EVERYONE NEEDS THIS ON THEIR BLOG.

A collection of Ways to Tie a Necktie

Our other collections:

How to fold a shirt

Choosing a suit that fits

6 ways to tie a Scarf

Writer's note

It's been a long day. I've been called in to 2 job interviews, for which I'm happy beyond words but, other than that, oh boy, have I had a swell time?

I'll begin with something that's very close to me: literary work. Ever since I learnt how to write I've had a grand vision of my future. It's been my dream to be a great writer and I've always lived in this illusion that I'm good at it. But today I was rejected by a medium-sized company. No, not my professional application-- I wanted to be a volunteer. It's a quarterly magazine. So they said that they had my test writings checked by professionals and they found them inadequate in regards of grammar and authenticity.

The other thing is, well, literature, too. Remember when I said I've had this dream to be a great writer? Yeah, it pretty much fills every second minute of my waking hours. So here's the other story: Yesterday I recieved an answer to a query I sent to a seemingly fitting agent. She wrote that she feels honored (of course), that I contacted her, however, my work is not really for her. She (of course) encouraged me to keep on trying because she did not reject my book because of its general lack of genuineness but because of her own lack of enthusiasm about it. Yeah, it sucks. I know what you're thinking: Well what does one (1) agent matter anyway? Keep on trying, she said that too. So yes. Thank you. I've been trying. I've been trying for over a year with a total absence of fruition in any respect. I've re-written and polished my work but what does it matter now?

I've never said I'm a writer. Never to anyone. I've always believed humility is crucial and so I've never mentioned myself as a writer or artist. I didn't keep my writing a secret but I sure as rain was modest about it. Still, what I feel right now is this: I'm a complete wreck as a writer. Yeah, I'm a wreck that's for granted but why do I think I'm a writer. I never said I was and I've been constantly forcing myself not to consider myself as that. But in despair and disappointment my thoughts betray me. I'm just a sore loser and a presumptuous fool.

I'm not going to apologize for all the dismal things I've written because they aren't dismal. They're meant to teach you something. Well, who am I trying to lie to? They're meant to teach me something. Something I know and yet pretend to never have heard of. In all honesty I have a lot to learn and I've got to let go of big-faced concepts about myself. I'll be small. I'll remain small and I'll accept being that. I'm too young to be big and it takes some time to get rid of one's youth.

Converting friendship to love (?)

Today I had a very inspiring conversation about love. Someone asked me if my falling in love with my girlfriend was instantaneous. To give a sufficient answer, I had to start from a couple years ago.

In the first years of highschool I had a girlfriend, then we broke up. Then I was attracted to a girl I didn't actually know. It was a very mindless and surprisingly pricey crush/relationship, anyways hard to define and completely irrelevant... I had all these, while my girlfriend and I were only friends.

My experience was, that love is a relationship, where you can't fully trust the other, you have to provide, where feelings are forged and you can't be honest about it, where you kind of get all used-out for a made-up ideal, which doesn't even exist in real life. With this sad and depressing concept I often pictured myself lonely in the future.

HOWEVER, and this however is, I suppose, one of the most important howevers in my entire life, I had a very great friend. She was my secret's keeper, someone, who understood me and whom I understood just as much. She was the most important person to me and I was 100% aware of this but considering what Iknewabout love, I figured it's the best to be friends and not even the slightest bit lovers...

After a long and fruitful friendship, and some disappointing experiences with other girls, the big, romantic turn occured. We (I mean my girlfriend and I (of course)), went to a big christian youth conference, where there was a seminar about how we relate to the people. The preacher said, that we should inspect our lives and find the leaks on our relationships and go and try to mend them. My first thought was a girl I was very keen on getting to fall in love with me, who would've thought... BUT a little later that night, I realised how twisted my life was and more importantly my relationships. And then I started to have faith in love, where you care, you respect, you can be honest, and most of all, you finally are whole.

There was one person, who I felt all this with. And it wasn't and still isn't just some mindless emotional stuff. This is a wonderful, deep and meaningful relationship. It takes you to places you never thought existed. You feel its stunning heights and the somehow hopeful depths. It isn't contrary. It's honest and clean. It makes you balanced and your life seems to finally get on the right track.

I'm in love. Not in the blinded, naiv kind. It's true love and sometimes it comes along with troubles, no doubt, but it feels just right. I'm grateful for my wonderful Girlfriend. Whenever I look at her, or listen to her or just simply think of her, I know, that this is where I belong. She gives me that feeling, that I'm finally home.

I could write houndreds of books about my remaining thoughts on love but this is a piece, which I felt like sharing...

