4-11-11 Class Response

I completely understand why you believe that Sharayah's project and the resulting discussion was the most important thing that happened this semester. You had mentioned previously that part of this course's purpose is to give us tools to help prevent and recover from burnouts like Sharayah encountered. Also, it came to light that many of us have encountered this even before now, and we actually came together and discussed it. I mean, most project discussions have been based around talking about the technical aspects of the work or, more recently, thinking about what lead the person to create the work. However, until that discussion, we had never had a real, lengthy discussion about the reasons and what it means for us as people who are going to make stuff for a living. If I had to guess, I would say it's due to the topic being something that is important, shared by the majority of the class, and something societally accepted as being "normal." With the fear assignments, I feel there could have been more, better, discussion if there was an understanding that many creative people have had shit happen in their lives.

I know a big theme in this semester, at least for me, is an understanding that I'm not, in fact, alone. In anything, really. Other people in the class have issues with their family. Other people have a pervading feeling that their work is never good enough. Other people have lost the feeling of love they had for what they do. I also found out that sometimes people actually give a damn about what I have to say. Shit, people actually know my name, which is something I'm going to go into more detail with before this semester's done as to why that's important.

From where creativity springs - 4-18-11

I've discovered throughout my life that I'm not a particularly creative person, at least by what I feel is the traditional definition: coming up with wholly (or mostly) original ideas. I tend to get most of my ideas from finding stuff and thinking of ways to tweak them so that they fit something I want to do or how I think they should work. In truth, I have to imagine this what creativity truly is, as ideas completely unrelated to existing ideas/products are so rare that you could say they don't exist.

This past week, I encountered a wonderful site called "My Next Tweet." When you give it a Twitter account to look at, it scours all of the posts that person has made and then cobbles together a new tweet based on what has been said previously. Most of the results are giberish, but I liked the idea. So, I made a simple (and definitely unfinished) web "app" I'm calling Catharsis. It has flips through a pre-generated list of statements/affirmations and allows users to enter their own. It accomplishes the goal of letting people know a side of me I rarely share, as well as let mess around with the concept of making a web app and get a little more experience working with a typographic interface. Here's the link: http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~brjgraha/catharsis/




My weakest assignment was definitely the stuffed animal one. Part of it I think was due to not knowing that you weren't expecting to get these back, so my ideas were simpler and, due to procrastinating, I didn't even do my initial idea. Also, I'm not sure I ever "got" what the purpose of that assignment was. I thought of it sort of as a "egg project redux" which I also was not happy with my end-result. My issue seems to be with having true and utter freedom to work. I prefer to work in a scenario where I'm playing in someone else's sandbox or have some sort of theme or loose structure. Obviously, I should have come up with my own restrictions for those assignments since I now know that's how I prefer to work.

Why am I here?

When I saw the assignment, I couldn't help but think of that video. I had a hard time coming up with an answer and creation to this question. I've come up with a pair that I'm conflicted about. The answer to the question, at least when "here" is equal to "alive", is often tied to one's religious beliefs, of which I have none.

My answer to the question was the following: "I'm here to become the best possible version of myself." On face level, it sounds like a cop-out answer, but after thinking about it over th weekend, it still resonates with me. I like the things in my life to have a purpose, and I don't think I would've been satisfied with my answer to the question if it couldn't stand the test of time. My answer does that as it is tied heavily in how I define myself, which is not static. However, it still is a purpose in life that demands that I improve myself.

As far as a creation, I decided to make something that would remind me as to why I exist, in the event I forgot or strayed from my path or goals. It's a simple wallpaper, but I like simple.

Like with the answer itself, I'm concerned that it's *too* simple, but I made it for me, and I wanted it to be something that I would actually use, and right now I'm using minimalistic wallpapers.

Fear Response - Day 2

So, that was an interesting class period. It was refreshing (although that seems like a bad thing to say) to know that having shit happen to you previously or currently is a shared trait in this class. It reminds me of something I heard on a podcast once. Jerry Holkins, the writer for Penny Arcade, said something that boiled down to, "There is something inherently broken in people that leads them to want to create."

Broken is perhaps a word too harsh, as it suggests that it's a trait that needs to be fixed, but I don't think he's wrong. While there were plenty of people who talked just about phobias as opposed to fears, I don't recall anyone saying that their life has been perfect up until this point.

I think Colby's presentation was most impactful for me due to my dad and step-mom's drug addiction, but there were quite a few heavy-hitters in class.

The Scientific Fear Method

1. Examine the situation
     - In my life, it seems that fear is a controlling aspect but I have never really considered what I'm actually afraid of besides the things that don't constantly affect my life, like arachnophobia.

2. Experiment idea
    - It made more sense to me to do something to discover, expose, and (on some level) confront my own fears as opposed to trying to draw out the fears of my peers. I decided to make a video (included at the bottom of the post) and talk about it while it plays.

3. Hypothesises-es-es-es-es-es
    - For me, the most basic outcome is to have a better understanding of what I'm actually afraid of. Hopefully, displaying them and talking about them would lead to me overcoming them, but I'm not convinced that a couple-minute speech would accomplish that task.

    - For others, I fully expect them to not care, and get the impression that I feel my life is much harder/worse/etc. than it really is.

5. Reaction
    - While my mind went "dumb" while I was presenting to the point of not being able to focus on anything other than getting the words out, I was all but dumbfounded to get some applause at the end of the presentation. I don't know if it was pity applause or patronizing applause or legitimate applause, but it was applause. Then I got a nice sense of perspective and a great insight into codependency from Beth.

   - I didn't feel a weight lifting or anything while presenting, nor after. In fact, for the next day or so, I was depressed. I'm not sure if it was from disappointment for not feeling significantly better or because of any number of "reasonable" explanations (weird sleep schedule affecting length of sleep, etc.), but since Wednesday, I have felt better.

6. Analysis
    - The applause was really shocking. In the "best case scenario" I was expecting perhaps a brief discussion from a couple people. Now granted, the only person who talked about what I presented (at least in class; I haven't looked at anyone's reaction blogs to see if I was listed yet) was Beth, but getting applause when we weren't really "doing that" was weird and cool. Perhaps they related to my fears, or perhaps they just felt bad for me.

    - The day-ish depression was not a reaction I was prepared for. I felt like shit for a couple days, but as I type this, I feel better and I do feel a little "free-er" to talk about myself, which is definitely a side-effect of bearing your soul to a group of people without total anonymity. =)

7. Future changes
    - The best change I can think of is to force (or at least request) responses and discussion after presenting, which would help get an idea of how, if at all, it affected people. Also, I need to make sure that the video is paced for speaking-speed as opposed to "inside-your-head-reading" speed.

Fear Presentation Reactions: Day 1

First thing's first: it was weird having a class session where nearly everyone was talking freely. I don't know if it was being out of the chairs or the topic forcing discussion to avoid fear/awkwardness, but it was awesome.

An unintended side-effect, however, was setting a mood in the room that I was incredibly hesitant to kill by presenting my (considerably "debbie downer") project.

While Pluckett's and Glasscock's projects were interesting, cool, and fun, they were "cop-outs." It's not my place to dictate what they get out of the class or how they do it, but they both avoided the topic, which perhaps is as telling as doing it "right."

Sandy's presentation about her fear of her son being kidnapped was the most powerful, which was bizarre to me, since I don't have children. I think what did it is that the emotional response to that situation is so clear and intense, it's easy to relate to.

The Scientific Method of DOOOOOOOOOOM!

Hypothesized Reactions: "Do you really think your life is/was so bad?" "What a douche." An overwhelming sense of boredom or apathy