So Here I Am

Sitting in Newspaper. We're putting the final issues on the November issue and I am pretty much done with my page. I don't really have anything to do right now because of it and so I'm thinking that I'm going to blog until I find something else to do. So...

Excitement.

Ha ha.

The next few weeks are going to be AMAZING. Completely and totally. I am just so excited. (Holy crap, I sound so retarded it is not even funny (this dumb program doesn't know how to spell 'is')). So anyway, the next... six weeks... are going to be awesome.

Why?

Because. My step sister, aka Shla, is out to visit from Georgia for the week and since this is the last day of school this week that is going to be awesome. Then, this week is also Thanksgiving and so tomorrow my family is having a dinner at home and then on Thursday we are going to my grandma's house for dinner. So that will be great.

Then...

December 6th I am going to the Nutcracker with my mom, sisters, grandma, aunt, and cousin. We've been saying we were going to go since I was little and now we are FINALLY going! I am so excited for that.

Then... (Ha ha!)

December 13th is my combined sixteenth birthday party and Christmas party for me, Carley, Nicole (whose birthday is the 18th), Hillary, and Kara (whose birthday is on the 7th). That is going to be soooo great because we've invited like fifty of our friends (even though we conveniently planned it for the same day as Davis' Christmas dance and so a whole bunch of them are coming) and it's the first party I've had since I was in elementary school.

After that...

My birthday is on the 18th and I'm going to see my dad for the first time in months that weekend because it's the family Christmas party/birthday party for me. That is going to be great even though it is going to have some bad in it too.

Then of course there is Christmas on the 25 and New Years after that.

I am sooooo excited for the next couple of weeks, but I can't believe that 2008 has passed so quickly. This time last year I was crushing over my ex and he didn't even know it. We hung out everyday and were best friends. This time last year I was stressing out over school and Science Olympiad was way fun for me. Now my ex and I talk civily sometimes after having one of the biggest fights I've ever been in with anyone and we're hardly even friends anymore. Now I am taking it easy with school because the only problem I have with my classes is that I was gone for three days two weeks ago. Now I absolutely hate Science Olympiad and wish I could just quit but I'm too afraid that my Chemistry teacher would then hate me because she's my coach and that would be bad.

So I'm thinking as the year comes to a close about the things that I want to remember. There are so many of them, and I'm sure in the next month I'm going to add a bunch more to that. 2008 has so far proven to be an amazing year, if not incredibly horrible at times. I've changed so much since I created this blog, or even since I wrote that blog at 12 o'clock on New Years Eve. How my priorties have changed, how my friends have changed, how my life has changed! It's so freaking incredible.

As I sit here in Newspaper, my excitement for the next month is growing and I'm thinking about what I want to do to remember this year. All around me are reminders of the past (I ran into one yesterday that got me thinking for hours) and ideas that will help create my future. It's weird how much things have changed (I'm getting really, really repetitive). Just as I write this blog so many different memories come into my head: a dorky guy one day at art club whom Morgan and I named Steve, a great night at the mall and the movies with my boyfriend and his brother, a day that ruined a friendship forever, and that's just the ones that have to do with the boy sitting next to me right now.

But anyway, this blog has turned into a really crappy bunch of nothing. Not like that is any different from anything else I ever write. That's one thing I said last year. I wasn't going to let this blog turn into crap. But it has. Oh well. At least I still write in it.

Anyway, Thanksgiving break starts in seven minutes and I'm gonna go now.

So...

It's been about a week since I've posted anything. Can I tell you how surprised I am that I am posting this often? I really never expected that I would continue with this blog even though I told myself I would. I've never continued on with anything like this on my own. I have had so many blogs over the years that have just kind of sizzled into nothing after a while.

Maybe before it was because the only person reading my blog was occasionally a sister of mine who lives in Ohio? Maybe not. Either way though, I've never been able to keep up with a blog like I have with this one.

I think that it is awesome. Because for right now this blog is mostly a representation of my last year at FFJH plus a couple months of random stuff after that. I hope to keep going long enough to make this blog a representation of my high school years, and then after that college. And who knows? Maybe I'll still be writing on this blog long after that.

Anyway, I just thought that I'd post something. I wasn't actually thinking that I'd even have that much to say. Ha ha. I'm going to go get some breakfast now.

