WHAT I WISH I COULD SAY ON A JOB INTERVIEW
Social Sneekers
Italy-based graphic designer Lumen Bigott has combined Keds brand sneakers with images from familiar online companies in her 2011 concept project, Social Media Shoes. She has more images at her Behance portfolio.
I’m a big fan of inspiration blogs, I also spend a lot of time in social networks and I love fashion: those three things are responsible of this shoes collection. The idea was to find the most important graphic elements of my favorite social networks and apply them to my favorite pair of shoes trying to keeping alive the essence of each brand.
Spontaneity
Today’s the first day I focus on one of my happies. Can’t wait for the day my happi (spelled with an “i” because it’s what makes me happy) is that I’ve found something more clever to call it than that. For today, I’d like to spotlight spontaneity.
This can be applied to so many aspects of life and can be practiced literally whenever, making happiness nearly instantaneous. Whether it’s spontaneously writing on a friend’s Facebook wall, grabbing coffee, or hopping off the treadmill to grab a banana split - story of my life - spontaneity is key. It’s nice knowing your life can seem so planned out and ordinary but at the drop of a hat, or more appropriately the ding of a text tone, what you thought you had planned out has its own mind.
In a way it’s reassuring, knowing that your life doesn’t have to be mundane. Plus when things come up you don’t plan for, you’re more likely to be able to go with them. It’s like how God has his own plans for you. You think you’ve got it all sorted out, living life on “your” terms, when BAM! God makes a change in the lineup 15 minutes before the first pitch. Just accept what’s coming and know in the end, it’s all a part of His master plan.
Clever thinking! Bringing SOUND into a print ad.
Portuguese ad agency DM9DDB has produced a meta series of posters for Saxofunny, a sound production company, with the slogan “every image has a sound.” Designers cleverly made each poster out of a different material to simulate the sound depicted on the poster.
Let’s try this again…again
It would appear that consistency might be something I need to work on, given that it’s been a year since my last post into the blogosphere. Luckily for me I have no loyal (or even non-loyal) readers, only myself to disappoint…
On THAT very upbeat and self motivating note, I want to try something new from here on out. Hopefully something that will help in my self discovery and ultimately happiness. In a way, I was inspired by this book I started reading (and of course haven’t finished), “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin. As one can imagine, it’s about the little steps she took to find what exactly the little things were that made her the happiest - from not having laundry on the chair to spending more time with her kids. Hers was a little more complex than that, but given she’s had more time to develop into a more organized and conceptual author wife, mom, lawyer, etc., I’d like to think that’s justifiable.
Inspired from that, I want to challenge myself to find something new every day that brings me a surprising amount of joy. Pay day and going to Disneyland are nice, but what little things can I do in moments where I’m feeling low? Hopefully I can take these little trinkets of joy and turn them into new passions.
To get me started from here on out, I want to compile a list of these things I learned this weekend:
Live music, comedy, making connections, story telling, eye contact, sending cards, wearing a dress, helping, being able to contribute to a conversation, hugging new friends, getting a fresh start, being welcomed, hearing stories, not being shy, wit, being knowledgeable, only eating until full, pianos, showering, being around energy, listening to my body - not my mind, making plans, doing something right away, taking a risk.
Those are just some of mine from this weekend. Hoping my future “happies” as I think I’m going to refer to them, get better.
I know her
Fifteen minutes ago, I found out my best friend from elementary school was just arrested for vehicular manslaughter, driving under the influence and fleeing the scene. I don’t even know how to react to this news. You never think someone you know could be capable of killing someone else, intentionally or otherwise.
Jane* (name has been changed due to the fact that I can’t bring myself to use her actual name) and I were best friends from the 2nd to 5th grades. She was always sweet, funny, and intelligent. I wasn’t aware of the stigmas of her culture then, but I knew her dad put a great deal of pressure on her and that her education was of critical importance to him. I attended a fairly underprivileged school and I knew it at the time, but I never expected her to be one to fall victim to such lapses in judgement.
