pursuingourpassions

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- Checking In

I sure love grinding out the entire rough draft for my research paper the day before because I have no planning ability and sleep isn’t apparently necessary to past me. Thank you, past me, for this. I appreciate it.

This is not at all my teacher’s fault, but simply me not wanting to just do the work. I spent the weekend doing other homework when I should’ve given this top priority. Oh well.

So then, progress update. In finding more sources, I’ve discovered a lot more about my project and how people actually think about it, and how people are desperately trying the same thing that I am. It turns out I am not alone in my quest against stranger danger. Who knew there were other weirdos out there?

This makes my paper a little more complicated than I thought it would be, but I’m glad for it. Having a lot more to talk about is far better than repeating the same points again, which I tend to do. Have I ever told you guys procrastination is bad?

Tune in next week for another reason I have accomplished not much!

[pursuingourpassions]

To Kill A Mockingbird- In Summary

First of all, I’d like to say that this was, by far, one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, especially for the academic system. My main experience with books that we are to read in class is that they are generally completely moral based to the point where it’s sickening how obvious the author attempts to make the lesson stand out in the book, and every action carefully calculated and faked. If the book turned out to actually show promise, either the entire class immediately hated it or it was overanalyzed to the point where I would get tired of the book before we would even finish it, even if I had been enjoying it.

It was finally not the case with this book. The class loved it, it had such interesting characters, settings, and plot that we always wanted to read more but talk about what we just read at the same time. Even from the first few chapters, we were hooked, and interested in the wellbeing of everyone in the story. Realistic fiction was not the class’ first choice, yet, the way Harper Lee wrote this made the book was so much more loved than Huck Finn or Haroun were.

The subtle actions and unique character of each of the people in the book made this a truly interesting story to pursue and discuss, and, for once, looking closer at a small event was not overly analytical, but required to fully understand what the author intended there. I feel like rereading the book would expose a million smaller lines I had missed in the first reading, and these tiny details made up huge underlying messages that I think only a classroom setting could fully appreciate.

For example, the discussion we had recently on the ending of the book showed me how people felt about it. Some people didn’t like the way the ending seemed unfinished and the conflict seemed unresolved, and I was with them, but the ending is slowly growing on me more and more as time passes.

The way that Huck Tate and Atticus stood up together for Boo, never once considering letting the blame of the murder come anywhere near him, and how the town came together to prove that at the end of it all they wouldn’t kill any more mockingbirds. Although equality wasn’t achieved, and wouldn’t be for many more years, there were people working from the inside to put down the racism in the tiny town, and they made special progress towards ending it. Atticus’s children will grow up good hearted and kind, because his actions were pure and honest the entire time he raised them, with no exceptions, not even the one lie he told to save Boo.

Plus Heck’s small tantrum about being the sheriff was pretty amazing.

Coming full circle and resolving the story as how Jem got his arm broken, and nothing more, was both really innovative and amazing, and honestly, I think as time passes this is quickly going from one my least favorite to most favorite endings.

[pursuingourpassions]

To Kill A Mockingbird- Having Second Thoughts

As we go further into this book, the more I like it. The characters and story are beginning to grow on me really quickly as the plot develops more, and although the overall moral / story / point is not necessarily clear at this point, the little moments building up, and the vital moments where I can see the characters become bigger and better people, make this book far more enjoyable than Huck Finn or even Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which we read at the beginning of the year.

I feel as the book moves on that Atticus becomes a more interesting and essential character, and he represents something that modern day society can’t seem to match, wherever it may look. There are no “gentlemen” nowadays, in the way that Atticus seems define it, because to be a gentleman in his terms is to be a good person, and not label yourself as one. He continuously masters and expands the definition and the idea with each of his actions, and shows the reader and his children what being a good person means, in the face of a corrupted society.

It’s revealed in the chapters that we read that Atticus, the old man viewed by his children as doing “nothing” most of the time, only wanting to read and work, was once nicknamed “One Shot Finch” for the talent he had with a gun.

