Eye shut. Everything happen for a reason.

A job was not what I wanted. What I wanted was a means to make money which I would enjoy doing. If I did not need to have money to survive, I would be doing what I enjoy doing. For the last 2 years I have been trying to find a decent student part time job, but I am either over qualified or not qualified enough for the positions I have chosen to apply for. Could it be I should have been working for myself? I have always had a strong desire to work for myself, and in 2011 my desire turned to working for God. I had thought this desire would be fulfilled by volunteering. I never thought I would find myself looking at a paying job for God, and definitely not one which had a pliable definition, or I could classify as self-employment.

Most recently, after pulling my self-esteem up out of the gutter of despair it was pushed into by job search rejection e-mail after rejection e-mail, I decided to make a go of working for myself and to step out into faith doing the things I know are God’s plan and purpose for me. The result is what I have agreed to do for income is enjoyable to me.  I do not call it a job. I call it my work, and I look forward to doing it. You may not have an aspiration to get paid working for God, but what I did to get to discovering my dream job and some of the things I am doing may be of interest to you.

It took considerable brainstorming, list making, and assessment taking to be able to discover my personal job description and employment opportunity, but it was all worth it. The objective of the process was to build a plan to make income which fit in with my skills, abilities, desires, and limitations rather than find an opportunity to try and fit myself into. I had tried fitting myself into existing opportunities, and all I did was lose money. The most difficult aspects of the self-discovery job process for me was determining my strongest passions, the overall category or categories my passions fit into, and what I would do to turn my passions into income. The second most difficult aspect of the process was defining the tasks of my work.

After determining my passion categories in faith-based social service, I spent some more time in introspective research to define my work tasks. I followed peace and paid attention to my internal excitement meter as I used the results of the interests and skills assessments offered and my personal lists of what I like to do and do not like to do, need to have in my work environment for me to be happy, prefer to do and will not do, need others to do or knowledge for me to do it, and what motivates and demotivates me to determine the tasks of my work. After these first two steps were accomplished, the last step was to search what existed in the marketplace for me to use.

The results of all of this soul searching and allowing God to show me where the peace for me is resulted in my being able to discover the means for me to make money. My interests have me leveraging multiple streams of income by default, but to my heart’s desires I have added affiliate marketing and drop shipping using the tools of Internet, social media, and blog marketing. Maybe one day I will even sell what I have learned. 

Girl I want to show you off.

Last night I had a dream. For the most part, it wasn't really a dream; it was a nightmare. That was until I met the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. I woke up in a cold sweat at 2:29AM and began drawing. It's now 5:55AM and I'm writing this. After what I've seen, I'm not sure I'll ever get back to sleep.

Let me tell you about my dream...

I was shopping in Carrefour for some new razors when from out of nowhere I saw a man stagger from behind the tampons and bite an elderly woman on the neck. Why she was stood by the tampons at her age, I'll never know. However, that doesn't excuse his actions and I went to investigate. As I began walking towards him I saw a horde of no less than a dozen people lumbering towards me. Now I'm no fool, I've seen Dawn of the Dead, I've seen 28 Days Later and I've seen Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' enough times to realise that I was encountering the living dead. Before they got any closer I had hurdled the Colgate and burst through the fire exit in true Bruce Willis fashion. HAHA 

I ran back home as fast as I could, dodging group after group of zombies. How I didn't see them when entering Carrefour I'm not sure, but the fact is that they were after my big, juicy brain. To cut a long story short, I managed to get home after strangling anything that moved. Regrettably I managed to throttle a small child in the process after mistaking him for a zombie. Looking back I think he was just having a fit.

After opening my front door I was greeted by my housemate, Jesan. However, it wasn't the Jesan that I've grown to respect and love (in a strictly platonic way, obviously), he was infected, he was one of them. I had no choice but to decapitate him with his own pizza cutter. I felt bad doing it, but it really was my only chance of survival. I dashed up to my room and locked the door behind me. I was safe.

