on social networking

Twitter and Facebook and Blogger, oh my!

Last night, rather impulsively, I joined Twitter. In hindsight, it feels like I was drunk when I did it, although I'd considered joining for months.

I've decided, after a good nights sleep, to give it a shot. However, adding it to my list of social websites I'm currently on, has made me think about social networking in the twenty-first century, and whether or not our current methods are an improvement on the ones we used in the past.


Before the internet, social networking meant going to parties and talking to people, glass of wine in hand, exchanging business cards or, in some cases, writing phone numbers on napkins or the back of your hand. This would lead to more meetings, to more conversations, and if you were lucky, the betterment of your career. Now that the internet has latched onto our lives like a giant leech, social networking has mutated. It is still about conversations, but on a far smaller scale through Tweets. Contact information is exchanged, but it's e-mail addresses. Oh, the telephone is still used, but chances are people are texting instead of talking. The personal, human part of social networking seems to have been lost.

With online social networking, it is true that you are able to reach a larger audience, to meet people who you wouldn't otherwise meet if it wasn't for the internet, and make connections with people on the other side of the globe. However, what you can't do through a computer is to observe someone, to look at their body language and their speech patterns, which are key in determining if you think said person is trustworthy. Part and parcel of being on the internet now is placing our trust in people and websites. Our trust that they won't repeat the things we write in our personal blogs, that they won't give out our credit card information, and that what they're offering isn't a scam. But that is difficult to do when all you can rely on are words. Yes, there is Skype, but you aren't having a Skype conversation with the CEO of Amazon. It's an imperfect system.

I've come to the conclusion that we are losing the personalization in our lives. It's become almost too easy to do things from our desk chairs, that I think traditional networking is fading. You can still do it, but the opportunities are fewer than they were before, and if you want to get anywhere--if you want to promote yourself--you have to sign up to Facebook or Twitter or whatever other site in order to do so. Hell, you don't have to leave your chair for anything these days, let alone socializing. You can go to school online, some work online, you can even buy groceries online. It's got to the point where today's human in the first world doesn't have to leave the house in order to live their life.

And isn't that sad?

Last night, after joining the many Tweeters (or would that be Twits?) already online, I could actually feel myself becoming more tethered to my computer. I'm on my computer so much already (more when I'm not at my parents', since I don't own a TV), and I'd just given myself another reason to be in front of its screen. And I didn't like it. I felt like I was trapping myself, like I was pulling away from the external world and into something that was so internally focused as to seem more real than the things around me. It all just felt so...wrong.

I don't think I'm silly for feeling that way, or the only person who does. For all that the internet is fantastic, I think it is being overused, and starting to damage aspects of our lives. When we're walking down the street now, and we see something, our first thought is no longer how wonderful or strange it is, but rather, how we would form what we saw into a Tweet or Facebook status update. We don't stop to smell the roses anymore, we stop to turn on our phones and comment on them. We are a society who lives in the moment, but in a limited moment, in the superficial moment that we can write in under 140 characters and share, and then read and comment on other people's superficial moments. We don't absorb what's seeing and happening to us, at least not the everyday things. But it's the everyday things that make life life, and if we continue walking with our heads buried in our iPhones then I guarentee that we will become a society that has difficulty enjoying--or caring--about life outside our own heads.

I saw a film in October called Summer Wars. In that film, everything from students to banks were connected to one giant network called Oz, and when that network was hacked, the entire world was thrown into chaos. It's a beautiful film, and now one of my favourites.

And I wonder how soon that will be our future.

(Image borrowed from here.)

on floods

All of this weekend, the news has been drenched (sorry) with stories about two environmental disasters: the flooding in Brisbane, Australia; and the flooding in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state. Both instances of flooding have nigh-devestated the affected areas, forcing people from homes and destroying property and even taking lives. These are things no one wants to happen, and while each can be explained by natural seasonal weather patterns (La Niña and a Humidity Convergence Zone, respectively), however, I couldn't help but think that global warming may have played a part.

It's no secret that polar ice is melting. All of those images of poor polar bears stranded on tiny ice flows attests to that. However, besides rising sea levels, what else would this excess mean? I give you the water cycle:


We all know it. We all get the photocopy in elementary school science class. We all know that water evaporates and condences, forms clouds and then falls back onto us in either rain or snow. But more water in the oceans means more water is being evaporated. More water evaporating means that more will fall on us than it has in the past. La Niña is a natural event, but the reason for its severity could be global warming-induced. As much rain falls in 24 hours as falls in a month in Brazil is likely global warming. And the harsh winter and heavy snow fall experienced in Europe, the UK, Canada, and the USA is, again, global warming, presented in a slightly different form.

