so i'll grow up, just to have you here with me

Everybody has a price. Today i found out what mine was. It's called the negative value..

You can't buy me if you haven't appeased my soul, but you can definitely make me feel like wanting to put myself up for sale.

i dipped into my savings to pay off some of my bills. i was supposed to have savings this month, but now i don't. it's not a good place.. i know the next few months of my salary's going to go back into my savings.

it also means taking stock of where that money goes. all those little things i overlook when we pay bills together, that little extra i cover when someone's short, those lunches i help pay.. they all add up.

and now that i need to be accountable to my own accounts, i'll need to grow up and do what i need to do, for those days when i have no one else to rely on but myself.

i give a lot, it's just part of my nature.. it's how i value the fleeting tangible in sacrifice for the eternal intangible. but even that has taken its toll on my maturity, and i'm stunted to being who i think i should be.

grow up i must, value my own value more i shall.

slow media to be enjoyed by the wayside

The world spins on its axis in twenty four hours.

We expect our news much faster than that these days. While i'm on Twitter, i get real time updates from my fellow human beings halfway across the world. I am twelve hours ahead of them. Not counting the things I get to read of blogs, news sites, video sites and pictures.

I guess it can be perceived that the world is getting smaller, or as Thomas Friedman says, The World Is Flat.

I say, learn to slow down every now and then. While the earth keeps spinning, perhaps twice as fast these days in the social media universe, there is a whole other world that still sticks to the same 24 hours we've always had.

You want to achieve work life balance, unplug yourself and start appreciating the world as you know it, not just through the social media's lenses.

Social media is best utilised to achieve a pulse on trends, communities, ideas, connections. but it backfires when you face an information overload. I think our brains can take it, but..

you also have to train your brain to not just consume information, but actually derive some value from it.

It's not just about how much you consume, it's how you interpret data, apply it, make it work for you, your counterparts, your businesses.

And that's why i still value "slow media". when you sacrifice speed for a great media product. a craft, where time and energy has been invested to make something easily understood so that MORE may understand and enjoy.

So what is slow media?


Image credit: Crackskullbob

For now, I'll define it as media that has large investments in time, energies, manpower, conceptualisation, production and even channel planning to maximise exposure to said media product.

Slow media can be social media. Slow media is purposeful, intricate cuisine, as opposed to fast food.

Fast food's a quick fix, fills your stomach, perhaps rough around the edges, not made from the best ingredients, perhaps even for mass consumption but with little value.

You just feel satisfied, and better about yourself and your surroundings when you consume slow media without rushing through it. when you come out of it, knowing more, eager to tell your peers just where you had this gastronomical epiphany.

And that my friends, is how i see "slow media". I guess the fact that i'm about to start looking for lunch had something to do with this post.

no pictures in the cloud

surreal. how i haven't typed in here for so long. it's so easy to just shrug it off really. after a hard day's work, or just the whizz bang of too many rehearsals going on, or the day to day meeting ups with friends.. and the ever pertinent question "what do you read this blog for?"

this blog doesn't really have a niche, so in that sense there really isn't a target audience. and in that sense, i guess you don't really grow an audience when your content isn't constant either.

i'm sorry if you've been visiting regularly the past six years and all of a sudden, i just make the excuse of being too busy to blog.

but 'tis the truth, it's hard to maintain a blog when you're spread thin. there are ways to discipline yourself to blog regularly, but i guess i'm not that disciplined. though i ought to be.

and i never thought it'd be this way, but typing in your has sorta become unfamiliar.

updating twitter on the other hand is super simple, and i think i've been maintaining my online presence through the use of facebook and twitter more than this blog.

but i suppose there's a lesson in all this, and that is.. there are pros and cons in whatever channel you choose to engage with your audience in, but if you want to be a good social media practitioner, you have to keep engaging in some form or another.