A documentary a day.

Last night I could not sleep, at all. So what did I do?

Read Paradiso for my reading group tomorrow? Nope. Work on a draft of my personal statement? Nope. Find outlets for those 3 papers I mentioned a post or two ago? Nope. Anything productive? You guessed it: nope.

I did watch a few documentaries on Netflix.

1. CNBC’s The Facebook Obsession

facebook logo (Photo credit: marcopako )

This was an interesting little documentary. I think it lasted about 45 minutes or so, and although I found some of the interviews interesting (especially those pertaining to how the actual people portrayed in The Social Network felt about all of the liberties taken), I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting a little bit more and barely made it through the 3 or 4 sob stories about people who were reunited with long-lost loved ones, who lost their jobs because they are idiotic, who solve crimes using Facebook, and who just basically used any air time they received to complain about how much Facebook sucks (while checking their profiles, that is). The documentary raised a few interesting points about the amount of data Facebook – the corporation – has access to and about the fact that no one really knows what they plan to do with this information in the long run, but the privacy issue, when handled, seemed to be handled well. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not that worried about Facebook using information from my Likes page to direct the advertising it presents in my side panel. I really don’t read those ads all that much anyway and Facebook’s strategy is not all that much different from several other corporations’ use of data to direct advertisements. As far as profile changes resetting privacy controls, I’m not all that disgruntled about this either. I choose to use Facebook. I know what the risks of putting information on the Internet are. I am not an idiot, and I understand that choosing to use a social networking site, like Facebook, requires maintenance. I need to monitor my account. I need to be responsible.

A lot of my friends have been talking about their issues with Facebook recently. One just (somewhat begrudgingly) reactivated his profile in order to manage the page for the company he’s working for, and one is vehemently anti-Facebook on basically all accounts. I’ve had my in’s and out’s with Facebook over the years, and I remember my friends basically forcing me to create a profile several years ago. But, even through all the changes, I still appreciate what it does for me. Yes, it has changed the way people interact, but let’s face it, the world was headed that way anyway. Our lives were increasingly moving to electronic media outlets. Facebook gets a lot of flack for being the first to really build on this. I guess my response to all the naysayers is, “If it hadn’t been Facebook, it would have been something else. This was going to happen one way or another.”

One of the people interviewed asked if Facebook has degraded friendship, and I think that might be blowing it out of proportion a bit. Change is not always bad, and I, for one, have found that Facebook enables me to maintain friendships that probably would have died out a while ago. People can complain about how no one writes letters anymore and the 900 other things that people find to complain about, but it kind of just drives me crazy. I’m as nostalgic and sentimental as the next guy, but I don’t go out and protest the Internet because it allows me to send emails to my friends. It’s the substance behind the friendship that maintains or degrades it, not the medium through which sentiment is exchanged.

I guess I’m just part of the Facebook Generation, or whatever it is we’re called nowadays, but I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Sure, there are some things I’d change about the site if I could, but short of buying a plane ticket to Menlo Park and bribing a coder, I just accept it for what it is. Facebook is a product like any other. It works on a take it or leave it basis as does just about every other product out there, and I’m okay with that.

2. Food Inc.

One word: gross. I actually turned this one off before the end because I couldn’t handle it. I’m not a big fan of scare tactics, and I think this film, or at least what I saw of it, relied on them a bit too much. I know the whole idea of the movie was “to show people what really happens,” but honestly, I did not need to see the hidden camera footage of workers kicking chickens around before tossing them, alive, into dump trucks. Just not necessary. I can call up PETA any day for stuff like that.

The Healthy Eating Pyramid, from the Harvard School of Public Health (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The one thing this documentary did make me consider is the idea of altering my pescetarian diet. As much as I enjoy seafood, I’m just not sure I can oppose so much of what the fishing industry does and still consume their products. It seems a bit hypocritical – kind of reminds me of all those people I can’t stand who sit around complaining about what Facebook does while still maintaining a profile. I think I need to do some more research, and although I doubt I’ll ever give up consuming seafood completely, I could easily see myself adopting a plan like one a good friend of mine contemplated recently: vegetarian at home and as much as possible, but pescetarian, if need be, when eating out. Seems reasonable.

Love never fails.

I feel like concepts of love have been following me around everywhere lately. I just can’t get it out my head. Maybe it’s because I’m searching for it, because I feel like I’ve lost it several times, or maybe, just maybe, because I am spending my time doing something I love every day. (I may complain about graduate school a lot, but trust me, I do love it).

