Words&Pictures

What have you been doing the last three years?

I thought about the last three years of my own life while watching this mesmerizing video created by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The agency captured an image of the sun every 12 seconds and created a three-minute video. The video includes two partial moon eclipses, a large solar flare and other planetary happenings.

While all these magnificent happenings were taking place on the surface of the sun, I was living out my tiny life on a tiny planet. I moved from the U.S. to Sweden and now I’m moving back to the U.S. after two years of trying to expand my intellectual and emotional horizons: learning a new job, forming new friendships, feeling lost a lot of the time. During all this time, my relationship with the sun went something like this: I yearned for in the winter and protected myself from it in the summer. I can’t say I ever thought about how fragile it was; how much I took it for granted.

The video is a good reminder for me that every once in a while I need to get outside of my own head and render a new perspective. As Carl Sagan once said in his signature prose: Earth, a “mote of dust, suspended on a sunbeam,” is the only home I’ll ever know, so whether I’m living in Sweden or the U.S. or wherever our next home will be, it’s human kindness—which is  a choice—that makes this short, delicate journey feel warm and nurturing and less scary.

In a way, we create our own sunshine. That’s the metaphor I’ll carry with me while the sun goes about its business and I go about mine.

How to Date a Girl Who Writes

From Elephant Journal: A lovely insight into the mind of a writer, in this case, a female writer: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/04/how-to-date-a-girl-who-writes/

More teens opt out of Facebook this past year

Here’s an interesting article about teens and social media based on new data from Piper Jaffray (a U.S-based investment bank). The trend indicates that teens would rather be more “invisible” on social media platforms (like SnapChat, which does not build a history or store a profile).

Could the trend be a reaction to businesses “fracking” social media sites as soon as they become popular? At the very least I think it shows that teens are willing to use multiple platforms, but they’ll also opt out when something new comes along.

OMG, you are so 2012…