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I don't know about you, but I like the Internet.

I mean, I'm sort of going to assume you do too, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. But the point is that you have the option to read this. The Internet allows its users the access to an almost infinite number of possibilities for information in any number of mediums.
From cat videos to the latest scientific discoveries, from flash games to experimental creations on the other side of the globe, from connecting with friends to connecting with idols - the Internet offers a lot of inspiration and innovations.

The Internet has grown from a simple means of communication and file sharing for government operatives, to an organic fair use space for all who can access it.

And it would really suck if it were to just...stop.

More and more, governments are seeking to control the Internet, with geographic firewalls, restricted access, and forced shut down of websites. This is happening already, but where governments are lacking is the understanding that the Internet is global. It is beyond boarders and try as they might, it's near impossible to stop the transfer of information.

And so a new tactic must be taken, if the Internet can't be governed, can it be bought? You may have noticed that earlier this year, your Netflix started being a whole lot slower - that's not a coincidence. Comcast told Netflix it had to pay more to continue having fast bandwidth, creating a two-tiered system. This idea is sparking across various Internet Provider Services and is heading towards the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Watch this video by Youtuber Hank Green to help breakdown what this all means:

Now, for those of us outside of the United States, may be thinking "But that's not our problem, we're not regulated by the FCC."
True, but remember: The Internet is not limited by boarders. And while that has worked in our favour in the past, it's now going to be used against us. A lot of the media we consume comes from the States and we will be suffering the same problems.
Net Neutrality is a concern for everyone - online companies and users alike will suffer from the removal of a level playing field.
Back in June, host John Oliver explained how vast and direly important this threat is for all of us:

He summed it up quite nicely:
"If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring"

It's easy to turn a blind eye when something doesn't seem to be effecting you directly, but if you ignore this and then start noticing the spinning wheel of death at every turn and wonder why your favourite cat video won't load, complaining won't help.

So what CAN we do?
Do what the Internet does best: spread knowledge.
Share this information with your friends, sign petitions and stand up for the fight for the Internet.
Today, September 10th, is The Internet Slowdown - where online companies and users show solidarity for Net Neutrality.
Learn more, sign petitions, and get involved at the following links:

https://www.battleforthenet.com/sept10th/
https://www.battleforthenet.com/

https://www.tumblr.com/stop
http://www.videocreatorsfornetneutrality.org/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
https://www.publicknowledge.org/

Don't let the Internet become one giant spinning wheel of death.

What does it mean to 'Make-Up'?

I made a post earlier today that was originally going to be the introduction to THIS blog post but I got on a role and it turned into a full blown bit of poetry stream of consciousness.

If you're interested, To Make up or to Make down? That is the question...

There has been a rising trend lately in pop culture of the anti-make-up campaigns. Women taking a stand against the pressures of companies and society to be a specimen of perfection. Women are breaking down the boxes of perceived beauty and taking a stand for self-love and confidence.
This can be seen most recently in the new viral music video for Colbie Caillat's song "Try"

In the video, Caillat and a series of women of all ages, sizes and backgrounds proudly shed their make up, freeing them to a natural beauty. Her message exposes many of the reasons that women wear make up:

"So they like you" 

We are told time and time again that this mascara will make our eyes pop, or that this eyeliner will make you sexier, this foundation with brighten your skin, this blush will bring colour back to your face...because we must always be our most desirable. We are specimens to be looked at and should be appeasing to look at in order to have self worth.

It is expositions like this that are turning heads and making us think about society's perception of beauty.

A similar argument was made critiquing the fashion and advertising industries' obsession with photoshop, also in a music video, earlier this year by Hungarian singer Boggie in which she is transformed via photoshop into a 'glamourous pop star' 

 Now that the box has been opened, more and more stories like this are popping up around the world. Like Dorothy and the Wizard, women are exposing the tricksters behind the veil in hopes that others will follow and be proud of themselves beyond advertisements in magazines.

