Author: thoughts-from-a-little-thinker

Identity

Identity is a strange thing.

We talk about having one identity, but really, we all have many.

Who we are on our own is different to who we are in a group, which is different who we are online, which is different to who we are around close friends and family. And while each of these identities may in fact be incredibly similar, and may only have very slight differences to each other, they still feel different.

They’re still there.

It’s not really something we can help.

As humans, we are always growing in some way. We are always experiencing new things, and it’s impossible to not change and adapt to reflect our constantly changing environment, and these different identities form as a result.

Sometimes while I was at uni it felt like I had two different identities: who I was, and who I had been.

It’s something a friend of mine and I realised while we were away at uni. It was always strange to go home to our parents. Our parents expect to see the person we used to be, the person we were before we left. By the time we went back to visit them, we weren’t exactly the same as we were when we left. We’d have new habits, new ideas, new opinions. Now, after uni and once more living at home, I have had to find a new version of who I am: the newer post-uni me in an old pre-uni environment.

Society has a great impact on our identities and how we view ourselves too. It can change who we want to be, it advises us on how to be the best person we can, it can influence our thoughts and our ideas and our opinions. This is probably to be expected, when we think of how easily accessible the attitudes of the world we’re in now are, and how open everything is.

With the idea of identity and society comes the idea of ‘community’.

Between young people especially, the importance of being able to be who we are supposed to be is huge. All we want is to be able to say who we are, and have it accepted, no matter what. Identity is what sets us apart from each other. It’s what makes us all different.

But knowing that there’re other people out there who have been through similar experiences or feel certain things the same or in a similar way is incredibly important, and is hugely encouraging.

There are people who share aspects of me who show me its worth.

There are people with the word for how I feel, for how I act.

There are people that show me that I’m not alone.

I’m not alone in that particular aspect of who I am, and it is the most wonderful and comforting thing to find.

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Tumblrpocalypse

If you’re on tumblr even a fraction of how much I usually am, you’ll likely have noticed what a mess it is right now.

For those who don’t know, the tumblr app was taken off app stores due to the finding of child abusive images. This removal kickstarted an NSFW – ‘Not Safe For Work’ – blanket ban due to come into effect today, and it has already resulted in a multitude of problems.

The main problem I have is that blanket banning NSFW is very much a half-arsed way of tackling the sensitivity of NSFW, and avoids sorting the actual problems.

It’s obvious that tumblr needs better systems in place, that much goes without dispute. At best, we’d want a new system that allows for NSFW content, but is much more reliable in weeding out child abusive content and ‘pornbots’ – mass-run NSFW blogs that follow and attempt to interact with users. This would ensure that the only NSFW content is found on actual blogs and is meant to be there. As it stands, we have a worst case scenario, and I’m not convinced it will solve the problem. There are already reports that the bot blogs are finding new ways to get around tumblr’s ban, such as by adding links to popular posts so that they look like they’re just reblogging or ‘replying’ to posts – something I’ve seen them do before.

The second problem I have with the blanket ban is how it is directly affecting content creators and communities that are based around NSFW themes. Many creators have had to move sites, and have lost a great deal of their fanbase because of it. Not all of their fanbase will want to move from tumblr, or are able to. Entire communities have had to move or have been divided and have lost their safe space. How is that in any way a good thing?

The third problem I have is how unprofessional, disrespectful, and dissmissive tumblr has been towards its users. When the app was first removed from the stores, no one knew why. Many users assumed it was because of the pornbots. The tumblr staff were purging blogs with external links, many of which were SFW – ‘Safe For Work’, so it was a decent assumption. No one knew the real reason until they issued a statement about it. What’s worse, is that this ban has apparently been in the works for a while, but no news of it reached users until the announcement.

Yet another problem is that everyone on tumblr knows full well just how unreliable tumblr’s bots and filters can be. Once, ‘safe mode’ was switched on for every tumblr account, and frequently blocked perfectly SFW content. Users had to manually turn it off again. During the run up to the NSFW ban, the same thing has been occurring, with all sorts of SFW images, gifs, clips and blogs being flagged as inappropriate by tumblr’s bot. There is the option to appeal against it, but the fact that it is happening again in the first place demonstrates why users have little faith in tumblr’s systems.

So what happens now?

The full extent of the damage done won’t be known until at least the eighteenth.

A large number of tumblr users are logging off and boycottng in protest today. No posts, no queued posts, no likes, no visits, nothing. Tumblr will be the electronic equivalent of a ghost town. We don’t even know if it will make the staff realise that the majority of users are unhappy with the ban.

