A First World Realisation

Hey guys! I hope that you're all well!

So today, I think I realised a truth that I hadn't actually quite faced up to before, that my relationship to Twitter really isn't all too healthy for me. It's quite similar to many addictions that you can get in modern day times where notifications become things you can't ignore and I've realised that I hate it. A lot.

It stops me from being present with my family and in many ways it's very inorganic. I've recently started talking to an internet friend of mine who I've known for about two years now and talking to her irl was much different to talking to her online. The challenges are different but I must say I think I much rather prefer spending time with people face to face than I do with my phone.

I absolutely love my internet friends and the support that they give me but the nature of our friendships is so completely different to irl. It's no wonder that people tend to freak out a bit when they meet their internet friends irl because they're so afraid about the difference in the experience they're going to have.

Internet friendships are awesome, don't get me wrong and they certainly function well in their own capacity but I think I've definitely become overwhelmed with the amount of time I spend trying to be in more than one place at one time. I know and now acknowledge more that when I'm talking to friends, perhaps they should be the only people I'm talking to.

The internet is so bad for being in the present moment and I've got to say I don't blame my friends who take ages to reply because who wants to be sucked away from the present? Organise a time and spend that quality time with them. Don't spread yourself thinly everywhere and expect it to work well because it's simply not the way we're supposed to function.

So that's all. I hope that you guys have a wonderful day and I hope to speak to you very soon indeed!

Staying in One Room..... For Ages

Hey guys! I hope that you're well!

So a few posts ago, I talked about the internet being like a house with many rooms and today, I want to share with you a new experience that I've had in this house that is my relationship with other people on the internet and something I didn't realise before.

So in the past couple of days, I've made the most awesome new friend on the internet through Facebook and awesome for a couple of reasons that I'd like to share with you before we go onto the crux of our discussion.

Numero uno, I actually know the guy irl and he's two years younger than me. We went to the same middle school and now because we're at the same high school, we can share a lot about teachers and about experiences and about the town that we live in. I've not been able to do that with someone on the internet in ages and it's been so refreshing! Numero dos, because he's younger than me, I've been able to offer him my advice and experience about exams and it makes me so happy being able to reassure someone who's going through what I've been through and being able to help. Always a wonderful feeling!

Now onto the crux of what I've discovered and that is, he replies so quickly! I don't think I've ever held out such a long conversation with such rapid responses in ages and don't get me wrong, the conversation is wonderful but whoaaaaaa. Breathe. First of all, I don't want this to come across as me complaining because honestly, everyone's different when it comes to social media just like how we're all different in our vernacular in real life. But what I've realised, especially with the socially packed day I've had, is that breathing space is so important, to have time to just relax and absorb what's happened.

Having constant awesome conversation doesn't really give you time to appreciate it because you feel like you have to respond and keep it going. I know with some of my best internet friends, I love being able to come away and just have the few things that we talked about going through my mind and not having to worry about forgetting them or not being able to process my stance on them. That breathing time just to be organically with yourself, as you would be without the internet or at least without the presence of other people is so important. I know that if I try and sustain the conversation, I will end up becoming more and more introverted because I'll crave that alone time more and more.

There's definitely a balance to be struck somewhere in the middle. Social media can be really unhealthy because it creates an environment that wouldn't happen irl, as I discussed in my other blog post. I think generally, it's really important to not be afraid offending someone and just take a break to be with yourself.

I don't know if this comes from some sort of fear of silence? I was talking about it with a friend of mine and I guess on the internet, you don't necessarily always get organic silences like you would irl. You don't have the physical cues to go off of about if someone wants to say something or if they're thinking or doing something else. It's a whole different ball game!

Finally, you guys all know this but I know with me, I'm such a big culprit of this and it's just having a lot of exciting stuff to share. If you're talking to someone and they have to do all of the listening then it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. But listening's not just not talking, it's taking it in and being excited and interested and I think it takes a lot more than you might originally think.

