social media - whose life are you living?

“It's entirely possible to get to know someone without actually seeing them in person. In fact, it's better like that because none of the superficial stuff gets in the way. You really get to know a person. And it's easier to express yourself when you're writing things down. At least it is for me. I like to order my thoughts, and delete them if they don't make any sense. You can't do that in real life.” 

― Cat Clarke

Social media. The epitome of modern life. There are many conflicting opinions on it, as is expected from any relatively new thing. Now, I do love social media (I'm using it as we speak, with tumblr, flickr, and youtube all up in different tabs while I write this) and I use it a lot. A lot. 

But recently I have been noticing some downsides.

Some background: I've been pretty busy recently with homework and all that, and I've noticed that it's been becoming harder and harder to keep up with all of my favorite youtubers and bloggers, not to mention all of the tweets, pictures, and posts over the various other medias I follow. 

At first, I cursed my schoolwork and personal duties for not letting me have any time to catch up with my social networks. What new videos and posts was I missing while I was obligated to do my work? My personal life was interfering with viewing others'. 

Perhaps you see the flaws in my thinking. And now I do too.

I was too wrapped up in the lives of countless people that I haven't even spoken to that I forgot that I too have a life that I am supposed to be living.

That, I feel, is the main issue with social media. While there are certainly many, many advantages to being able to connect with other people's lives, too much of that connection can sometimes make us forget that we are living our own lives. We should make our own lives and stories and not waste too much of our time watching other people make theirs. 

Now the problem that I face is how to cut back. How do I stop watching other people's lives when I feel so connected with them? For many of these people, I have seen them at their highs and their lows and for some of them, I have even followed them for years. They feel just like old friends. But it is a one sided friendship, and again, a friendship that prevents me from growing my own story. 

This post has been long and rambly, but I hope that it was understandable. Don't get me wrong, I adore social media and all the positives, but sometimes we need to step back and realize that we have our own lives in our own hands that needs to be lived.

new camera!

Hey guys! So my birthday was on Thursday (17 now woo), and I got a camera! It's a canon powershot sx600 hs. I don't know too much about it but from the many pictures I've taken so far, I like it a lot. Here are some of my favorite pictures I've taken so far:

my eye; I love taking pictures of my iris because normally it looks so dark and you can't see any variation but in photos you can see the detail

my little sister's eye; how lovely is her eye color?

72x zoom on the moon; you may have seen this on my instagram. how insane is this?

      

other various shots; shoutout to my sister for being a cooperative model--there's lots more of her in my pictures folder

None of these have been edited and they are mostly just test shots. Also, I would like your help. Firstly, if you are familiar with this camera or powershots in general, any tips you have would be much appreciated. Second, I would like to start a flickr or maybe tumblr or instagram for my pictures but I am not sure where to do so. I am considering flickr the most but I am not so sure with the whole yahoo sign in thing. Anyway, any tips would be great and I hope you enjoy these shots!

 

storie: my new favorite app

So on Friday I discovered something amazing. Storie.

I found this app through funforlouis and as soon as I saw it for the first time, I couldn't wait for it to be released. The idea behind storie is to be a simple vlog-type video maker. You record clips throughout the day and then it automatically edits them all together for you when you want to publish. It's essentially a easy to use mobile youtube without the hassle. The community is amazing as well since it is only a few days old.

          

One of the main reasons why I love storie so much is that it allows anyone to share their day no matter where they are in the world. I love watching what peoples' lives are like. (That makes me sound like a stalker but I really mean it.) And can we talk about how pretty is it to look at? I'm a complete nerd when it comes to pretty looking things, even food packaging, but this app is just really nice looking.

Storie is currently only available on ios, but I believe it is supposed to come out on android soon.

At the time that I am writing this, I have posted four stories, and I plan to make many more. (I even show my face and talk ahh which is something that I never thought I would do--it is explained in my "hello" storie.)

I think this app is super great, especially since it has only been out for less than a week. I see a very bright future ahead, so jump on this train early! 

5 apps to help you with your new year's resolutions

hello and happy new year!