The kind of weather being experienced globally is not natural. Yes, some of it occurs during natural phenomena, however, the severity of these occurences clearly indicates that something else is at work here. There is a clear--and almost stupidly simple--explanation, one that we humans cannot afford to ignore anymore. We can't let these sorts of things keep happening. We can't let people keep dying. Because this is just the start. If we don't do something, weather will only get worse, and from there crops are destroyed, fresh water ruined, animals perish, and more people die.

Is that really worth living happily ignorant a little while longer?

(Images borrowed from here and here.)

on freelancing

In admist the holiday travel, the botched New Years plans, the lost luggage, and the parental pampering, I've been looking into becoming a freelancer.

Which is more difficult than one would think.
I know of a number of people who do freelance work, be it editing or writing, and as someone who is realistic enough to know that making a living with a Creative Writing degree only happens to the very lucky, I decided to follow in their footsteps. First came lots of Google-ing. Followed, by more Google-ing. There are a plethora of websites dedicated to freelancing, some as handily labelled as www.online-writing-jobs.com and freelancer.co.uk. However, for all the websites available, finding a website you feel you can trust seems nigh impossible.

As with all things on the internet, and all things that involve money, you have to be very conscious of whether or not the website you're looking at is actually a scam. Reading website and company reviews is helpful in this area. It's also helpful in determining whether or not the website you sign up to has your best interests at heart. A site like Suite101 looks good on the surface, however, some of my research has told me that it "favor[s] the company and deprive[s] writers of revenue". It is not there to help you as a writer or editor to establish yourself within the industry in such a way that you recieve proper compensation for the amount of work you put in. After all, writing and editing is an exhausting, time-consuming process, and no one wants to be short changed for the hard work they produced.

But as with all things, nothing is perfect, and some sites haven't been reviewed and as such I've been wary of signing up with them. Many sites, like freelancer.co.uk, also contain a system which does not appeal to me: the biding system. After signing up, writers and editors wait for jobs to be posted and then they bid on them, directing employers to their profiles in the hopes that they are chosen to do the job. It strikes me that waiting for opportunities to bid is a full-time job in and of itself, and I do not have the patience for it. Say whatever you want, but sitting there pressing the Refresh button all day is not exactly what I want to do with my time.

Thus, I have decided that the internet, for all that it is the best thing since sliced bread and the internal combustion engine, is not the way I want to go. I'm going old school.

I'm going to talk to people.

Wish me luck.

(Image borrowed from here.)

on christmas day

Wishing you all--you hippies (in space and elsewhere), you greenies, you eco-warriors, you writers, you readers, you skimmers, you casual perusers, you--a Merry Christmas, and a fantastic holiday season.

How can it not be? There's Doctor Who on! To the TARDIS!

(Image borrowed from here.)

on giftwrap

It didn't occur to me until earlier this week as I realized I still hadn't wrapped my Christmas gifts that most of the giftwrap options open to me weren't green ones. I headed to my local organic shop, and did discover some lovely (although not particularly Christmas-y) 100% recycled wrapping paper made with soy-based ink. However, it was also £1.49 a sheet, and the sheets weren't terribly big. Due to my very tiny budget, I ended up with giftwrap from WH Smith. However, this got me thinking about eco wrapping paper, as well as other more eco-friendly options for dressing up your gifts.

At Pristine Planet there are a number of options for handmade giftwrap using non-toxic dyes, post-consumer waste, shed tree bark, and other lovely things. A quick Google search will give you a number of options, however, you will most likely have to order them online. The non-eco stuff is what is cheap to stock, and unfortunately that's what you're most likely to find in Hallmark, WH Smith, and other chain stores.

If you want to take a more hands-on approach and forgo store-bought wrapping paper, you can create your own eco giftwrap. Green Planet Ethics gives some options such as using cloth, children's artwork (although, if you don't have kids, you can do it yourself to get a similar look. Finger painting, stamps made out of halved potatoes--use non-toxic paint and that's a well spent afternoon), magazine and newspaper pages, and even things like pinecones and holly in place of bows. Planet Forward has even more alternatives in place of store-bought products.

