Thoughts and Insights on Writing and Blogging (I promise this is somewhat insightful and not that boring..)

Because I am not sure whether or not the new '3 posts instead of 4 per week' has been implemented yet, I decided I will write this 4th post just in case. Also, this is a good chance to practice on my writing while expressing my thoughts this week.
Although I did not raise my hand in class when asked 'Who here keeps an active blog?" I do have one that I keep in my spare time. In my defense, it is not an active blog at all, I write it in spontaneously, sometimes a few times a week, sometimes once a month, sometimes every 2-3 months. I don't always write in it, but I check pretty frequently for my 'Subscription updates' which are entries written by my friends. As I have mentioned in my first post, when blogging I do not like to proofread, I feel like sometimes I'm just brainstorming but posting it online so others can see what I'm thinking and so I can record my thoughts that I can refer to in the future. Another reason for me to write informally and have some pleasure doing so is because I feel as if I'm expressing my truest thoughts and feelings. Thoughts that I'm thinking, and emotions that I'm feeling at the moment exposed at that moment, pure and unedited. I feel like editing or proofreading it may take a bit away from my post, as it may be primarily so the audience will find it more enjoyable, or easier to read. The irony of all this is, I have a habit of constantly rereading what I just wrote to make sure everything makes sense, there are no typos and to come up with a coherent thought to continue on with my quasi-essay. When I write seriously, I treat my work like it's supposed to be my masterpiece. Even now, I'm going to spend a good 45 minutes on this supposed 200 word entry.
While writing a paper for a history class, I came across the story of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome. As taken directly from my Textbook "Michelangelo undertook the project but refused for a long time to allow anyone, including the pope, to see his work. Julius grew anxious, pestering Michelangelo on a regular basis about when the ceiling would be finished...Michelangelo...replied...'when it satisfies me as an artist". What stood out to here was, Michelangelo spent weeks and maybe even months to create a masterpiece not everyone has the capacity to enjoy. The work he created can be shown to an audience who may not stay for more than a few minutes, perhaps an hour at the most. Comparing Michelangelo's work to writing, while I'm spending 45 minutes to write this entry, it will take less than 5 minutes to read. It became more apparent to me when I read some fellow classmates' blogs. I thought, s/he must have spent a considerable amount of time, and put a considerable amount of thought into this entry, yet I am done reading it in 3 minutes. Novels themselves, probably take years to write, yet only a few days to read. Even now that I think about it, movies take about a year to produce, yet are seen in an average of about 100 minutes. I have a friend who, in High school, entered a contest to design a logo for an after school program. The contest was completely optional, and it did not have a fabulous prize. He considered himself not artistic at all, yet he wanted to win. He spent weeks on his drawing, telling himself he was going to win and in the end, he did. After winning, he was disappointed and found it regrettable how the photocopied poster looked nothing like the original, and how he did not look natural in the picture they took of him, as his smile was crooked. This has led me to realize how fragile it is to be a creator, an artist, a writer, when it could feel like all the work and efforts that one has been in vain. In a way, maybe I'm just wasting my 45 minutes writing something nobody will even read. Then again, even if nobody reads it, maybe it isn't true. Through experiencing hard work and witnessing the hard work of my fellow classmates, I have gained valuable insight. I have realized what it means to make something beautiful, make something look easy, and enjoyable in the eyes of others. Unless experiencing something of a lesser degree, if not similar, the audience will fail to understand the amount of hard work one has put in, and fail to visualize the blood, sweat, and tears one has shed in order to attain their end result.

Closing comments: I may not ever blog the same way ever again after this class. Maybe it's because if it 'does not satisfy me as an (artist)' I don't want people to see it. Maybe it's because I too hate seeing uninformative posts about the lives of people or that people care craving crab mmmmmmMMmmmmmMm. Maybe because it's just pointless to write something that is well..pointless. I am also changing the name of my blog from 'Summer Thoughts' to 'Controlled Spontaneity' because that's what it basically is. I'm being spontaneous but I'm also editing it, to make it less spontaneous, and thus readable and coherent. So long to how I used to blog, and so much for pure, unadulterated spontaneity. Bummer.