Miss Maudie, who is still my favorite character, explained to his kids that their father decided not to shoot any longer, after discovering that gave him an advantage over most forms of life. She also said something very interesting about talent, which I don’t necessarily agree with.

Miss Maudie said that most people in their right minds don’t express their talents. I get why she said it, and why she taught the children a valuable lesson about humility and not letting ego take over, but if a person has talent, they should play to their strengths and share their talent with the world. If you were born to sing, then that’s what you should do with your life. You should practice your talent and do what makes you happy to do with it, not hide it away and be ashamed of who you are.

This is the one point I’ve disagreed with Miss Maudie over so far, and I’m not very happy about it. Otherwise, throughout the book, she’s had the best attitude about everything that’s happened and been one of the best role models for the kids (other than this one line, which I still am strongly broken up about).

Unfortunately, I was not assigned Miss Maudie, so I must go back to the character I was actually assigned, Scout, or the character the story is being told from. Scout is also fascinating in her actions and thoughts, and the story is told in such a way that you know her well enough to know how she will react to certain situations, making you feel as if she’s not just the narrator but someone like an old friend.

She had one line in these chapters that particularly caught my eye and will not let it go. Most other people skipped over it, and since I didn’t bring it up in the recent discussion, it was not talked about.

When she went to church with Calpurnia and Jem, she described the little cemetery next to it. She described it as a “happy cemetery” something that seems foreign at first, but when you think about it, it’s something that you’ve seen before. Happy cemeteries are the ones surprisingly full of life, of flowers, of candles, of stuffed animals, of memories constantly being refreshed, and people not ever leaving the minds of who they’ve left behind. We’re so unfamiliar to it because of our sterile, haunting, uninviting cemeteries that look haunting and dead, but occasionally you see a cemetery somewhere else that tells you a community has a much different idea of death than you do.

This book is constantly surprising me and honestly I’m really excited for the rest of it.

[pursuingourpassions]

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: 50 pounds of pots rated an “A”, 40 pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Art and Fear- David Bayles and Ted Orland (via qweety)

Perfection is intimidating.  I think most artists blocks come from the fear of creating something imperfect.

(via buttastic)

putting it even more simply: just make shit. eventually it’ll be good shit. maybe most of it will just be shit! but you can’t make good shit if you’re not making a lot of shit.

GET EXCITED AND MAKE THINGS.

(via aintgotnoladytronblues)

[pursuingourpassions]

I think Tumblr needs to work on their math.

But seriously, thank you all for following me and my attempts at accomplishing nothing.

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- Houston, We Have Progress

Now, disclaimer, no miracle tool has allowed me to accomplish this mediocre progress.

Similar to procrastinators everywhere, my incentive as always was not passion, nor was it some fancy web tool that helped me combat my “I’ll do it tomorrow brain.”

It was, of course,

deadlines.

I got a bunch more sources, cited a lot of them, and finished the first page. To be fair, I did have break to thank for all this extra time, but I’ve spent most of it doing homework anyway, so I wouldn’t really classify it as a break but more as a full time homework schedule.

More updates for you all later, but I needed to post this because I’m still astounded at the power of deadlines.

[pursuingourpassions]

To Kill a Mockingbird- First Thoughts

So my English class is now starting To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We haven’t read that far into it thus far, so I can’t make very intelligent comments about the plot or anything, or even try to explain what the book is about. I still haven’t quite gotten far enough to figure it out yet.

It’s an interesting book so far, mainly because of it’s likeable and realistic characters. Personalities are more in depth and important, and you get to know the characters by not only what they do and say, but descriptions of how they’re feeling and their past, which makes it all so much better to read and have a vested interest in.

In comparison to Huck Finn, it’s almost like you can further realize that the characters Twain used are simply built and used as tools, making them less relatable and less likely to actually have the reader actively care about them and more likely to just see them as a part of a cartoonish play, actors instead of real people. Huck Finn did have a really good personality, but you could tell every little detail had some little purpose, and it leaves the reader wondering why they should assume he could even possibly be a real person.

