Reflection

    It has been a bit of time since I last posted. During the past couple of weeks, I decided to focus on my midterms, and fully enjoy my Spring Break. It is hard to truly relax when deadlines and commitments exist. Once in a while, clearing my mind is useful for keeping me from burning out and becoming overwhelmed. During breaks, I tend to cease drawing and writing to not only allow my hands to receive a break, but to keep myself from obtaining art block or writer's block as well. Of course, if I do have priorities to complete during a break I will get them done before their deadlines. As for this blog, I felt as though it was something I could get back to the week after break. Due to it being the week after the half-way break though, I'm going to take the opportunity to reflect upon my previous blogs. 

   When I was first creating this blog and planning a title for it, I wanted the blog's theme to be apart of all my blogs in some way. The theme I decided to go with was my writer's block, since I realized that this blog would be a great cure for my writer's block. If I'm being honest, being able to write freely in this blog has inspired me to write in my personal journal more often. Anyways, as I was saying, my goal by the end of this semester is to have multiple references to my writer's block sprinkled throughout this blog along with ways I manage it. This goal of mine has been going really well in my opinion, as it has sparked self-conversations and ideas in my posts. I feel that it also creates unison throughout my blog as a whole. This is not the only form of unison I have though, as I have also tried to keep the formatting of my blogs alike along with including similar images.

    Formatting in an important asset in making a piece of writing look consistent and clean throughout. If words are all over the place, the piece of writing becomes difficult to understand. Also, if the paper has paragraphs that do not line up and are placed strongly on the page, it makes a piece of writing uninteresting. Therefore, structure plays a very important role in making a piece of writing eye catching and understandable. I make sure that with all my blogs, paragraphs remain evenly spaced, and there are always three paragraphs in every post due to the reasons I listed previously in this paragraph. Also, I tend to keep my writing lined up to the left of the page so that it lines up neatly with the left side of images. Speaking of pictures, so far I've made sure that ever image posted so far had relevance and is an image taken by me to reduce copyright problems. Those are what I've kept consistent throughout my blog thus far. I'd like to add that I've included the picture of my dog being cute to hopefully give you motivation or inspiration as well to power through the rest of your second semester. 

Midway

 

    Well, it seems I have made it to the middle of my second semester, and what occurs during the middle of the second semester of college? Spring break! I am so glad that I will have a week off, because so far this week has been packed with work. Most of my midterms are projects, so I do not have to study or memorize a lot of information for tests. Yet, they do require lots of time to complete. It also doesn’t help that most of them involve writing, which is what I procrastinate the worst on. Yet, the feeling of a nice long break is offering me a bit of motivation. Plus, the upcoming break is something I can use as writing material for this week’s blog. So, with one week left until break, I will be writing about how I plan on filling my time during the break. 

    When it comes to breaks, the classic way to enjoy them is by going on a vacation with friends or family. Over the years, my family has gone on multiple vacations over spring break, except for when Covid-19 occurred. Now, with my brother coming home from college, my mom did propose the idea of my family spending a night or two in Chicago. If we were to visit Chicago, an item on the bucket list is eating at a Michelin starred restaurant. I'm actually looking online right now trying to debate which restaurant I'd like to try. Looking at these options though, I am laughing over the lack of food that chefs put on each plate. Now, I am sure some of those dish’s taste amazing, but I have no clue what is appealing about small portions. Perhaps they made portions small to allow people to try multiple dishes and to encourage customers to spend more money. The smaller portions do have me wondering if some of the dishes are overpriced though. 

 

    Looking at these dishes more, I wonder how much of an impact art has on the food world. Part of what makes a dining experience enjoyable is the appearance of the food. Looking at pictures, most of these Michelin star dishes have artistic designs due to the way the chefs apply sauces and ingredients, utilize fancy plates, and incorporate other creative touches. Some designs look more appealing and make more sense than others, but I wonder if part of the quality of the food’s taste comes from its unique designs. Perhaps it may be the inclusion of different flavors and spices that allow chefs to be more creative with their unique plating ideas. Diving further into this train of thought, it does seem plausible that some chefs take art classes at some point in their lives or learn about art in some way to help them with plating designs. Since cooking is so closely knit with art, should cooking be considered a type of art or method of expressing creativity? Personally, I’d say yes based on my current thoughts. Anyways, who knows if my family will go on this mini vacation to Chicago over break. What I do know is that I’m excited for break, and I hope everyone who will also be on Spring Break has a good and relaxing week! 

Image source: Photo taken by me a few years ago in San Destin, Florida, which is where my family went the last time we planned a Spring Break vacation.