This is when I met her. I turned to see a figure in my room. Thinking it was time to slay another zombie, I picked up the heaviest item in reach: a weighty copy of The Bible I was given by some random priest with a megaphone in my home town. I crept towards her, grasping the Old Testament in my hand. I lifted it up above my head with the intention of striking her but as I did so she turned to face me. I froze. In front of me was the most beautiful girl that I've ever seen, ever. I couldn't believe what I was seeing (and still can't, to be honest) as I stood there motionless looking her up and down. She was incredible. She was gorgeous. She was absolutely, genuinely perfect. She smiled at me and said: "Hello, I'm so glad you're here," and then kissed me.

And then, all of a sudden, I woke up. Distraught, I reached down the side of my bed to find a pad of lined paper and began sketching the most accurate picture I could possibly draw. This is it:

I'm no artist. I think you can tell that and I'd like to point out that this picture doesn't even convey 1% of her beauty. The girl in my dream was perfect, this picture, however, is not. Therefore, I must let you know that:

• She didn't have a weird little pointy nose.
• She didn't have lips like a fish.
• She didn't have a lumberjack's chin.
• She didn't have beady little eyes.
• Her hair was actually more like Angelina Jolie

Other than that, the drawing is pretty accurate.

I don't think that I dream about people that don't actually exist. Whether they are friends, family, or people that I've seen on television; everyone that has ever been in my dream I've seen somewhere. I genuinely believe that this person exists .

Camera angle shots KAAAAABOOM*

Extreme Long shot : This is an extreme longshot of three people. All you can see is the body shape, but no clear features like there eyes, mouths etc. They have the sea running alongside them, but hardly any clear details within this picture.

Long Shot (Whole body): Shot which shows all or most of a fairly large subject (for example, a person) and usually much of the surroundings. Extreme Long Shot (ELS) - see establishing shot: In this type of shot the camera is at its furthest distance from the subject, emphasising the background. Medium Long Shot (MLS): In the case of a standing actor, the lower frame line cuts off his feet and ankles. Some documentaries with social themes favour keeping people in the longer shots, keeping social circumstances rather than the individual as the focus of attention.

Medium/Mid Shot (Head & Shoulders) : In such a shot the subject or actor and its setting occupy roughly equal areas in the frame. In the case of the standing actor, the lower frame passes through the waist. There is space for hand gestures to be seen. Medium Close Shot (MCS): The setting can still be seen. The lower frame line passes through the chest of the actor. Medium shots are frequently used for the tight presentation of two actors (the two shot), or with dexterity three (the three shot).

Close Up (Just head): A picture which shows a fairly small part of the scene, such as a character's face, in great detail so that it fills the screen. It abstracts the subject from a context. MCU (Medium Close-Up): head and shoulders. BCU (Big Close-Up): forehead to chin. Close-ups focus attention on a person's feelings or reactions, and are sometimes used in interviews to show people in a state of emotional excitement, grief or joy. In interviews, the use of BCUs may emphasise the interviewee's tension and suggest lying or guilt. BCUs are rarely used for important public figures; MCUs are preferred, the camera providing a sense of distance. Note that in western cultures the space within about 24 inches (60 cm) is generally felt to be private space, and BCUs may be invasive.

Extreme Close Up

This is a picture of my eye and eyebrow. This shows how close up the extreme close up shot actually is.

Made me realised how grateful I am to have everything I have.

Based on the true life story of thousands of run away and abandoned children on the Romanian streets of Bucharest. This documentary follows five young children and their dangerous fight for survival. Mihai Tudose - Age 12 and her younger brother Ana - Age 10, Cristina (II) - Age 16, Marian - Age 8 and Macarena - Age 14. These young girls have had to disguise themselves as boys in order to be tough and survive living on the streets.

The Reign of Romanian dictator Nicolei Ceaucescu had outlawed the use of birth control as he wanted his nation's population to grow. He encouraged his people to have more children and with nearly 20,000 homeless and abandoned children surviving on the streets of Bucharest, his plan went extremely wrong. These children must beg, fight, steal and improvise to get a daily meal. Most have turned to sniffing paint as a recreational way to bare the pain.

My biggest complaint of this documentary comes with the reading of sub titles. The are placed against bright areas on the screen making them hard to read. For me, I found myself spending too much time trying to read dialog than identifying with the children's grim future. However, you don't need subtitles to recognize these children are street tough and already know what it takes to survive in a world that doesn't want them.
Award: 2000 - Sundance Film Festival - Special Jury Prize

I heart which Genre?