Society revisited

My group’s word cluster consists of once again, deconstruction, diaspora, society, reform and revolution, and race. How do these words relate to one another when our text for the course lists none of these ‘counterparts’ under the ‘related words’ or ‘see (also)’ section at the end of each term? The best we can do is to carefully assess the book’s definitions and draw connections. We will be deconstructing these terms and reforming them. What a coincidence, as those are our terms and that is what we have to do with them. Now onto the topic. As suggested in “New Keywords”, society seems to be 'displaced' by words similar to 'modernity'. This relates to one of our cluster words, deconstruction.
Deconstruction is nearly synonymous to 'criticism' or 'critique' as it is a 'strategy of complication'. In this sense, society has been both critiqued (does society cause poverty?) and complicated (society does not exist, despite some call it a living structure). Using Rachel’s example of the deconstructed salad, you take a single item sold in a store or a restaurant and it turn into a bunch of different items. How does this relate to society, or race? Society has been made complicated as the definition of society isn’t completely agreed on. In our American society, as we define ourselves as a big melting pot, we are made up of many ethnic groups or races. Unfortunately, because of attempts to assimilate, many second or third generation families value less on the cultural backgrounds, language and history of their ancestors and homeland, and focus more on assimilating into the American society. I can argue that by being a melting pot, not exactly embracing differences, but assimilating and losing ourselves, our ‘racial identity’. For example, I am a Chinese American, born in the United States. Although I am fluent in speaking the language, many of my Chinese American peers are not while a few others have not been taught to speak Chinese in their upbringing. In this sense, the Chinese-American race has been 'deconstructed' and reformed to better fit into society. Perhaps this could be seen as a mild form diaspora, the scattering of seeds (race and their geographical location) or dispersing of races.
While my understanding or definitions of these terms might not wholly relate or agree with those in the text and the text has drawn no direct relationship between those words, the relationship is something I have experienced and observed firsthand. A society is constantly deconstructed, and those counterparts such as race must be reformed along with society for reasons of survival and societal progress, and revolution. Through the deconstruction and reconstruction, some parts inevitably get lost, disperse, and scatter.

Society

The words my group and I have chosen are deconstruction, diaspora, society, reform and revolution, and race. My word is society. Society to me is, a institution to which people live in, interact, and learn certain rules regarding behavior such as social norms and social roles/scripts. Scripts refer to the unspoken set of rules one follows in a certain social context. For instance, when eating at restaurant, a person has learned to wait to be seated, and to provide a tip at end of the meal. Society is where we grew up. It's one of our biggest classrooms outside of home, it's where we learned a lot about life and the people around us. Society has taught us to exhibit behavior X in situation Y. When growing up, I hear a lot of remarks from my father about society. I remember a lot of these comments vividly such as “wow I can’t believe how much society is changing” (in terms of trends, technology) and “it’s good that you have a job now, you’re interacting with society” and “until you come out to the ‘real world’ you won’t really understand how society is like”.

Society is an institution in where people interact. Through their institutions, certain rules, customs, and values are shared. Not every society shares the same values however. I remember having a lecture in my Psychology of Emotion class on morality. There was a hypothetical scenario where two siblings were away on a trip and had sex with double protection. They both enjoyed it, was it okay? As expected, some of my classmates suggested that it wasn’t, however when the professor asked them to state why, nobody was able to find a ‘logical’ explanation. Most explanations against it was either based on or influenced by emotion, or tied to their set of values. I raised my hand and suggested, “it’s only not okay because society said it’s not”. While many societies view incest as completely taboo, there are a few societies that practice royal incest. Within our society incest is wrong, but in others it is encouraged. Different societies may operate differently and have a different set of rules. Because societies can be so different, it is hard to define. As written in "New Keywords", the term society has been controversial. Margaret Thatcher suggests 'there is no such thing as society' while the early images of society are of an organism or 'living structure'. Although society is intangible, I do believe it exists.How societal rules, values, customs, and social norms are created are far beyond my knowledge, as is why they vary so much from society to society. What intrigues me the most is the fact that I am a product of society, and individuals such as myself are the ‘creators’ of our society; without us, there probably wouldn’t be a society, yet we as individuals are relatively powerless to define our society’s rules. Or perhaps it is quite the opposite.