For goodness sakes, Jane was the first girl I knew to get her period. I remember, we were in 5th grade doing our state report presentations when I saw her put something in her pocket before she went off to the bathroom. My naive self thought she was sneaking candy, but she later told me she’d started her period and went into what I would later discover to be a very poor description of what she was using.
You never expect it to be people with whom you associate such anecdotes to be the same people you find on your city’s local news site, their booking photo taking up the entire right side of the page. The left side of her face is pretty badly scratched, but no one would ever look at it and say to themselves, “That’s the face of a woman who killed a young man fresh out of school.”
You think you’ve got your stereotypes all figured out, not thinking they’re stereotypes at all, but rather accurate schema based on experience and what you expect to be common knowledge. Break away from what you thought true and open your eyes to what might be possible. Anyone is capable of anything, cliche as it is. For Jane, all it took was one bad decision, whether it be the first or the 50th time she’s done so. Just one time will change her life, and more lives than she’ll ever know possible, forever.
This got me thinking, I have at least three friends whose names I can pull off the top of my head that have had DUI’s in the past, two of which continue to drive drunk. I don’t know how to get the message across to them that their acts of selfish recklessness are going to someday get them into something worse than their license being revoked. I worry that one day they will be driving under the influence and hit someone, more specifically someone I care about. There’s nothing you can do to stop other drivers, but you can stop yourself.
From here on out, I refuse to drive if I have even been drinking within five hours or when I intend on leaving. The slightest bit of impairment could result in serious harm to another person’s family and friends. I couldn’t live with myself knowing I put that tragedy on them.
Why is it the drunk driver always walks away with no more than a few scrapes on their face and dents in their car when the person they hit almost never makes it out?
RRS Discovery ~ Dundee ~ Scotland by idg on Flickr.
Not only is this picture gorgeous, but the boat’s name is the Discovery Dundee. It seems to fit with my theme of discovery.
Let’s try this again
I’m going to to the cliche and start this post with one of those “they say” statements. So here goes.
They say college is the time you discover yourself, you experiment and grow to determine the person you’re going to be. Everyone grows, no one is the same person they were in kindergarten (despite the fact that many women in their early 20s are still covered in glitter and talking in words they made up).
As I’m writing this, I’m procrastinating on studying for my last three finals of my junior year at San Diego State. That leaves me a year in which I’m supposed to discover what three years should have taken care of. Off the top of my head, I can tell you my three years away have taught me I don’t know how to be bored, I’m not the party girl everyone expects when they hear I go to SDSU, and I really like peanut butter.
The problem is, I don’t even know how to begin to discover who I am. I think the best thing to do is to dissect the more likely than not, lengthy answers to important questions in life. The first being: what are the most important things in my life?
Someday I’d like to be able to say my religion, but sadly I do not give that nearly as much time or respect as it deserves. When I am more connected to God and reading my Bible, I simply feel more at ease, knowing there is someone who loves me more than words can explain who will listen to me through every high, low, and in between. I wish I could say family but I know I’m not there for them as much as I should be.
Long story short, and as much as it pains me to admit it, my looks and vanity control a majority of my life. In the back of my mind, I always wonder how other visually perceive me. I want to be pretty, naturally beautiful, thin, anything above average. I’m not confident enough in my personality to think I can solely rely on that to have, keep, or initiate friendships. It’s ridiculous and I would like to think I don’t live my life only making friendships with thin, attractive individuals so I don’t know where I got the belief ingrained in my mind that visual superiority is key. I guess I have another goal: to find where my insecurities stemmed from and figure out how to resolve them.
I love the Rousseau quote so very much. It gives me hope that my shyness and my tendency to be quiet isn’t such a bad thing.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
—Jean Jacques Rousseau
Let me clear this though, Rousseau was not the one who coined the quote in the picture.
