Mortality

Names have been changed for confidentiality reasons

I have a part-time job in a nursing home. I work alternately as a housekeeper and supper chef on Saturdays and Sundays. This August will mark the second year I've been working there, and I really do thoroughly enjoy my job.

You're probably thinking "why is she talking about her dumb job on here?" but bear with me. I have a point.

In room 12 we had a resident called Victor. He was 99, although due to how sprightly and 'with it' he was I could never quite believe that. He had scruffy gray hair and wore a lot of beige. He reminded me of my uncle with his laid back, nonchalant attitude. He wouldn't care if I made his coffee wrong, he'd drink it anyway. All in all he was a wonderful, humble old man with a big heart.

On occasion, when I was in the adjacent room 11 cleaning, I would hear him sing 'you are my sunshine' to himself. It was - for lack of better words - adorable; and to this day I have difficulty even thinking of the tune without being haunted in some way.

On Christmas day in 2013, Victor passed away suddenly at about 11am - two hours before my shift started that day. When I was told the news I was heartbroken. We all were. As someone who's main job is to cater for dying people, we aren't usually so affected by death, but for Victor we all grieved. He made a mark on me that will probably remain for a lifetime.



And while I was at work today preparing the suppers, a dark thought came to my mind. What if I don't make my mark like Victor did? What if I'm not the kind of person that leaves such a presence behind? Sure, I've worked hard to get where I am. I'm a decent artist (though still learning) and I've established myself a good reputation online. I've met with my favourite games developer, and I still have a long stretch (hopefully) of life ahead of me to achieve even more.

But I never knew about Victor's achievements. All I knew was that he was 99, he had a little wife from some eastern European country and that he liked beige. It was just the way he was that made such an impact on me. He had a specific way of being. Of viewing the world.

Mortality seems irrelevant when one considers how people live on even through death. Look at Marilyn Monroe; she died long before any of us were even born and yet we know exactly who she is, what she did and why she was just so charming. Maybe in the future we'll hear about Justin Beiber and Kristen Stewart in a similar way; though I somewhat doubt that. I think Marilyn had a charm that made her memorable. Just look at how fun she is; her wide, girlish grin and flirty attitude. It's magnetic.

So my question to you is this: what immortal mark will you leave on the world? Will you use your kindness to touch the lives of others, or equip a specific talent to leave your own personal stamp behind? Let me know in the comments section, I'd like to know

 - Alice x x x

Write Damnit

I don't really know what went wrong. I won't make an excuse. I hate it when people give the old "I'm so sorry that I haven't written in a while. I've been like super busy!". How many times have you, honestly, read something along those lines? Honestly. I couldn't answer the question myself, because I've never counted (how sad would that even be?) and I'm sure the number would be depressingly high.

It's the easter holidays though, and I should have had plenty of time to write something. But I have no clever topic for us to discuss. Maybe it'll come to me. I'm mostly just writing this out of frustration. Running your own blog is very much a love/hate relationship. So is running any project though. I refuse to let myself slip on this one. I will write. I'll write myself out of writers block or whatever this is.

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In the Boreads club there has been a lot of suggestions to what we could write about. All of them great and inspirational. And whilst Alice and I will try to use them as best as we can, I couldn't help to glimpse a tendency that this blog may be encouraging. We talk about the golden days. Heck, my last post was mostly about those old times. Where we were all just a bunch of kids, causing drama and trying to find ourselves. But do we really want those days back? Do we even really know what was so special about them? Isn't it really just like when you were a kid and the summer was always sunny and christmas was white? Looking back at the past, don't we tend to forget all the bad things, and just remember the good?

I know this all sounds so very Carrie Bradshaw of me, but it seems to me that more and more people are openly talking about how they want the so called golden days back. I guess for a very long time, you could have included me on that list. There's this whole new community out there (primarily on Facebook Alice tells me) of blogs and magazines. And I can't even be bothered to look into it. It would be so much easier if we just didn't have to address this whole new community, but if things just went back to drama-gossip blogs and there's-a-new-hot-buys-dress posts. And I guess it would be fun and exciting for a while, if Perez started the blog again and if Style posted a new issue. But, what I've really been thinking about is, is it really what we want?