When we do get back on, no one’s entirely sure what to expect.

How is the new ban really going to affect writers? How many blogs will have been lost? How many users have logged off to not come back? How much quieter is the site going to be now? How many times will we have to appeal to save our posts? No one really knows. But it won’t be the same tumblr we used to know. Not by a long shot.

tumblr

Politics

I have never been a political person.

Understanding politics is a skill that I don’t have.

I struggle to unravel all the confusing wordings of policies. I struggle to find where I sit when it comes to opinions on even some important affairs. I struggle to understand why some things happen instead of what I believe would be a better option. I even struggle to understand the politics and feuds between people.

Everything is always seen in black and white. People forget that there’s usually a grey middle ground.

I tend to see a lot of the middle ground.

Because of this, I often try to avoid politics as much as I can.

I know it’s important, but I can’t bring myself to struggle through the messy politics of people and society that I can’t make sense of. I’m not like those people who’s life revolves around it.

Unfortunately, politics is impossible to avoid.

My Dad is fairly into politics. Every time he drags me into a political conversation, I end up getting lost and muddled.

The news mostly starts with politics these days, and I get lost and confused.

A single scroll through Tumblr will undoubtedly turn up a handful of reblogged political posts. Many of them use long and complicated words and terms I don’t understand, or are long posts that I just don’t have the energy and focus to read and understand, or both.

I don’t know how people cope with it all. It’s exhausting.

Some of Tumblr’s political posts scream at you to reblog them, saying that if you don’t, you must be a terrible person.

Luckily for me, I’ve seen a few posts circulating that tell the people who rag on those who don’t do politics to give us a break.

No one is mentally equipped to see all the bad things in the world and be able to deal with it, they say, Not everyone has the capacity to be able to deal with every single problem in the world. Don’t feel bad if you’re someone who doesn’t do politics or doesn’t reblog every important post. Humans aren’t supposed to deal with knowing every single bad thing happening around the world.

It was such a relief to see a post like that. For the first time, I thought that maybe it’s ok for me to not be comfortable with politics. For so many other people, political indifference or disinterest seems a strange concept to grasp.

I would say the opposite.

Politics are hard and confusing and exhausting. For me, being political is a strange concept to grasp.

But it’s ok to not be political.

votes

November

It feels strange that it’s November already.

Not even a month ago, I finally handed in my last deadline for my course.

This time last year, I was partway through my first deadline for my course.

I feel like we must have missed a month or few somewhere. I’m not sure what happened to July. Or March. I’m not sure that March really happened. I don’t remember much from it, that’s for sure. The same with September. September just completely disappeared this year.

But they must have happened, as the calendar on my computer tells me that today is the 7th of November.

They must have happened, as we’ve had Hallowe’en.

They must have happened, as my course has finished, as Nanowrimo has started, as my older sister has added another full year of life to her collection. It’ll be Christmas before we know it, then the start of 2019.

Isn’t that a strange thought? It’s almost the start of the new year already.

This November feels a bit weird.

The last time I had a November without being in education was when I was three. I don’t really remember that far back, and I didn’t have the same options then as I do now, so it’s a new experience for me. I have a November during which I don’t have any coursework to do. I don’t have a timetable to stick to, and I don’t have school or uni events planned that I need to attend. I don’t really have much of anything planned, at all.

I’m used to being busy in November. I’m used to having a lot on all the time, be it work or ensembles or just life.

So far, since my deadline, I’ve slept a lot, and not done much else.

It’s really strange.

It’s making this November feel like it’s just a crossover month between the end of my course and the Christmas period. It feels like Christmas will be the next big event happening in my life, and I’m just waiting for it now, even though it’s not.

This Sunday, the 11th, is Remembrance Day here in the UK, an important day in its own right. And this year marks one hundred years since the end of the first world war, so it’s even more important than it has been in previous years.

In two weeks time, I’ve got a sport tournament. No matter how it turns out, it’ll be a big event. The outcomes of the matches we play will determine whether my team will play at the national tournament or not, so it’s my biggest weekend of this November.

And then in three weeks, Nanowrimo ends, and I’ll once again have attempted to write a novel.

So even though it may feel like it right now, this November is not just a filler month.

December, Christmas, and the new year will just have to wait.

hello-november

Time Blind

I’ve never been very good with time.

I always say that time doesn’t like me. It certainly feels like that way. It has a habit of disappearing on me. I’ve lost over an hour before; one minute it was quarter to six, a few minutes later it was half past seven. I still have no idea how it happened.