So far my favorite character is the nice neighbor Miss Maudie. She’s ever the optimist, and even sees her house burning to the ground as a good opportunity to expand her garden and plant more flowers and less house. She’s always kind and respectful to the kids, calling them by their full names, not dodging around the truth, and actually listening to what they have to say. You can clearly see that Scout is intelligent through the conversations with Miss Maudie, but since most other people simply see her as young and unknowing, she doesn’t often have the chance to show off her intelligence.

The main theme that we’re discussing alongside the book is the idea of “The Secret Lives We Live”. Yep, all capitalized with no further introduction. I’m not exactly certain how it fits in completely, but we recently did an activity on it in class to have further thoughts on it.

We decided, as a small group, that a secret was simply a selective white lie. By not telling some people one thing, you’re withholding information from others for personal gain. White lies are not bad things within themselves, but you can easily see how harmful secrets have many of the same consequences as harmful lies.

On a side note I still can’t believe this movie was a thing.

EDIT: So I didn’t add enough to this blog post, or at least not even remotely close to everything I needed to add, so I’m adding a couple thoughts kind of late.

What’s been emphasized the most in class is a short moment in the beginning of the book, which my teacher has labeled as one of the most accurate descriptions of the depression.

“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I [Scout] first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square ... People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it...."

This characterizes the depression because of the way people lived through it. It was called the depression not just because of the economy, but the physical sense of tiredness and broken hearts that made everything move slower, and things seem to sag and hot days seem to be unbearably so.

People had no place to be without jobs, and no money to spend if they did, so they ambled to places, grabbed what they needed, and were in no rush to complete any of it. Harper Lee is really using advanced techniques to help the reader get a far more advanced understanding of the time period, and learning and applying the tools she uses her can help fellow readers convey their point and mood far better.

This is the environment these children are growing up in. So far Atticus is the only one to be their true role model throughout all of it, steadily showing them that morals are to be upheld in all aspects of life, not just when it’s convenient, and to stand up for what you believe in.

The character I’m following for class, Scout, has not clearly been introduced yet, so no updates there.

(To be perfectly honest I’m editing this post after I read the book so I’m attempting to remember my thoughts back then.)

Three questions for next week’s discussion:

1. If Boo Radley is showing himself as this nice character that does good for people, why did he stab his mother? 2. Why does his father insist on keeping him locked up and away instead of sending him to school, and why does his older brother go along with it? 3. Did he actually stab his mother or was that his father’s fault?

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- Time to Get the Research Paper Done REALLY Quickly

Why am I like this?

I need to get the paper done in order to do the project. I already have a lot of the articles and a small portion of the videos I want to include, in order to make the content more friendly for parents and children alike.

So the plan is this- get the research completely finished by Monday, then use all the research to get the actual paper done by Thursday at the very latest, then use the paper to create the parent presentation / script thing, do that, and then do the kid presentation. I have to really hurry up because a lot of time is passing and I’m not getting anything done.

Luckily for me, I have a new way to procrastinate procrastinating.

My teacher has recommended Unstuck, a website / platform thing that seems to help procrastinators, like me, actually accomplish things maybe? (LINK)

There’s an app I plan to check out tonight instead of doing any of my actual work.

I’m sure my english teacher will appreciate the irony.

[pursuingourpassions]

Huck Finn Time- Something I Actually Accomplished

Since this is my school blog, I guess I’ll share a school project. Recently, my class read Huck Finn, and my teacher assigned a project about it.

Now, he did offer multiple options. I was just going to write a little essay about something with Jim being selfish throughout the book, with little pieces of evidence to set me apart from the rest of the class who said he was a father figure, but noooooooooooo.

After being forcefully indoctrinated to the team by @aka-enlightenment and another person from my class, we began to create an architectural project.

Well, let me explain.

The guidelines said to simply construct something artistically to represent the novel as a whole, or one of it’s major themes, without being literal about it.

I was recruited to be “the metaphor guy”, which lead to a whole bunch of representative structures and colors and stuff.

