Journal #36 - Being Yourself

Have you ever had that friend whose personality changes depending on who they are with? Most people do. If you do not, then there is a possibility that you are that person. Anywho, those people probably have difficulty being themselves. This unfortunately is true of a lot of people. Most people, unless you are a perfect person, act differently around their parents or grandparents than they do around their friends and peers. It is just how it works. It is a sad truth though. When you think about yourself, you are able to picture who you know you are truly like, whether you at that way or not. Would it not be great if we could all just be ourselves to everyone? We would never have to fear that we were acting differently than we normally do because we'd always be the same! It is extremely important that we, as human beings, show who we really are to those around us. What is the point in living a lie? If we were able to be ourselves and let our true colors shine, we would most likely be more happy than if we fake our behavior. I will not start talking about how God made us all perfect since not everyone is of the Christian faith, but I will say that however you were made, you were made for a reason. Everyone is unique and I am a strong believer in having that uniqueness shine through. Being yourself brings more joy and accomplishment to your life. It can make you feel like you have a purpose in life. You. Your unique personality that it probably going to be loved no matter what at least by some people in the world. So, whenever you are with people that you like, be sure to be yourself. You are a special person, made for a reason, and if you choose to hide that, you will never feel truly fulfilled in this world.

Journal #35 - Comparing My Writing

Today the journal is based around how my writing has changed since the beginning of the year. Seeing as though it was half a year ago that I wrote the five hundred word essay on the Declaration of Independence, one could imagine that I have changed a great deal in how my literary styles are arranged. Looking at the essay now,  I see that I obviously could not fathom the concept of a five paragraph essay. Seeing as though I wrote roughly a million of them over the summer for AP United States History, you would think I would understand that. My essay from before had exactly three paragraphs and, while they were of decent length and provided a lot of information, that would just not cut it. Nowadays, my essays all contain at least five paragraphs, which is very helpful for the future. Now that I have read through the essay, I am appalled at my foolishness. What was I thinking? I put one quote in the essay. One. There was not even a second citation. I just flat out quoted the Declaration at one point and talked around it. Now I looked over at the essay I wrote last night on Walt Whitman and his search for self - I have a nice, decently lengthed essay with five paragraphs and six citations, unless I miscounted. Around each quote or reference is a detailed explanation as to why it is important to my writing. That is obviously something that I did not understand five months ago. My writing has changed a lot since the beginning of the school year. I can now elaborate my thoughts in a more detailed fashion, accurately portraying my ideas among the facts I gathered from whatever we were analyzing and the literary criticisms online. Thankfully, my writing in general - the actual sound of my sentences - has improved a lot more. Instead of sounding like a simple high school student, I am starting to sound like more of an advanced placement or honors student. For these reasons and the ones above, I have improved a lot since the beginning of the year.

Journal #34 - Describe Myself?

Well, sure! In one word, I can tell you that I'm weird. I'm strange. I use humor in response to anything unless something or someone died. I get overly excited whilst explaining things to people that I really want to explain things to and even then-!... I am very quiet. However, I am getting over this chronic silence. As my self esteem rises for whatever reason that will never be explained, I am gradually getting more sociable to those I rarely chat with. Believe me; I am anything but quiet when you are my friend. I am the chatter box of your life and you probably want nothing more than to get rid of me. Nonetheless-! I tend to enjoy being quiet more of the time. Observing others and how they act really entertains me, so it works out! After having the actual description of the journal given, I now have to talk about my spiritual self. If I was thinking of this in a simple way, I would say, "Well, I am an evangelical Lutheran and I attend church every Sunday." However, I am pretty sure I was supposed to discuss it on a more deep level. So, I will try that. I like to consider myself a good moral-ed person. I try to help whoever I can and in most cases I succeed. I stay away from things that could potentially harm me, such as drugs or alcohol, and I have good intentions in life. I want to go to college, get a degree, get a job, get married, and have a family until I finally die hopefully a quiet, peaceful death in my sleep in my late eighties or early nineties. That is pretty much all I have got. I am well off spiritually. I get constant guidance from great family and friends and my consistent visits to church. Because of this, I, in a completely non-boastful way, consider myself a good person.

