Symbolism of Clothing

Clothing is symbolic for hiding who we are. When we wear clothes, we are covering ourselves so that the only people that know that we look like underneath is the ones we choose to show our body to. As people, we typically aren't ourselves when we first meet someone. We don't show our true personalities to people that we are introduced to until we feel completely comfortable with them. Slowly as the friendship/relationship progresses, we begin to let out true selves out, letting them see what type of person we really are. Clothing is the same way, when we first meet someone, you aren't going to feel comfortable with them unclothed so therefore you wear clothing. As your relationship moves on, you become more comfortable with others and aren't self conscious about your body anymore. 

To hide your true personality when you meet someone new or someone that you are not fully comfortable with is natural. It would seem that not being yourself is like a defense mechanism. You are still in the process of figuring out if the person you just met is worth putting your best face on for, leading to not being your true self. How does one know who exactly they truly? We are around other people for such a large part of our day, how do we really know who we are if we're constantly hiding ourselves from the world? When are we really ourselves? Getting to know who you are is a big part of how your life goes, and I think that it is important to know who you really are before you make a life commitment to someone. Knowing who you are helps shape your life, and if you're just pretending to act like someone that you're not in order to impress someone, what is the point?

What does it mean when I say that you are the key to your own success?

Success is earned by you. When it comes to your own success, you are the key. There is no one in this world who wants to be successful at the goal that you are aiming at as much as you, there is no one in this world that will be as upset as you when you don't hit your goal. If you feel like nobody is there for you, or you don't have anybody to guide you in your decision making or the things that you do in life, that you don't have any support to help you get through the day, good. Because the people that are most successful in this world are the ones that realize that their fate sits on THEIR shoulders, not anyone else's. When you come to this conclusion, you are going to be way more successful than you ever would have thought. That cliche phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" in all of life seems to be true, especially when you're in it alone. Realizing that nobody is going to help you and that you have to figure out out by yourself is the best thing, because once this thought hits you, you open up your mind to so many different ideas. You can do anything, you don't need someone sitting behind you to catch you if you fall. And if you do fall, you get back up, shake it off and keep going. It is only going to make you want it more. 

Success is like running a marathon. You start out by the idea of what you want to be successful at, forming your plans around that idea, trying to jump start a plan to get yourself moving towards that goal. So you prepare for it, you run every day before the marathon, every day adding one more mile to your run so by the time the race rolls around, you are running an average of 25.2 miles a day, and that very next day you will hit your goal of being able to run 26.2 miles. You are the one that pushes yourself to get up every day, and run. You are the one that keeps nagging yourself to never give up, that soon enough, that day will come that you will finally reach your goal. Just like a marathon, success isn't something that you can jump into unprepared. Preparation and acting on that preparation is 100% of the battle. 

What I learned today

Today, I learned that when writing something, you have to figure out your audience first before you decide what type of writing style you are going to use. If you are writing about how you're mad about something, you have to figure out what you mad about and who is going to fix this problem that you have. One of the examples that was in the book was cigarette companies targeting teens and the poor. You can't write to them because that isn't going to make much of a difference, you have to write to somebody who is going to do something about it, like advertisement companies. The genre for that would be argumentative, if you were to write to teens and the poor, it would be informative because you are trying to help them see what is going on around them specifically. I also learned that after you figured out who you are writing to and your genre, you have to consider your voice. Your attitude and tone of the essay play a big role on whether or not you want people to be persuaded by what you're writing about.

What are our responsibilities to each other when we blog?

Our responsibilities to each other when we blog are to respond and communicate back with each other. Someone posts something on a blog because it is something they care about or are interested in, it is our responsibility as the viewer to respond to the blogger. Tell them what you think about what they said, how you feel, etc. They are putting their opinion out there not because a blog is a diary, but a way to voice your opinion through the cyber-world. To put your opinion out there is something that takes guts, you speak about your opinion knowing that there is someone out there that will disagree with you, be 100% on your side, and other views on the subject.

Blogging is something that is also very useful to viewers. Whether it's on how to train a puppy to how to do a smokey eye with eye shadow, its something out there to view and learn from. The internet isn't and shouldn't be just used for Facebook or Twitter, it's something that stores so much information that you don't know who will find it useful.

Blogging is something that I personally have never really cared for or payed much attention to, just because if I have a question or a concern on something there are a million other resources that you could use before you go to a blog, which is what  I typically do. Now that I am being introduced to it, I am starting to see the usefulness of it and how the viewers are all affected differently. If I wanted to share my feelings or views on something, I would just talk to someone about it, I would never write it down because I feel best way to express your emotion is to say it to someone else in person. You really can't tell how much emotion a person is putting into words typed on a computer.