Showing posts with label Updates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Updates. Show all posts

May 05, 2015

4 Years and 10,000 Views Later

So, I've recently hit two milestones in regards to this blog. The first milestone is that I have recently passed my 4-year anniversary since this blog's creation, and the second milestone is that this blog has recently passed 10,000 page views. This may not seem like a lot to many people, but for me, these are two significant milestones. I know that I haven't really posted to this blog on a regular basis, but the fact that I am able to post whenever I feel like it keeps this blog fresh, and I don't have to feel burnt out because of it.

Back in April 2011, I took the plunge into writing, and created this blog. I created this blog because I wanted a space to express my thoughts on the things that were going on in the world and were affecting my life in some way. To this day, that hasn't changed. This blog is a hobby for me, and it will continue to be a hobby. I still post whenever I feel like it, and I don't have to feel pressured by deadlines. I feel that I am able to post my best work on the blog if I didn't have someone who wanted me to have a blog post completed by a certain time and date. I love the fact that I have total control over this blog, and that I can take it in any direction that I want. I wouldn't post something on this blog if I wasn't completely satisfied with it, because I want the reader to get the best of me every time I post something. That is my promise to you.

When I created my blog, it was known as "Beefing with the World", and it was a reflection of the angst I felt at the time. My first posts were basically attacks and criticisms of certain groups of people I didn't like (soccer haters, high-school wannabe gangster types, overreacting sports parents). As time went on, the focus of the blog shifted more to writing about Toronto FC and to also talk about the experiences in my life, as well as reactions to certain things and events. The current title of this blog, "Cultured Individual", is a reflection of that. The other reason why I changed the title of my blog is just to make my blog more accessible and welcoming to the reader.

I never expected my blog to have any sort of popularity. I felt like writing simply because I wanted to. I would never think that my blog would be read by hundreds of people all over the world. Yes, it can be viewed as a drop in the ocean to people with a popular following, but to me, this was like a tidal wave. People were actually interested in what I have to say! The last blog I wrote about Toronto FC was shared by so many people, probably the most shared post on the blog to date. To see personalities with thousands of followers and with real influence in the Toronto sporting landscape read and share something I have personally written is very encouraging for me. It makes me want to keep doing this as a real hobby. I feel like this blog is my personal contribution to society. With every blog post that I write, I always want to present something that no one else has covered or explored. I think that is what makes my blog posts unique. If I can't present something entirely new or present a new angle to something that has already existed, then it loses the uniqueness that I crave.

The most interesting experiences I have had with the blog are the face-to-face interactions I have with people who have read some of my posts. Admittedly, it is a bit weird to talk openly with someone in public about something I wrote on the internet and where I would be used to interacting with people online, but I also find these face-to-face interactions the most rewarding. I'll give you an example. The next night after I wrote about my experiences of going to university, I met up with a lady friend of mine for a drink in the back room of a seedy Irish pub in St. Catharines. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the blog post I wrote, and I couldn't help but feel embarrassed for myself a little bit. But she told me about how she enjoyed reading it and how impressed she was that I would pour my heart out like that. That felt like the greatest compliment of them all. To have someone personally describe to you how your blog has personally impacted someone's life is one of the greatest feelings one could ask for.

To everyone who has read my posts, shared my posts on social media, left comments on the blog, and interacted with me through every medium possible, I want to express my sincerest gratitude. This blog wouldn't be where it is without you. Although I may not post all that often, I want to continue to create quality posts that I hope you will enjoy. I feel more motivated than ever to post content on my personal space that I share with you.

This has been quite the roller coaster ride, but I'm not looking to hop off just yet.

September 04, 2013

Why I Miss Going To School...


This September will be the first time that I will not be starting a new school year since I was a young child. I remember when I was younger how much I hated going to school, but as I grew older and went through high school and university, I began to appreciate (and eventually enjoy) going to school and actually learning about something every day. As you may or may not know, this past June, I graduated from university with my Bachelor's degree, and now work full time at a job in my general field of study. Today, I see people posting Facebook statuses, tweets, and just generally talking about going back to school, and it aggravated me. It aggravated me because I know I won't be going back, where I had much more freedom than what I'm doing now.

I hate growing up. I miss school.

Right now, with my job, I'm constantly busy, which means I don't have much time for anything. Some people think that me being busy is a blessing, but it's turning out to be a curse. I get up at 7 in the morning, sit in a cubicle and stare at a computer for 8 hours, and then come back home in the late afternoon. When I come back, I'm usually too tired to do anything. How the hell can I be tired when I sit down at work most of the time? Anyways, at school, I had a lot more free time at my disposal. I was able to have the time to go to class, do homework, work on projects, and study for exams, but I also had the time to socialize. Right now, I don't have much time to socialize with friends, or go out and meet new people.

To build on that last sentence, the only way I get to interact with friends is either by social media or calling/texting. I don't see friends anymore, because I don't have the time for it. It is something I truly miss, and it is something I desperately want back. The only people I see every day are my co-workers, and I don't really see them as friends. They are people I work with, nothing more.

Socializing is just one aspect of what made me happy while I was at school. Another aspect was how liberally I spent my money while I was at school. I would always spend on food, drink, and anything else that I either needed, or enabled me to have a good time or feel happy. Now, even though I am getting regular paychecks, I find myself being much more conservative with my money, and spending only to help my future (though this is a very good thing). You know what I did this week? I opened up an RRSP. Fun, huh? I cared less about money when I was in school, and it was another aspect of my school life that made me happy.