Fitzgerald and Class

I talked to a friend of mine about Hamlet yesterday. He hasn’t read it (not a literary man), so he asked me about its merits. I told him a little bit about this, a little bit about that and then I mentioned how the protagonist is considered to be the first modern man. I said this is probably one of the drama’s heaviest assets, as it’s remained relevant for centuries, to which my friend replied, “Yeah, classics sorta tend to stand the test of time. Suppose that’s why they’re, you know, classics.”

Coming from an art-novice it has the potential of being no more than a piece of conventional wisdom. Perhaps it really isn’t more than a common place but it made me wonder. I’ve had this thought for quite a while now that Fitzgerald was ahead of his time a great deal.

In his works This Side of Paradise and Beautiful and the Damned he wrote quite a few dialogues, where intellectual, authoritative characters contemplate thinking methods and philosophies but they all transcended the early twentieth century, as they almost always reached their climaxes in settling with critical theories.

Oh and he did it with such ease and elegance. Fitzgerald embodied what contemporary thinkers and artists want to become and he did it without ever coming off as artificial or fake. Fitzgerald’s works are classics because in them there are ideas, which were not borne by the time or the general opinion but of an unparalleled artistic mind.

does the job

Quickly threw this together and it instantly made me feel less anxious so it might help some of you idek

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

F Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned

Since 1974

Winter lights on Her face

The Secret Life of ME

Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) got some harsh reviews on accounts of being a cliché and of praising the sort of life that only a substantial amount of money can make possible. Some critics even say they'll graciously overlook these because Ben Stiller's just not that profound and we like him for his unique and entertaining humor, not his abstract thoughts. I watched the movie today and I was blown away.

I had quite low expectations because of the reasons above, and my intention was simply to watch something light and to relax. It was light, yes, and it was relaxing, true, but it wasn't at all as superficial as some say.

The title character, Walter Mitty, is a guy, who, after his father's death, became a responsible adult, who had to put aside his dreams and desires, in order to provide for his family and himself. He lived a life, where adventure existed only in the form of fantasies and daydreams. The movie is about his brave moves of going out to the wild and exotic parts of the world.

I admit, even in my brief summary it sounds like a cliché. However, what makes this movie extraordinary is there, among those lines. It's not the story of a man, who's just a little gray piece of paper (even one of the characters says that he imagined him as that) but someone with a past, with hopes and dreams and abilities. I can't stress abilities enough because that's a crucial point in Walter Mitty's greatness. He does the things that he can actually do and not the impossible. In an early scene we see him perform cool skateboard tricks and that's him, not his imagination, him. Now I'm not saying that someone has to be able-bodied or some such thing to live a good life. My point is that this story shows us a guy, who's coming from somewhere and goes on doing amazing things that he's had the potential to do all along. If he's an athletic guy, then it's a good thing he does things that require that.

Another important element of his character is that he wants to travel. You can say that everybody likes traveling and it's their financial states that prevent them from going to see the world. However, this is a misconception. I see people around me everyday, who say they wish they could go abroad and see this and that part of the world but in reality, they're afraid of people, who don't speak their language, they're uncomfortable with hiking, they hate spontaneity and so on and so forth. If pricey hotels with fancy rooms and fluent English concierges is what you want, then that's actually achievable almost exclusively through spending a fortune on it. If you want to see nice landscapes but only without breaking a sweat, here's tumblr, where there are endless photos that you'll be happy with and that's that. But if you're one of the few adventurous people out there, willing to jump in the ice-cold ocean, then you can do that on very little money.

My point with these is that looking at the events in the movie very specifically will make you say that yeah, it's pretty cool but no one can actually do that. But those specific events would take place in the life of that very specific Walter Mitty.

This movie is about the lifestyle that our generation has forgotten but even a hundred years ago it was the prevailing idea. And I remember that when I was seventeen I wanted to be a journalist and travel to the Sahara and climb the Mount Everest. I know, from my own experience, that abandoning these dreams won't erase them from the fabric of my mind, only I can oppress them with the new idea of life. But it's wrong. It's so wrong actually that my fear or reluctance to realize at least some of them has resulted in having me now with a poor heart, probably incapable of climbing the Everest but at the same time, a heart that's aching to do it.

My conclusion is that not all of us are adventurers or journalists and we shouldn't try to be the things we can't be, so it's not necessary to pretend we're Walter Mitty. However, figuratively, our generation's father died and we've become responsible. But it wouldn't be irresponsible to stop playing it safe and stop living petty lives. We complain a lot and believe all the crazy-labels that are put on all sorts of awesome things and I think these two things are on the top ten list of things that are wrong with people of this era. Let's try to change that.