Orange…
The other morning there was this weird orangey light. It was like the whole of outside had an instagram filter applied to it. It made me want to blink hard to try and re-configure the light, it didn’t seem right. I remember years ago when there was a massive dust storm somewhere in central Europe ( im a bit sketchy on the details!) but where we were living at the time in the south east of the UK..there was a light covering of red dust on everything and the colours around at that time reflected it. It was bizarre, like being inside one of those seaside sand shakers.
It was a nice light this morning of orange..but it felt odd…my eyes frantically sending messages to my brain along the lines of ‘the sky is supposed to be blue, this is ALL wrong!’ Our brain has its colour pallet and when things don’t quite fit into that it sort of goes into a mad scramble to sort it all out and make sense of it. The sky should be blue, the grass should be green, that fence should be brown etc etc….
I like the colour orange, its such a cheerful colour and so fantastic at autumn time, so many different types of orange just in the trees…but when the light gets involved too….
Its a little bit special…you just have to tell your eyes to go with it….
Facebook…
I used to be a real fan of facebook. Really..i was.
I remember first being told about it by a friend and he was explaining how his sister in America used it a lot and it was this new big thing. I remember logging on (on dial up..which takes some patience!) and not being able to understand why it would ever be useful. I think i logged on, got an account and then promptly forgot about it…
Then dawned the age of the iphone and for me this opened up a whole world of possible surfing opportunities and in a moment of mild interest i loaded the facebook app from itunes and then facebook became part of my daily catching up, finding friends from years ago, seeing kids grow up and change, finding out news and of course that delightful past time of rolling your eyes at how wonderful everybody’s day, holiday, family, car, weekend etc are…yeah yeah don’t go on there after you have had a wet week camping in Devon you are going to depress the C**P out of yourself flicking through the 200 pictures posted by someone you vaguely know of all their inclusive, sun soaked, smiley, happy, sangria holiday. 😉
Anyhoo…Recently i added a business type page for my photography and it has been amazing for referrals and a quick way of communicating with my clients.
Then things started to change and i heard scary stories about photos loaded to FB being the property of FB, entire pages just disappearing without a mention. More recently there seems to be much more control over what you actually see in your news feed. The OH and i have had many conversations along the lines of..
‘hey did you see X’s photos of his kids?’ –
‘er…no’ and then i discover that, that person’s updates are not featuring in my newsfeed AT ALL despite being a friend of mine and you know a proper friend not someone who you vaguely know. 😉
This has been happening more and more. I see less of actual updates and more and more of company promotion.
Now it appears that if FB think you are newsworthy enough then you will feature in newsfeeds……nice… so companies that rely on reaching their clients via fb are now finding that they are only reaching (in some cases) as little as 10% of their followers because fb is not deeming their news worthy enough to go into all their followers newsfeed.
The newest development? The option to ‘promote’ your posts which means that you can pay for your posts to be in other people’s newsfeeds. Click on it and facebook will cheerfully ask you for your paypal details and off you go. *shakes head* Â you would think that promoted posts would only be from people that you are friends with or pages you like. Not so…i keep getting promoted posts from facebook accounts that i have never had anything to do with..
I remember reading something about  Mark Zuckerberg saying facebook would always be free…hmmmm..guess that changes when you have shareholders to satisfy now eh?
twitter anyone?
🙂
#satcap
and oldie but a goodie, whats to do here….and i promise to be back with finding the gold and monday club next week. *slaps wrist*
Finding the gold
Finding the gold: When old prospectors would look for gold they would take large pan and grab up huge loads of gravel and sand, shaking it backwards and forwards to encourage the heavier gold to the bottom of the pan, at the same time the lighter materials which are worthless are worked up to the surface and swept away. This process is repeated until all that is left is the heaviest most valuable material.Â
My finding the gold project is inspired by this description, searching through the daily stuff of life that is ultimately worthless…the stress, the what ifs, the tantrums, the work nonsense,…and finding those valuable bits of my day, my week that are the moments i need to remember. The things that catch my eye and are just beautiful in their simplicity unbidden and untouched by the daily grind. Things that make me smile, even if sometimes that smile doesn’t linger and stay.
Some weeks it is harder to than others, sometimes the pan feels like it is only full of gravel and sand. There are weeks when its hard to keep going, searching through the detritus of this crazy, busy, frantic stage of life. Times when having time to catch you breathe seems impossible let alone stopping to look… but then you catch a glimpse, even in the darkest of darkness a small shard of gold can shine out and lift your spirits. Â Even if it is just one piece.
Can you find the gold in your day…?
