The Art of Blogging

or, Why I Decided to Stay Up Late to Write About My Blog.

The good news is that I've just taken a cocktail of naturopathic medicines that will knock me out in a bit, so this post is timed in its length. If you see a bunch of nonsensical sentences near the end, you'll know why.

So here I am, after many years of having contributed on an almost monthly basis to my precious little project. Indeed, this place is one of the rare undertakings I have kept in my life for any length of time.  Most of my other "projects" - such as scouting, shamanism, origami, duct tape creations etc. - have been left in the dust because I have the attention span of, well, someone who doesn't like to spend time doing things over and over again.

I will admit that some of my blog posts can be quite a bore - especially the long winded rants about why I  sometimes hate life and the universe and other people, but I feel I can only get better the more I write. I hate to admit it, but practice, to an extent, does make perfect... whatever perfect means.

There are many patterns in why or how I write that I find almost fascinating. For example, I tend to blog more often when I'm feeling sad, depressed, melancholic, lonely, discouraged, forlorn - take your pick, they're all lovely words. It seems that if I'm having a really good time, like when I was in Halifax in 2010, I just don't feel the need to spread the joy through my words online.

There are exceptions to these trends. Just because I write often doesn't mean I'm particularly depressed or anything. If I'm feeling very, very angry about something I've witnessed or experienced (e.g. my anti-capitalism, anti-Facebook rant), my blog, instead of Facebook or the phone, is usually my go-to place. But I find I don't get livid easily, so I don't have that many angry posts.
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I don't really receive much criticism, as comments are few and far in between, but I feel I have a general sense on how to improve the readability of A kaleidoughscope of writings. It's simple, really. Have interesting things to talk about. Of course, what I find fascinating and what my semi-private audience finds fascinating are very, very different. (On a side note, I really wish more of you would comment, or even link to your own internet domains, blogs, whatever! I'm even willing to *shudder* visit your Tumblr as long as there aren't too many ADD-seizure-inducing gifs plastered all over the place).

But I do tend to lack content, a real subject matter to discuss and to explore in any sort of depth. But it's never been my goal to make this blog a politicized, controversial debacle full of people with hardcore opinions, like you find on so many of the popular domains nowadays. I'd describe this place as a mix of the easy-going and often humorous nature of Yahoo Answers with the somewhat more professional content-filled blogs like BoingBoing, with a dash of XKCD-inspired self-referencing wittiness.

I also made the choice not to monetize my blog. I don't think I ever will unless I'm really, really desperate for cash; or if I make a cool partnership with a business that won't alienate my precious audience with ads about bathtubs and useless gadgets.
I was actually offered a "partnership" with a big online retailer a while back who would send me free stuff if I reviewed some of their products on my blog. I admit, I was tempted at first, but I didn't need the stuff anyway, so I thought "Why bother writing about boring things that no one needs anyway when I spend half the time ranting about how consumerism is killing our planet...".
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So what influences my writing? Well, I guess all the books that I've read help me to write with more confidence, as it's easier to place words in a sentence when you've read hundreds of thousands of them. I have a few favourite authors (read: "favourite" means that I've read at least a few of their various works), such as Kenneth Oppel, C.S Lewis, Bryan Perro, and a few of the fancy philosophers like Descartes, Kierkegaard and Kant; they really know how to make me feel like a smart cookie. But personally, I think I've finally found my sweet spot, the perfect setting that gets me to sit down and write a blog entry:

• a late-hour (after midnight is usually best)
• having taken a long, winding walk through the darkened city streets (I find a lot of my blogging ideas just pop up when I'm wandering Toronto pondering life)
• a smidgeon of alcohol (tonight, it was a bit of tequila and a beer later on)
• a small desk lamp that illuminates my desk and the piles of fancy books that lie beside it for school
• smooth jazz playing through my speakers
• a few puppets and origami to keep me company

What a poet, am I right?

If the above conditions are met, I usually bust out some pretty epic posts.

I also like to write when I'm high on various totally legal (insert hacking cough here) substances, but I find that my writing tends to lack clarity. I sometimes have to erase entire posts because my brain hurts after reading a couple sentences when I wake up the next day...