Nowadays, not very many things make me happy. Sure, I get to work in Downtown Toronto and walk around the city on my lunch break, which is mostly enjoyable, but it's not very fulfilling. The train ride to Union Station is reminiscent of my high school days when I would have to take a packed bus to and from school every day. The walk from Union Station to my building is like a death march with hundreds of other suits walking with you with the same drab expression, with the homeless sticking out their hand for change and other people trying to give you flyers you don't need. The elevator to my floor is usually cramped with people and full of the kind of conversation that middle-aged people talk about, such as why their spouses weren't in the mood yet again last night.

I guess what I am trying to say is that my day-to-day life right now is monotonous and predictable, when I compare it to when I went to university. I feel absolutely soulless. The only two ways where I can truly express what is in my soul is through Twitter, and this very blog you are reading. When I was in university, I was able to socialize, and work towards an attainable goal, which was to get my degree. When I was in university, I felt like I still had my soul.

I knew at some point, I would have to take the leap, and finally grow up from school, and enter the working world. I'll admit, I was a bit unprepared, and it surprised me in some ways. For everyone that is about to finish college or university soon (and to those who have just started), enjoy the time you have right now, and cherish it. When you finish school and enter the working world, your entire life will change. I hope it changes for the better for you, and not like how my life ended up. I miss school so much, but these words can't even begin to quantify how much I truly do.

Well, time for me to grow up some more...

July 18, 2013

10,000 Tweet Milestone!


Yeah, so I finally hit my 10,000th tweet.

I may as well milk this as much as I can, because you only hit 10,000 tweets once.

I never thought I could be truly active on a social network for a long time, but Twitter gave me the opportunity to truly speak my mind on any sort of issue that I wanted to talk about. For the past two and a half years, Twitter has always been my "go-to" social network, and it has been the social network that I have enjoyed the most. I remember the reason why I started to use Twitter in the first place, and the main reason was because of my complete annoyance with Facebook, which I am not very active on anymore. I found that the things I saw on Twitter were much more positive than the negativity and phoniness I regularly saw on Facebook, so naturally, I gravitated towards Twitter, and I haven't looked back since.

I would say that about half of my total tweets were about footy/soccer. Whether it was about Toronto FC, Manchester United, or anything else that was in the world of footy, it's pretty obvious that by reading my tweets, a reader can tell that I am footy mad. The other half of my total tweets are about, well, everything else. Usually, it was about the things that go on in my life, whether it was about school or something else. I always tried to strike a balance between the readers that follow me for my footy tweets and the readers that follow me for the other things going on in my life.

I remember when I first started up on Twitter in the beginning of 2011, and looking back on it now, my early tweets were pretty shit, in the grammatical sense, and also that my tweets were very boring. Some of my tweets, when looking back, were also a bit cringe-worthy. I only talked to about two people since the start of my account, one of them I still talk to regularly to this day, and the other I don't really talk to now (let's just say, she got replaced). In the beginning months of my Twitter account, I would talk about anything and everything that came up in my mind, from dirty song lyrics to the attractive woman that passed me on the street that I really wanted to have sex with. Nothing was off limits. Hell, I even talked about what I truly wanted when it came to my love life.

The follower count started to rise, and I started to have more valued conversations with a number of Twitter users. Occasionally I would get the angry disagreement or hater trying to make me feel bad, but overall, the conversations I had on Twitter were overwhelmingly positive. From the Twitter account, it was also the basis for the creation of my blog, which serves as my extended thoughts that I couldn't fit into my Twitter account. Also, this may be a bold statement coming from me, but I would like to think that I pioneered the use of Twitter among my university friends. As soon as I started to use Twitter, one by one, my university friends followed suit, so go ahead and call me a trendsetter.

The months and years passed, I interacted with more people, my follower count kept rising, and I continued to tell my stories and talk about my experiences. And it all led me to today where after two and a half years, I finally reached that milestone of 10,000 tweets. I know a lot of people that use Twitter reach that milestone in almost no time at all, but I would like to have the vast majority of my tweets have some sort of quality and substance, and I also don't really like to bombard the timelines of my followers with constant tweets (except when a footy match is on).

As much as I truly love Twitter, I feel like these days, my tweets haven't been up to the standard that I want it to be. I remember back in 2011 and a good chunk of 2012 when I truly had free reign over what I wanted to tweet, but ever since, let's say, September 2012, I felt like my tweets were getting to be a bit boring, and I felt like I lost that free reign. I couldn't really tweet anything explicit anymore, except for a few swears, and my early Twitter followers know how much I love tweeting explicitly. Maybe I'm a bit more mature now, or maybe I'm not trying to offend and/or disgust all my followers. Actually, I'm afraid that one day I may write a careless tweet that exposes certain feelings about certain people. Nonetheless, I'm going to try to bring my Twitter account to its former glory. I'm going to try to be as witty, funny, and explicit (within reason) as I possibly can.

I just want to say that I value each and every one of my Twitter followers, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations I've had with you all over the months and years. Some of these conversations actually helped me through some tough times, and for that I am grateful.

Well, here's to 10,000 more...cheers!