Beauty in ugly

Hehe went dumpster diving and boy do I have a visual aid

11/15 recap

Today was a fun day.  It was interesting to see all of the projects people had done for the personality assignment.  I found several people's really interesting, the thinker, the tires, and a few others.  I must say though, it's rather annoying when the class is starting to dig in about the deeper meaning of a piece to be randomly interrupted with information that has nothing to do with the current conversation.  one thing that I didn't start a discussion about because I figured it would take quite a while for my rant to finish was something as follows.  When we're young we show our true self to the world.  But we quickly learn that the world is a painful place and we hold our true selves in high regard and don't want it damaged.  So we learn to build layers between our true selves and the world.  The masks we wear when around others, the people we pretend to be, or the way we act to fit in.  Other's see those and build their understanding of who we are and our personality off of it while most never see that true self.  And sometimes we build so many layers that we forget who our true self is and start identifying with the masks that we hide behind rather than who we are.  Then there's the idea that we are identified by who we were, not who we want to be or are working on becoming.  So that we are constantly chained back to the actions we have done before by others.

here's my inspiration picture for next week:

personality

What is personality and what does it mean to me.  If I had dedicated more time to this assignment instead of doing it at two in the morning this post would be roughly twelve pages long and no one would bother reading all of it.  Instead i'll talk about how we represent our personality.  It is what makes us different from each other, how we see the world and give meaning to it.  It changes the way we remember things and how we deal with the good and bad times.  I think one of the easiest ways to determin some of the key aspects of someone's personality is to look at all of the fronts that person puts on, the masks they use to deal with life.  and examine the parts that overlap from them, what is solid throughout that person's changing faces that anchors them down to who they are, and what are the exceptions to generalizations people would use to describe them.

spatially diverse class time

Yesterday we had class at our own chose of location and time.  When asked why, the answer seemed simple to me.  When out in the business world when you have a contracting job or small firm work, there tend not to be any "guidance" beyond a very basic concept of a goal and an intensive for you to reach it(money).  One thing that schools in modern times are terrible at instilling in many people is the ability to stay personally motivated when not given a lot of direction.  Once in the real world there isn't "class time" or a simply formula that you can follow on every assignment to get a good grade, especially in the artistic field. 

For my time I gazed off into space thinking about various aspects of psychology, mostly cognitive behavior and humanistic schools of thought, and how they tied into so many different aspects of life and jobs.  While doing this I had out a couple of my favorite knives from work and slowly sliced up a cherry coke bottle that was laying around.  My first order of business was to cut off the cap section of the bottle, then slowly sliced into the middle of the bottle and even points and pulled upwards.  The way the blades slid upwards was undirected by me and took on a very fringe look.

what is it?

There is a simple truth to the universe, people are fascinated by what they don't understand.  One of the first schema that we learn to identify is gender, and babies under 1 year in age will stare longer at an androgynous person than they will at someone who's gender is easily identified.  Therefore it is important to be able to make any sort of production we have intricate enough to keep attention, but straightforward enough to convey our point.

Time to get real 10/25/10

To day has been an interesting day.  I sat down and forced myself to own up to my actions for the past week and take responsibility for what has gone on. 

      Preface, I have had Severe chronic depression with moderate suicide risk since fall break of my junior year of high school back in 2003.  It took me many years, countless therapy sessions, countless medications over the years, a hospitalization and the support of all my friends and family to get to where I am now.  This summer I was able to go without any medication for roughly a month while maintaining fairly effective control of my emotions.  As the school year approached again I decided to start back on a medication I had been on several years ago instead of the most recent one since I was starting to get additional side effects from the dosage I was at.  I had to withdraw my freshman fall semester because of depression and refuse to let it happen again.  I have learned that one of the best ways to do this is by taking ownership for all of my actions and not using my diagnosis as a crutch or an excuse.  I started back on a very low dosage that I am still at, and am starting to consider getting it increased because of the following.

     About two weeks ago or so I had the onset of a depressive spell start. I didn't catch it till roughly last night and have been doing emergency triage trying to get everything back on track.  I started skipping a couple of my classes even through I enjoy them for various piss poor reasons.   I always had an excuse or two ready to go whenever it was time to go to them.  My sleeping patterns started shifting around and I started oversleeping quite often, unable to convince myself to get out of bed or do any work.  The only thing that I did manage to focus on was an almost fervent obsession with putting together a Halloween costume that I would enjoy.  So on a positive note, I could say that I was slightly creative in that aspect.  I ended up failing to follow through several times at work and slept through two to three alarms going off at a time.  I lost a promotion I had and now have to re-earn it it, as well as getting back on track for school.  I am disappointed with myself, and accept all penalties laid against me.  I am my harshest critic and am trying to use that anger directed at myself to motivate me instead of holding me back. 

     So in conclusion, it's time for me to fix the mess I've made to the best of my ability, forgive myself and accept that I'm human(one of the hardest things for me to do), and try to use the knowledge that I've gained from this to try and avoid it again in the future.   Thought for the day: Never compromise with yourself, if you are coasting through life it means you aren't growing.

sacred follow up

I really enjoyed class today.  There was a lot of open discussion without any screaming or blowing things out of proportion.  I had to refrain from playing devil's advocate several times.  I guess it's just in my nature to try and see what people are made of and try and peel back the outer layers they show to learn what they are really about.