Journal #33 - Stress Relief

We all have our ways of dealing with stress. We have to. Stress is a naturally occurring force that has the ability to overcome all aspects of our poor poor lives. Because it affects all of us, we form ways of reducing our stress and connecting with ourselves in order to achieve optimum happiness. Such things vary depending on the person. Some people eat comfort foods from their childhood. Some watch television or play video games. Some people envelope themselves within the confines of a specific hobby that takes up obnoxious amounts of their lives. I, for one, have a very specific list of things that I do when I am overly stressed with things that usually derive from the pains of Junior year. Nonetheless, this list has never ceased to make me happy when I am down and so I will forever continue to use it. First of all, there is nothing better to ease my stress after a hard school day than a strawberry and banana smoothie with nilla wafers on the side - sorry to be so specific. It is literally the reason for any happiness that I have ever experienced in my life. Okay, that is a lie. However, I still seriously love that after school snack. It has the power to increase my happiness levels from 30% or 40% to 60%-80%, depending on how much sugar I add. In addition to this, I also like to spend a lot of my time playing video games and watching television, as I stated earlier. Though, I have noticed that I do not go to television as much as video games, unless there is something I seriously want to watch. A night of video games can bring my spirits up to 100% as long as I don't die or I make something seriously spectacular on Minecraft. Then, there's always taking a nap, but I don't always have time for that. At school, I frequently get stressed out of my mind. In order to fix that, at least before my last class in PACE, I draw. I draw everywhere. Mostly in my notebooks. Drawing is my way of expressing myself and being happy. It is an extreme stress reliever for me. In the end, many things can make me happy and help me connect with myself, and due to my constantly rising stress levels, I really need them.

Journal #32 - Revolution

When I think of the word "revolutionize", I think of changing the mind set of a lot of people. Hopefully, the new mindset is one that is better than the previous, leading to a better world. I imagine that it is incredible to experience a revolution. Everything around you is changing, and you can take that as a good thing or a bad thing. However, I can also imagine the hardships that one would have to go through in order to revolutionize something. It would be pretty tough to change the mindset of so many people. Everything would have to be organized in a way that works for everyone, or that the people can deal with. When I think of a revolution, I think of the American Revolution. I also think of the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, but that is another story. The American Revolution took a lot of thought and dedication. In order for it to take place, many people had to get involved and show equal amounts of dedication and devotion to the cause. That is what makes such revolutions work. Some revolutions can also be bad, in which normally only a few people are involved. In that case, I imagine that the task of revolutionizing the way people think or do things would be pretty tough. Now that I think about it, since we're talking about poetry through Emily Dickinson, It could be pretty easy to get your thoughts and ideas across. Emily Dickinson, where a lonely woman who spent her life in solitude, got her ideas across through her numerous poems. The poems spread to the people of the world and through her descriptions of her thoughts and ideas, the readers were able to see the world in a whole new way... Dickinson's way. In a way, this was a revolution, because it took a large group of people and made them think in a different way. That is quite a revolution.

Journal #30 - Civil Rights

As we make our way into February (its already the sixth), we can see that it is currently black history month. It is quite an interesting month if I do say so myself. However, when I look at the past, I can only think of all the trouble racism has caused in the past. Why do we have this black history month? Because so many brave African Americans fought for the right to be equal. A fight that they never should have had to fight. I am a strong believer in civil rights, especially to those of a different color. What makes them different to us as people? Nothing. The only difference is our color, and that should not even matter. We are not in control of how we look in that sense. If every African American went Michael Jackson on themselves and dyed themselves white, they would be no different than if they were black. Having a prejudice toward African Americans because of such a small fact seems foolish. Its okay to think that whites are different from blacks, but it is not okay to think any one better than the other. In the end, we are all human, and that is all that should matter. Not to preach, but God made all of us in the same form of a human, and whether the skin is darkened by the sun, or lightened by the moon, has absolutely no say in who we are as people. We all have thoughts and ideas that can be the same or different. We all think with the same kind of brain and move with the same kind of feet. People say that a blind person would be the best person to love because they cannot judge on looks, only on character. I do not wish that everyone was blind, but I understand why someone would say that. If an African American and a Caucasian person were both to speak, besides the difference between female and male voices and the different dialects, the two people would be indistinguishable as better or worse. Its sad to think that people were and still are so judgmental about people.

Journal #29 - When Nature Was In Charge

Nature is a wonderous thing. Unfortunately, sometimes it decided that it is going to try and ruin our fragile fragile lives. Sometimes I think that I have a transcendentalist mindset, seeing as though I think so highly of nature and everything about it. Its so beautiful and power, especially storms. Many times, storms dictate the world around us. Oh, you had marching band practice after school? Well too bad! THERES A TORNADO OUTSIDE. Oh, your track practice was supposed to be outside? Well too bad! There is currently three feet of snow on the ground! Nature is very often in control of our lives. That, however, does not mean that it ruins our lives. I, for one believe it makes everything much more interesting. I love going outside at night whilst a lightning storm is going on. I take my blanket out onto the wooden bench on my porch and entertain myself for about an hour with the bright flashes and the rain. It is truly amazing. You see, I could have been watching television that night. I could have been lazy, staring at a computer screen as I did not admire the beauty of the world around us. But no. I took the initiative and let nature teach me wonderous things. Nature controls so many aspects of the world. A perfectly nice day can be turned into a thunderstorm. A windless day can become a fierce tornado. The gentle waves of the ocean on your nearby beach can become a frenzy as a hurricane sweeps through. The possibilities of nature are endless. Every day, something new is going on. The sky could be purple, or green, or orange, or pink, or even just plain old blue, but it is all so varied that one could spend forever trying to experience everything and yet fail. Nature, controlled by God, dictates the world around us and lets us experience every thing the world has to offer. That is how nature is in control. It always is.