Blogging Around

I looked an Nina's post about cleaning her dresser top and as I was reading it, I found I could somewhat connect to her emotion. In her blog, she realized she was able and strong enough to get rid of old notes and things that brought mostly bad memories. Here is what I commented:Ashley ADecember 10, 2012 6:02 PM

When I was doing this task of cleaning my own room, I know exactly how you feel about throwing something away and getting rid of that burden. While cleaning my room, I noticed that the more clothes and shoes and little unnecessary things that I got rid of, the better I felt. Weirdly enough, a lot of those things did have negative connotations of my past. So I absolutely know how you feel. I think it is AMAZING that you have come to this recognition of being able to get rid of these things and know that you're strong enough to. I think it's great! Good for you and keep working at it! :)

My second comment was on Sam Johnson's blog about organizing his Itunes Library. He says he can't really live without music and even organizing it was a great feeling. I definitely agree with him. This is what I commented: Ashley ADecember 10, 2012 6:17 PM

First, I love music! And second, honestly one of my favorite things to do is organize the little things in my life. If I feel flustered, the very first thing I look and see if I can organize is definitely my art box. I have tons of markers and crayons and if I can organize them by color order, I am pleased. So I totally understand the feeling of organizing just the Itunes Library. I absolutely love discovering new music from others or just my own investigations. I agree 100% with how Sam says he "can't survive without music". I like seeing that he did't do the usual of organizing a room or closet or backpack or whatever. He went a 'modernized' route and picked Itunes. I think that's pretty funky. :)

Get Organized : Cleaning My Room

Now due to the upcoming holiday, I decided my room needed to be cleaned in case any family members were going to be staying in my room. Honestly, my room was a mess. I share it with my younger brother Giovanni, and our clothes were everywhere. On the floor, not hung up correctly in our closets, under the bed even! Honestly it looked like the stereotypical statement from a mom, "It looks like a tornado came through here!". So, it was time to clean it up.


Of course, starting the job of cleaning is painful and obnoxious. Just thinking about the big mess that awaited me was making me want to cry! But, nevertheless I had to get it done. During the process though, I felt at times angry because it was just so messy I couldn't believe it. But then I would look at the progress and feel much better. It was something short of an esteem booster.

Then towards the end, I felt great! My room looked great! Almost spotless! Which is absolutely fine for me. I don't need my room to pass a white glove inspection in order for me to feel satisfied. I thought I did a great job and thanks to my mom, she made the bathroom look brand new! In a dramatic way, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. All the clutter was crazy and effecting my sleep because I was actually too lazy to put my crap away. 

Honestly, now that my room is clean I feel my brain to be less clustered and jumbled. I know that the organization of every aspect of my life effects anything else in any other place too. It feels great. Now I know where all of my favorite shirts are, and where all my sweatshirts are and it honestly is a great feeling. My mind now feels...to some extent, free. In a small way, I feel like now I can think more openly and freely. It's a great feeling that I know I get whenever my room is clean. It's just the process to keep it clean.

I didn't learn anything new from this project. I always knew that it's easy to keep my room clean, it's not hard to clean it, and that I feel better afterwards. But to me, it's still a pain in my butt to take and extra five minutes to put my clothes in the proper place, whether it be the hamper or closet. It's just so much easier to be a lazy bum and throw all of it on the floor. But I do know that I need to fight that lack of motivation. Unfortunately, it is in all parts of my life. And it has been for a while but I know I have to fight it. I just need to stand up and face it, and avoid it as well. 

Connection: My dads' life and Aesthetics

Every day my dad tells my younger brother and I to live by the rules of happiness and follow your dreams
and to enjoy every second of your life because you never know when it will end. I feel like my dad would strongly believe in aesthetics and to live by its' rules. I know that aesthetics is 'rules and structures for creating absolute beauty" so I definitely know my dad follows these ideas. He knows that besides for all the ugly of the world, there is way more beauty in it than most see. He wants us to go to the forest preserves in every season, more than once to see the beauty and change that is on this planet. He never wants us to lose the ideas of beauty that we have of the world and how we can use it to our every day advantage. Bring these ideas into the rest of our lives and continue seeing the true beauty of things even in difficult situations that may come about.