At the same time, this is not to necessarily critique the existence of make up products themselves. Make up can be awesome and amazing. Search almost any make up tutorial on youtube and you can be blown away by the talent and creations people can do. As much as make up can be a security blanket to hid behind or to feel the need to put on for others, it can also be empowering and create confidence in onesself. A great reflection of this was brought up by YouTuber and author John Green in one of his most recent videos "Why I Love Makeup"

John brings in the male perspective of the social pressures against men who wear make up and for women having to wear make up. He states he likes make make up because "it feels good" and makes him happy. I know many women who wear it for the exact same reason.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to put on make up because you like it, there is nothing wrong with not wearing make up because you don't like it. The problem lies within in society of guilt-tripping us into believing it is something we must be applying to be appreciated.

In the end, who cares if they like you - as long as you like you.

To Make up or to Make down?

To make up or make down? That is the question.
Whether tis nobler in the mind
to suffer the boxes and confinements
of society's pressures to perceived beauty
or take arms against a sea of traditions
and by rebellion, end them?

To conform, to blend in,
no more; and by blend in to say we end
the erasure of diversity in a thousand natural pigments
that flesh is heir to. 'tis a revolution
devoutly to be wish'd.

To remove foundation, to risk bags under eyes;
To risk bags under eyes, aye there's the rub.
For to expose the imperfections and blemishes
what impressions may come
when we are not hidden behind a masked face,
must give us pause: there's a respect
we demand with a painted pretty face.

For who would bear the quips and scorns of others,
the oppressor's wrong, the proud woman's standing against.
The pangs of childish insecurity, pride's delay,
the acceptance in Office and the assumption
that we are the unworthy of stakes.

When she herself might her quietus make
a pretty face? Who would want her without?
To grunt and sweat is an unladylike life,
But that the dread of someone to see you without
the face society has created as your truth.
The undiscovered beauty from whose real face
no one observes, puzzles the mind
and makes us rather continue in our disguised self
that is shown off to those we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
and thus the native hue of natural foundation
is painted over with the pale concealer and lipstick blots;
As we are encouraged to be specimens of perfection,
Though we are all imperfect and have the power to turn away
and create our own course of action.

-
Apparently I have thoughts about make up...also thanks to our man Billy S'peare and Hammy for writing the original soliloquy a couple hundred years ago

6 Problems with Having a Job You Love

Now before you all go grabbing your torches and pitchforks - hear me out...

Most twenty-somethings like me are struggling to keep any sort of employment let alone get a job doing something we can tolerate or even love. I am highly aware that I'm extremely privileged to be working a job that gives me career opportunities and experience while staying creative and open to do what I love and enjoy. I'm extremely grateful for making it where I am, and this in no way is trying to be a pity grab for attention.
That being said, As great and fantastical as a seemingly perfect job can be, it's not always sunshine and rainbows. Here's a list of some problems I have noticed with me and my job:

1. Learning to say "No"

Oh Consuela, teach me your ways.

Especially for someone looking to gain experience and constantly searching for new opportunities, it becomes a reflex to just say "yes!" to everything that comes your way.
You get on this high where everything is coming up roses and daffodils because you're doing more than just cleaning windows and sweeping (though you know you'd do it if you were told). You're in a workplace with good people and are comfortable in the space. You not only want to please everyone, but you are genuinely enjoying the work that you do. You don't want to pass up any opportunities that are sent your way for the risk of losing out on valuable experience.  
Even once you've settled in, new exciting projects come along and you just want to be part of it.

The problem here is stretching yourself too thin. Instead of taking time to focus on one or two projects, you find yourself dipping into too many without actually accomplishing much. Learning to say "no" is hard and scary, but you'll be so thankful in the long run. There will always be opportunities knocking at your door - learn to pick your battles and don't feel guilty when you have to let something go.



2. Knowing when to Quit

Exhibit A: when your job starts to define you

I don't mean your job (please don't quit your job), but rather knowing when to put things down and walk away from work. There's the old adage "Find a job you love: and you'll never work a day in your life" - bullshit. It should read "Find a job you love: and let it consume your every waking moment until you don't know who you are without it". Doing work you enjoy makes it easy to take over your life. You are more willing to work longer hours and spend more time perfecting something than if you hated what you were doing. You bring work home with you, think about it while out with friends, volunteer your time to it. It will literally become your entire life and what defines you.
While dedication is great, there still needs to be a line between work and play.