We started with the quote by Twain he said about his own book, “[It’s a book] in which a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers a defeat.” So, we wanted to have the heart somehow triumphing over society, and then we had the inea of dripping ink to represent the “graying” of the right and wrong, black and white, of society, and then a pyramid to represent society as a whole and then we just shoved everything together and this happened.

There’s a whole lot of metaphors crammed in here, but really I just wanted to show this off because, as my teacher said, it’s beautifully unsettling, which means it did exactly what we wanted it to do.

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- oh boy

20 Time is supposed to be half over. Oh god.

I have literally accomplished nothing but getting all the sources together, reading some, and gathering basic facts, which is not good at all. I haven’t even started on the actual project, and now that four or five weeks have passed with nothing done, it’s panic time ladies and gentlemen.

Super cool update- my teacher followed this blog so now I have three followers, which is way more cool than the two I had before (sorry Katie).

Over the next week I plan to get the researching bit done, the next for the paper, and the next two for the project. If I don’t start I’ll be in deep trouble, so I really have to actually stick to plan now. 

Hope you enjoyed this short update! If I had any actual followers I think I’d lose them by this point.

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- Post Pitch

So you know how I promised this blog that I would have the pitch done before the due date?

That went exceptionally well. Kind of. I didn’t finish it until the day before, and it was kind of a mess.

Let me explain. I did the three slide powerpoint pretty well, and typed up the script before the due date, but I hadn’t practiced either before I did the actual pitch thing yesterday. It was with four outside people, so that we could gather outside feedback, and I knew some of them, but I still preformed my pitch pretty badly.

I think I could have definitely used some practice, and in presenting to the other students in my class I realized I was missing something very important:

Deadlines.

I have some basic ones for myself, like getting these blog posts done, but I don’t have a deadline for when I should set the deadlines. I think the best plan is to have them done by Wednesday of next week, so that I can actually get started on creating something worthwhile and use my time wisely.

And also so that these blog posts aren’t just,  “I’m sure I’ll do something next week, you just wait and see.” and then they slowly turn into “I’m panicking, everything is on fire, I have no life goals, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

So the new plan is to set deadlines for myself, which I’ll hold myself as accountable as I can to them. I’ll post these here so that I stick to them, and my two whole followers can be expectant of something from me.

Back to my actual presentation, the feedback I got back from my graders was pretty simple. I should be more professional about my topic, provide more concrete evidence, and that I should offer a piece of my project in my pitch so that they knew what I was talking about.

Only problem is I haven’t started it, so next time I definitely think I should get more of a head start on what I need to do.

If you all are curious, my pitch script and presentation looked like this:

“Strangers are a part of our lives we oftentimes ignore, another distraction or obstacle in the way of whatever we have to do. But, Walt Whitman himself has shown us differently.

As he famously wrote in Song of Myself, “Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)”

This line encouraged me to talk to strangers. Some of the nicest conversations I’ve ever had are with strangers, and from this quote, it has inspired me to ask strangers about things you can’t ask the people closest to you for. Thus, I got the idea to do this project.

On closer inspection I discovered that the idea of stranger danger is not only outdated, but dangerous to children, defeating the idea of it’s entire creation and teaching.

I’ve read horror stories of kids lost for hours, refusing to ask for help, or children hiding from rescue parties until they almost starved because their mother said to never talk to strangers.

What I’m attempting to do is educate parents away from this. If we address the problem at the root, we can fix it altogether. Children will learn the proper way to deal with strangers, and the world will be a much friendlier place.

I’ll be making a short animation, demonstrating to children how to approach strangers, which are good to approach, and what a bad stranger would look like and act like. I will probably also be including a talk directly to parents on how to educate their children on the topic, and why they need to do it differently.

In conclusion, I invite you to talk to more strangers, and just see where it goes. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Thank you!”

End meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[pursuingourpassions]

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.

Charles Bukowski (via quotemadness)

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- It’s Time to Accomplish Something (maybe)

It’’s crunch time ladies and gentlemen.

