Blog Post 2 (Anton Kyrylenko)

Where will you write your project? On a train? In a room? In a library? In multiple places? Describe this place or places. How might being more mindful of the space you are writing in impact what you write?

When I will be writing my autoethnography, it will most likely be at home. The room I would write in is a cozy place for me, yet some would say a minimalist one since I had only lived there for four years, so I never bothered decorating it too much. I have a large classic world map, a Ukrainian flag signed by many of my friends from Ukraine as a gift to me when I was leaving to New York, along with the medals hung around the flag that I would collect from my years of competing in swimming, I have a medium sized bookshelf, a computer table with a computer, an extremely comfortable yet compact IKEA bed, and books about physics and other sciences. In a sense, this room reflects my interests, and how I learn to prioritize the important things in my life. It reflects on how I would move around a lot in my life and my realization that you cannot always bring everything with you, and how some things should be prioritized over others. This room is never empty for me despite the lack of excess furniture in it because the things that are in it – are surely meaningful to me. This would certainly support my theme in writing my autoethnography about adapting and moving a lot in my childhood.

The human mind constantly searches for patterns and connections in the world around it and molds itself in order to better fit into the environment. From that, the environment around us can have that certain control over our mental states. A good example for me, is visiting old orthodox churches in Ukraine, that are filled with history, magnificent architecture and art that vastly differs from the traditional American catholic cathedrals. Other than having religious reasons to visit them occasionally, such as Christmas or Easter, going to those churches back when I lived in Ukraine was a place of certain mental relaxation, that would free my mind and calm my worries. Often, it would not necessarily even be related with me being religious about the meditation.  It would get me to think more philosophically about life, and the experiences that it brings me, both good and difficult. It would free my mind from the clutter and the unnecessary worries just like the excess furniture I would never actually need in my room.

When considering the place that you write in, it is also important to consider what kind of emotions and memories this place brings to you and treat it as a library of the past experiences that you may have had here, that would run certain circuits of emotions and memories in your mind. Writing takes time, focus, and inspiration. The place that you compose your writing can have a strong impact on the work that comes out and is one of the key components of writing. If looked upon from an artistic perspective, people often speak about places that inspire them and fill them with thought for creativity, whether its painting, composing music or writing. This can include visits to the scenic natural places that you might paint of or being surrounded by people ambiguously searching for knowledge in a rich library of a university or a public city one. On the other hand, being in a place where art is frowned upon or around people that talk down about it can significantly impact the way you see your motivation, writing process and potentially its content. Another example of how the space around you can impact on how you write is the people in your classroom during a lecture. Form experience, I had noticed that when students around me are more serious about the current lecture that is going on, I subconsciously become more focused on the lecture as well and become prompted to take notes just like the people around me are. You can know it to yourself that it is important to listen, but when you have examples showing you that it is worth listening, you instinctively will become more focused on what is going on. It is a primal instinct that people have- to follow the crowd (to a certain degree). We cannot avoid it and it governs our daily lives and the writing we do as well.

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