#but i started using Evernote long before that so I just kept all my excerpts for this 8 year in the making story in one place

[theamazingannie]

Capitalism fucking sucks. I’ve used the website evernote to write down miscellaneous scenes that appear in my head that aren’t ready to be added to the official story yet for over a decade now and now they made it so I have to pay to add any more notes than what I already have cuz now you only get 50 free notes (I have hundreds by this point). Something that had previously been free I now need to pay $10 a month for. How can anyone look at this and think this is a good thing???

[socsayang]

August 26, 2019. [Week 1]

1:52AM

At last, I’ve finally made & set up my journal-blog-account thing. Yay? I was both pretty excited, and also scared of actually having this project as a requirement, then I realized this wasn’t really an actual journal and more of a what-have-you-learned-this-week journal. Oh well. At least I won’t have to worry too much about what I can and can’t post about.

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First up, globalization. Technology allows us to be closer with so many people, and I am ALL up here for it. I am absolutely in love with the fact that it’s so easy to connect now to other people just like you online, and make new bonds with completely different people all the way across the world despite being THOUSANDS of miles away. 

Most people probably look down on this and hard meme social media because in some cases, it actually causes people to drift away from each other and interact even less. Exhibit A: people on facebook, instagram and all the BASIC, fake forms of social media where people sink all their time in by posting all these fake, unauthentic, “perfect” images of themselves, and scrolling down aimlessly their timelines and feeds despite being in some important social event, serving as a gigantic distraction causing rifts between them and everyone else, instead of enabling one to become closer to others.

This was not the case for me. Honestly, before college, I was probably in one of the absolute worst times in my life. I pretty much had no more people around me I could trust, that cared about me. I had been completely alienated by all the people around me and was just so far away from everyone else. It hurt. It consumed me so much; and tore me apart because this was always in my face, in all the different actions people had around me, big or small (especially the small). School was just so demotivating to go to anymore, and I was just so tired of everything. I actually tried to find excuses to skip; like having too much homework due that day I was not finished with, and the fact that a lot of people were skipping anyway because there were no quizzes (unfortunately, this only worked once or twice and I still had to go anyway). It all ate away at me. The guilt, the isolation, and the pain (mine, and the pain I’ve caused others unintentionally, but hurt nonetheless). I really couldn’t take it anymore, and it was just consuming me like a tornado that was tearing me apart at the seams.

I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if I never actually opened my Discord again after so long, and joined a lovely little server I met all of the amazing online friends & support system I would have now. When I first joined, I was probably at the absolute lowest of my all-time lows. I never really thought of the server as anything more than just a place to ask for advice about a game I just started playing at first. Over time, I started chatting more with the people in it; not really noticing that hey, I’m actually making friends with them. Over time, I started getting closer and closer to them, to the point that they actually made me happy (or i guess back then, feel a LOT less like shit). To this day, I am still so incredibly thankful to them, for just being there for me. They never really did anything extraordinary for me, but the fact that they were there for me, and they were my friends that loved and respected me (even if I was kind of an idiot :P), and treated me like one of their own.

It was only about 2 weeks ago that I realized the main difference between my own peers in high school, and my online friends actually were: my online friends actually cared about me. They were the first people that actually cared and acknowledged me as an equal. They saw me not as a freak, like everybody else IRL had back then (and had given up on me), but they saw me as just another imperfect human individual, just like them. Someone who still had a lot to learn, didn’t really know what she were doing, and didn’t really mean to ever be mean. My online friends actually gave me so much more empathy and concern over my own past mistakes than anybody else probably ever did. Instead of just tossing me away and pretending I don’t exist, they actually guided me through it all, told me what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. And they actually forgave me. Every single little thing my dumb 16 y/o ass messed up.

It was really just such a fresh change of pace, and a gigantic breath of fresh air for me to be treated like this. It just felt so great to actually have proper friends and for my social need to be fulfilled again after so long without any problems, even if said friends were virtual and that people would probably never understand and give it the same weight as an irl friendship like it should be. I can’t help but feel only love for these people who had helped me back up when I was down because they were one of the few who ever really did, even if all they did was just be normal people, normal friends, and do normal friend things with me and nothing too special. Because that was something I did not get often back then.

If you guys are listening, I just want to say I really love and appreciate you all for being such incredible, amazing friends. You helped me anchor myself and keep myself together this whole time in my last year of high school, against all odds. I know we had our differences and our own little squabbles as well, but I’m also really thankful that despite that we were able to resolve these issues, both because of your maturity, and your guidance/s through these to help me on my own road to maturity too, to become a better person. You guys really have no idea how much you’ve helped me throughout the past year or so. 

Social media can either help you or hinder you from making friends. It really depends on the way you use it. I know it helped me for sure, and I strongly believe that online friends can be just as significant and important in your life as your IRL friends (arguably, they might even be better depending on how good your online friends are, and how awful the people around you are).

Perhaps one day, when I’ve become a holistic and fully grown, mature individual I can help a lost and lonely soul like I was and guide them back into the light.

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Next up, the bioecological model. It’s really interesting and strange how we’re all intertwined so closely with each other, both of us influencing each other so significantly both for better AND for worse. It just goes to show how small the world really is and how big our impact can be on the people around us.

Not really sure what else to say, so here’s a little random excerpt I scribbled down in Evernote about our biggest weaknesses being our extreme interdependence on one another, which I think is very relevant to our past lesson about Bronfenbrenner’s little theory:

“I think our biggest flaw/flaws as human beings, is our need to depend on others and ask them for help, and our extreme reliance on others as well. Not just in physical struggle, but emotionally and psychologically as well.

We all seem to have this burning need to let out all of our inner issues and hurt to other people in an attempt for them to help us "carry" our struggles together, to be understood and empathized with, etc. However, humanity is so full of horrible people with bad intentions, people who simply don’t care, people who will hurt you and will continue to hurt you, whether it is their intention or not.

We try to place our trust in these people, thinking it will be different and they will truly help, when in actuality what will happen is that these other people can and will most probably betray you and hurt you even more than if you kept it by yourself.

It will be very easy to just hurt you by not putting in as much value or care into your own internal issues, and just drop you like you don’t matter to them (which you probably never did if this specific case were real). And after that, you’re pretty much just back to exactly where you were before this fiasco. All alone, still hurting and just as hurt as before (if not more). And now, you’re forced to keep your composure and act like everything’s fine, even after a betrayal as terrible as this.

This horrible cycle is actually why I find us so depressing and pathetic. We’ve been cursed with such soft hearts, that anything and everything can hurt us. I wish I had been born a stronger person so I no longer had to rely on others as a crutch to help me up, and so my own inner turmoil would not consume me completely anymore either.”

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Alright, I am very very sleepy and it is now 2:54 AM, so I bid you all good night and end this entry here. Good night! :]