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My elders would have me believe that the world is a terrible place. They would have me believe that it is filled with terrible people, all of whom are out to do me harm. Strangely enough, they themselves are magically exempt from that particular character assassination of the world population. They have only my best at heart, or so they claim. They aim to educate me on the morass of evil that is daily existence. That evil sludge doesn’t include them, of course, because they have found some magical elixir to ward off selfishness, jealousy, greed, and every other misuse of the human mind that plagues the rest of us. Yet they refuse to share this magical elixir for my protection, and only stilted, pessimistic wisdom is on offer.

These exemplary individuals would have me believe that they have the answers — the answers to every human question, and the key to all that haunts me. All it would require of me would be to accept their view of the world and existence as they know it — an existence filled with cloak, dagger, and bickering - an existence where everyone is a lousy human being except me, and them, of course, because they must be exemplary to tell me what I am doing wrong on such a conveniently regular basis. They must have all their worldly affairs in perfect clockwork order to advise me on what my actions lack, and they must be perfect employees, perfect citizens, perfect parents, perfect siblings, and perhaps even perfect human beings to have the leisure to find and point out my hourly blunders.

I am thankful for such incessant support towards my moral betterment. For I know that I am flawed, and I know I have no answers, only questions. Questions that I ask myself to find my way and decide on right, wrong, and grey. Being such a habitual questioner, where would I be without their distrust, their insecurities, their fears, and their sludge-tinted glasses? Where would I be without their truth?

Perhaps I would never settle into the delusion of knowing all the answers and all the questions. Perhaps I would never stumble upon the misconception of knowing everyone’s motivations, their scheming plots, their twisted minds, and their sordid plans for my downfall. Perhaps I would take nothing or no one for granted, and perhaps I would even find myself on that illusive dirt track through the lush forest of life called happiness, without ever expecting to reach a hidden palace of the same name.

Perhaps I will abstain from their truths, because as seductive as the answers are, I do not like what they say. I prefer my questions. I prefer my complex chaos of illusive knowledge than their convenient truths — truths that would raise me to their level of superiority, from where I could look down and survey the world without ever needing to study my countenance in the mirror. I prefer the agony of staring at my imperfect features and striving to higher humanity than the path to wisdom and preeminence that they tantalizingly lay before me.

I do not want to be that person.
Do you?

Samir

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The presentation at my college was done on Sunday. I would say it went well, though not quite an outright and complete success. I get the feeling I might have overestimated the level of interest amongst final year university students for this subject matter, and also their level of understanding of basic internet technologies. Perhaps that is a geek affliction.

I do hope it was piqued their curiosity, at least. It certainly resulted in some more thinking on the subject of online portfolios in particular, and some of the trials and tribulations involved. So much so that there was the realisation amongst the group that they had no idea where to begin with building a website, and I might be going in next week to conduct a workshop on creating a simple website from scratch. One seemingly insurmountable task at a time.

While I will write up the contents of the entire presentation as an article here some time soon, I did promise my stressed out, soon to be graduating, audience that I would post links to some of the resources and software I mentioned (I didn’t have the time to prepare a handout before the event, unfortunately), so here they are:

Portfolio PDF Tools

PDFCreator
http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org

Scribus
http://www.scribus.net

Portfolio Website Tools

KompoZer
http://www.kompozer.net

WordPress
http://www.wordpress.org

Samir

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I have been invited to give a presentation — a presentation on digital portfolios to be precise. Dr. John Alexander Smith (with whom I’ve worked before), of the Interior Design department at my old college asked me if I would be interested in talking to a class of final year undergraduates on the subject of electronic portfolios and personal websites. Rarely the one to back down from a chance to scare myself to death with seemingly insurmountable tasks, I said yes.

I haven’t given a formal presentation to a group of people in a while. In more recent years, as a freelance designer, I’ve often needed to think on my feet and go into explanatory monologues with clients on occasion, but that sort of spur-of-the moment, spontaneous occurrence was almost never planned and I rarely found it intimidating. This was in large part because I had full confidence in what I was saying. Always a plus.

Say the words presentation or public speaking, however, and most people, myself included, lose sight of the pragmatism demonstrated in my previous example. Then it comes down to pure and unadulterated fear of the fight-or-flight variety.

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By all measures, you would consider me to be someone involved in the creative pursuits. I am also a writer and commentator on many things, both on this blog and off. So I do not broach the subject of originality lightly.

The long surviving myth of originality and the stupidity of most criticism as petty fault-finding came up again recently, when Vishal pointed me to yet another meticulously researched site documenting where every popular Hindi song was “lifted” from. The question that once again came to mind was: Is any music truly original?

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