Next year, I plan to be more eco-friendly in my Christmas preparations. Instead of just getting a roll of store-bought paper and gift tags that only look homemade, I'll make my own. This way, I can also personalize each gift--write a message, decorate the wrapping using images I know that person likes. So much of Christmas is becoming just about gifts--about objects--placing less importance or full-on ignoring the reason why we give gifts in the first place: to make people happy. To let our friends and family know that we think about them, and love them, and miss them, and that while what we present them with is only a pale representation of what they mean to us, it is something that will let them know that there is someone who cares about them whenever they use or see their gift. Why can't the giftwrap do the same? Why does it have to be something to look at for a microsecond and then toss in the trash?

Personally, I think it can be a bit more.

(Image borrowed from here.)

on definitions

Years ago, during my daily wanderings round the internet, I came across a quote on someone's profile on some site I don't remember.

Author's write to live, writers live to write.

It's one of those anonymous quotes, one of many that flit about the profile pages of fledgling writers like flies, and are just as inconsequential. But for some reason, I started thinking about this one again. It's made me wonder about the difference between a writer and an author, and if there is really a difference at all.

The Oxford English Dictionary (online edition), says an author is "a writer of a book, article, or document; someone who writes books as a profession". A writer, on the other hand, is "a person who has written something or who writes in a particular way; a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or occupation". Very similar definitions are given for each word, however, there are minute differences. An author is a writer, implying that being an author is in a category above being a writer. It's something you can achieve--a title--like being called "doctor". An author is also someone who writes "book[s], article[s], or document[s]", all of which at first glance imply that an author is someone who writes prose. There can be books of poetry, yes, but articles and documents written in poetry? Difficult (although there is probably someone out there who has done it). People who write poetry also have their own title separate from author: poet. But similar can be said for them: when is one a poet, and when is one just someone who writes poetry?

An author is "someone who writes books as a profession". This enforces the idea purported in my anonymous quote: an author is a job description. What do you want to be when you grow up? A doctor, a lawyer, a pianist, an author. It's what you put on your CV, what you tell people at parties when they ask what you do. Furthermore, it's what you call yourself when you make money off of your writing, particularly in "book, article, or document" form. Only on the publication of one of those can one be called an author. This, of course, means that publishing short stories does not make you an author. A collection, possibly ("book" is, after all, a fairly broad term when you think about it), but a single story in a literary journal? According to this definition, no.

A writer, on the other hand, is "a person who has written something". That can apply to anyone. Every elementary school child is forced to produce a short story at some point in order to approve their apptitude with the written word. Does that, then, make everyone a writer? Is anyone capable of scrawling even the crudest short story able to claim that they are a writer? A writer is also someone "who writes in a particular way". Well, that is a bit better. A writer is someone who writes, yes, but also somoeone who writes in a way that distinguishes themselves from others. The use of the word "particular" implies a certain cultivation, that they way a writer writes is something they have crafted over time, something they do purposefully. This further separates the writer from the everyman (as the first part of the quotation implies), to someone specific--somoeone singular. Not everyone is a writer, just like not everyone is an actor or an artist or a musician. You may have acted in a play or painted a picture or were forced to learn the trombone, but that doesn't mean you are masters of those crafts.

And that's what a writer has: mastery.

A writer is "a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or occupation". Much like with "author", "writer" can also be given as a job description. In this instance, however, "document" has been replaced with "stories", which tells us that while you can write stories, you cannot author them, and while you can author documents, you cannot write them. Perhaps I'm delving in a bit too deep. These are, after all, just dictionary definitions. But how we define things is often how they are percieved. If you don't know what something is--what a word means--you look it up in a dictionary, and what you are told influences how you view that thing. Here, the dictionary is telling us that the difference between being an author and being a writer depends upon what you choose to write. However, both are professions. Both are occupations you can be paid for. In that, there is no difference.

I have always written. At first, it was scribblings on sheets of scrap paper that hardly resembled words at all, but which I called a story. Writing was a state of being. I wrote. It came as naturally to me as eating or sleeping or breathing, and was never something I gave conscious thought to. It wasn't until I was eleven that it occured to me that people make a living out of their writing. That it was a job. That when asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you didn't have to say you wanted to be a vet, because you didn't know and that's what your best friend had said. You could be an author, and an author is something you are only when you achieve publication.