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I really do feel like this blog has helped me out immensely. I used to think that blogging was not very therapeutic, because at the end of the day, they're just pixels on a screen. But being able to look back on what my life was back in, say, 2007, is pretty nifty; I'm kind of proud of having pushed myself to write when sometimes I didn't feel like it at all. It's also really awesome that a couple of my friends have started their own blogs, mayhaps because of my influence (I like to think that...).

In my opinion, blogs are much more conducive to "good" social relationships online. Facebook blends everything together and there's just way too much information to really care about any one person for very long because before you know it, a dramatic status update has captured your attention. Personal blogs, like mine and my friend Kate's that I linked just above are a much more interesting look into someone's life and you can really get a sense of what they're passionate about from reading a couple entries. Pictures on Facebook and years of status updates are just too... impersonal for me to really care about much.

Well, it looks like my lovely flower essences are kicking in and ZZZZZZZZZZZ-

Karma Aspiration Langune Entité Iodinement Dérive Oisellerie Ulysse Guimauve Hurlement Salutaire Citronelle Ophilia Perspicace Ettore  

Dreams and other pretty words

Why are there certain words that we just like more?
I sometimes get complimented on my majestic (and often ill-used) vocabulary and when it comes to archaic words, I see no reason for them to die off simply we've come up with more "hip" words like "tweeting".

It would be machiavellian of me to start listing off random words without proper introduction to them but I feel that this is sometimes almost necessary, considering the sheer amount of hashtag nonsense we see today from the younger generation.

Jeez, I sound like an old man (which I never, ever want to be) with my general ranting on today's youth. But it's true - I really like words, both english, french and maybe a select few other languages that hold a special place in my heart. Words allow us to convey things to each other - it's such a basic principle that we embrace in our lives and sometimes forget to take care of. But in today's modern world, we've emphasized speed over comprehension and it doesn't seem like very many people care about writing properly - which is insidious to our ancient linguistic roots.

Personally, I feel my life would be more meaningful if I received texts in proper grammatical form and especially with proper spelling. I make an effort to write out my texts because I just... love the way they look.
Something about having numbers and random symbols just turns me off.

I think this is why I might be minoring in Linguistics. Either I've been raised to love words (having one too many translators in this house) or I somehow developed an attraction to them in school.

How do you feel about words?
This post was rather academic.
Maybe it should go to my university...
I don't know, I felt like writing something since it's been a while.

Karma Aspiration Langune Entité Iodinement Dérive Oisellerie Ulysse Guimauve Hurlement Salutaire Citronelle Ophilia Perspicace Ettore  

K & The Internet

Once upon a time, in the depths of my past memories, I was an average 14 year old who went to school, got decent grades, and played video games with friends when not busy being a boy scout.
I also spent a monstrous amount of time surfing the internet - back then, we had just gotten a new DSL connection, and I could spend unlimited amounts of time connected to the modem without tying up the phone line.

I quickly discovered many ways to connect with people, and one of them was a particular chatroom I had found by googling (or, back then, "Altavista-ing) "chatroom". Of course, there were your regular people, mostly teenagers around my age (I hope!) discussing music, movies and your run-of-the-mill teenage banter. There were the creepers, who were sending countless number of private messages to the girls just to see them naked.
And there was me.

I don't really know why I was there in the first place. I guess it's because I felt a little lonely and I loved how easy it was to just start up a conversation with someone. I didn't even have to start the conversation with "hello". I usually came up with slightly punny introductions that would get me weird looks were they uttered face-to-face. Some of the people I messaged thought I was weird nonetheless, but once in a while, I would find someone who would reply with an equal amount of wittiness and I knew I'd found someone special.

Usually, the conversation would go on for a while before the inevitable question would pop up: "Do you have MSN?". Because, well, once you disconnected from the chatroom, you were likely fated to never see or hear from these people again, unless you were a regular.
Either way, MSN was always a constant. You could always depend on MSN Messsenger. The smiley selection was just... so appealing, and the introduction of voice clips in my later teenage years only furthered my adoration for this communication medium.

So, during one of my many 321Teenchat escapades, I met a girl named K. from New Zealand. She is one of my -original- internet friends, and I've known her for seven years to this day. SEVEN YEARS! And I've stayed in touch on and off with her for those seven years. I think I just loved the fact that she was from New Zealand, and I would always beg her to use her microphone to talk to me because I desperately wanted to hear her sweet accent.
K., being a wise and rather shy girl, never did such a thing... until two days ago.