I think the most confusing part of it all for me is realizing the many ways I have been loved and have loved in my life. There are so many ways to love, so many things love can mean. Surely the love I have for my family is different from the love I’ve had in past romantic relationships and that love is very different from the love I have for my best friends. I also love many of my books. I love tea and rainy days and snow. I love waking up early on Sunday to walk into town for bagels and coffee with a dear friend, and I love studying medieval literature.

With so many possibilities for love, I think I sometimes get a little lost while trying to understand it. I’ve often felt like Mary Margaret from last night’s episode of ABC’s Once Upon a Time.

Mary Margaret: Love’s the worst. I wish there was a magic cure.

I think anyone who’s suffered a broken heart can understand the sentiment there. Sometimes love really is the worst. Sometimes it really hurts, but as Grumpy later explained to Snow White, sometimes the pain we feel from love is what we need, is what makes us who we are. We can’t choose whom we love. We simply love. It’s probably one of the deepest and purest expressions of who we are as individuals.

One of my good friends posted the following quote as her status on Facebook this morning, and it’s what inspired me to finally write a post today:

What you are in love with will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

I’m not sure if the words are her own or if they are borrowed from another, but the message is true. “What you are in love with will affect everything.” There’s no escaping it, no controlling it.

In last night’s Once Upon a Time, Rumplestiltskin said, ”Love makes us sick. Haunts our dreams. Destroys our days. Love has killed more than any disease.” His statement seems extreme at first, but it, too, is true. Love is powerful, and it holds some magical power over us as humans. The problem I struggle with I suppose is how to tell when love is real.

With so many ways to love and so many potential recipients of my love (from family, friends, and boyfriends to books, beverages, and precipitation), how do I know when my feelings truly are love and when I simply wish they were. Can we try or not try to love something or someone? Can we actually control it?

My best friend recently shared this TED talk with me, and I feel it fits quite nicely here.

While she strays a little from my main point (e. g. – antidepressant use), I was supremely intrigued by her study and her beliefs. We love in different ways. Apparently we now have scientific proof of this, but people still seem unable to understand it completely. Little girls are still raised with the idea that they must find their knights in shining armor, and boys sometimes grow up afraid of women’s crazy expectations of them. In the same episode I’ve been quoting throughout, Mary Margaret insists on saving a dove from a life completely alone. Separated from her flock, the dove will never find happiness again unless she is reunited with her monogamous dove partner, her love bird. Sometimes I’ve felt like this dove, like I’m searching the whole world for one person who is supposed to enkindle some type of magical bond. It’s a scary thought. It seems so easy to fail, so easy to end up alone forever.

We try to fit love into neat little bubbles that work for everyone, into fairytale scenarios, but the reality is that love is often messy. It’s often painful. And, in the end, it seems that mess and pain make the joy of it that much more powerful. Love never fails to entice, excite, entrap, and often exasperate us.

It’s a new year. Almost.

I’ve been gone for a while enjoying some time at home over the holidays, but I’m slowly starting to remember that I don’t do well with doing nothing.

Today I received my new iPhone in the mail. It was incredibly exciting, very frustrating to activate, and pretty much just like having my old phone by now. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve moved from the Dark Ages of iPhone times to the future, and it’s great. My apps work correctly. I can tell my phone to text message someone, and it does it. It’s very fun, but in the end, it’s just a phone. I need something to work on, to accomplish.

What does that mean? Well, it means I’ll be spending several days of the next few weeks at Starbucks working on conference papers. Did I mention that my paper was accepted to the NJCEA conference? Yay, me. Moving up in the world of academia. I have to edit, cut down, and prepare my paper for presentation now. I also need to get working on another paper I’m submitting to the Plymouth Medieval Forum. Hooray for me again. Exciting stuff is happening.

It’s nice to remember that every once in a while, especially when being forced to let go of a lot of other things. It’s nice to look forward to what is coming.

Anyway, if I’m gone until the New Year, now you know why.

Happy 2012!

Pinterest.

I am addicted to Pinterest.

Seriously. I am.

I have never procrastinated so much in my life. I think.

Anyway, it’s become almost as bad as a Facebook addiction: constantly checking it, updating it, adding to it, sitting and staring waiting for someone to post something interesting.