Find hobbies that require your time and attention, find something to do that doesn't allow you to think about work. Have an office job? Sit on your butt staring at a screen all day? Go outside and walk or run (without a smart phone in hand!). Work outdoors? Lifting and hauling your butt around all day? Take a break at home reading a book, watching a movie, play some video games. Work mostly by yourself? Make social dates with friends and family. Work in a super social environment? Make sure to give yourself some alone time. Counter your all encompassing work life with something completely different that doesn't allow you to convince yourself that just checking your work e-mail on your day off will just take a few seconds...

3. Burn Out

When all your sentences require zombie subtitles it's time to take a nap

Given the last two points - it is easy to work yourself into the ground without realising it. When in a constant state of GOGOGOGO! your body will work itself into overdrive until you physically can't stand up anymore. There are times when this is unavoidable with deadlines and events and emergncies, but even without those stresses you can burn yourself out in the every day both mentally and physically.

Book your time away from work and don't waiver from it. Let yourself have a nap when you get home at the end of the day, don't feel guilty about having to just take a personal health day (responsibly!). Burn out is real and can actually become chronic and truly detrimental to your health so stay mindful of your limits no matter how awesome your job can be.

4. Becoming Invaluable

The printer is jammed. Our lives are over.

This is both a problem and a virtue. I was always given the advice "If you get a job and learn how to work the photocopier/printer you will become invaluable". I wouldn't say by any means that I've mastered our hell-fury of a photocopier, but am one of only a few who will put up with trying to understand its drunk tendencies. Obviously job security does not boil down to this alone, but small things like that where you take responsibilities and are patient with tasks that frustrate others, you build up a whole stack of skills that make you invaluable.

Of course you only notice this after you take a day or two off and come back to work to find that the printer tried to explode, your web server crashed, reception is a disaster, and the basement flooded. Okay, so there was nothing you could have done about that last one - but now all the stress you just got over on your day off comes back like a freight train. You love your job and problem solving is a great exercise, but there are times where you wish you weren't so damn useful.

5. Perpetual State of "Happiness"

What do you mean it looks like I've had botox injections?

People know you love your job. People probably are sick of you talking about your job. People probably hate your job purely out of spite of you loving it so much. But as any of the previous points have made note of - you're also not constantly singing EVERYTHING IS AWESOME. Sometimes things get stressful and exhausting and it can be frustrating. So when I feel like this and someone asks "How's the job going?" my reflex is to throw on a smile and be like "Great! Wonderful! Excellent, things are great. wonderful. awesome. couldn't be better.. great." I've become masterful both at work and outside of it at throwing on a face of complete calm happiness. To the point of when someone actually is suspicious by the amount of 'greats' in my answer, its hard for me to actually acknowledge when something is really bothering me. You don't like to bad-mouth the work you do because you genuinely love it, and you don't want to sound like a hypocrite and complain.  You get stuck in this pattern of being super-happy all the time, because on the other side of things you fall into number 6.......

6. Sounding like a Whiny Bitch

I know that feel, Michael Cera.

... The flipside to number 5. Being that person that won't shut up about frivolous things. You know people who've been unemployed for over a year, you know people who hate their job but it pays well, you know people who have the worst co-workers that make life hell. These are actual serious issues in the working world. I always feel guilty after hearing their woes and then wanting to complain about the goddamn spawn-of-satan-himself photocopier that makes me want to recreate the scene from Office Space. Talk about #firstworldproblems. I feel guilty ranting when I have a crappy day because of that fear of judgement from those who may be worse off.
Let's face it though: Work is hard. No matter what you do, everyone has bad days and need to blow off steam. When I say "everything sucks" I know I'm being superfluous... everything does not indeed suck... but just let me have my moment and it will pass.

