first-hand?

The nature of the craftsmanship of literature is something that shouldn't be overlooked, it's so easy to become immersed in a story that flows so seamlessly and appears to have been condensed in a single moment of inspiration. Honestly, there's so much painful re-drafting that goes on and nobody no matter how skilled they are, can write flawlessly first time. Hours of time, hundreds of cups of coffee and reams of paper goes in to writing a book worthy of publication. Sometimes the finished product isn't the part that deserves the most appreciation.

An open letter to my friend Instagram

I feel I'm one of many teenagers who desperately need to prioritize, I feel as though people within my age group find this particularly hard because we're at that stage where it feels we're suddenly being pushed out of the nest and dog tagged with things called "responsibilities". 

It's glaringly obvious to me that social media needs to be forced down my list of priorities, I get a shaky, seasick kinda feeling when I think about the hours of my life I've wasted watching cats doing stupid stuff and reading "10 things every Londoner understands" and the like, despite the fact that I do not nor have ever lived in London. 

The most ridiculous form of social media that I admit to using - in my opinion - is definitely Instagram. Don't get me wrong, conceptually it's pretty flawless, a website intended for sharing pictures you have taken with you iPhone, who doesn't want to marvel at the fact that a picture as beautiful as that can be captured without photoshop or fancy lenses on DSLR cameras? It's the way in which this concept has been altered that grinds my gears, it has become a form of social media when I don't think that was ever the intention, the intention being - in my eyes - a mobile form of things like Flickr, making professional standard photography and photo sharing accessible to those who don't have all the gimmicks. 

Instagram can be pretty detrimental in my eyes, like all social media, it has become a form of one upmanship: who can "out-selfie" their friends? Whose weekend looked the most exciting behind that smokescreen of filters and clever angles? It's become a competition, as if the number of likes you get determines your worth as a human being. Like you aren't worth so much more than that, like your charm, passion and inner-strength don't mean more than a bunch of numbers on a picture of your cat. Like the way the sunlight hits your face on a morning and the chime of your laughter isn't far more beautiful than any "no make-up selfie". 

Of course, I'm not going to pretend I don't use it, social media is renowned for being addictive and enticing. Not to mention the fact that the prevailing paradox of our society (this term + that context = me cringing) is that not to conform is also to conform. But the reshuffle within my ministerial cabinet of priorities has proved time and again that I don't NEED Instagram, why do I need to seek validation from strangers through a screen? Why do I need validation at all?

Instagram, it's been great, but it's time we cooled things off. I'm narcissistic and psychopathic enough without you.  

2 minute writing exercise - 22:32pm

You can't connect the dots
Because you have forgotten Sunday
You are that papered ribbon of a moment
When you wake up and forget who you are.

And the coffee-scented sunrise catching his dusty eyelids
Doesn't make the breath catch in your throat
Any more. The imagery's turned stale.
Your camera's out of film.

Musings

Last night's eyeliner game still going strong? Check. Unquenchable thirst and questionable memories of the night before? Check. Hangover? Check. My face this morning was a mass of contradictions, on the one hand my eyes and lips looked as perfectly made up as they had when I went out, whilst my face was dry, patchy and flaky - I looked like a surrealist painting or something (OR a cheap hooker, but I prefer the painting simile). But contradictions, that got me thinking.  

"We value permanence in impermanence and impermanence in permanence nowadays" I mused as I helped myself to orange juice at my friend's house this morning - essentially worshipping sleep yet forever being the first person up. And as deep and pseudo-philosophical as that may sound, I think I was onto something. We're constantly looking for things to last longer, nights out, eyeliner, orgasms, there's a perpetual fear of life going by so quickly that we're afraid it could always bypass us without us realising. However, how many people are continually racing forwards towards the weekend or the next payday or the summer holidays without stopping to consider that right here, can actually be pretty good as well. Yeah you might have work spilling over from desk to floor to bed and a spot may have appeared in the most inconspicuous of places the day you have a date but what about today when you laughed so hard you thought you were gonna throw up and the lady you see every morning at the bus stop bought you a Diet Coke. 

 I'm trying not to run the risk of sounding like a self-help book or a John Green novel by saying everyone should appreciate the little things more but perhaps people should depreciate when it comes to expectations. I'm doing a little experiment right now where I try my hardest to avoid having expectations so that I can appreciate things for what they are and not for what I thought they were going to be. Let's see how it goes.