Month: September 2017

I’m feeling a bit sentimental today. When I thought about the idea of this blog post and what it truly means, I was hungry.

Now that my appetite has been satisfied, it’s time to think about why the food I just ate was important. We can talk about its nutritional values, its price, etc. But, I ate that buffalo chicken sandwich all by myself in a crowded sandwich shop.

How could I feel so alone in a crowded place? How can that be possible if food is a comfort to the hungry?

Well, it’s because recently, I’ve changed my eating habits. Not in a nutritious way, mind you; in a way that allows me to share my food and my experiences with my friends.

Every Sunday night for the last month, my friends and I come together and create gigantic feasts to share amongst ourselves and our close friends. We’ve made fajitas, ribs, fried chicken & waffles, and we’ve even made our own crawfish boil.

This isn’t a brag fest about my friends and I being able to cook these; anyone can cook these. What I’m trying to relay is the togetherness of the dishes we make.

Before our guests arrive, my roommates and I prepare the meal while listening to music that relates to the dishes we are serving. For example, when we made the crawfish boil, we listened to old, New Orleans style jazz. When making the fajitas, we listened to Hispanic flute and dance music. Pizza? You’d bet your ass we listened to the Rat Pack.

It’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had. With the fun preparation of the food and the bond of friendship, it makes the end product that much better(it tastes delicious anyway).

After the meal is cooked, a handful or two of friends swing by for good times. The last dinner we had, I finally took a step back to appreciate the culture we’ve created for ourselves. I can’t call myself a southern chef or a boil master and neither can a lot of people that prepare meals for their families or friends. We leave those titles to the professionals that cook.

But who are the professionals? No matter where they come from, no matter the ethnicity, and no matter the food they cook, these professionals are all just people who want to make everyone feel good through food. They want to bring together people of all shapes, sizes, and colors to share food and experiences.

When I took a step back this past Sunday and felt what hopefully anybody who has prepared food for others before, I figured out the togetherness of food. Food satisfies us all.

I’ve said it before, of course food satisfies our hunger. We need it to survive. But, love and togetherness can also keep a suffering world alive.

I urge anybody to try to replicate this feeling of togetherness and love. Take a step back with loved ones and friends of old and new to share food. Prepare a dish from scratch and bring together the aspects of your life onto one plate and in one place.

Food and togetherness are both experiences that should be served alongside one another. Although you may want to sit in a sandwich shop by yourself, just try once a week to share a meal with someone and appreciate it.

Appreciating the time spent over food makes the meal that much more memorable and much more satisfactory.

I hope that everyone can experience togetherness in a time of divide over a meal with friends.

(My friends and I are making a rum ham this Sunday…..I hope it’s good. Regardless, we’ll be doing it for the experience and the togetherness).

~DS

I haven’t updated my blog with my first published story yet because I don’t have a published story yet. This is of course, no one’s fault for things don’t happen until they do.

I’ve hit my first speed bump as a journalist though. I’ve had sources gone quiet for a bit and it’s starting to be a gigantic pain in the ass. But there’s nothing I can do except try and be a pain in the ass back without being creepy.

There are a bunch of questions that run through my head as I try to focus on my first story and getting that going while other events and stories go soaring over my head. I feel behind though I’m all on top of my feature idea. I find myself slinking back onto social media and I see other people publishing works while I feel left in the dust.

I don’t see how much more I can do but I’ve got to do something. I guess I just have to re-evaluate myself and try to refresh my outlook on being a journalist. It’s my priority and I should stop feeling like I have a promise held down to one story. I should get going on other works and maybe toss aside my pride behind my first story.

Anyways, the title of this post had social media within it and I did mean to discuss social media and my adapted feeling towards it in the world of journalism.

I’ve recently had my profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and iTunes peer reviewed for the first time by somebody who I’m not friends with and it was actually an eye opening experience. To what I thought was a profile clean up before college, I had made my profiles readily appropriate for basic purposes.

Basic purposes being, not looking  weird to girls who wanted to slide into my DMs. But, now that I’m an official reporter for a news organization, I really have to step up my game.

For instance, all those pages I liked in seventh grade that are inactive on Facebook now can still be seen by the social media hunters that want to see who’s interviewing them. I’ve got to do a total revamp of all my profiles big time if I want to actually be considered for a job somewhere.

Though, my YouTube, Twitter, and iTunes profiles are all sound. I still run my “Nerd News” gaming page on YouTube. My Twitter page is the best form of myself online. Meanwhile, my iTunes page is where you can find “The Creatively Challenged Podcast” which is the podcast my friends and I discuss movie and entertainment news.

There’s a time and a place for everything in real life and in your social media life. Once you become an adult in the working world, it’s time to clean up the profiles. Unless your job depends on you being a wild and spontaneous personality on social media, it’s time to grow up.

So don’t be mad if you don’t get the job you wanted or if somebody doesn’t want to date you because you’ve got videos and likes on your profile that indicate you plow beers like water and want to post about it. Well, it’s still pretty impressive, just leave it off of social media.

Through the emotional rollercoaster that was this post (which mimics my life at the moment), remember, clean up your social media profiles and be professional when you can be. Also, straighten out your priorities and make sure your life is the one you want to be living.

~DS