Talented; whether famous or hidden.

Hello again, remember me? Yes it took me a while to find myself in amongst the innumerable amount of books and papers and such. Luckily I scraped my way out into the realms of normality, perhaps minus several ounces of sanity but here's to getting those back. Ah the joys of mock exams; all the fun of the circus. Now, although I do not like to disappoint  I'm going to go against my somewhat signature line of 'nothing interesting to write about' and state that although I've not written in a few weeks, I've been wanting to talk about this for a little while.

Before the business of exams arose, I had a very interesting conversation with one of the two other students in my music class. We spoke about how talent does not always constitute or lead to recognition. Her argument as a singer was that it does not necessarily take a huge amount of effort or intelligence to sing, whereas to play the piano, or to excel in any instrument does. Singing is more of a natural talent first and foremost. But then, people always enjoy music more if there is a singer, and it is only the musicians that truly recognise the talent of the musicians. I am in no position to judge talented singers, I have a great deal of envy for them in fact, but it did get me thinking about how we, as humans, get more enjoyment out of things where we can compare the talent, work or good will of others to that of ourselves, which can either develop into snobbery or potential hero-worship, depending on whether or not that person is better or worse than what you are. Going back to the example of music, people like watching singers because - whether good or bad - all of us have the ability to sing, but going to a piano concert might seem boring to someone who cannot play the piano. I believe this is purely down to the fact that most people are naturally incapable of truly appreciating something they cannot do themselves, which is a somewhat tragic analogy.

This can be applied to almost anything, if you think about it. Wherever your studies, careers, even family relationships have taken you, it can probably be seen that although talent can be acknowledged, it is not fully appreciated unless you share that talent. 
There have been so many studies and such done on theories of self-analysis, many of which will probably come up in the future around this blog! This was just the start of a trail of thought that I had, and since that conversation took place, and my usual procrastination session followed, I began to think more about things in people that I really admire. More importantly, I started to make a conscious effort to take an interest in things people did, not because I can do them better, or because they were better than me, and not because of any seemingly harmless ulterior motives, but just because there are so many amazingly gifted people out there that go unrecognised. I would hate to think that someone thought their talents were worthless, just because I was not willing to grant them some worth. 

"Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 See. Talent develops in quiet places, but to give that talented individual character requires open-minded people who are willing to give their time and encouragement. 
Sermon for today is finished. I do enjoy conversations like that; they seem a little cliche and generic, but often what can be gained from talking to a like-minded person is insight and thought trails that might not have otherwise been considered.
If you are still reading, thanks a lot, it's nice to see viewing figures going up, although saying that, I love writing like this, so even if I had no readers, I'd probably still be taking up space every now and then!
Next week (and yes, I will try my best to blog next week!) will probably be part #2 of the self-analysis stream, as I have a considerable amount of personal experience in that area, and seem to spend a lot of my life putting it into practice, as many of my friends would tell you.
S'me for now.

Over and out. 

A few brain cells, a few personality traits...

hello again! Right so I've not posted for two weeks, as after my last ever-so-slightly feeble entry, I thought I'd wait to see if anything in particular happened that I could write about. As it happens, nothing much has, but hey ho, here I am, and hopefully you're still reading!

