Lanuage

Language is defined as a system of communication used by a particular country or community

As well as the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way

I copied and paste the definition I found online. That's why the first line looks the way it does.

So today I'd like to write my thoughts on language...well, more so on something I observed in regards to communication.I came across a video that was titled "Deaf people hear for the first time"

What happened in the video isn't what interested me, but what people in the comment section said about the video. I wonder if it surprised them as much as it did me...okay well it first it didn't surprise me,  but I sat on it for a while just now and I got to thinking.

I should specify that there was a particular portion in the comment section that I read. Some people were having conversations about how they thought it may have been abrupt for child in the video to suddenly hear so much noise, because in the video the mother and the lady who was controlling the ear piece were constantly calling his name.

Some of the other comments were about how the boy probably didn't understand a word they were saying because he never heard "speech" before. People who are deaf (some) will resort to using sign language right? To me, this is similar to any other language in the word.

Now, I'll tell you why this is interesting. The people had no qualms over this being bizarre and they actually agreed. I agreed as well. Now, when it comes to our domestic house pets, some people will swear their pets can understand them and they talk to them.

Some people believe that they listen to the inflections in our speech to gauge or determine what we're saying. I have two dogs and two cats, and I can call a pet from another room and that pet will come running. So I believe they understand certain words.

As far as them communicating to me or communicating back, well one of our dogs as a much harder time than the other. Sometimes I don't quite understand what they're trying to tell me. So for example, I'll ask them the obvious "Outside?" or "Water?" or "Food?" and depending on whether they respond to a word, I"ll understand what they're trying to tell me. So if I say "Outside" they run to the back door. If I say "Water" they go to their bowl or they'll twirl around.

What I'm getting at is that we somehow find a way to communicate. Yet, I believe we base it on what we can see.

But this isn't the interesting part. That was only half. The other half is what if we, or some of us, have not been able to hear anything?

I'll explain. So I'll take sight. Because we've been bombarded with consistent stimuli for so long, it's natural that our minds will only focus on what's important. For example, we don't have to think about breathing (or some of us) or our heart beating. These things are done without us having to think about them.

So due to blocking out certain things, perhaps we aren't fully aware everything. So imagine walking through a tunnel and seeing only light at the end. Now imagine if the walls were see through, but due to us blocking out everything, we're not focused on it.

Where am I going with this? So for me, I'm a spiritual person...sometimes. Sometimes I'm a normal person lol But I'm a spiritual person, and I believe in the possibilities of...well a lot of things. Due to this, it can be overwhelming. Now, because I'm a person who is open to the possibilities I still come across as having "strong views", and this is perhaps due to my ego *shrugs*.

Anyways, I'm saying this because although I can't see spirits or communicate with them, I do believe in the possibility of spirits.

The only reason I'm saying this all is because I'm posing the question to you, as well as myself, on what if the spirits are here among us, within a different plane of existence, but their form of communication is different? Though I pose this question, I've read a bit about how spirits communicate. I thought to myself "Why the symbolism? Why not just tell me what you want?" because some of them were once humans. And as I was showering I realized that it's because they don't posses the "physical" means to do so. They don't have a mouth or vocal cords like we do.

This is why I mentioned my dogs. Dogs communicate differently. The only reason we even have any sort of information about the way dogs communicate is due to people observing the animals.

The difference with spirits is that they are "invisible", but this is only because we don't know how to see them. This is why I mentioned the conversation is the comment section being so interesting.  Without realizing it, these people were having a conversation about language and communication.

And if I'm honest, I don't think we've even scratched the surface on properly communicating with each other (especially through speech).

So although I can't "see" spirits, nor can I "hear" them, I think it has more to do with me just not knowing how to go about it, rather than it not being something that is possible. I also think, as spiritual beings, we all have the ability. We just don't remember.

I remember wondering why we would choose to have "amnesia" when we come into a lifetime, and my theory (and this is based on some things I've read as well) is that we either 1. we can truly test ourselves in this life without remembering 2. to not distract us from our currently lesson or 3. It's just not important (or past lives)...at the moment anyways

I have found it interesting that some people can be affected by things that happened in their past lives. For example, I once read a case of a client who was placed under hypnosis and did a past life regression where we stated that she put on a lot of weight in her current life due to a lifetime where she starved to death (I believe is how it happened). It was either she starved or there wasn't enough food for everyone in her group. So when she saw food, she felt the need to eat enough because she felt there wouldn't be much left over, or that it may be her last meal.

Now, to test whether or not I can see spirit is something I think requires a lot of discipline and focus, and I don't have that at moment lol But I do believe I can "feel" things. Me and my younger sister use to spend so much time with each other that we use to say the same thing at the exact same time and then start laughing (telepathy). I also remember being at a mall with my family and, I don't recall why we were doing this, but we were talking to a guy who worked for this store and he jokingly asked us to guess his age. Everyone was throwing their thoughts out and my first guess was his age.