With the new year comes new year resolutions, most of which don't happen, but for the time being, here are a few helpful apps that I will be using in order to maybe make some progress towards my goals.

1. 7 Minute Workout

    One of the most common resolutions is to workout, get fit, etc. I've gone through this phase a couple times and tested out a bunch of quick easy workout apps and this is by far the best in my opinion. It only takes 7 minutes, can include a warm up/cool down and customizes the workout for your motivation and fitness level.

2. DailyYoga

    Yoga is great for relaxation, meditation, and fitness. This app contains lots of free yoga sessions from a range of difficulties and focuses.

3. Plant Nanny

    Lots of people don't drink enough water, and I am one of them. Plant Nanny is an adorable virtual plant that grows when you drink water. It's simple, easy to use, and just plain adorable.

4. Walkr

    This is made by the same developer as Plant Nanny and is just as cute. It uses your phone to track your steps which is then converted to energy you can use to aid you in your search through the galaxy. I've been using this app since December and I love collecting all of the different planets. If walking is your thing, this will make it a lot more enjoyable.

5. Way of Life

    For your other resolutions, you can track them with Way of Life. Just input what you are trying to achieve and then track whether you accomplished it each day.

I hope this list has helped you find at least one tool to help you achieve your resolutions! 

6 apps you should check out

I'm just going to come out and say it: I'm kind of addicted to downloading apps. I love looking through the app store for new and interesting apps. However, what usually ends up happening is that I'll go on a big spree and download a bunch of apps only to delete them after one use. I also like to keep my phone relatively freed up so I tend to purge apps that I don't use regularly. 

So here are a few of the apps that have survived for long enough for me to use them on a regular basis:

1. Wanelo 

This app used to be really popular (at least at my school) but it seems like everyone I know has quit it. I do use this app in phases and have deleted and redownloaded it multiple times, but I just really like to use it. It's basically pinterest (another one of my favorite apps/sites) but for shopping. Like pinterest, it has it's own website too. You can look through popular items, search for things, save things to organized lists and even buy things straight from the app (though I've never tried). It's especially helpful around gift giving seasons.

2. Podcasts

       

This is an app that is just made by apple but I love it. I've always been kind of a radio junkie and when I found out about podcasts, I was ecstatic. Above are all of the podcasts I listen to but my favorites would definitely be Welcome to Night Vale (strongly suggest), The Moth, This American Life, and Radiolab. If anyone would like me to do a full post about podcasts alone, I would be more than happy to. Yeah, podcasts are great.

3. Way of Life

   

I'm someone who always makes goals but never sees them through so this app has helped me so much. I've tested out tons of these to-do/habit tracker apps and this one worked best for me by far. It's simple so all you have to do is list everything you want to get done daily and each day you can mark green, red, or skip. It also has a handy little graphing feature to analyze how terrible you are at doing things. I also use this app as a way to tell when the last time I did something was. For example, it came to my attention recently that my last blog post was three weeks ago (whoops).

4. StudyBlue

This app was actually suggested to me by my latin teacher as a way to study vocab. It's basically virtual flashcards without wasting tons of index cards and time. When you go through a stack, you can mark if you got it right or not so you can go back and study everything you got wrong afterwards. It also allows you to search for other people's flashcards that they have made so you can use them for yourself (which I used frequently until they decided to charge for it...still bitter).

5. VSCOcam

        
There are tons of photo editing apps out there but this is definitely one of my favorites. I like it because aside from the broad choice of filters, it allows you to fine tune your own pictures like a more simplistic version of photoshop adjustments. It has many of the same features available in instagram editing or even the photos app editor (which I've never used), but I like to use this app as a one stop shop for all of my edits.

6. Dropbox

Lastly is Dropbox. Dropbox is cloud storage service where you can save all of your pictures and documents for access on other devices. Since I use google docs for all of my document needs, I only use this app to sync my iPhone pictures onto a folder on my computer (which comes in a lot of help when I need to get pictures off of my phone to upload on tumblr or blogspot or deviantart or something). I used to always email myself my pictures but this is by far easier.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little list and found it helpful in some way. If you have any good app suggestions, I'm always on the lookout for new ones so let me know!