Semester Takeaway

I feel like creativity has a lot to do with your state of mind.  depression, anger, and other emotions or states of being can really hinder any creative thoughts and processes. The thing to overcome these obstacles is to change your perspective. If you can harness your ability to change your perspective even just a little bit, your creativity will blossom.

Life is difficult and will get in your way many, many times but if you don't make time for yourself and your personal needs, you won't grow as a person.  Growing as a person is one way i feel creativity becomes natural and real. Your creativity grows with you, it doesn't stay the same. It's a dynamic concept.

Takeaway 16

Change is something I don't deal well with. It's scary and new and I hate scary and new. But sometimes change is a completely necessary aspect of life. There is no way of changing change. You can try, really try, to avoid it but change is going happen. Your best bet is to take that change and embrace every aspect of it.  Change can and most likely will broaden your horizons.  Change makes us better people, for the most part that is. Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow and accept that some things are out of your control.

"Altared" Book of the Self

What is your opinion of combining technology and the human body as she did in the video?
I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with her incorporating technology with the human body like she did, but I don't completely agree with it either.  Sure, cosmetic things are completely fine (like the perfume pill) but there comes a point where it's too far and we are messing with things that shouldn't be messed with.  I don't know where that boundary is yet because we haven't actually started messing around with this kind of experimentation on a larger scale, but there is a boundary.

What is your opinion of combining a media arts and science project with your own body?
I would not combine a media arts and science project with my own body.  That's something I would just not do.  I like my body just the way it is and I would not change it for a project in college.

How will you change this book?
I will change this book into something beautiful by folding some of the pages into paper cranes.

How will this book change you?
I think it's opened my eyes up to new possibilities.  There are beautiful things to be found in ugly and boring situations.  It all just matters in how you look at it and what perspective you hold.  That's what I've learned from this horrible, ugly, boring book.

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So my book is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  I absolutely hate this book.  It's ugly, horribly written, and just plain boring.

I then opened the book to a random page and ripped some of the pages out.

And the cut those pages down to somewhat really uneven squares. Them not being even is what really made the swans look stupid.

Swan number 1. Not too shabby if i do say so myself. It's not the prettiest swan, but it will serve it's purpose well.

Here are 4 total swans.  I was going to make 10 of them, but a) it's a lot harder than I had thought, b) I'm extremely lazy, and c) i feel like I have proven my point that I made John Steinbeck's ugly book somewhat beautiful and for that I am really happy.

Takeaway 14

Because of this class, I have changed my major.  Again.

I'm going back to Neuroscience.  I've realized it is definitely in my best interests to pursue this major because I am completely and utterly enthralled by the human brain's composition, the human psyche, and the function our nervous system performs.

It really is my passion.  Hasn't the whole theme of this class been to find what you are passionate about and incorporate it into your everyday life so you can continue to be creative?  If not, well then I completely missed the entire point of this class.  But you know what?  I don't think I really care.  I've found what makes me happy and feel complete. And that's all that matters today.

Fear

The fear I have identified is more of an anxiety than anything.  I notice it in a lot of ways in my life such as: not wanting to go to places I'm unfamiliar with, not wanting to meet new people, and not wanting to speak out in any social situation where it isn't required (example: my job).  This fear has me not experiencing life.  I have so many aspirations and dreams and goals but I just can't actually go out and get them done.

I have no use of fear in my life.  I really don't.  But yet there it is, lurking beneath the surface whenever I have the random urge to do something outside of my "norm".  This really effects my life in a pretty negative way.  I don't go out and do new or exciting things or go meet new people or travel unless someone literally forces me to do it.  If I had a choice I would have nothing to do with anything of the sort.

This also does nothing positive for my creativity.  I feel like to have creativity one needs to embrace change and new experiences to grow as a person.  If you can grow as a person, I feel your creativity grows with you.  It all depends on your perceptions and experiences.

My fear takes the form of feeling like I'm not adequate for anything or anyone.  But by creating this (not very good) painting of my fear, it kind of takes it outside of me so that I don't have to focus on it anymore.  It's almost like it isn't my problem anymore because it has materialized outside of my body.

Bliss

For the bliss assignment I honestly did a whole lot of nothing.  It was very relaxing to get in touch with my inner self and see what all I have been neglecting to take care of in the chaos that is life right now.  The outcome of this was pretty surprising though as I now have a pretty good grasp on why I do the things I do.

So here are my 3 "What if's..." for the Bliss assignment:

1. What if I stopped caring so much what other people thought of me?
2. What if I found a way to meditate so that I could be in my creative zone more?
3. What if I focused on me more and less on everything that is going on around me?

Takeaway 12

I find the universe interesting.  Like mind-blowingly interesting.  Just think, we are tiny, minuscule ants compared to the vast size that is the universe.  The massive rock we live in that is floating through space around a giant ball of molten stuff is just a grain of sand in the grand scheme of things.  There is no way that we are the only living things in our universe; but we aren't advanced (or ever will be) enough to be able to conduct deep space exploration.  Other life forms could be out there, doing their alien things, and we would never know unless they wanted to make contact with us first.  And to be honest, I don't think they would want to ever make contact with us.  If they have the technology and knowledge to discover us from millions of lightyears away, they would be too advanced.  To them, we would be a very primitive species.  It's crazy to try and wrap my head around just how massive our universe is; but it's impossible to do that.  There's no way our human mind could ever comprehend how large the universe is.  There's just no way.

Some astrophysicists even believe that there is a multiverse.  That there are more universes out there outside of ours.  We will never know in the near or distant future unless we develop a technology to see past the edge of our universe.  It's just not possible with what we have right now.

I don't know what's out there.  It's trippy to think about all of this, really, but I just find it so damn interesting to think about.