I have never known how long a minute feels like. I have never been able to put something in the oven, come back later and known how long it’s been in there for. If I forget to put my timer on, I’m screwed. Even now as I write this, an hour has disappeared in what feels like half that time.

It gets worse around deadlines. One minute it’s three in the afternoon, then suddenly it’s four and I still haven’t gotten as much done as I wanted to. This past year feels like it’s been nothing but work and deadlines, and so many things have fallen by the wayside as a result; sharing my thoughts here was one of them.

Summer is confusing. Hours blur, and days, even weeks just blend into one another. I always lose track of the days. It ends up just being a period of time-stasis, in which I don’t register the days passing until it’s September. This year has been one of the worst for it that I can remember. I’m pretty sure a couple of weeks in July and August just simply didn’t happen. Yet now it’s September, so surely they must have done?

I found a term sometime around my April-May uni deadlines: time blind.

When I read up on what it was, I recognised it as one of the difficulties I face. To be time blind is to have no linear sense of time, to be unable to feel time passing. To look at the clock at half past twelve and then look up to find it’s half past two and yet it feels as though no time has passed at all. Or even the opposite, occasionally. To be time blind is to have no idea how long is spent on an activity unless timed. To be time blind is to know that there’s something on at this time on this day, but no matter how much time passes, it always feels the same amount of time away.

I’m sure this probably applies to everyone in some form; why else would we have the phrase time flies when you’re having fun? But for me, it’s constant. It’s always been this way. It was a relief to finally find a phrase for it, to find out others have it too. Finding someone else with the same difficulties makes it seem much more real, makes it feel much more like I’m not just imagining it. It seems to be most common in ADHD, especially with the influence of hyperfocus, but time processing and time management difficulties have also always had close links to Dyspraxia and executive dysfunction.

This academic year is the first year I won’t be going back to another year in education. It’s a strange concept to me. I’ve always had school keeping my days of the week structured and grounded, but once my last deadline goes in in October, there’ll be nothing ahead of me to tell me what day it is until I manage to find an actual job. Am I nervous about it? In a way, I guess. I’m already hopeless at remembering dates — birthdays and holidays always creep up on me.

This picture really sums it up for me. I’ve used it before in a post, but there’s something about the character trying to keep the time from disappearing that I find relatable. Because time keeps slipping away anyway, because even when using all the strength in her power, there’s nothing she can do about it. I’ve been known to use countless alarms, have clocks that are ahead of time, and do everything I can to try to keep on track, but to no avail.

So I just have to try to hold on, like the girl in the picture, and hope that not too much time disappears into the void that is time blindness.

Changed?

Quiet

The world is quiet out on the canal.
Maybe there’ll be traffic in the distance. Maybe there’ll be the odd cyclist, or the odd bird tweeting from somewhere. The occasional boat passing.
But for the most part, the world is quiet.
When it’s not raining, it’s nice to sit out front as you travel and to just watch the world go by.
Sometimes a book helps the time pass, but sometimes you just sit there and watch.
I read somewhere that everything on earth is made from stardust.
It wasn’t an academic source in any way – in fact, I think it was in fanfiction, but I suppose in someways, it’s true. If you can consider the elements stardust, that is.
But when the sun shines through the trees, and the sunlight glitters on the water, that is when I see it the most. That is when I can look at the world and agree. When the world is quiet, and when the world glitters, I can believe that it is made of stardust.
I like when the world is quiet.
It’s one of the only times I start to feel at peace.
With the constant hectic rush and noise of this world, it helps to have some quiet time away from it all.
Something shatters it, of course – someone talking too loudly, or a noise startles me out of the reverie in which I find myself, but until that moment, the world is quiet, and life is good.
Being on the canal is good for feeling at peace.
The water is so still, and so smooth against the boat pushing through.
Maybe you’ll catch sight of a fish jumping out of the water, or birds flying off as your boat approaches, hopping from perch to perch until you catch up and pass by, or until they fly away from the foliage around the canal and the noise of the boat’s engine.
You’re away from online communication, away from most contact, away from the peace-disrupting politics of this world.
You’re away from the pressures of everyday life, and away from the usual expectations that come with it.
Time on the canal is so quiet.
Travel time is slow, but there’s so much space to think and be quiet and away, it can feel like you suddenly have all the time in the world.
Sometimes I miss it when I’m not on the canal, even though the times when I am on the canal are a rarity. Other times, I’m glad I’m not on the canal; but that tends to be when the weather is cold and miserable.
Most of the times I’ve been on the canal have been in the summer.
Of course, in Britain, as I am, the weather can be poor even in summer time.
There have been many days when we’ve either barely moved or haven’t moved at all because of the bad weather, but I’ve had my fair share of beautiful, peaceful days while I’ve been on the canal, travelling what feels like a long way during the day, maybe operating locks if there are any, maybe driving the boat, maybe just sitting and watching the world go by, enveloped in the peace and gentleness this form of holiday can bring.
These days are the best days, days when I can simply enjoy being there and not have to think about the world off the canal.
Days in which I can just enjoy the quiet of the canal.

