Giving up

"I totally failed."
"I did really bad."
"I bombed the test."

I hate, hate, HATE, the pessimism and defeatist attitude that's so prevalent nowadays. What the heck happened to the optimistic and cheerful times? IB happened, that's what.

In all seriousness though, many people that are in high school that I've met have a tendency to undermine themselves. And what bugs me more than the fact that those people are being so pessimistic to begin with is the fact that a good majority of those people have little reason to be concerned.

Why? Why are people so willing to write themselves off as failures? Does it set their expectations low enough to the point where success will permanently lighten them up? Is it maybe modesty - trying to make them appear not as smart as they are? Is it maybe to prevent themselves to look more loftier than they are? I doubt any of those are the answer. It all comes down to self-doubt - confidence is something that's lacking nowadays. But why? Is there even a reason? Even those that study for hours on end will think they aren't ready. What kind of paranoia is this? Are we accepting that we students are made to only constantly spit out grades?

Maybe this sounds ranty, maybe even hypocritical - I know I underplay my own talents a lot. But still, this defeatist attitude has got to change. Even if we can't get an A, we still have other things that make us amazing. Right?

Announcement regarding Ephemeral (The Story)

I've had a bunch of motivation slumps this week, and I've barely covered more than 200 words per day (instead of my usual 500 words per day). Part of it is motivation, but I also need time to think of the story. Most of the notable plot points that I've though of have been covered, so I now need to think about what happens next.
In short, I'll be taking a break from writing Ephemeral. I also have had an idea for a short story, and I think i'll take a bit of time to write that out and see how it turns out.
There won't be an update next Wednesday. Until then!

Ephemeral (Story) Update and DeviantArt

First and foremost, the obligatory update is here. I may take a break from writing Ephemeral for about a week in the near future, but I don't know exactly when. I'll announce it when that happens.

Second, I got a new DeviantArt. You can see my wonderful art there. By which I mean the same style seven times in a row xD But whatever, eye candy is eye candy. I may delve into pixel art since I've proven in one of my art pieces (which isn't on DeviantArt) that I am capable of at least very basic pixel art, but we'll see how that goes.

Enjoy ^^

Do You Love Me? (Song Interpretation)

If I lay here,
If I just lay here,
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
~ Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol

Short, yet meaningful. Snow Patrol's song "Chasing Cars" is probably one of the most romantic songs I know. And by beautiful, I mean it in the way that it holds a lot of less than cheerful elements.
You see, the narrator hints A LOT at his doubt (Those three words/Are said too much/They're not enough) and is stuck in a way that he cannot communicate his inner feelings. And honestly, I think that's one of our biggest problems as humans. We aren't very good at communicating how we feel - we think that our message will be taken at a level that's extremely superficial. His doubt is also shown in the chorus, where he wonders if his affections are mutual - I mean, it's pretty darn touching, he's hoping that his lover cares to the point that she would join him.

It's a nice song, really. Brief, but beautiful lyrics. And a nice surreal feel to the instrumentals. See if you can forget the world with this song.

Youtube link of Chasing Cars

Ephemeral (Story) Update

So there's an update or something,

Read and comment as always. Thanks!

Masks

This may or may not be more of a rant than an actual philosophical rambling.

But I want to know - why do people feel the need to do so many rude and otherwise inappropriate things on the internet? I specifically refer to social networking sites: the ones I will be specifically addressing is ask.fm and Facebook - neither of which are actually bad sites, but have lead to a system of abuse that is partly (if not entirely) cyber bullying.

Now first, ask.fm. I'm sure a million people have addressed this (For those of you SFS people, I think Taylor had a long Facebook post addressing this very thing) but honestly, this site has produced a lot of ill-will comments. While I cannot doubt that some people actually post genuine, non-insulting questions, others are just outright degrading. And what's even more bothersome is that people think their anonymity gives them the right to unleash the nastiest things out there (for example, I've been called a waste of oxygen, and I think there was someone that was insulted for being so faithful). I don't know if people realize this, but putting on the mask of anonymity doesn't change the fact that it's so obvious how much your words sting.
Sticks and stones may break my bones. And words will ever hurt me.

Something less serious, is Facebook "frapings". It's another way of putting on a mask and insulting someone - albeit, less emotionally detrimental than the cyberbullying that flies around on ask.fm, but still enough to be embarrassing. To anyone that's clueless, when you "frape" someone, you basically get into their Facebook (maybe you got on their computer or something) and post random, embarrassing comments or send chats with similarly weird content. First of all, why the heck is this so funny? Fraping seems to be one of the most ubiquitous activities out there, and yet, I see no emotional appeal for doing so. Why would anyone enjoy this embarrassing and mean process? Because it's funny? Sorry, but where I come from (a civilized little town in New Jersey), that's called bullying.
Sticks and stones may break my bones. And words will ever hurt me.

Ephemeral (Story) update

So there's another update or something.
This is actually the first half of an overarching story... so yeah, enjoy or something.

Ephemeral (Story) Update

Posting the update at six forty in the morning because I can
On a completely irrelevant, I found out ephemeral is pronounced ePHEMeral not epheMERal. Wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable, but now it sounds even cooler :D

Can You Hear Me?

As a continuation of my last anti-bullying post, I think I should probably address another big issue: hiding inside oneself. And not just hiding inside because of bullying; hiding our true selves, hiding what we stand for and what we are just to be puppets of society

One of the biggest problems (in my opinion) in our generation's society is conformity; we're expected to dress like that, behave like this, and if you don't, you're just an outsider. While it's good to know why society has that expectation, what I think is more important to know exactly why we choose to conform. Are we afraid of shame? Or maybe we just want to look cool? Are we then saying that our God-given bodies and spirits are not good enough?
I guess I'm jumping to the cynical conclusion that everyone conforms, which is almost obviously not true. But there are a lot of "unique" people out there that have only a very small cluster of friends. So I think I can rightly assume that for some reason about their mannerisms, they aren't good enough to be accepted.
And another thing - would it kill you to try to accept an outsider? And I don't mean that new kid that shows up and is new and doesn't know what the heck is happening and all that crap. I mean accept someone that doesn't fit. Welcome them. Show them life as a friend. Because really, there's little that sucks more than being isolated.