A lot of people would say "Well, that's just a coincidence!" and maybe I would agree with them to extent. However, during my last few quarter at my college was full of "coincidence", so many in fact that I felt that it was very strange how things played out lol

Apparently coincidences are a casual amount of events with no apparent connection, but I don't believe this was the case with me. From leaving one college, at the exact time I did, to finish certain classes when I did, to just barely missing the closing of my school by one quarter, this is an interesting string of coincidences haha Now, I'll say this, had I not run out of funds to continue taking my Gen Ed. classes (and trust me, I wanted to stay a bit longer!) when I did, and this was years before the news about the school closing became any sort of "thing", I would not have graduated. I wanted to do certain things, but had I, I would have been months late and found out my school closed, I wouldn't have a diploma and I wouldn't have met the people that I know now.

To me, coincidences are a strange phenomena.

Back to language.

So imagine for a second that you are blind and that you've never seen anything ever. To you, your world is dark. Now you can't see, but you can hear on the side of you, someone tells you what they see. You can't imagine this because you've never seen it before. It doesn't exist in your eyes. And it's nearly impossible for the person to describe something to you that you've never seen. Pretty much, Plato's The Allegory of the Cave.

This is probably what it's like for a person who can see spirits, try to describe it to people who "can't see".

But, I get it. Because there are some "fake" seers out there. Some people may say that we should use our discretion, and I agree. But the best way to not have to deal with that is to learn to do it yourself.

It's interesting because people who just weren't believers or this who have had NDE or OBE have suddenly changed their minds about being against it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think skeptics exist for a reason. If we blindly went along with everything, we would never have any advancements in technology or our thinking.

I do believe we should be respectful of one another. Something I can't stand seeing are people calling each others names lol Honestly, what exist within your reality may not be what exist in someone else's.

For example, a few days I was walking home from the bank and the schools nearby was letting out. I watched as a bunch of kids exited their school. Can you imagine if they started telling me about their day and I say "No it didn't. None of that happened" to them lol They would probably say "How are you going to tell me? You weren't even there!"

Anyway, that's all of my thoughts for now. If anything else comes up, I'll try and type it here. I've been feeling very drained, so I'm trying to give myself time to recharge.

Good night!

Mon
 

Update: Webcomic. Art Station. Honing the craft!

Hiiiii!!

I don't type here very often. Actually I'm indoors a lot more to be honest. That might scare people, but honestly I can't think of very many places I'd like to go at the moment. That's not to I haven't done anything at all this year. I have!

In June I went to Wisconsin Dells with my sister for about four days where we stayed at the Kalahari Resort! It was a lot of fun.

A photo of the hotel room.






Back to the topic. So we went there near the end of June for your younger sister's birthday, but we were out every single day. I was dead exhausted by the very last day and decided to stay in the hotel room the last evening we were there! We went to an indoor water park which was great! :D I convinced my younger sister to get on a water slide with me xD and it was hilarious because she doesn't do well with rides. I'm not a sadistic I swear lol But her reaction was hilarious.

This was an awesome fountain in the lobby heading towards our room!




We also visited a tiny little farm and saw some Llamas! :) I love Llamas now because of the movie The Emperor's New Groove. I like Kuzco. He starts out as this very arrogant whiny baby, but he ends up having a heart of gold near the end of the movie. Mostly I like the scene where he starts turning into a Llama and his adviser and her sidekick hit him over the head with a tray. It's a really great movie!

Actually it wasn't a Llama, it was a giraffe and some camels. I don't know why I thought I saw a Llama lol 


We were able to get extremely close and some people were feeding it with the carrot sticks in their mouth. It was really weird...lol *Cue Christina Aguilera's I Am Beautiful*


Anyway, in July was me and my older sister's birthday. Her birthday was the very first week of July and mines was the second week. I can see why my mom would celebrate our birthdays all at once when we were kids lol

When my birthday came around I was like "Yeah, June was enough for me" lol because we did so much! I had a lot of fun with everyone.

In August, we found out my grandpa passed away. So we traveled to Mississippi for about three days. We spent so many hours on the road. It was about 10 hours to get there. Then the following day we had to travel 4 to 5 hours to get to the location where he would be buried. Mind you, my older sister did all of the driving (I'm so grateful for this, honestly!). The drive to and from was a bit scary as some of the areas were cover my water due to flooding, on both sides of the road and there were no guard rails lol Overall it was a hilarious trip.

During the final day we went to visit the birthplace of Elvis Presley!







It was neat to see there was a logbook at the reception desk with the names and location of people from all over the world who came to that exact location just to visit his birthplace! I even saw a few from Australia.