I have somehow managed to not accomplish a single thing.

The project proposal is due Friday of this week.

It’s being preformed in front of a live audience.

This is the time procrastinators like to call, “panic time”.

Not that kind of panic time.

This time seems to roll around every week for me.

I should probably fix that.

So.

The general plan for this week is to whip this project into something resembling a shape. I’ve already collected the previous YouTube evidence. I have plenty of articles. I have yet to read any of them.

My goal is to have the pitch done by Thursday so I have a general idea of how bad I have actually spent procrastinating. It’s only three pictures and only one to two minutes long, but in order to propose something you actually have to have an idea of what you want to do. Something I have yet to accomplish.

Cool.

I’m stuck between two things. The first option is the lazy one, and the second is the big goal, super star, amazingly huge and difficult one.

Guess which one I’m leaning towards.

The first option is to create a powerpoint and talk combo, which I can then present to parents of young children, or record and put on YouTube. It’s easy enough, and although it would require some rehearsal, I could totally do it. Probably.

The second option is to launch a super mega ultra ad campaign across the US, denouncing Stranger Danger as a concept with catchy slogans, themed websites, paid ads, a grassroots movement, and a nationwide movement involving volunteers and a cause to rally around. Fireworks recommended.

I just talked to my teacher about the project and he said that I may want to try an animation, possibly being simple enough for children to understand. Using shapes I could deminstrate how some strangers are bad and how some you just have to be careful around.

For example, a circle could represent the parents and family. A triangle represents bad strangers, who offer things or try and take you away from the circles. All the other strangers are squares, which you have to be careful of, but they can be really nice.

Only problem is- I have no idea how to animate. At all. So it might turn out really badly, really quickly. It does beat the idea of trying to publicly give a presentation and post it on youtube, or paying for fireworks.

I’m really not sure what I’m going to do, but I am slightly concerned.

I’ll have the presentation up for all one of you (thanks Katie for not letting me post to no one) really soon.

I hope.

[pursuingourpassions]

I fixed the colors. That’s basically all I have done so far.

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- Kids These Days

I really need to fix the colors on this blog. Ew.

It is week four and I have done nothing besides gather links, which is not such a bad thing, but I should probably actually do something with them. Last week I talked about the YouTube activity on the subject, so this week I think I’ll focus on how parenting has changed.

First, let’s look to the past. In the past it was considered perfectly normal for kids to be out and about, and even take trips by themselves to walk to friends houses, or the arcade, or even to get something to eat with friends or alone at a very early age. Kids of all ages were constantly outside, playing with the other kids in the neighborhood, going over to each others houses, exploring, and just hanging out.

But things have pretty drastically changed. In today’s terrified society, adults are hawkishly weary of their child’s location at all times, and some are even constantly tracked using GPS on their cell phone. Nobody is allowed to go anywhere without permission, a detailed plan, the names of the friends they’ll be with, and, in most, if not all, cases adult supervision is required. Kids no longer hang out at the arcade, or go exploring, or even interact with neighbors at all in most cases, being required to walk straight to where they have to go, talk to only trusted friends, and come straight home, with their parents watching their location the whole way.

As a result, kids have migrated to the internet to escape the watchful eye of authority. The cool spot to hang out now is social media, and conversations between friends are had over text, something that a watchful chaperone isn’t listening to. We share our latest news with the internet, rather than in gossip groups. This has made us “antisocial” in the physical world, preferring to talk to a friend on a phone, or spend time checking up on what the latest trend is, than to talk to strangers and make an attempt to meet kids in the neighborhood.

Let me give you an example to make this difference a little more clear.

In the past, kids would go from door to door to see if people wanted to come out and play. In fact, my dad told me stories of how the whole band of neighborhood kids would sweep through like a tsunami and take all the kids with them. The dinner bell had a purpose.

In the modern day, if my younger brother were to walk up to a neighbors door and ask if they had any kids that wanted to come out and play, he’d get the door slammed in his face.

