Sydney Craig Media Effects

This past week I have been reading a book called Beauty for Ashes by Scott A Livingston and I'm obsessed with it. It's all about how we respond to mistreatment in our lives. It encourages us to take the ashes, the pain and sorrows of life, and turn them into beauty by responding to situations as Christ would. I recommend it to everyone!!! One of my favorite quotes says,    We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer-how it was for your mother, how it still is for you...He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid...He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause...He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save hi...

I have become obsessed with the game BitLife. It's a game where you are assigned a random life and you live it from birth to death. You make choices about school, career, dating, kids, etc. You can even murder people, get in fights, adopt children or pets, and so many other things. When my friend first introduced me to this game I thought it sounded dumb. And then I started playing. And then my fiance started playing. And it's so addicting. You just live out different lives and can make decisions that have virtually "no consequence." I know that many people don't believe in catharsis theory, but I make decisions in this game that I never would in real life. And that's exactly why. It's not real life. I can tell the difference. I make sure to only play when I'm alone or if I'm with my fiance we play together. I don't want it to take away our time together. But honestly, it has been a lot of fun.

I am writing this post as I finish my social media fast that I decided to do today with my fiance. We decided to take the day off and just spend time with each other rather than mindlessly scrolling through our phones. It was awesome! I really feel like we had better conversations and overall just focused on each other more and forgot about our phones all-together. I highly recommend a 24-hour social media fast for everyone at least once a month. It really helped me put things into perspective and realize how much time I spend mindlessly scrolling. I am excited and feel like this helped prepare me for the technology fast I want to do this semester!

This week was Halloween! So naturally, in class, we talked about fear. I started to ask myself, why do I like being afraid? I'm the person who enjoys scary movies and haunted houses and October is one of my favorite months. But then sometimes I'm on edge afterward. But why? We talked about how some people have an openness to fear. I feel like that describes me. I am open to fear but sometimes it causes me to have increased fear. I like to be scared because I like to prove to myself that it's not real and that I can overcome my fear. I'm kind of weird in that way. I have always been afraid of heights so I decided to go skydiving to help me with that. I like facing my fears head-on and trying to conquer them. Maybe it's a good thing? Maybe I'm a weirdo? But either way, it's just who I am.