So, as a result of having nothing to write about, I just thought I'd draw on a completely out-of-the-blue observation, which actually turned into quite an interesting research project! I seem to have caught practically every cold that's been going around recently, and apparently, you can tell quite a lot about someone just by the way they sneeze! I'm being deadly serious, psychologist and body language expert P. A. Wood created (wait for it..) the Achoo IQ. This is a scale on which every person can be placed on, purely according to their sneeze. Think for a moment, what does your sneeze sound like? I might be able to tell you something about yourself by the answer from that question. In my case, anyone that knows me will know that I will quite literally hold my breath for as long as humanly possible to avoid sneezing in public; I've never heard an elephant being strangled, but I'd imagine that's something like what I sound like! Right, so here goes;
There are four categories of sneezers, the 'nice' sneezer, the 'get it done' sneezer, the 'be right' sneezer and the 'enthusiastic' sneezer. (You know when you say a word too many times and it begins to sound wrong? Sneezer.)
- If you're a single sneezer that turns away when you sneeze, Wood would classify you as a "nice sneezer." These people are characterized as being warm, helpful, supportive and nurturing of others. (I find these people incredibly annoying, how they can maintain 100% dignity while I automatically lose all of mine the minute I get a cold.)
- Or are you the type to let a big loud sneeze out? These sneezers, or "get it done" sneezers, are found to be fast, decisive and to the point. They typically make the best leaders.
- Do you always keep tissues handy and cover your mouth when you feel a sneeze coming? These are the "be right" sneezers and are typically the careful, accurate, deep-thinking type.
- The last group are the "enthusiastic" sneezers, Wood said. These are the people with sneezes you notice -maybe it's particularly loud, or you sneeze about fifty million times in thirty seconds. The enthusiastic sneezers were found to be charismatic and social and have the ability to motivate others.
Two guesses where I am. Pretty sure I'd be an enthusiastic sneezer seeing as it's pretty hard NOT to notice when I'm about with a cold. But then, Dr Frederick Little of Boston University concluded that sneeze style is often genetic, so I've got my mum to blame for that one. 

 From a psychology point of view though, I actually found this quite interesting and did quite a lot of reading on it. Might seem a little far-fetched, but my last blog post? All about taking some time out of everyday life and just finding something to do? Well, this week, this slightly random topic of sneezing crossed my mind earlier this week and so I decided to go for it, lucky you! Anything you've been wondering about? Go find out about it, you never know what you might find yourself blogging about before long! And, perhaps even stranger, that's what Patti Wood must have been doing, research on a wim, because why else would you devote your life to sneezes? 
So, hopefully if nothing else, this has provided somewhat of a source of entertainment this Sunday night, and I'm sure I'll have something more meaningful to blog about next week - keep reading! Bear with me people, something will come along soon enough.

Over and out. 

The heart of un-inspirationism...

Hello all, again!
I'd just like to say thank you if you've decided to keep up with my blogs, I've had over 120 views since I started, and right okay I'm hardly going viral, but to those of you who are tuning in, thanks a bunch; I love writing, and I'm incredibly skilled in the art of procrastination, so to do both is pretty good use of my time I should think!
Right so this week, as the title might suggest, hasn't been the best. I won't go into all the ins and outs of my fascinating life because too many blogs are used like diaries and I'm not aiming for that, otherwise we might all be here a lot longer than we planned to be. I'm hoping some of you can relate to the way I'm feeling right now; genuinely unmotivated in every sense of the word, completely useless and generally quite fed up of life at the moment. It must be the time of year, because from talking to a few friends, I'm not the only one! As David Mitchell pointed out in one of his sketches recently, after around the 26th December we all turn into the miserable people of Januaryland, a complete contrast to the wonderfully happy, reindeer loving people of Christmasland. Pretty sure I should be the poster child Januarianism. 
It was only Friday just gone that I actually had a bit of a thought for this week's blog. I was flicking through ITVPlayer and came across a two part series "Inside Death Row with Trevor McDonald" - sounds so cheerful, right? Usually, I'd avoid these things at all costs, but it had actually been recommended to me by a friend that knew I was interested in Psychology (and Criminology, a little) and so I thought I'd give it a go. 
If you want to know what happens, go and watch it, I won't spend ages describing it, but it really goes without saying that bits of it were a bit tough to watch; there were 12 guys on death row in this high-security prison, each of whom had committed unthinkable crimes. Part of me, though, was fascinated by listening to these men speak. For the most part, they sounded well spoken, and if you met one under normal circumstances, you'd probably think they were just respectable middle-aged men with a few tattoos from their younger years. This led me to think about what choices they had made in their lives. These men have nothing but time, they were confined within 4 walls for 23 hours a day, and so a lot of thinking and reading etc had been done, purely because they had no access to whatever might have interested them before. 
As I do, I began to think about how this, on a much less extreme scale, could apply to us as average non-criminal people! There are always going to be times when things just don't go perfectly, and we make mistakes, but it's only when we're really forced to (most of us) that we actually go out of our way to try something new, and maybe, during a bad time, that's what we needed. These men obviously made unforgivable mistakes in their lives, no-one can dispute that, and if you watch it, you'll know, but being stuck in a cell for 7 years or so really turned them around. It's just unfortunate that it's too late. If, before, they had read those books, or spent a few days furthering themselves from the world to gather thoughts and contemplate who they really wanted to be, they might not have ended up making those mistakes.
Now, I'm not saying that when you have a bad week, you'll end up in prison for homicide, because even from me, that's a little pessimistic, but I think there's a valuable idea to come out of this; take interest, take time, before you're forced to. 