Due to my past, I have been 'blinded' by darkness and unable to see the beauty and happiness that engulfs us everyday. With this class, and my family, I am trying my hardest to think and see all the beauty that I should be seeing everywhere. I'm not saying I don't find the fall colors to be beautiful or a sunrise. But I cannot see it in everything. I know that my younger brother has problems seeing full beauty too but he is still young. My dad and aesthetics have beliefs of the same kind and are able to use them everyday of his life. And portray them even onto others' lives.  I find it to be an important matter to accept it in our own lives and then bring it onto our important friends's lives too.

Best of Today: Common Sense and Platonic Thinking

In class today, along with what happened yesterday, we came across the subject of common 
sense and to what extent are certain issues actually common sense. Like it IS common sense to know not to touch a hot pan on the stove. I feel like it is also common sense not to ask a stranger or someone that you aren't close with, who they voted for or what their salary is.
I feel like if someone is lacking common sense, it's more towards the sense part rather than the 'common' i guess. 

One of my best friends has NO common sense but she is very thoughtful and understands right from wrong. She just, at the time, doesn't think much of the 'sense'. In class, Mr. Allen talked about how there is two parts of common sense like the sense part and the other part, which I have never really thought about before. I just felt like since it's 'common' then everyone should have it, although I knew a lot of people didn't/don't.

Also, today we were talking about the ideas and beliefs of Plato and Darwin, and how they would intertwine. And I don't know much about Plato and his beliefs, but what I found out today was actually really cool. Plato feels as if we, now are the shadows of the realm above us. We are not the reality, but what is above us with all the ideals and materials, they are reality. Just even typing it seems strange to me to think the possibility of it. But what I can't seem to wrap my head around is the thought of afterlife. I'm not religious and I can't even begin to comprehend the thoughts of an 'afterlife'. 

I now have the tools to look forward and think more about this. I now want to look into religions of all types just to learn more about them. Give me more knowledge about religions that I have either never heard of or, know little about. Opening of new doors for my life in experiences.

Metacognition: Open Minds

Every day in this class, we talk about open minds and free spirits in some way. Or how a writer writes
in a free spirited kind of way. But most of the people in our class fully understand what that means.

I don't. I know the idea of free spirits and open mindedness but to actually make it happen in my life
seems to be a bit of a struggle for me. I would like to be able to do it and involve it into my life in all
aspects but I just don't know how.

I have two jobs, I take care of my little brother, and I have school work. How can I just put that stuff
'aside' and feel free? How can I think that I have no big worries or stresses?

Stress is something those people may not even have. But is that even possible? Can someone really not have stresses?! Doesn't stress naturally come with everyday life? Or could that just be me?

Or instead of just stress, maybe worries. Don't worries happen in everyone's life at least once? Or instead of the negative everyday things in life and it actually be the effect of situations one has been put in
in life. Can that be the cause of a closed mind?

I feel that although someone has a closed mind, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In class I feel like we have
talked about numerous ways to open it up: writing, drawing, crafts, movies, music and anything else not mentioned above.

Open minds=Creativity. Being creative to me, means being able to look at all perspectives
and add a little bit of something into a whole creation. No matter what creation is made. Creativity is
being open to new ideas from other creations or from other people. My main train of thought
that this class has helped me with is, now I know how to be more open minded or at least learn
to work for it.

Blogging Around

Ashley AOctober 11, 2012 5:30 PM    To Isana's Born into Brothels.
I love how you pointed out how not many people, if any, actually ever think about the children born into these horrible places. I know I never even thought about it. I for some reason just figured that they were taken away to a better place or something from a dream. I wouldn't think that the children would be called nasty, horrible names and treated like dirt. These kids don't know what freedom is and they maybe never will unless these organizations and programs and a continuous that they see.