I’ve found that whenever my brain needs a serious break, I wind up on Pinterest (usually building my virtual perfect closet, but also collecting way to many silly Harry Potter jokes and quotes about books).

Anyway, if you’re interested, follow me. I’d love to have you.

 

A little Psychoanalytic Theory for the Internet Age.

I’ve been struggling with my thoughts on our society’s techno-revolution. Anyone who knows me or who has read more than this post on here also knows that I am very pro-technology. I think it’s great that we all have cell phones that are actually little computers and that Facebook is around. A lot of people discredit Facebook and the impact it has had, narrowing it down to nothing more than another way to waste time and a terrible new aspect of the “I can be reached at all times” phenomenon.

For me it hasn’t been the same. Sure I was a latecomer of my generation into the Facebook world. I didn’t see a need for it in high school. All of my friends lived right around me, we went to the same school, I had their cell phone numbers, and I saw them every day. Most of the pictures they’d post included me or events I already knew about. It just seemed superfluous to my life at the time. Once we all graduated and began to plan our lives across the nation, I realized staying in touch might get difficult, that I might miss out on a lot. I’m not a phone person. I actually hate talking on the phone, so I knew that I’d be terrible at staying connected. Then, Facebook happened.

I’ve mentioned my feelings about Facebook recently, yet I’ve been feeling the other side a little bit more lately. Sometimes I want to escape from things, and Facebook isn’t exactly helpful in doing so. Sometimes I need some space from things, but the act of actually physically having to remove a connection to it seems too much. I don’t need that much space. I’m trying to run away to Australia or anything; I just want to go on vacation for a while. Most people will answer my complaint with the fact that I don’t actually have to go on Facebook if I don’t want to, but that brings me back to the previous point. Sometimes I’m just looking for some space, not a life adjustment. I don’t want to have to stop myself from interacting with other things. It’s a bit of an interaction corner. What’s a girl to do?

Social networking revolutionized human interactions. Forever. The ways we engage with others in the world will never be the same. This radical shift brought with it a whole new system of etiquette – netiquette, and it’s a world we have to navigate much like the day-to-day, off-line world – by trial and error. We have to figure what works for us, what seems socially acceptable to others, and what is responsible. The world of Facebook etiquette, however, is not something we can read about in picture books as we grow up, it’s not something we can pick up from watching our parents. For most of us, we are the first generation to venture into this online world of interaction. We have to pave the path.

I’m not talking so much about the annoying friend who likes all of your status updates no matter what they say or the guy who comments on your conversations with others as if he’s been invited. I’ve been wondering more about the etiquette of passive interaction. Is it healthy for us to always have a connection to every piece of our history? Do I really want a record of my every move, thought, and interaction with someone? What do we do when our morning coffee-time mindless scan of the Home Page brings us face-to-face with things we don’t want to see about people we don’t want to remove from our circle (or friends list – to be more on with the Facebook lingo)?

Where are the rules for that type of etiquette?

Our lives have taken on another dimension, but sometimes I wonder if our human minds are ready to deal with this new change.

Also, Happy Halloween.

Stolen.

I found this on my Facebook News Feed, and it’s helping me to smile this morning.

Magnetism.

I read an article today about gender theory, and while I understood almost nothing (thank you, by the way, literary theorists of yore, for always choosing a three-syllable word when a one-syllable word would suffice; you make my life so very much easier), I found one particular sentence rather interesting:

Knowledge, after all, is not itself power, although it is the magnetic field of power.

– Eve Sedgewick, “Axiomatic”

This line stuck out to me so much that I even copied onto the back cover of my notebook so I’d be able to come back to it later. I suppose later is now.

The simple idea of stripping knowledge-for-knowledge’s-sake of power seems rather simple, yet our society appears to hold the opposite view. Children are expected to attend college because it gives them knowledge which gets them a better job. People pursue higher degrees to accumulate more knowledge, and we bestow them with fancy titles like Master of Arts or Doctor of Philosophy. Knowledge seems to hold some sway, at least in the general population, but I find myself asking the same question Eve Sedgewick introduces in the line I quoted: is simply acquiring enough? Shouldn’t we go further, do something with that knowledge we’ve accumulated, change the world?

It is in our actions and in our exercising our knowledge for the betterment of others that we gain true power – in how our actions, and very lives, affect those around us. Although this train of thought takes me down a very different passage than I’m sure Sedgewick ever intended or thought her work would transport a reader, I feel my meditations are especially applicable to my current position in life.

