A Write-Up of my "Ted Talk"

I’ve had a smartphone for four years now, and last week, I lost it. I was phoneless for five days while I waited for my replacement. And during those five days I realized that I’m terrible at talking to people. I’m terrible at saying, “hey what are you doing tonight?” I’m terrible at asking, “wanna hang out this weekend?” I’m terrible at coming home at the end of the day and telling my roommates about how my day was. I’m so used to having something happen to me, texting about it, and then forgetting it. I never give an event time to process, I never think about it, let it develop into a story, let it develop into anything: maybe self-reflection, maybe realizations about the world, maybe ideas. I’m not used to retaining my observations.

It’s very hard to reflect in the digital world. Everything happens so fast.

Today, you can express happiness with a colon and a parenthesis. 

:) 

When you see that do you know just how happy I am? Do you know anything about me? 

What if I make it a D.

:D

Does that help? The answer should be no. That is punctuation. You can’t know the intricacies of a human person through punctuation.

I’ve been noticing a trend lately, of people posting statuses on facebook, and, either as their whole status, or to augment their status, they also post a link to a meme, a gif, a video, a song, a comic, in order to better express themselves. I am no enemy to sharing art. If I find something on the internet I like, you better believe I share it. What bothers me is when people start to replace their own expression with other people’s. It bothers me when people spend a long time searching the internet for something that will help them say what they want to, rather than creating it themselves.

So the reason I’m giving this presentation is to convince you to create. In this class we’ve been creating so much: redesigns, mashups, nameplate pages, web comics, blog posts, product sites, you name it. And all I want to say is keep doing that. Because through creating you find yourself. I’m an actor, a filmmaker, and a writer, and I am very happy to say that I know who I am. I didn’t before I began creating. I was diagnosed with OCD in seventh grade and for about a year it consumed me. I was not Shannon Ward I was OCD. But then I began writing I began playing saxophone I began singing and acting and I found myself. I discovered my identity, and my identity is stronger than OCD. I overcame my mental illness through creating.

But in order to create in this digital age we have to resist the easy way outs. Resist letting your observations melt away with your texts. Resist only expressing yourself through punctuation. Resist rushing everywhere and not giving yourself time to think. Resist using other people’s words more than your own.

  

It doesn’t have to be art: you can create business, you can create political platforms, you can create organizations, you can create movements.

You can create anything, just make sure that you do.