"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." - Joseph Campbell

 When I was younger, I spent some time in hospital, and it was while I was confined to my bed that I learned my love of drawing, and more importantly, of music. Since I was very young, music has been my escape, and I've always found sitting down at the piano very therapeutic, but what I should be asking is why was i that I didn't make that choice to try something new before I had no other choice? 

Thought #3? Try something new, whether it's finding a new game, baking your first batch of brownies, or writing a story, you might just enjoy it, and it might just save you from making a mistake, or getting too wrapped up in the repetitive nature of life that you end up unresponsive the the world around you. A bad week is perfectly acceptable, and definitely not unheard of (!), but take a few hours to lift yourself out of it, can't do any harm, surely. 

Right, apologies for a bit of a harrowing post, but I'm hoping I've put a positive spin on it all, here's to next week being better than the last! Keep reading!

S'me. Over and out.

Snowcrastinating - thought #2

Greetings! 

So it seems to have got to 5:20pm this Sunday evening and I thought it was about time I had a go at blog post number two. 

It seems only natural to mention a slight sense of euphoria attached to the weather over the past few days, it has indeed snowed, and quite extensively at that! As someone of a slightly younger generation I feel as though it is my duty to be jumping up and down with joy, but in all reality, i'm not too bothered. Yes, i'd have loved to be making snowmen and - as per tradition in my family - other snow-beings (such as the recently-born "Snow-elephant" in my grandmother's back garden!) but in all honesty I've had too much to do and too little time to do it in, which is kind of what the main body of what i'm writing about today is centered around. I've often found that thinking clearly is somewhat easier when it's a choice between that, and getting some work done for that ever-approaching deadline. 

So a few days ago, when the snow first started really building up on the ground, I was walking back from my bus-stop and was reveling in the amazing feeling of walking on untouched snow, and noticed that because of just how soft and new it was, every footprint I left seemed to be perfectly shaped, as thought it was meant to be there. Naturally, this made me feel quite proud, but when - about an hour later - I ventured outside again, I saw that my footprints (still the only ones on this particular stretch of snow) were almost completely filled in again with the snow that had fallen since. This triggered a little bit of thinking, or even "Snowcrastinating" as I have so named it (must say, I'm quite chuffed with that one myself). 

"Most steps in life are unaccounted for. Try changing that, for it doesn't have to be that way. Make what you do today have a positive impact on what happens tomorrow" - Unknown