Day One, first blog- About Blogging

Before I stepped into class today, I did not know what to expect. I have walked into another UWP101 class before that took place in a computer lab. When I read in an email that this class would be virtually paperless, I thought to myself "Is Storer 1342 a computer lab?". Right at 10AM Monday morning, I arrived in the classroom and took a seat. My questions were answered and more arose. Blogging sounds like plenty of fun. I have a blog at Xanga I write in on occasion. Sometimes I would make an entry a few times a week, sometimes once every few months depending on my mood or whether or not there is something I'm willing to share even to the public. I consider my blog now semi-active, however I still check my friends' blogs every so often to see what they're up to. Most of them are either inactive on Xanga, or write something totally random. As an example, in two of my friends' posts today, one wrote" I want some....I want some cheese cake, garlic noodles, and crabs "and another wrote " whoa oh... i dyed my hair purple =x" and that is all there is to their posts. They're both around my age, over 20. I myself could also make an entry that tells everybody what my summer schedule is and that I'm not sure if I should keep my job or focus solely on my summer classes, or that my UWP class is using blogs, or that I have heartburn right now. However, that leads me to one question, "why blog?"
Personally, I think my friends that wrote their real short and random posts only do so because 1) they are bored, and 2) they want comments. I feel like the real value of blogging is to write something meaningful, relevant, memorable, insightful and something that generates comments, debate, or controversy. Unfortunately, whenever I write something that's like an epiphany to me, I rarely get comments. Sometimes, or most often time actually, my blogs become rants and a post about 'mememe' and people may read them, others done. Some don't even bother to read them because they're so long and others don't know how to respond, or probably just don't want to. Those posts tend to be left uncommented, whereas other posts where I link an amusing video/link to youtube or a funny picture tend to get more comments. Those comments, also aren't 'quality' comments are typical ones include 'LOL' or 'haha' or 'I love that vid'. I myself am guilty of leaving such comments as well.
A few years ago, when I took English 1 as a Freshman at UC Davis, there was an article in my book arguing that 1) there is way too little 'quality' writing on the internet other than official websites such as news and that is because 2) anybody can become a writer online and 3) therefore the internet is still in its infancy stage because of so much non-quality writing. (I will try to find the article/book later to properly cite this). I agree with the main points of that post although the article was from the 90s. Things are still that way, people posting whatever they want on the internet simply because they can and it generates attention. That leads me to back to my original question that I still can't seem to find a clear answer for "why blog?"
As for this class, I am both excited and wary at the same time. I'm happy the class is structured in such a way that is unstructured, promoting free speech so to speak, and allowing students to write what they really think/feel. I'm worried however, that this lack of structure could be a double-edged sword for me, as without structure I could easily produce 'non quality' posts or I could revert to the 'blogging mindset' of lazy writing, or commenting with 'lol', or end up just sitting down at my keyboard, and composing something 200 words and submit it without proofreading it. I generally do not proofread my Xanga entries, I leave them as rough draft as I feel it shouldn't be for an English class so proofreading isn't necessary, and I'm too lazy to do it. However, this is for an Advanced Composition class so I understand I have to proceed with extreme caution and perhaps change my mindset towards blogging. I am looking forward to this class because this change is something I feel worth risking in a 6 week course. Although I'm worried that I won't know what is expected of me in my blog entries, as for now this class sounds like a lot of fun and I'm in an adventurous mood.