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Disappear

Have you ever felt the need to disappear?
Not in the runaway sense of the word.
Disappear as in to separate yourself from the world, just for a while, to think and breathe and simply be?
In which you don’t want to do anything in particular, don’t even want to be anywhere, but just put some distraction on in the background and feel as though your very being is just invisible? To feel as though you take up space and yet at the same time take up no space at all? To have some time in which to step away from the pressures of everyday life and to just block things out for a while?
I do.
Often it ends up eating into my time to work or sleep, but with the full-on nature of my current general week, this time is the time I need to keep me sane.
Maybe I’ll fill it with music in the background and admin time, maybe I’ll put music on in the background and read, but I’ll always need that space to just be.
Sometimes I’ll be at home, so it’ll be ok, but other times, if I’m in the middle of something at uni, it becomes very difficult.
I have a fidget cube, which does wonders for my hands that feel a near constant need to fidget, but there’s only so much I can do when I don’t have it.
Once I had just come out of a tutorial. The tutorial itself wasn’t inherently bad, but it was made plain that I needed to sort out some of my working and time-structuring priorities, something I was already aware of.
Those tutorials had always been intense, meaning every time I came out of them I ended up giving a sigh of release of the pressures expected of me. This week, despite my work itself pleasing my tutor, I felt as though I had let everyone down and I just needed to disappear for a while.
Desperately so.
So I went to the library, found a seat in a quiet zone. I put on a film soundtrack that I generally find calming and relaxing, I did admin to sort out my working hours, and I felt invisible for a while. Then the soundtrack ended and that feeling came back, so I put it on again, and it helped, a bit.
I let myself just be for a while.
Familiar, comfortable music, little to no communication with other people, a steadily emptying library, finishing my admin, and letting my thoughts loose for a while before moving on to do something else I enjoyed.
And it helped, it really did.
I always dread those times in which I don’t have the time or space I need to calm my soul for a while. The relief I feel when I’m finally able to vanish back into my own little world is unbelievably strong.
If you need to disappear for while, if you can, go and do it. It’s better to have time to yourself to let your soul calm down than it is to try to push through too far.
Everyone needs a break once in a while.
Everyone needs a time to disappear.
Let yourself be.

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Changed?

There’s a picture from when I was five, at my Dad’s wedding.
I don’t remember it being taken.
I only really remember sketches of that day – bits of the morning, bits of the ceremony, bits of walking down to the reception, feeling embarrassed when we had to stop every now and then for pictures. The start of the reception. The toys my sister and I got. I still have the owl at home. I don’t know what happened to her doll.
The picture is one I’ve gone past many times, and haven’t always looked at in detail, but even when I do, I don’t think much about it. It’s a nice picture, and in some ways, I look almost exactly the same as I do now, except my hair is much shorter, my face younger and chubbier, and my frame much smaller.
But my expression is the same.
The feeling I get from it is the same as how I feel now.
There were many pictures taken that day.
It was a wedding, pictures are almost always taken at weddings.
I remember some of them, but not this one. I couldn’t say when it was taken, who took it, what they said, what I said. I couldn’t say what happened before, after, and as it was taken. I don’t remember who was around me.
What was I like that day, I wonder? How much have I changed since then? In what ways am I still the same person?
I know who I am now, or mostly, at least, but who was I at the age of five?
In some ways, it feels as though it was another person back then, that I was a different person back then.
But it isn’t, and really, how much have I changed from the little girl I once was? Even after so many years, there are things about me that don’t change, that haven’t changed, that I can’t change.
Instinctual things.
Genetic things.
Thoughts change, and appearance changes, and how you interact with the world changes, but the person you are, the person you’ve always been, does that stay the same? Is it only something drastic that can change who you are, or are the hardships of life enough? Or is the person you are in your core something that rarely changes?
How much do we change over time, really?

Changed?