{"id":14044,"date":"2015-09-11T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/?p=14044"},"modified":"2015-09-10T16:18:57","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T23:18:57","slug":"happy-friday-randomness-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/?p=14044","title":{"rendered":"Happy Friday + Randomness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bear-on-bike\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Happy Friday! Lately, I’ve been spending a few minutes every morning with my watercolors, painting whatever comes to mind. As a way to chronicle my daily paintbrush musings, I’ve been posting them on instagram<\/a>, and it fills me with tiny bubbles of joy\u00a0to have this little ritual (don’t roll your eyes!). There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I paint and I don’t know how long I’ll continue this.<\/p>\n

As I’m wont to do, I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole “follower” culture that’s the norm these days.\u00a0On Wednesday,\u00a0I had to block an IG follower with a provocative profile image of a male appendage front and center, and then realized that a slew of my so-called followers are spammers of similar ilk. It’s sad.<\/p>\n

Not because I don’t have\u00a0as many followers as I’d initially thought\u00a0— that\u00a0doesn’t bother me in the least, but because it taints my experience of something I was genuinely enjoying. On Pinterest, I have over 20,000 followers, but I’m sure most of them are in the business involving handcuffs and poles and disco lighting. And then there’s the whole insecurity-inducing aspect of the popularity contest…yet we can’t forget the astronomical benefits of the connectivity and access social media promotes. I wonder what the next phase is? Curiouser and curiouser.<\/p>\n

“It takes more courage to be nice and happy,” M told me the other day. Do you think that’s true? Is human nature really prone to baseness and gloom? Perhaps.\u00a0I recently heard a Buddhist reference, which went something along the lines of how our minds are naturally pure and radiant but are frequently visited by unpleasant and unwanted thoughts and emotions like greed, jealousy, anger, hate…I like to think that we’re all basically good, and I definitely prefer the Buddhist outlook. Then again, in my world, bears ride bikes while sporting grins, so I may not be a trusted source.<\/p>\n

*************************************<\/p>\n

I am truly and earnestly burrowing into the final, final phase of book #2, and I want to give it\u00a0the fullest\u00a0attention that I can. As such, I’m going to cut myself some slack again and post less frequently here over the next three weeks. Once a week, that’s my aim…Have a wonderful weekend, all!<\/p>\n

*************************************<\/p>\n

Good to shake things up<\/em>
\nQuality trumps quantity<\/em>
\nThat’s what I say, yo*<\/em><\/p>\n

*K likes to make up raps and I’m easily influenced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Friday! Lately, I’ve been spending a few minutes every morning with my watercolors, painting whatever comes to mind. As a way to chronicle my daily paintbrush musings, I’ve been posting them on instagram, and it fills me with tiny bubbles of joy\u00a0to have this little ritual (don’t roll your eyes!). There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I paint and I don’t know how long I’ll continue this. As I’m wont to do, I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole “follower” culture that’s the norm these days.\u00a0On Wednesday,\u00a0I had to block an IG follower with a provocative profile image of a male appendage front and center, and then realized that a slew of my so-called followers are spammers of similar ilk. It’s sad. Not because I don’t have\u00a0as many followers as I’d initially thought\u00a0— that\u00a0doesn’t bother me in the least, but because it taints my experience of something I was genuinely enjoying. On Pinterest, I have over 20,000 followers, but I’m sure most of them are in the business involving handcuffs and poles and disco lighting. And then there’s the whole insecurity-inducing aspect of the popularity contest…yet we can’t forget the astronomical benefits of the connectivity and access social media promotes. I wonder what the next phase is? Curiouser and curiouser. “It takes more courage to be nice and happy,” M told me the other day. Do you think that’s true? Is human nature really prone to baseness and gloom? Perhaps.\u00a0I recently heard a Buddhist reference, which went something along the lines of how our minds are naturally pure and radiant but are frequently visited by unpleasant and unwanted thoughts and emotions like greed, jealousy, anger, hate…I like to think that we’re all basically good, and I definitely prefer the Buddhist outlook. Then again, in my world, bears ride bikes while sporting grins, so I may not be a trusted source. ************************************* I am truly and earnestly burrowing into the final, final phase of book #2, and I want to give it\u00a0the fullest\u00a0attention that I can. As such, I’m going to cut myself some slack again and post less frequently here over the next three weeks. Once a week, that’s my aim…Have a wonderful weekend, all! ************************************* Good to shake things up Quality trumps quantity That’s what I say, yo* *K likes to make up raps and I’m easily influenced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-illustration","7":"category-watercolor","8":"entry","9":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14047,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14044\/revisions\/14047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}