Making a profile picture is always hard for me. To capture the entire essence of a person in one small image is a daunting challenge to say the least. I saw the assignment, sat down and took a long time thinking about what I wanted to present myself as to these people that, frankly, I don’t know that well. After a deliberating on it on and off for a week I finally came up with an idea I liked.

The icon consists of nothing but a time photo of a rat and my name written on the side in my less-than-perfect penmanship. I thought of making a collage but I feel like this simple image alone conveys what a want.

I’ve always felt a connection to the common rat, rats being one of my favorite animals. Most people see them as pests, ugly little creatures that infest people’s homes and businesses. While they do tend to make themselves comfortable in places they shouldn’t be, there is more to them than chewing through drywall. They are quite social and intelligent creatures, needing companionship and mental stimulation when kept as pets. Domestic rats have been a staple of research in part due to their intelligence and willingness to complete simple tasks.

As a kid I was often mocked for my weight and just general awkwardness. I didn’t really know how to socialize that well with other kids and tried to make myself as small as possible to avoid the other kids. However I was a bit of a teachers pet. I was eager to please anyone I could so happily did assignments given to me and went out of my way to please them with art or cool rocks I found outside at recess. The parallels between the common rat and a younger me draw themselves. Small, intelligent, misunderstood creatures. Found in places they feel like they don’t belong.

Luckily in high school I found a group I clicked with, and made friends willing to stand up for me. Generally now a days I find myself in places where I am warmly welcomed. Still, I see myself in these small misunderstood rodents.

(Image found on: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mr_and_Mrs_Rattus_Old_English_Black_Rat_(3589381404).jpg I could not find any information on the photographer however, guessing from the age of the photo it now falls into public domain)

Happy Friday. I chose this image as my avatar for sunday sketch 1. This is a picture of a raccoon at a local park back home in Vancouver. Honestly I like raccoons, they are pretty cute animals and are very intelligent. There is a family of raccoons that lives in my neighbourhood and I always see them walking across the streets when I walk my dog at night. In a way this badge represents my love for nature and animals. While creating this badge, I had problems finding a image on flickr that I thought was unique and liked. If I think of a name maybe I’ll name him..

This is an image of Eren Jaeger from the comic based anime: Attack on Titan. I chose a picture of Eren because Attack on Titan is the first anime that I have ever watched, and I have been enjoying it very much so far. Eren is a character that is driven by pure determination to revenge his mother, who unfortunately was eaten alive by a monster titan. Although I have not experienced such a horrific event, I can relate to Eren’s drive to achieve his goal as I have a similar type of drive to achieve some of my goals in life as well. When creating the badge, I encountered the copyright issue where the image that I found and was originally going to use did not have a Creative Common license. Hence, I could not use that image and restarted my work on a different image.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

This assignment will be easy. I have the perfect avatar idea!

Those were my thoughts when I first started this task of creating an avatar to represent myself and my website. I had initially wanted to use a panel from my favorite manga (One-Punch Man) as the foundation for my avatar; I would have then edited my name into one of the speech bubbles. This idea would have been perfect if it had not been for that pesky thing called copyright. After extensive searches on Flickr and Google, I could not find a single CC-licensed image of the manga panel I wanted. I, a sane man who would never dare to risk copyright infringement, bowed down to the power of copyright laws and resorted to the next best option: using an image from my phone’s camera roll.

Four-year-old me shooting imaginary Power Rangers blasters is a perfect reflection of who I am today—a child at heart. Children thrive on having fun, and one cannot have fun without a vivid imagination. I believe adults also thrive on having fun, and that is why I never let my vivid imagination die out. To this day, no matter how dull and bleak some days might be, I continue using my child-like imagination to have fun however and whenever I can. I continue to shoot those imaginary Power Rangers blasters.

I chose this picture to be the basis of my avatar because I thought it was highly symbolic. To me, the water and the land represent my future aspirations and the work those aspirations will require. As you can see in the picture, there is much more water than land. This is because my future is uncertain and I have to discover what I want to do with the rest of my life.

In the top right corner of my avatar, I put a Michael Jordan quote that reads, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. ” Since most people believe that they had a humble upbringing to a certain degree, this quote could be interpreted as rather cliche. However, I interpret it more in a future sense. Although I do not know what the future holds in store for me, I know I can learn from my failures, which will hopefully lead to success.

The picture I selected was taken about a month ago when my friend and I went to a local beach.