But anyway, what do you guys think on the topic? I'd love to hear it :D
I hope that you guys all have wonderful days and I'll talk to you very soon indeed :)

What can you give your friend?

Hey guys! I hope that you're well!

I've wanted to write this post ever since I saw a specific video from Soul Pancake and the awesome Julian and their series 'The Science of Love'. This video specifically intrigued me from it's title (of course) which was 'Can Men and Women Be Just Friends?' which of course is probably one of the most asked questions ever. But when I watched the video, what intrigued me most was how the pairs reacted to one particular set of question right at the beginning of the video and whether you have a friend of the opposite sex who you're close to or not, I honestly thought that it'd be great to share with you guys!

So right at the beginning of the video, each of the partners were shown a velcro board with qualities on it and they were asked to place inside the circle what they thought they needed from the other person in their friendship. That, of course, was the easy part!

Afterwards, the partners were then asked to consider what their partner needed out of their friendship and for many of them, they hadn't actually consciously considered this before! This led to it taking more time than you might've expected from good friends! However, it was also nice in some ways for them to be able to take the opportunity to actually consider the question because so often in friendships, we're so much more concerned with what we're getting out of it and if we're having our needs met, but what about the other person?

The awesome thing about this video is that they then brought the couples together and put together two Venn diagrams - what they each had thought the other needed and what they actually needed. So you may both think you need say, emotional support or flattery or an ear to complain to, but is that all you need or what you really gain from the friendship? I think it's really important in all friendships, to really think about what it's like from the other person's point of view because then you can really begin to appreciate how you can help the other person and not just how they can help you.

I think it's so easy to lose friends from being unintentionally selfish - we all do it sometimes I think, but that's our choice. Do we have to continue in that vain? No! But it's our choice if we acknowledge the other person and their needs and how much we want to develop the friendship. This would help make it sustainable in the long term and help to make sure that the give and take is equal. It shouldn't be imbalanced because that isn't really fair at all, but until you realise that, will you be able to address it?

I hope that you guys enjoyed this post! I would thoroughly recommend watching the other videos in both the Science of Love series and also the Science of Happiness because I learn a lot from them and find them really thought provoking. I may even blog more about them in the future so do stay tuned! I hope that you all have a wonderful time doing whatever you're doing and I'll speak to you very soon indeed!

P.s. I loved this still from Julian at the end - I feel like he's a cross between Colin Morgan and Thomas Brodie-Sangster - anyone else see it? :D

The Many Roomed House of the Internet

Hey guys! I hope that you're all having wonderfully present days!

This little analogy sprung into my mind when I was considering the phenomenon that is communicating to people all across the internet and how that compares to in real life. The main thing that struck me was the fact that on the internet, it's very possible to be talking to more than two people all at once and to be having completely different conversations. I've done that with around 3-4 people all at once and it can be quite overwhelming at times!

But what really struck me was the fact that we would never be able to do this in real life. You'd never talk to that many people about different things all at once, talking to that many would only work if you were all in one group being a part of the same conversation. This led me to think about how if you were to do this in real life, it'd be almost like each conversation taking place in a different room and how if you wanted to talk to that many people about different things, it would never happen. You'd never be able to up and leave a person in one room to go and continue a conversation from before with another person in another room. It'd be so immensely rude and diabolical in real life and impossible that the fact that this phenomenon is possible with the internet is quite amazing and definitely a big change from how we're used to operating in social situations!

This was brought on because of me trying to get hold of a friend who I usually talk to around the same time everyday. What made me sad was the fact that they felt like they weren't doing very good multi-tasking because they weren't able to switch their attention from the group of people in one room with which they were having a lot of fun, to me, in a completely different room with a different atmosphere altogether. I didn't like the fact that somehow not being able to be in two places at once and give two different sets of people the same amount of presence was somehow bad because it's not really how things are supposed to operate. I just felt bad that they felt like they had to leave the other room to visit the room I was in when really, I didn't really have to be there at all. I could leave the house or had I known they were entertaining others, not come at all and not create that thought in the back of their mind and make it harder to enjoy that social occasion.