Basically, no matter how terrible or amazing your job is, there will be times where you just need to get the hell away from it. Because otherwise you will probably end up doing something wrong or something you regret.

Now excuse me while I take a blow-torch to our photocopier.
-

gifs not mine

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Repeat.

In high school there was this substitute bus driver who only seemed to know how to drive with the 'pump the gas' method. Wherein he would floor the gas pedal for for 2 seconds, then let off completely, then floor it again, then let off. Same came with braking to a stop. Pump the brakes until we stopped....pump the gas until we go. It was like he was doing gym exercises with his feet alternating on the gas and brake.

As you can imagine, this start-stop-repeat motion, made the students on the bus look like waves on a shore, launching forward, and then back, forward and back, forward and back. The motion sickness was always evident and by the 10 minute mark of our 45 minute drive to school, my forehead would be forcibly pressed to the seat in front of me, cheek firmly pressed against the cool window, eyes  shut, willing the agony to end.

Luckily, this was only once in a blue moon, but those few times when I'd see the bus approaching with this man at the wheel, my stomach would instantly regret breakfast and I'd have to resist the temptation to jump into the nearest bush.

I'd long forgotten this feeling until recently, upon looking at my schedule. I've noticed my life seems to be running a pattern lately where everything will be due at once and everyone needs something from me that very minute, to absolute emptiness and exhaustion. Everything is either too much or too little and it switches on a dime. I feel like I'm either out of breath from trying to keep up, or have the wind knocked out of me when there's a moment to pause.

I feel like I'm on a bus called Life and that substitute driver is the one behind the wheel while I am a lowly commuter. The bus accelerates too fast, causing my heart to race as I'm pressed into the back of my seat by the G-force of deadlines, and then suddenly am lurching forward before I'm ready on a forced exhale. Back and forth I go trying to predict the motion of these waves and not quite getting comfortable in the rhythm.

I'm feeling sea sick, I want off this bus to one that is set to consistent cruise control.

The World is Watching

Ahhh the Olympics... a time when world nations throw their politics to the way side and cheer each other on in celebration of sport, right?

Alright, I couldn't even type that with a straight face. 

We aren't even 24 hours in to the games yet, and I know you've all started glazing over headlines about security cautions, LGBT protests, and the media superstorm regarding unfinished venues.

There seems to be 3 types of people I've noticed leading up to today's Opening Ceremony, see if you fit in any of these categories:

The Patriot: Decked out in national colours, every bit of flag related apparel, knows the entire event schedule and is a walking talking livestream of the games, inserting 'GO [INSERT COUNTRY] GO' into every conversation when applicable.
The Cynic: Is boycotting the games, protesting with a mile long list of civic issues, has lost faith in the organization as a whole and is pretty much a giant dark cloud of despair for the next two weeks.
The Doesn't-Give-A-Shit: meh I don't care  about sports really so-WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY FAVOURITE TV SHOW IS ON A 3 WEEK HIATUS.

You get the idea.

But when any one of these people interact with another, get ready for long passionate rants ('BUT YOU GOTTA SUPPORT THE ATHLETES') that all have valid points ('THE GAMES HIDE CORRUPTION IN SPECTACLE') albeit all start sounding the same after a while ('BUT IT ENDED ON A CLIFFHANGER').

It's even harder when this is all going on inside your head. The fact of the matter is that I love the Olympics but am feeling extremely uncomfortable with the politics that surround this year's games (and yes that TV show did end on a cliffhanger).

The LGBT issues have hit very close to home for me, but I can see where some are arguing that the unrest it has caused is starting conversations and bringing awareness on a global scale, and athletes are going to have the opportunity and drive to win in face of discrimination.

But the LGBT right issue is not the only thing that is political revolving around the Sochi Games. Russia has a lot of tensions with a lot of countries.  Though Russia's artistic culture that will no doubt be showcased in the Opening Ceremony is a rich and beautiful one, it doesn't mean the world's politics goes on hold for two weeks. Because the world is literally watching, these tensions give rise to risk of terrorist attacks and other such demonstrations. Many are on edge over safety concerns for the athletes, families, media, supporters, etc and are fed up of the ignoring of civil unrest to spectacle.

