BLOGTEMBER DAY 4: My Passions

Friday, September 4th, 2015: What are you passionate about? 

For today's prompt I'm going to list five things I am passionate about. Let me know if you are passionate about any of these same things too, or even what your greatest passion is!

#1: Manners.  When I was in elementary school I often got in trouble for telling dirty jokes. One involved a man named Manners and whenever I see the word typed out, that always reminds me. A random and irrelevant aside but I felt the need to share it. Growing up, my brothers and I were in so many "polite" habits, we even got teased by a family friend because we were always so predictable in saying, "Thank you for the wonderful dinner, may I please be excused?" after every meal we ate there. So yes, that might be a touch aggressive on the politeness scale but I cannot tell you how many times I have corrected, out of habit, children for not saying please or thank you (often much to the disgust of their parents) and I can feel my whole body posture change when anyone talks to me rudely. I feel like kindness and The Golden Rule tie into this. Also, a bit of a stretch but not being arrogant or ignorant is SO important to me. Anyone who acts like they are better than anyone else automatically gets the red negative symbol floating above my head (Sims reference, anyone?).

#2: Words. Could I be any more vague? (I definitely read that in my inner-mind Chandler voice). I needed something that encompassed that so totally and completely, so "words" is the only way to do that. I have wanted to be a writer since I was in grade three and for a long time that was what defined me. Stories, poems, fan-fiction, blogs, lists- you name it, I went through a phase at some point. I later decided I wanted to be a novelist, but still love doing all of those things... my grad yearbook write-up was even a poem! The other half of this passion would be quotes. I wrote a whole blog entry about my love for sayings, which you can check out HERE.

#3: Uniqueness and authenticity. It's the lamest advice we have all received at some point in our lives: be yourself. But really, it's so very important. Now, I'm not going to stand here and say (or rather, sit here and type) that I am the most unique shining star in the sky and I don't follow any trend and everything I do is 100% me and not inspired by anyone or anything else other than my own one-of-a-kind noggin. Because that is not, never has been, or never will be the case. Obviously I take inspiration from different things I see and people I encounter; I pretty much close my eyes and see a Pinterest feed on the back of my eyelids. I am not going to get too into this as I wrote a blog post awhile back that goes deeper into my "feels" (you can read that HERE). Basically, there is only one you. P!NK pretty much covered my thoughts on the cliché when she said "...I don't think imitation is the highest form of flattery... I think it's annoying". Yes, take inspiration from people... acknowledge great ideas but DO NOT CLAIM THEM AS YOUR OWN. It is beyond frustrating when I scroll through Instagram and finding people reposting my pictures and saying they made them, or even just blatantly copying my ideas into their own art journals. It's not flattering, and more than that it's heartbreaking that people don't come up with their own ideas to express themselves and their passions, just redo something they saw in a YouTube video or on Tumblr. Be yourself. Come up with your own ideas and portray those, without fear of rejection or no Instagram likes. At the end of the day, there is only one you and no one can express your passions to the world better than you. I will stop shaking my cane and get down off my soapbox now.

#4: Memory keeping. Ever since I can remember, I've been obsessed with taking pictures and making videos. Yes, this started with my mom's old film camera and taking the pictures to Costco to get developed and bringing my dad's huge video camera to school to film my friends and I at recess. This has evolved as the technology has: digital camera, vlogging, Instagram and so forth. The picture in the title picture of this post (I'm starting a new thing, woohoo!) is one from a party I through for one of my friends birthdays in high school. We all went to the park by my house which also is the field of the elementary school I attended from grades 4-7. A lot of memories of mine took place within the space captured in the picture and that idea... that a picture or a video captures something, even though everything about it changes you have that fragment of it forever. So now, there's a new playground behind that goal post. I no longer talk to the girl I co-hosted the party with and its been eleven years since I was a student in those walls. But that doesn't change this picture. Thanks to forums like blogging, YouTube, and Instagram it is possible to capture your life and share it in a way that our parents were only able to do so through home videos on VHS tapes and photos in old three ring albums. So yes, I love scrapbooking and Project Life gives me thrills that really make no logical sense for me to get from paper crafting but the amount of ways I can save these moments and share them is something I am forever grateful for.

#5: My loved ones. This kind of ties to the last post, as a key part of memory keeping is the memory making, and most of the best memories are made with others. Instead of labelling this friends or family or both, I felt this title was more apropos as at this point in my life, there is a lot of crossover. Sure, I don't get along with some of my family (girl, do I have stories for you...) I am lucky enough to say I am very close with my parents and my youngest brother and consider them all dear friends. My two best friends through most of my childhood may not live nearby but they have been my "sisters by choice" for sixteen years. My boyfriend is a given on our family camping trips and my other best friend, Erica is my parents' "other daughter". I may not, as Erica and I joked about today, have enough friends to fill one of those collage photo frames that has "FRIENDS" in black block print in the middle, but I am truly blessed to have these people in my lives.

Thanks very one for checking out this post and I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

-Adrianna.