All in all, what I gained from this was the fact that if we're going to try and use the internet to communicate, we do also have to understand how much differently we have to operate ourselves and the parameters we set ourselves because of how much differently it works to in real life. We shouldn't feel like we're somehow failing because we've not managed to align our parameters to how much we can handle to the reality of how much presence we can actually realistically give. Multi-tasking in real life is much easier because the tasks are things we can see and are tangible and can be understood. People aren't always the same and having to get your head around that, especially with the phenomenon that is the internet, can be quite a hard balance to strike, especially when you're trying to live your real life reality at the same time!

I hope that this made some sort of sense guys! I'd love to hear what you think on the subject :D I hope that you all have wonderful weeks and I'll speak to you very, very soon indeed!

No Obligations

Hey guys!

Today I wanted to talk to you about something I've recently realised which both liberated and constrained me so here goes!

With your opinion or even just your being, the value that you give to other people and their opinions and vice versa is entirely personal and entirely your choice. You choose what has value in your life and what you want to keep and also what you want to get rid of or keep at a distance. This is amazing because of the amount of possibilities you have in the way you choose to view things in your life and where you want to go.

Where for me, this becomes more problematic is when you attach more value to someone than they attach to you or at least it feels that way and then you can't really do much about it because it's their choice what they think of you and the value they ascribe to your friendship. This is also then hard because you don't really know what to do - do you wait and see if their attachment to you increases or do you try and read into what they do and gauge based on that.

The hardest thing in these sorts of situations is that you don't really want to say anything either because it doesn't feel like your friendship is at that open enough level. It just feels like you're left in a limbo just waiting to see what happens next. The thing I want to realise is that they're not obligated to you in the slightest so they will do what they wish and perhaps just going on what happens next is the best policy.

Thank you guys for listening! If you have any thoughts about this topic, feel free to leave them in the comments and I hope to speak to you soon!<2

Time and where it all goes

Hey guys!

It feels like months since I've last spoken to you and indeed it's been almost that long! How crazy! I'm sorry that I haven't been able to find the time or the content to give to you but I do hope that I can find things to show you and to inspire and interest you and that we can continue to have these little conversations at some point during the weeks to come!

I just wanted to ramble a bit today I guess and I feel like today is a day that just showed me how quickly time can pass. It's not really something that you need to be told really but it's something that we all have to be aware of. This was really brought on and reinforced in my brain by Carrie Hope Fletcher, that wonderful woman and it really is hard to live in such a way that you remember that you do need to tell people how important they are to you because a lot of anything could happen between the next time you see them.

Change is so ever present in our lives and we always seem to forget that things won't stay as they are forever. I think that we can sometimes allude ourselves that because of the length of our relationships with the people around us, they must simply know what we are thinking and the way that we know that they're just there for us whenever we need them. That isn't always healthy in a relationship because it can lead to the other person forgetting their worth and not feeling the positivity from the relationship that they're giving to it.

I've felt that way myself before and I have evaluated myself and the way I feel. I know that one friend I have suffers from severe anxiety and therefore is rarely the one to start a conversation, however, just because I may be the one to start the conversation, doesn't mean we can't stem one from there. I have another friend who I used to be able to have rather lengthy conversations with because we met on a forum website where we'd write each other paragraphs and reply every other day or so because time zones wouldn't permit us to really be able to IM each other. Our convos moved to twitter and it's hard to feel that you're feeling the commitment to the friendship, especially seeing as though there are many reasons the friendship shouldn't work because of the distance.

However, having said that, I know that sometimes I feel like if you do constantly message someone, they might be a bit creeped out and a bit overwhelmed but I guess, back to a post I did about one of Carrie's videos, you've got to say so.

In conclusion, time can lead to relationships becoming strained and to people feeling like the commitment isn't showing through the action of the other, however, that isn't always an adequate excuse for not putting as much effort into a relationship as the other person.

I hope this wasn't too much of a random post but please, as always, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below and I hope to speak to you soon! God Bless!<3