Essay #1. Apparently 1 comes after 2 today.

Teen Violence

More than 750,000 people, age 10 to 24, were treated in emergency departments for injuries received due to violence in 2004 ("Youth Violence, Fact Sheet" CDC). The numbers grow every year as teen violence becomes more and more of a problem. There are many different reasons that teen violence is becoming such a problem in our society. One of the bigger causes for teen violence is the great lack of respect. Another is the amount of negativity in the media. Also, many teens don’t have an effective way to express their anger. These are all problems that teens deal with.

The biggest cause of teen violence is the lack of respect teens have for both themselves and others. The lack of respect for both peers and elders causes many problems including anger and violence. When a teen argues with someone they don’t respect then violence becomes a risk. Disrespect from either side of an argument is harmful. When a teen thinks that someone else is being disrespectful to them they get angry, and when they get angry fights start, and not all fights end peacefully.

What makes teens so angry? There are probably many reasons that some teens are angry. One reason though, is the media. In the newspaper and on the television news focuses around bad things that are happening, the bad things that are coming, and consequences of the bad things that have already been done. With so much negativity surrounding them, how can teens not be angry? Every day they hear of wars and murders and shootings. If the media focused more on the good things that are happening in the world all people might find more reason to be happy or content, and at least some of the anger would go away. Then the rest of it could, hopefully, be dealt with in better ways.

There are many different ways for a person to effectively express anger without resorting to violence. Most teens know that. Even the ones who do resort to violence often know that there are better ways to fix problems. The hard part of that, though, is that some teens don’t have a way to express their anger. They don’t know how to talk to someone they’re angry with. They don’t have anyone else to talk to. Violence is a compulsory action. Teens don’t usually think about the violence before they cause it. They don’t know how.

Rates of teen violence increase every year for several different reasons. They don’t respect people enough, including themselves. There’s also so much bad around them in the world that it makes them angry. Another reason is that they aren’t sure, or don’t know, how to effectively express their anger. Violence is wrong and teens know it. There are things that could be done to stop it. They know this, but they may need a little extra help to succeed.

Essay #2 Yes, I know I don't have an essay # 1. Yet.

Anger and Stress Management

All over the internet, there are self help websites and professional help websites that focus primarily on anger and stress management. Most of these websites start out by saying what anger is, how it can help, how it can hinder, and how it can be controlled. Then they move on to explain what it is that their website will do for you or what their product does that will change your life. There is nothing wrong with most of these websites. Anger and stress management is a serious skill that every person needs to have. Not only does anger and stress hurt yourself, but everyone around you. There are many ways to manage these emotions. People just have to find the things that work for them. It is not something that can just be done. It has to be worked at.

Anger is an important emotion in every person’s life. It helps motivate people toward change and it isn’t something we can just push aside (Anger Management: Using Anger Management for Stress Relief). When a person decides that they’re just going to cast that anger away, never feel it or express it at all, they often just end up hiding their emotions until, eventually, they cannot hold it in any longer. This usually just ends up causing problems for everyone else. “Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal body to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined.” (Wikipedia: Stress (biological)). When a person feels stressed they are easily frustrated or angered. Learning to manage stress is just as important as learning to manage anger, because stress is often on of the causes of anger and frustration. Managing anger and stress may not be easy, but there are many ways to do it.

There are many, many, ways to manage anger and stress. Books are written just for the purpose, websites and groups are created to guide those who need help. Experts spend their days researching the effects of stress and anger and what can be done to make these as harmless as possible. Since managing these emotions is something every human being needs to be able to do there is no lack of information, help, or strategy. People design programs and products for people who think they need more help. Some say that stress journals are a good way to manage unwanted stress and anger. Still others think that the first thing that needs to be done is to asses where the anger is coming from. Then a person can decide what needs to be done, knowing where it is coming from. Every person deals with emotions differently, and therefore every person needs to find the method of anger and stress relief that works best for them.

Not a single person on this planet is the same as anyone else. We are all unique. So why shouldn’t our methods of dealing with emotions be too? For one person, thinking about what is causing the anger and stress might be enough for them to stop it. Another might need to have a personal journal to vent their feelings to. Each and every person is going to find that what works for them might not necessarily work for someone else. No matter what method works best, it is vitally important that people do at least know what methods work for them. When people don’t have methods of anger and stress relief they end up expressing their emotions in harmful ways that don’t help anyone. Why risk that when there are so many ways of avoiding it?