Over the last few days, I’ve come to understand just how important friendship is. Friendship, like Sedgewick’s knowledge, is magnetic at times. What draws two people together from across a library table, a crowded coffee shop, a classroom, or a world? How do we manage to find friends who seem to know us better than we know ourselves? How would we ever survive without this powerful, magnetic, magical (to quote a dear friend of mine) bond with another person?

In the Middle Ages, people believed that everyone had invisible darts of light shooting from his eyes. They believed that when we found a person with whom a strong relationship was possible, our eye darts would connect with his. The idea of friendship (or love) at first sight seems especially well founded in this idea – this idea that assigns a supernatural power to human relationships, that takes human relationships to a magical level, a level beyond our control or understanding.

Friendship changes people; it changes worlds. I know that my friends bring out the best in me, for if they didn’t, I wouldn’t bother maintaining the relationship. I would not and could not be the person I am today without the influence of friendships both past and present, and I hope that others can say the same about me. It’s a scary thing, friendship. Trusting another person with a piece of yourself, asking that person to keep it safe, to keep you safe. But, in being a terrifying thing, it is also a beautiful thing, a magical thing. Like knowledge friendships can be accumulated and stored on shelves (or Facebook profiles), left to be admired for their quantity rather than quality. Yet, in doing so, we erase the very fabric of the relationship – change it at its core – for it is no longer a relationship, but a title.

Friendship is a powerful force, yet, like knowledge, it must be cultivated, worked for, maintained, and exercised. Friendships cannot exist in a vacuum. They are meant to change lives, to change worlds.

I count myself lucky to have friends across the nation, and even some across the world, for whom I am willing to cry, to whom I am willing give my time and trust, for whom I work and strive to be a better person. Friendship is work, yes, but in the end, when you’ve met the right people, those who are willing to give all same effort, that work becomes magic.

Let there be more magic in the world. Let it start with you and circle back to you.

More transitions.

I’ve been making the transition from my old Windows PC (Henry) to my new MacBook Air over the past week or so. So far, I’ve been loving everything. There are a couple little things that have stopped me up and frustrated me, but overall, I’m very happy with my decision to make the change to an Apple computer.

The thing I love most about my new MacBook is its size. I’ve decided to name her Heidi because she’s so skinny. I can carry her all the way to campus, around campus all day, and all the way home without my shoulder cramping even once. It’s glorious. Anyway, I’ve also run into some problems. For instance, my blog updates no longer automatically appear on my Facebook. I’ve read a few suggestions about fixing this issue, but nothing seems to work. Boo. Also, my iCal app keeps giving me an error code when it tries to sync with my google calendar. Second boo. In the long run, these are minor issues, but if anyone has any ideas about how to fix these problems, I’d greatly appreciate the help.

It amazes me how far technology has come over the last several years – even just in my own lifetime. The fact that I have this tiny computer that weighs maybe 2 pounds that can access the Internet from anywhere, sync with all of my other devices, and still look super streamlined and beautiful amazes me. I’ve really been missing all of my friends from Orlando and my family and friends from back home in South Florida recently, but with e-mail, Facebook, and my phone, I can talk to them whenever I want. Yesterday, I was working on a paper for my Shakespeare class and was sorely missing one of my best friend’s input. We used to spend hours in the library (or the Starbucks, depending on how late we’d been studying the night before) bouncing ideas off each other. I’ve been missing that. Most of my friends here in NJ are Diplomacy students and not very much help when it comes to analyzing Shakespeare. Through a Facebook message, an email, and a text, we were able to recreate our study session technologically. How great is that?

I’ve also had friends who hate the idea that new technology enables us to be accessed at any moment, that we can’t stop the deluge of information and demands on our time. I see their point, and remember one friend in particular who decided to give up on Facebook for a while to see how many people would actually in keep in touch with her via phone only. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure I 100% buy the idea that Facebook, email, and other avenues of social media remove all personal connection from our interactions with others. Sure, I can’t hear my friends’ voices when I talk to them via Facebook messages or texts, but I still share my thoughts, feelings, and emotions with them. Yes, I miss seeing my boyfriend in person every day, but I also smile every time his name pops up on my phone because he’s sent me a text message. I still have a connection to the person behind the technology. Rather than a telephone as the vessel for communication, I have a computer. Is that so bad?

Transitions are a natural part of life. That’s what I’ve learned. Embrace the change.