In university, as I finished my master's degree, one of my professors told us that upon completion, we were writers. Few of us were published in any medium, but we'd spent an entire year doing nothing but writing, so it was a fitting title. But it still made me wonder: when am I an author? Do I have to have a contract with Random House to do so? And saying we were writers sounded so...silly. So little. I wasn't sure I liked it completely.

Author's write to live, writer's live to write.

An author is someone who is published. By that token, many people can call themselves authors. Madonna. Jimmy Buffet. Will Smith. Pamela Anderson. So many people published today are those who are doing it out of boredom, or as a cash-in on their celebrity, or because they feel the need to do everything regardless of their talent for it. So many people who can call themselves authors are hardly deserving of the title.

A writer is someone who writes. A writer is someone who writes down sentences on cocktail napkins and hotel notepads. A writer is someone who wakes up in the middle of the night and gets out of bed to grab a pen, to try and weave a story from the frayed threads of their dreams. A writer is someone with words tumbling through their head every day of their lives, who put them down not for the sake of making money, but for the sake of getting their story out into the world. A writer wants to share, wants to tell, wants to shape their world for the better through the language they use.

The more I think about it, the more proud I am to call myself a writer. It's a difficult life, often solitary and it sure isn't a cash cow. But if I didn't write...well, I don't think I would be able to do that in the first place. Not willingly. I may never be published, I may never get to hold the title of "author", but for all that it is so similar--and yet so different--I am proud of the title I have.

I am a writer. And I'm living my life writing.

(Image borrowed from here.)

on herbal remedies

In light of the entire UK having been gripped in what could only have been a global warming-induced deep freeze, and my own subsequent cold, I've decided to take some time to talk about herbal remedies. Not all of them, of course. There are whole books dedicated to the subject. What I'm going to talk about are the things I reach for every time I get a sniffle, and why I think they work better than more modern alternatives.

1. Echinacea--it's a pretty purple flower that looks rather like a daisy, and, to me at least, it's practically a cure-all. Two of the more common ways to take echinacea is either in capsule or liquid form (which you then put into tea or juice) for the relief of common cold symptoms and a host of other things. Whenever I start to feel a sore throat, or even just a little run down, I put some in a drink (1mL up to 3 times daily), and honest to god, it works. With this on hand, I've kicked colds in a week, which is pretty good considering my flatmate was still expelling all of his symptoms after a month.

2. Honey--like many holistic remedies, honey has been used for centuries, primarily as a topical antiseptic. You can put honey on cuts and scrapes and it kills the bacteria present just as well as Neosporen would, if not better. Because of its antibacterial and antiseptic properties, honey is also good on sore throats. Put a spoonful in your tea, or consume the spoonful on its own like cough medicine (with lemon juice if you like), and it will soothe your raw throat while killing the bacteria that is causing your discomfort. And hey, it tastes better than Buckley's.

3. Ginger--after a trip to Greece in June, I suffered from some, shall we say, stomach upset. In my quest for remedies, I tried both ginger and lemon tea, and candied ginger. Ginger is used for indegestion, nausea, and other unpleasent stomach ailments, although I recommend taking it in its tea form. It's the most palatable way I've found. The candied ginger was foul.

4. Peppermint--used for the same ailments as ginger, peppermint is not only infinitely tastier, but can also be applied topically for plant-induced skin irritations, to soothe tension headaches, and when put under the nose or on the chest can clear sinuses. Besides peppermint, another herb in the mint family--that I've recently discovered--that is good for stomach problems is Dittany of Crete. I picked some up while in Greece (and I won't lie, Harry Potter played a part in the decision), and while it's fabled to be an aphrodisiac, it's also told to be a cure-all, used for the aforementioned stomach problems, and as a topical polutice for wounds.

5. Rest--okay, so it's not an herb, but I can honestly say that one thing I don't think people do enough of when they are ill, is rest. Oh, they say they do, however, often times many rely on fast-acting modern medicines and a single night's good sleep. The world has become a place where everyone wants to be the first, be on top, and that means being able to do everything from paperwork and problem solving to eating and sleeping quickly. But when you're sick, quick just doesn't cut it, and I would not be surprised if the reason why many take so long to heal is because they're not taking any time at all. Therefore my primary recommendation is to take the day--or week--off, put your feet up, and drift in that lazy, self-indulgent place that is illness. Your body will thank you.

For more information on herbal remedies, go here.

(Image borrowed from here.)