I heard her voice for the first time after seven years of "knowing" her. Since we'd been Facebook friends for a while, she took the initiative to use the new Facebook video chat and actually gave me a call, and we had so much to talk about!
Unfortunately, it was around 4 am and I REALLY needed some sleep.

My conversations with her usually ended at such a time because I was always up late talking to her and I eventually needed to go to bed. She would rarely be on at normal conversational times for me, say, 9 pm, and so I would stay up late just to talk to her because her time zone was very strange indeed.

I have many, many other internet friends, but K. is probably my most ancient, and I do hope to see her someday. We're both mature enough now to actually travel the world without feeling awkward about it.

Anyway, this was what was on my mind today - let's hope my Saturday will be filled with fun-filled adventures and real-life socialness.
Hah...
Yeah right...
Karma Aspiration Langune Entité Iodinement Dérive Oisellerie Ulysse Guimauve Hurlement Salutaire Citronelle Ophilia Perspicace Ettore 
2019-09 update: Removed first name for privacy reasons.

Free writing: #1

New rules: I am not allowed to use the backspace.

Doctor doctor, what is wrong with me? Why can'tI seem to find the right words for my expressions?

Why do you ask so many questions? Why do I sak myself countless number of questions only to find that nothing has changed.

Do you have a purpose for this words? Will people stop reading once they see that I don't write with eprfect accuracy?

It's actually really difficult to write without automatically pressing the backspace button; I'm so used to using it because I contantsly reainvent what I want to write to make my meaning omre clear.

I can't seem to be the epsonn I want to be... let me try that again (I am not a printer). I can't seem to find to be the person Iwant to be. I try for a little while, i try and follow the decrees but I can't keep up with all of them. I still can't sleep at a reasonable hour; I prefer to dull my brain with massive amounts of internet information before bed at around 2 am instead of actually taking care of my health and following nature's indedtend sycle of sleep.

This is a tortorus blog to write. THe isspelled words are nagging at me like a moqsquito draining y life blood. I breathe and write as as supplementary  way of feeling good about myself. OH THIS IS too difficult! Please let me use the backspace! No, trules are rules.

Living life oh my... jeez, ths is really difficult. Well, it's just like life itself, there's no backspace in time, so I better know what Im doing. I shoul d wtirte faster and faster; on second thought, nevermind, then my writing won't even be legible.

Did I have something important so say? Not really; I'm only writing these lines to get rid of the creative energy that flows through yym veins right now. There's no mutch left. It'd bea easier to feel content writing these lines if my fellow bloggers blogged as much as I do, butg I have yet to find a friend who has withstood the test of time with their blog. They quit, they come back, ( I just cheated there, I used the backspace twiece), but it'S still a lonely place on this blog. Who am I writing to? I'm not writing to anyone; I'm writing to myself so that in my future, Iwill see what I was thinking at the past.

Oh there goes my grammar too... oh dear oh dear, this will not do. I just wish I had more and mroe haobbies and that they didn't reolvele around being near a computer for any length of time. I can't imagine my life without a computer, itS' kinda scary. I mean, I've lived for a computer for a while, so it'S definitely doable... it's just I don'T do it because it's so much... fun? No it's not fun, computers aren't a fs fun as they used to be. I remember when I was little, because I had a windows 3.1, I remember playing with a toucan and him teaching me words.

That was sall so long ago. What happened tow riting? Why do we tweet so much? Why is Facebook so BIG? When's the last day I didn'T check facebook?% Why why why why.

Oh I have so many uquestions, I just wish people would give me answewrs sometimes.

OKAY I FEEL LIKE EATING JUNK FOOD. I do not want to cheat I do not want to cheat I do not want to cheat.

I think I need more pictures on this pblog, to make things colorful. OH GOD, NO, I SPELLED IT THE AMERICAN WAY. THis is my demise.

I want friends. I should wget that cellphne...

Emails no longer mean anything apparenly. Ou can't oraganize things without a cellphone, I'm out of the loop, I could be outside with a friend right now. I am locked away insid e a basement writing words that seem to follow a vague if not distant structure . I hope my witing isn'T too drab.

I'm at 0$5%.

Summer will help.