For a while I thought it was what I wanted. But I don't think so anymore. I have more faith in us than that. The whole reason that people started blogging and then making magazines in the first place, is because we are creative people who are looking for new artistic areas to explore and boundaries to push. After all, most of us were teenagers. But taking two steps back is no way to move forward. Let the new members dabble with blogs posts and try their luck with magazines. I'm a veteran, I'm not going back to that war. I'm moving forward and making writing posts that have more to them than the shallow things that used to fill blogs in the golden days my new project. We have to keep moving forward. This can be the Stardoll renaissance, as long as we don't strive backwards, but take what we learned back then to help us move forward.

PS. Happy easter everyone!

PPS. Alice and I are working on some brand new ideas (get excited) and some posts which we are going to co-write. 

6 Years and Counting

I have been a member of Stardoll since November '07. That's 6 and a half years. I was 13 when I joined and recently turned 20. So basically, I have been a member of Stardoll all of the years that I have been a teenager. When I could be out rebelling against my parents by sneaking out to hang out with my friends, I was mostly at home. In front of my computer on Skype. Giggling, even though I was the only person in the room. In the so called "golden days" of Stardoll (around '08-'10), I would mostly be in at least one group chat and be talking to at least a couple of people on the side as well. Now-a-days the only people I talk to on Skype are family members and Alice. I still have over a 100 contacts, a reminder of the days where Skype was a blaze with Stardoll members. Days where I was often "invisble", simply because too many people would contact me if they knew I was online. 

Behind Skype, my internet browser would be open, and on it, would be Stardoll. The website itself and most likely several Stardoll related blogs would be open in different windows. I would check for the news, I would check for the gossip, and I would check to see if there was something with my name in it. Yes, I did that. Remember guys, I was like 15. And 15 year-olds want to be popular. Even if it's on a virtual site. So being mentioned on blogs like Perez Hilton of Stardoll was huge for me. And something you'd freak out about with your online friends.

There can be so many people out there, who likes to criticize the fraction of the Stardoll members who became known as Elites, but to be completely honest with you guys, it was awesome. I know, I know, putting other members down, making other people feel like their worth less and yada yada. I get it. But like everything in life, things are just not that black and white. For me, personally, it was amazing. Simply because I just wasn't the most popular person in real life at that time. Stardoll gave me a chance to feel what it's like to be popular, to have people knowing your name everywhere (I loved this) and wanting you to be a part of their projects (wasn't always the biggest fan of this, but it was flattering). I know that some people weren't proud to be called an elite (honestly, I just think that everyone was just saying this publicly. I think, deep down, they liked it.). And you may frown at me and call me stuck up. And maybe, I am out of line. But the truth is, that I honestly don't know what it was like being on the outside looking in at that time. I only know what it was like for me at that time, and so my views on certain things will be different from the norm.

The subject of this post was mainly suppose to be about what it is that keeps us coming back to Stardoll, but I guess I've strayed a bit off topic. That happens, please bare with me.

The reason I kept coming back to Stardoll, besides this feeling of popularity it gave me for a few years, is not Stardoll. By this I mean, it is not the site itself. I honestly never cared that much about the dress-ups, and changing my medoll's outfit is not the reason I keep logging on. What makes me keep coming back to Stardoll are all these amazing projects that people make about this site. And of course the amazing people in themselves is a good enough reason. It's the friends and it's the projects. Those are the things that inspire me and keeps me coming back for more. Stardoll is not just a site for "fame, fashion and friends", it's a site of creativity. I know that a lot of people that join Stardoll as teenagers, and the site and its members helps them find who they really are. Through the site, we become aware of our own personal style, and its outside projects pushes us to find and nourish our own creative streaks. I don't think I would have found out how much I like writing things like this, if it wasn't for Stardoll. The projects and the friends that we make down the line helps us grow and evolve. They make us more creative and they give us a free space to have a bit of fun and just be teenage girls. We grow as persons through Stardoll and in that process, Stardoll becomes a part of who we are. We keep coming back to this site because we've gotten used to this free creative space, where we can hang out with people who shares our interests. Or at least, that's why I think we keep coming back.

What do you think? Am I out of line? Why do you come back? 

Ps. Shot-out to EMILYmileyrocks for the idea behind this post! If you have any of your own suggestions as to what we could write about, click here.