#hollytalks

[clow-faelie]

guess who took her first dose of

today!!

[hashtaghollytalks]

My dog doesn’t snuggle.

She just flops over on top of you and stares at you until you do her bidding.

[hashtaghollytalks]

Why So Loooong

Why in the world do we generally assume a blog post has to be long? Is it just me? I sit here and think and think.... “What should I write? How should I write? How much time will this all take?”

By the end, though, half the time I forget what I was even talking about. I gotta keep going back and checking, and even then, I still mess things up. Granted, I like to talk, and my tangents know no bounds. So, really, I have no idea whatsoever how long to expect any of my posts to be.

[hashtaghollytalks]

Social media can suck your life away, but you keep touching it anyway.

So I just though, you know, that I’d share some thoughts about social media and let y’all know just what I normally use each for. First, here’s an interesting graph from the Pew Research Center:

(Link to full article here.)

Now, the linked article has a lot of interesting information. From what I can see (check the full PDF download they offer), the sample size was approximately 2,000 people (U.S. only). Much better than only a few hundred, but considering billions of people around the world now use social media, it’d be really neat to see higher sample sizes.

What am I saying? That would require people to participate in research studies.

Not really surprised that Facebook shows the highest percentage of visitors. I consider the platform very useful in keeping up with family members and friends or associates I’ve engaged with throughout the years. Sure, maybe I don’t talk to all 800+ people on the list, but hey, at least they’re there in case I suddenly DO need to get in touch. You just never know....

Snapchat is one of those platforms I’ve messed with multiple times since it came out, and I STILL haven’t gotten the hang of it. From a user-friendliness standpoint, I kind of think it sucks. Then again, I give it props for using all the freaking swipes possible to get where you want to go. iPhone X users should have no problem at all managing a profile on Snapchat.

I will continue to hope and pray for something new and better to come along, though, and that’s pretty much where I am with Instagram. I really like the simplicity of the app. I have multiple accounts on there for various types of things, whether personal, game-related, or sharing my sad, sad art. The Guild Wars 2 screenshot sharing community on there is pretty tight and super supportive of any newcomers to the scene, and I’m sure there are others like it.

Twitter.... Now this one I probably use the most, when it comes down to both posting and engaging with other people’s posts. It’s a whatever-I-want-to-post-about account, really, and just like on Instagram, I’ve met many cool and supportive people, some of which have been around since I joined the platform. (Honestly a lot of retweets are probably cat-related.)

Uhhhhhhhh..... YouTube is AWESOME. Obviously. I don’t know anyone personally who doesn’t visit this site at least weekly. I visit it daily. I do have a channel up, but recently I hid all my videos in embarrassment and am hoping to start something in the future.... some day.... when I somehow eradicate the hopelessness inside me. (Cue tears.)

Pinterest is cool, but I mainly use it to gather references and inspiration for my art projects or practice pieces. I think my mom ACTUALLY uses it for its seemingly intended purpose. (It always looked like a DIY sharing site. Kinda glad it turned out not to be JUST that.)

Aaaaanyway, I’d like to hear from y’all. What do y’all use the different platforms for? Do you think the statistics shown above are pretty accurate, given your experiences? What’s your favorite platform?

[hashtaghollytalks]

Where do you want to go? I don’t know, where do YOU want to go?

The above scenario is most assuredly something that many of us experience on a regular basis. For me and my family, choosing activities, places to go to eat, or even selecting a film to rent, are all very... frustrating. The biggest dilemma we encounter, though, is the “where to you want to eat” dilemma.

Most of the time, I genuinely don’t care where we’re going, and when I do care, I will speak my choice from the beginning. I am a very picky eater, but wherever we end up going, I’m pretty sure I can find something to eat. (You know the person who always orders a burger or fried chicken strips at a new restaurant? That would be me.) My main choices are usually things that most restaurants already have on their menus.

In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem, right? You have complete freedom to select what you want to eat, and I’ll just go along with it. However, you seem to feel the same way--”let’s just EAT.”

As a result, I’ve come up with a few rules I usually go by that help me make up my mind and resolve this ambiguous situation.

1) I have particular categories of food/restaurants I do lean toward. If someone I ask says they don’t know where to go, I list a few categories such as Chicken, Burgers, or Seafood, along with fast service or sit-down restaurants. Based on their choices, I will try to recommend one or two places for them to choose from.

2) If I’m visiting a friend in their hometown, I tell them to give me two options, and I pick one. If a friend is visiting me in my hometown, I offer a few options of my own. This way, the people recommending the options are people who’re familiar with the area and the quality of the food available. One can also assume that the recommendations are likely ones preferred by the other person.

I’ve read a couple of articles here and there that bring up the idea that having too many options can be a very stressful situation and bring less satisfaction. One article on The Guardian (link to article here) mentions, “When there are lots of alternatives to consider, it is easy to imagine the attractive features of alternatives that you reject that make you less satisfied with the alternative that you’ve chosen. Increased choice, then, can make us miserable because of regret, self-blame and opportunity costs”

I have experienced such stress many times, and I can relate to the idea that some selections just feel less satisfying, because you wonder if you would have actually preferred a different choice.

This is actually pretty funny to me, in a way, because where life is concerned, I usually prefer having as many options open as possible. Closing options actually can cause me stress. At the same time, when I have opted to close certain options, it has freed me from worrying about whether or not my future options will be more or less satisfactory.

For instance, I love having tons of software options. However, when I have multiple options for, say, video editing, I can spend an hour just figuring out which one would be better to use. So, I choose one that I default to. This allows me to, for the most part, keep my options open, but at the same time, I remove those options from the choice list unless something comes up that my current option cannot accomplish. This reduces my stress and also makes working on tasks so much more efficient.

The article later brings up the issue in dating web sites or apps, and it brings up that so many choices can be quite problematic. How much easier would it be to make a choice if there were only two men or women for you to choose from? (Disregarding the millions of other users.) You might date them and either choose one or none at all, but at least it would have been less of a strain and less disheartening than, say, going on a hundred dates and, because you know there are other options, moving past ones without the perfect features and eventually realizing you wasted all that time and are still without a partner.

[hashtaghollytalks]

Sorry We Haven’t Reached Your Letter Yet

You know what’s scarier than a Halloween haunted house? The Office of the Department of Motor Vehicles. The attached image by Maria Scrivan illustrates a wait at the DMV perfectly.

I mean, seriously, the cubicles are never all manned, and it takes hours to get through the room. Hire more people! Make the system simpler to navigate. Something to make this experience less of a Hell than it is.

What if there was a phone system, where you could sign up for the line on your phone and receive a notification when you are 30 numbers off? That way you could still go about some town business, or have lunch, or go GET SOME FREAKING CELL SIGNAL. As if it’s not bad enough you have to wait in a room filled with different smells and an atmosphere that makes you want to fall asleep, there is simply no cell service once you walk through those doors so you gotta be absolutely, positively BORED out of your MIND for HOURS.

[hashtaghollytalks]

Well. Hello.

Yes. Hello.

Been thinking about starting a blog (for years).

Been staring at blog stuff and wondering if I should actually start a blog (even more, for years).

Figured it’s about time I just start one and let all heck break loose. Expect incoherency, ranting, reviews, some art, and who knows what else. Hopefully at least some of this will entertain you. If not, feel free to go find entertainment elsewhere.

Toodles!