As soon as this post is published you’ll be allowed to call me a fearful reactionary but I have to make a confession. The thing is that I can’t stand emojis.

At first, there were just smiles. These funny yellow circles seemed really helpful to express emotions while texting and to prevent ambiguity. I started using them quite often and really enjoyed this new way to empathise certain nuances of my written speech.

Later on, when I first starting using an ‘innovation’, emojis, I also found them quite entertaining. Sometimes, my friends and I even made a kind of code with them. For example, we would make each other guess the hidden message. 

Now I hate the emojis. What makes me so worried about people using them? The fact is that now emoji are either used in excess or compete with actual words. I’ve seen plenty of posts on the Instagram/FB/VK/etc. where each sentence ends up littered with small pictures. Why do this if the meaning of a text is obvious anyway? They neither look pretty nor are relevant. I’ve also seen posts without any words where all the author’s thoughts were put into pictures. It does kill writer’s creativity, doesn’t it? Instead of choosing weighted words, you can just flick through colourful rows of icons and find something close to what you were going to say. Instead of making up a syntactically complete sentence, you can just put together a load of badges.

I think about the books for children and the ones for adults. Where can one find more illustrations and less text and vice versa? It feels like we have become children again who can’t read huge meaningful texts – and what’s more – don’t want to. And it has to do with 'fragmented thinking’, which kills not only creativity but also the depth of comprehension, the ability to critically perceive information and the capacity to focus and concentrate. 

I, of course, do not intend to quit using emoji and don’t judge anyone. I, myself, use them in spite of my own pathetic speech above. The only thing I try to do is to remind my readers that everything needs to be in balance.  

We all know that March is the first Spring month. It’s the beginning of flowers blossoming, the period when nature gradually wakes up. 

Saying ‘we’, I certainly don’t mean St Petersburg citizens. I mentally exclude them. Their approach to March will be mentioned below. 

We, people who live in Spb, know that March is not the first month of spring but the last one of insidious winter. It can be warm and dry for three days at the beginning of March, and then suddenly turn -1°C and start snowing. It can be a prognosis that rain is highly unlikely and suddenly start raining cats and dogs. It can be a wonderful calm sun-drenched morning and horrible windy dull evening. The weather is unpredictable and you never know what you’re supposed to be wearing. 

Rapid weather changes impact not only on your clothes but also on your mood. And sometimes even your blog’s content turns out to be influenced by the weather’s state :) I pin my hopes on April and believe that this post is the last one about the weather!