Also can I just say that Elvis had a very handsome face! I think his dark hair really brought out his blue eyes~~

In May, I went to a parade with my older sister and nephew. It was nice and they threw out candy. It wasn't very far from my house so we could easily walk back. I mostly took pictures of the trucks and cars as reference material lol It's safe to say that this is what you'd get if you take an artist or a photographer to a new location





Unfortunately I missed the clowns because I had to use the bathroom lol I ended up running home, came back and I missed the clowns. But I did get to see one more truck drive pass before the parade ended suddenly hahaha

And finally in April we went to see the new Avengers: Infinity War movie! It was great~~~ It was like an event because my older sister and I was anxiously awaiting this movie. My older sister cried during the movie haha

In the end, I thought this year was pretty great mostly because last year I had that bad allergy situation. I ended up working and became way too stressed. Although I'm still searching for at least some decent work, I have to say I think if I stayed while I was that overwhelmed it wouldn't have been pretty. I had to listen to my body. I was really having a tough time getting out of bed and at one point I even called off from work due to it (well actually multiple times).

I'm better now :) So I'm very happy. I think the moment I found out what it was it started to make sense to me. I'm allergic to cow's milk btw :P

As far as my art goes, I've been working on my webcomic. Very slowly may I add. At the moment no one is rushing me to get a new job but me, but it's because I feel very bad staying indoors so much. But my excuse is that it's because a lot of my work is done from a computer :P

Here's a link to my webcomic here:

http://www.smackjeeves.com/comicprofile.php?id=117786

The problem with me is that I'd either relax way too much, or I'll work way too much lol If I relax I feel unproductive or a bit guilty that I'm not working. And if I work too much or even just a few hours a day I feel like I'm neglecting the world. But I'm passionate nonetheless, even though it's tough work sometimes.

Sometimes I just stop for a day or two to just reflect to make sure I'm not pushing myself too much. I am constantly telling myself that it's okay if I'm not cranking out pages like a madwoman!I'm also trying to determine if I should just do this kind of work mostly and try to make a living from this, or if I should push myself to do more 3D work and try to get a job in the Game's industry.

The fact that there are many options is tough for me. But in the end, my ultimate goal is to try my hand at getting employment at Naughty Dogs! It's a gaming company in California! I love their work and how passionate they are about producing quality work to their audience. That is very important to me.

So as I mentioned in previous blogs I'm slowly learning to use Zbrush and Maya together and also learning Substance Painter and Substance Designer. It requires a lot of self-motivation to keep going. At least in school the consequences of not having an assignment done was a bad grade,but in life, alone, there are no grades. The only person I have to push myself is me. My friends and family can say "You can do it!" But I have to believe it first.

I'm also very critical of myself and I will go "I can fix this" or "I can be better at this", and this goes for character traits in myself as well. But I try not to be too hard on myself. To not do that I'll often find some inspiring quotes in books I happen to pick up :) I even found one in a game design book. It made me feel much better about my work and how I tend to work at a snail pace.

Maybe I shouldn't say I work slowly, but that I work on multiple things at once.

So currently while I'm trying to keep myself in touch with Maya, texturing, Zbrush and all these other software, my goal at the moment is to finish chapter 5 of my webcomic. I took about a year hiatus while I was finishing up my last year in college and I felt bad for my readers, but I knew the final year would be hectic and stressful.

After this, my younger sister to anxiously awaiting my next webcomic lol It deals with fashion and will be a slice of life comedy story. For years I've been planning this, but due to having to prioritize school and finishing those projects, I would just jot down ideas and revise. I still have a lot of projects from the years prior that I have to work on.

I'd also like to fix up my website and include some of my 2D animation.

So as I write this, yes it does seem like a lot, but you can see why I'm not trying to rush to cram everything in at once lol I'm working at a pace to not get overwhelmed. I know for sure that it's important for me to finish what I've started, but I also know that it's not uncommon for artist to have a bunch of unfinished pieces. If I don't finish a few, that's fine. I should finish the ones that interest me.

I've signed up to Art Station as well.

https://www.artstation.com/

There's a lot of great work there. Yet I'm not interested in those lol I'm interested in Naughty Dogs! haha Their name is in the career section. I'm more interested in catching a possible future employees eye, rather than gaining attention from other artist xD That's a shame, but it's the  truth.

One thing I don't want to do, but I found myself slightly doing, is comparing myself to other artist. I had a few teachers that stressed that we should try to make our work similar to the work coming out of these AAA studios. That's a lot of unnecessary pressure.

I think some people think art is a competition rather than a form of expression. I didn't know our willingness to express was in competition with someone else's willingness to express! I've been viewing art the wrong way all these years xD

I didn't start out like that. I did enjoy my school, aside from the loan I have, but I love learning to hone my craft. Yeah they jammed a lot of biases into my brain that I have to find a way to work around, but I found it gave me a great foundation to work from. Since I've graduated I haven't stopped learning. I'm always reading something new or watching a new tutorial or re-watching the same tutorial until what I learn sticks.

Somehow, I'd be happy if I can find a place that wouldn't mind me saying "I don't know everything there is to know, but I'm willing to learn" and they'd be okay with that. But a part of me assumes that they search for some mystical unicorn capable of doing everything lol

I think, if I can create something and feel satisfied with it, that's enough for me.

That being said, that's my year so far! haha If you made it this far I appreciate it.

Now I should at least attempt to get something done today.

Byeeeee

Mon