American Pedometer researcher Catherine Tudor-Locke found that the average woman takes around 5120 steps in a day, and the average man about 2000 more. Draw this together with other studies and work out figures and that would mean that the average person walks anywhere between 43,000 and 115,000 miles in their lifetime. That would mean about two to four times around the world. These statistics really made me think, because that would mean that I, aged 17, having not even lived a quarter of my life expectancy, have potentially walked around 18000 miles so far in my life, which is over half the earth's circumference. If you can, work it out for yourself. Even those steps that you might have thought counted, that first time in Nando's, the stepping off the plane into your latest holiday destination, getting up to help cook dinner (and these are just a few of my examples) haven't really done a huge amount of good in the long run, have they? It may seem a little over-touchy, but the mood I just so happened to be in those few days ago really made me feel quite sad. In so much as, it's quite difficult to think of something that I've done, steps that I've taken that really have left a mark. Yes okay, granted I'm only young, but surely life can afford to be slowed down a little in order to think out what the next steps will be, in order to make the future brighter. 
This is something I think society as a whole has lost over the years. Simple 'necessities' didn't used to be as available as they are to us today. People actually had to plan out how to get the best out of their day, and how their own actions might make things more manageable for themselves or even for other people in the long-run. Nowadays, everything really is laid out for us on a platter, especially for young people. If we think about it, it's never been easier to get an education, to grasp new opportunities to better ourselves, to get life experience etc, but what do we do? Complain. All the time. Personally, I'd love to get into Cambridge University, but it's dawned on me that I never seem to stop moaning about how hard it will be. And the same goes for some of my friends, wanting to get into Medical School, or Law School, or going on into the world of work. People just don't see how easy others that came before us have made it, yet all that seems to happen is we get wrapped up in our own lives and forget that those steps that we keep taking mean nothing, they're just going to keep getting covered over by whatever is coming at us at the time. 
There have been innumerable amounts of studies done on Personal Development and Social change over time, but one - slightly strange - relevant one I happened to stumble across was that of Richard Wiseman in the 1990s on 'The Pace Of Life.' He found that ten years after carrying out a control experiment, in the early '90s, people in the world's major cities were walking up to 20% faster. He then said "This simple measurement provides a significant insight into the physical and social health of a city." and then later added that individuals moving at a faster pace were less likely to help others, and more likely to walk past a £50 note lying in full view on the ground. For me, aside from feeling a sense of disbelief that somebody could miss a £50 note on the floor, this signified more than just scientific fact. It is no news to us, any of us, that we are constantly evolving, and the world of technology and industry is evolving right along with us, but perhaps too fast? It all links back to my footprints in the snow. Luckily, I was feeling reflective that day, and I was able to notice that those footsteps were there, and equally I was able to notice when they were gone, but more and more now, people don't bother looking back, to see if what they've done in the past was really the best thing to do for the future. 

Thought #2? Think more. Don't be making perfectly shaped footprints everywhere you go, because there's always going to be someone there to cover them up, but at least, for your own satisfaction, make sure they count for you. You. No more rushing around and complaining that there's no time, just stop for a while and make time for yourself, to think about how your steps today have changed your path for tomorrow. 

All that, from a little bit of snow. Hey Ho, at least we might get some time off work. 
Over and out, until next week.

Bienvenue! Or words to that effect…along with thought #1

Hello world! I’ve been talking to a few people about blogging and suchlike, and after about a year of trying to think of what to write, I’ve decided to make the leap and start writing, not that I’ve actually got very far on the “what-to-write” fiasco.

So, apologies in advance for anything uninteresting that gets put up on here, but I’ve decided to keep a journal over each week of any interesting observations (I’m a dedicated people-watcher) or things that I’ve heard that I might be able to blog some sort of semi-educated debate around.

For today – one of those “nothing is inspiring me, lest of all the ever-ascending pile of work to do” days - I’ll just say a quick word about the last time I ventured from my work into the living room and happened to pause by the television. On it, was the Channel 4 top 50 world-changing singles from the past however-many years. The one I happened to walk in on, was the Charity Single “Everybody Hurts” that was recorded in aid of the Haitian Earthquake, that I was surprised to learn only happened 3 years ago (it seems like ages). The video is heart-wrenching, and if there’s anyone that happens to read this that hasn’t seen it, or needs refreshing, stop now and go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1HxVopG2k

It was one of those moments where I didn’t want to watch, but felt a sense of moral obligation to do so, because how we, in all our luxuries, can ever comprehend that kind of pain is beyond me. What really shocked me though, and this is only a little thing that perhaps would have gone unnoticed by many was that before the song had even finished, up comes the Channel 4 Music logo and we hear the voice of Nikki Minaj in an interview telling the world all about how her feud with co-American idol judge Mariah Carey is officially over. Well, I’m glad because I have been on the edge of my seat for days waiting for that news. For me, that 3 seconds of Haitian children crying and Nikki Minaj’s screeching overlap symbolized a lot of the way we, as a nation and a generation of young people, think at the moment. We all “think” that we’re being good people by watching and aww-ing, just as the media seem to think that they are fulfilling some sort of duty by showing these horrendous videos, but really, we can switch to caring about something else, just as quickly as the media can. I, personally, found it shocking how disregarding it seemed just to see that on television, and it made me think about just how few people around today are actually sincere in their sympathies, and who is just out to make money while making themselves feel good. We’re turning into a group of puppy-dogs who see media as a legitimate authority to justify our lack of regard, or even our level of ignorance, and forgetting what is actually important.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This may all seem very cliche, but I promised “a thought” from today, and that just happened to be it.

Over and out.