Ashley AOctober 11, 2012 5:35 PM    To Samy Rhee's Best of the Week.

I LOOOOVE absolutely everything about this post. I love how instead of the word being conformity, you chose consumerism! I thought that was very original and something that falls into conformity but nobody really talks about this perspective of it. And I love how you're talking about how society has lost sight of being actually unique although it's what we have grown up with talking about with our parents. Everyone wants to be unique but in todays society, how possible is that?

It Matters: Divergent Thinking for the upcoming election of 2012

So let me start off by sharing that I do not want this to be 'Candidate bashing' of the Obama vs. Romney
Presidential Election. But in class we are talking about linear thinking versus divergent thinking. This
idea struck me as something I think even the big politicians need to learn the differences and the benefits and the downsides to these two types of thought processes. First, I think it's important for middle schools to college to adulthood should learn these types. Why? Well because education has been flipped into a way that now, imagination and creativity seem to have been sucked right out of the curriculum. We have been 'trained' to no longer look beyond what we're told and taught and just accept things the way they are. But how the crap are we supposed to support a presidential candidate if they don't know how to think of all possible outcomes and solutions to one big, huge, problem in the country? There should be no second thought about if the candidate, when faced with a sudden obstacle, can decide the best choice out of a few and then proceed forward. Not only is it important for schools to stop teaching only convergent thinking, but even divergent thinking is important in adult lives as well. Maybe more so than in childhood? 

Best of the Week: Born into Brothels

The thought of these young children being raised and slaved is mind blowing and heart shattering.
Just because their mothers and fathers CHOSE this lifestyle, it should not depend on these people to 
decide if the children live there or not. They deserve a life of freedom and education and LIFE. 
And believe me, I'm not saying they have to move here to America to enjoy life, but they need to be 
taken out of there. Which is why our discussion about Kids with Cameras is such an important inspiration
in my life now. These children have/had no proper way of relieving stress, or even being a kid! 
Now with this Kids with Cameras program, they can let out their feelings by controlling what picture 
they take and of who/what. After watching this documentary, I noticed that I liked and understood their
pictures more than I do/would any other adult photographers. That to me is mind blowing! 
These children don't take time to plan out each and every shot, which makes these pictures so much more 
real than the ones that are planned. I can relate more to these kids pictures than others. I now am interested
in working with these kinds of children and I look forward to pursuing these programs. 

What If?: The Writer

"an iridescent creature" said in Richard Wilbur's poem, The Writer. This so-called 'iridescent creature' is just a bird, or so I thought. As we described all the possibilities in class of what this bird can resemble it opened my eyes and mind as to how many things I have missed since I didn't think the bird meant any of the things we talked about. Now being able to see everyone else's perspective on this one bird, made me realize all the things I have missed my whole entire life. But not only in writing.

In movies, art, songs, and probably conversations I have been neglecting other possibilities for what things can mean. I take things for what they come to me as instead of seeing if there is deeper meaning than what meets the eye. Now a question that comes to mind is, what if others are doing the same thing when I talk to them? Are they thinking that everything I say is nothing deeper or are they trying to find the deepness of my words? I mean, if they're looking for something deeper, I don't want to possibly disappoint them. So I know not everyone thinks like this, but for the ones who do, I want to know why.

But now, I want to know what drives the other people to see numerous meanings behind one object of art. How can their minds be so ready to see one word, search for things it can possibly mean, and be somewhat correct? Or is there even something to be correct about? I mean, when does it end. I take things literally because I don't have time to think about all the other possible meanings of things. But does that mean I'm less creative than those who see that? I mean there are so many possibilities as to how these things happen, why they do, and why some don't. It seems like a never ending circle, going around and around with no definite answer to a lot or all of my questions.

Another thing I think about when I think about this is, what would the world be like if nobody saw hidden meanings? How bland and simple could life be. Or maybe somehow it isn't these people who make the world unique and it's actually scientists instead. It's kinda cool to think that maybe the people with the most ordinary minds somehow created this wondrous world. But then again, that doesn't make that much sense.