Overheard someone..

“It’s too sweet.”

It didn’t really matter what the customer was complaining about, my angst was up. This is a hot button for me since I write sweet romance. Lately I have felt, well, a bit under fire for not exploring the intensity of sexuality in my stories. There seems to be an assumption that sweet stories automatically do not have depth or intensity. Wrong. I deal with difficult issues like death and heartbreak and lost love… not to mention parenthood. And, just as sex scenes can come off as contrived, so can philosophical themes if not handles properly.

Which leads to my discussion in this post about Post-apocalyptic Romance; something the Genre-istas are highlighting in October.

As I found while researching reviews for this genre on net, there is no way to handle this topic without delving into the depths of personal tragedy, pain and suffering that is caused by losing everything you know and love. An author can try, but in every case I found the readers sussed it out as superficial and lacking credibility (and reviewed it as such).

So whether you write sweet with emotional depth or post-apocalyptic, how does a writer seek out those feelings within themselves to create believable characters? Not all of us have (hopefully) lost a close loved one or seen tragedy occur right in front of our eyes; so how can we possibly relate to what we want to put our characters through?

In researching this idea of empathy I found that Doctors experience something very similar in their work. While patients expect or hope their doctor will be empathic, (or share their feeling so as to better diagnose or treat them), doctors must also maintain their focus on the patient, rather than on their own, similar experiences or emotions. To do this one article describes the term emotional attunement (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1494899/):

"Emotional attunement operates by shaping what one imagines about another person's experience. In trying to imagine what the patient is going through, physicians will sometimes find themselves resonating. This is not an additional activity to imagining, but rather a kind of involuntary backdrop to it. Further, resonance is not a special professional skill, but a part of ordinary communication. While listening to an anxious friend, one becomes anxious, while talking with a coworker, one feels heavy, depressed feelings. Importantly, attuning to patients does not always involve resonating with strong feelings, but often is a subtle nonverbal sense of where another person is emotionally."

This then is something everyone already experiences living out our everyday lives. The question is how to tap into it, whether as an author writing a book, or a reader trying to relate to one. And this depends on conscientiously observing non-verbal cues, such as a bitten lip, a shaky hand, no eye contact, a lax face, hunched shoulders….. 

The goal for this post then is to observe these cues in those around us; do not react to them but note how they make us feel; Anxious, scared, tired, bored, excited, concerned, hopeful? And then write down the association.

Then, when we go to write that post-apocalyptic love scene we can physically use the appropriate cue to help us recreate the emotion. 

I’d love to hear how it works for you… be it in relating to a hot sex scene, a sweet heartbreak or a lone dog wandering the streets of post-apocalyptic Malaysia.

Baraka

Okay, so how do I start this?
Well, it started with the whole class watching a film called Baraka. It was basically a film about nature and human culture around the world. I don't know how to say this but I don't understand any of them. To be honest, after 30 minutes I was lost into my own dreamland. I tried keeping my eyes open but yeah, I can't.

I didn't really pay any attention to the film and what's it about but I'll just be honest on what I did know about Baraka. The film started with calm music and mountains view which I think is at cold winter place. Haha, I think? Anyway, moving on with the story. I personally think that it was about the differences of animal and human living? I know it's weird to think like that but yeah, this is just me explaining what I know about Baraka.

I know it may a little bit lame for you but I think Baraka is actually a good film to keep one calm. I was so calm when watching it. I realize that all the picture and views are all wonderful views. I can't stop myself but to look deep into it. This obviously happened when I was awake. But yeah, there's so much beautiful views in Baraka.

The part where it shows about poverty. I was crushed. It sadden me to know that there's actually a place like that. Children were starving, parents were out wondering around looking for shelter and food. I feel sorry for that. I literally pause and went into tears for a moment there. HAHA I'm serious.

But yeah, I learn so much things after watching Baraka. I sort of opened my eyes towards Earth and my surroundings. Also on how people in different world live their lives. I am much surprised.

I need some inspiration. I need something to write, anyone?