Skype

My new computer arrived in the mail yesterday and I could not be more excited.  There are so many new features on this one that I realize there will be a huge learning curve.  So far, my favorite feature is the camera.  I downloaded Skype and tried to talk my mother through setting up the same on her phone.  There is only so much one can do over the phone and it may have to wait for her to visit my sister next month to get everything installed properly.  But I was able to have a Skype conversation with my sister last night.

It really makes a huge difference in how we talk to one another.  Even though she is not physically in the room, I find myself paying more attention to our conversation as if she were.  Most of us are doing five different things while talking on the phone these days and things get missed or we don't completely listen to the other person.  The result is that, even though we can talk to someone more often, we're not really communicating.  I think the video call will help us to connect more genuinely and effectively.

Of course, the entire time, all I could think about was this episode of the Jetson's where Jane receives a call from a friend and has to rush to put on her morning face.  I was keenly aware of my appearance as I spoke with my sister and realized this would make a difference when calling anyone else.  Will we get to a point, with this technology, where we can make a call and not care about our appearance?  Certainly, we don't get dressed up to go on an airplane the way they did in the 50's and 60's.  And we don't have special riding clothes for the car as they did in the early 1900's.  Photographs are not the special event they once were but the invention of the digital camera has made sure almost all of our pictures meet our approval.

Like most things in our society, we are concerned with how we look or how people perceive us.  We live our lives on display with sites like Facebook and Twitter.  The mundane parts of our lives made more interesting for the consumption of others.  We run the risk of pushing ourselves to meet unrealistic standards that everyone struggles to attain yet believes they're the only ones missing the mark.  The video call will definitely help families and loved ones connect on a deeper level from greater distances, but it could also further entrench this narcissistic culture we've developed.

Writing

The guy I've been seeing has been incredibly supportive on a number of levels, but has mentioned on more than one occasion that I should focus more on writing.  I let him read my story about my character, Ianthe, and he found it to be very entertaining.  Apparently, it has the benefit of being easy to read and engages the reader in the story. 

I have a lot of my story up on Live Journal, though my privacy settings are set so only my friends can see what's posted. When I first started writing the story, I would let the girls at Hallmark read pieces of it.  Their enthusiasm helped spur me onwards with the work and I wonder if I should start posting on this blog.  If I'm getting feedback from people genuinely interested in the characters/story it would keep it fresh in my brain and encourage me to write more often.  My concern, however, is plagiarism.  I've read through more than one entry of Cleolinda Jones' journal where she has had to battle people claiming her movies in 15 minutes as her own.

Not to say that my writing would be nearly as clever as hers or incite that level of plagiarism.  I just would hate to have someone unknown take my characters and accomplish what I have been thus far unable to do with them.  I think I am also afraid of having the negative feedback that inevitably comes with posting anything creative or personal on the Internet.  Even though the story, itself,  would not be a personal account of anything, it's still very much a part of me that would be exposed to the general public and people can be cruel.

I've attempted to read some of the recent fiction that's on the bestseller list and I realize that writing doesn't have to be the crafted artistry I appreciate in novels, but I don't know if I would be personally satisfied with writing something less than perfect.  Of course, nothing is perfect and that's a ridiculous statement.  But I do have a certain level  to which I hold my writing and I would not want to put out something half-baked.  But I also know that I have the talent within myself to write something better than what I've seen on the shelves recently.  Unfortunately, in order to prove that, one must actually write and produce something for comparison.

So I'm back to wondering if I should risk writing unfinished works here in an attempt to complete something for an actual publication.

First Day of Grad School

I've been taking classes at CCBC this summer, as part of my prerequisites for Grad School, but there was something altogether different about traveling to Towson University for my very first Fall Semester class.  It's as if I finally believed I was doing this.  Not when I filled out the paperwork for school, not when I paid the semester tuition, not when I purchased the books for class.  But walking across campus with my bag slung across my shoulder, catching snatches of undergraduate conversation, and searching for my classroom finally made it real to me.

All of my classes are in Stephen's Hall on the Towson campus.  It's one of the original buildings on campus and the set-up makes me feel like Professor Indiana Jones should come sweeping through the door to lecture at the podium.  I am incredibly excited to be in this place at this time in my life.