Obviously, Sochi is not the first place where these problems have occurred. Each venue has had its problems: Great Britain had security issues, Vancouver had last minute venue difficulties, China displaced entire cities and muted their voices, Salt Lake City was the first Post 9/11 Olympics .... the list goes on.

Sochi seems to be dealing with all of these things put in to a blending pot, and it comes at a time when people are fed up. The LGBT rights issue was the spark that lit a flame of unrest regarding social and political issues that have been plaguing not only Russia but the games for years.

The Olympics are meant to be about peaceful sport and the spirit of the athletes is where the heart of the games lies. It is a paradox where some say we must leave our politics at the door and focus solely on the sport, and where others say that politics are needed in order to participate ethically in peaceful sport. There will always be those two sides (or ever expanding sides).

Regardless, I think the thing to take away is to be conscious of what the Sochi Olympics are. We can't watch blindly and take the first observations that are handed us as the truth, but we also can't get so wrapped up in our political ventures that we forget the athletes who train their entire lives for this moment.

An example of commentary done right, has to be in today's simple Google Doodle for the games that has been making headlines for its cheeky and somewhat passive-aggressive reminder of the Olympic Charter to the political and Olympic leaders. 

I see what you did there Google...

It's going to be an interesting two weeks, and I think we can all agree...in the end we're going to want our TV shows back.

A Year in a Jar

Before the countdown to the year of 2013, I stumbled across a post on tumblr that had been circulating for an interesting project: “Start on January 1st with an empty jar. Throughout the year write the good things that happened to you on little pieces of paper. On December 31st, open the jar and read all the amazing things that happened to you that year.”

A few of you may remember... but 2013 did not start off well for me at all.  I felt depressed, exhausted, and unmotivated to the world - this after 2012 being an amazing rollercoaster of a year.

Regardless, I found a large old mason jar in my parents' cellar and dedicated it for this project. It sat on my shelf for days, weeks, completely empty (void of the one paper i had folded on New Year's Day explaining the project).

I started considering replacing it with a smaller jar, thinking that at the rate my life was going, I would barely be able to fill a small jar with a year's worth of good memories. But I let it sit there, collecting dust with only a few measly folded papers over time from hazy memories of small things I had forced myself to write down. Little things that made me smile gave merit to be written down, just so the jar itself didn't look so sad.

As the year wore on, I kept forgetting about the commitment I'd made and would go ages without updating the jar with good memories and slowly I had to start retracing my steps to days I felt good and noting them down. Just a few short sentences or phrases that would sum up a feeling.

As it turned out, by the time I dumped out the jar on January 1st of this year, I had to shake it vigorously to get all the piece of paper out. It surprised me how many little pieces had slowly accumulated over the last 365 days.

I had an odd sensation of remembering writing moments down every so often, but couldn't possibly comprehend the amount I dumped out of the large jar.

I sat on my bed opening and unfolding these little snippets of the last year, and found certain moments and phrases standing out against others.

I felt I should share a few of that jumped out at me:

These two struck me as important moments in the spring months for a turn around in my mental focus from the deep dark wintery place my mind had been living in for months. These little moments made all the difference in the world.

Free. Something I rarely feel, something that is much needed.

 Not everything was deep and meaningful... after being sick for a multitude of days, my ears popping was literally the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me at that moment.

I do believe this one is self-explanatory.

This was one of the last ones I put in the jar from one of my last lectures this semester in which my professor ended his class with: "If what you're learning isn't resonating - even if it will get you a job - if it isn't hitting you right here, in your heart or your head, then go find the thing that does." I scribbled that passage down in the margins of my notes as good school advice, but it is transferable to life advice that I have come to learn as well.

I looked at these notes of memories scattered across my bed and could see a year of transformation, adventures and growth. Finding your place and self worth is not something that happens over night, like this jar of memories, it build slowly and subconsciously before it is over flowing, ready for you to accept it.

Here's to another year and another empty jar.