School sports are the only outdoor activity friends do together. Shopping trips are normally a small group and chaperoned by parents of both children. Spending cash is considered wasteful and dangerous, because of the increased fear of younger and younger drug users.

Children can’t even escape their oppressive parents on their phones most of the time either. I have a friend who has his phone checked every day, who has to ask permission to get every app on his phone and his parents have to help create and follow any account on there (even Pinterest), who has his internet severely limited to a few key sites, and even his email account is hooked into both his parents so that everything he receives (even the spam) is received by his parents as well.

As a result, he never goes outside. He stays inside and plays video games, and is one of the most antisocial people I know. It’s impossible for him to make new friends, and I’m only ever allowed over his house because we’ve been friends for a long time. His parents supervise the entire visit, and even normally join in playing video games with us. He has never once been over my house, and I’m guessing that its because his parents don’t trust me enough to let him over. He got grounded once for getting a Starbucks reward program account without permission for a solid week. Then, of course, they had the audacity to ask why he didn’t go out all that often.

What has caused this fear in society, and, in turn, the creation of the “helicopter parent” (they’re always hovering)?

How can we begin to fix this divide? How can “kids these days” be social in real life again?

I believe firmly that you can fix it by talking to strangers. It’s just going to take me a little convincing to get that to happen.

Until next week, my two followers. Until then.

[pursuingourpassions]

20 Time Project- Slight Panicking is Good for Creativity

It’s week three and I have no idea what I’m doing still. I love life. So much.

My best bet is to continue on with the idea of stranger danger. I recently watched a “social experiment” video that reminded me why I thought of the idea in the first place.

This video has almost 50 million views, and honestly, I think it is one of the most harmful and shameful viral videos I’ve ever seen.

It was released a year ago, when buying smartphones for children was starting to become more and more popular. The “prankster” Coby Persin, chats up a 14, 13, and 12 year old girl on Facebook, then works with their parents to see if they’ll leave the house and meet up with him.

Now, being a responsible, mature, high schooler, I would not recommend for you to see the h3h3 reaction video to this because it is simply not funny and immature, as well as full of devilish cursing.

But if I was, I would say that the reaction video raises the same points that I believe I will attempt to make- that this video was not successful in achieving anything but traumatizing children and making them mistrust, not strangers, but their own parents. (I also wouldn’t recommend the sequel to it as well.)

Adults are making social media, as a whole, out to be a tremendous danger to their children. It’s common for children to not have a single private social media account, and for parents to often comb through otherwise private phone conversations. This, I believe, has lead to a deeper mistrust of parents then of strangers, leading more things to be hidden from parents, and parents in turn to ramp up their invasions of privacy. This feeds a vicious cycle until videos like the following exist.

This is Joey Salads, another YouTube prankster who built his career off of the success of similar “pranks” of Coby Persin, above. This video shows Salads luring children into his van with a puppy, with the consent of their mothers, who believe that it won’t work.

Since this video Salads has relised another video labeled, tastefully, “Trump car DESTROYED In Black Neighborhood”, which was exposed as fake.

The car demolitionists were hired by Salads to destroy the car and for him to film it. Later, in an interview where the evidence was presented back to him, he said he did it so people could see “the dangers of the blacks”.

This was one of the many incidents that proved that “social experiments” were faked to generate views and often to discriminate against certain groups just so that they may “open the eyes of the public”. Salads admitted to faking multiple pranks, and brought down a few other channels with him, listing, not surprisingly, Coby Persin, and pulling down this viral video from his channel, with millions of views, and an incredibly racist comment section that claimed that “this video is proof of why we need white supremacy” and other, not school appropriate, slurs.

There is so much miscommunication about this topic that parents have resorted to the classic, don’t talk to strangers, but this is not effective and outdated.

I’m beginning to realize that I made this like a formal essay / rant type thing. Oops. But still, I think I can do this project on the topic now.

Sometimes the stupidity of the human race surprises me.

[pursuingourpassions]

Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path. By all means, you should follow that.

Ellen DeGeneres (via purplebuddhaproject)