Anger and stress are emotions that every human being will feel at different times in their lives. They are basic human emotions that can be harmful to the person and others around them if they do not learn appropriate ways to manage and express them. There are many vastly different ways of controlling anger and stress; so many, in fact, that every person is going to find different methods that work for them, but not everyone else. Stress and anger management are a very, very important part of human life and should not be taken lightly.

Can't Breathe Can't Feel

Today I have done something that is going to change my life. Let's just hope I can get through it. To think that something seemingly so small is going to change my life so completely. I can't breathe. My brain feels like a mass of empty space. I deserve it. I know I deserve it.

I'm sorry.

It's Not Faith if You Use Your Eyes

Random title for today's blog. It's just a line from one of my favorite songs by Paramore. It's called Miracle!. Check it out sometime. It's a good song.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about tonight is a quote that I saw in Spanish today. See, my Spanish teacher is also an English teacher so she has bulletin boards with quotes about reading and writing in one corner of her room. It just so happens that she has put me in that corner for second term, so at the end of class today I was reading them. They're all really good quotes and maybe as the year goes on I'll write about more of them, but tonight I wanted to talk about the one that caught my attention today.

'A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.'

~Mark Twain 1900

I really like this quote. Mainly because I think it has a lot of truth to it. It makes me think of last year, and even just this summer. When Mr. T would assign us a book for Honors English (classics that is) people would complain. They'd complained no mater what we had to read, but classics were worse. I think that it's mostly because they are usually older books and therefore in a language that is harder to understand because it has different slang and different words. It makes it harder to read.

There are things that language doesn't change, though. I mean, even though a book is hard to read and understand it doesn't mean that said book is not a good book. Even impossibly difficult reads can have great stories to them. That is why I think that Mark Twain's quote works. I think that people really do want to know the stories as they are written, but it becomes such a hard thing to do (oh my, we really have to think?!?) that people don't actually want to read them.

I cannot really deny that this is true to me as well. Not in all circumstances, but with some classics I honestly don't want to start reading even though I absolutely love the story. It just gets to the point where I would like to read something that doesn't take as much thought. I can't read a classic when I'm tired or I've been in school all day/doing homework all night. I have to read them when I have time and patience enough to reread passages and contemplate things. I absolutely love a lot of classics though. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen are two of the ones that I read last year that have ended up being two of my favorite books ever (although even that is a very long list with like... 100 books or more).

Anyway, I just really wanted to share that quote with some of you and explain why it stuck with me today and why I like it. So that's it for tonight.

Hasta luego!

Majorly Proud of Myself

Today I found a good blogger template and then kind of made it my own. I am so proud of myself for figuring it out and I think it looks way awesome.

I just thought I would share that accomplishment.

Yay.

Plus I GOT A 4.0 GPA for first term! Eeee!

Haha.

National Novel Writing Month...

Started on November 1st. I am taking part in it this year and have a goal of 50,000 words to write by November 30th. That means that I have to write an average of about 1,700 words a day. So far my grand total would therefore need to be 5,100. Well I wasn't so into writing on Saturday. So I'm not that far yet... I'm actually not even to two days worth of writing that much yet. But I'm getting really close. My total right now is 3,062 words. Yay me. Haha. So before I go to sleep tonight I have just under 350 words to write. I am confident that I will do so.

Anyway the point of this blog, other than introducing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, nanowrimo.org) is to show you a little bit of what I have been writing. I'm proud of it. It's just a prologue so you don't really get any real plot from it, but I think it's a good way to grab attention I think. I don't think I'll be posting the whole thing here, but if you're really interested I can send you what I have at the end of the month. So here it is:

Prologue

Come on Mike! Get up! Hurry, they're right behind us!" A tall and lanky red haired woman yelled to the dark haired man who was lying on the ground ten yards away from her. They were being chased by the police. They were in trouble. Together they had done something neither of them could ever have imagined and they were going to pay the price with their lives. Now they were on the run and Mike, the clumsy guy that he was, had fallen down. She ran back over to help him.

Mike was slowly getting to his feet. The woman grabbed his hand and pulled him up and forward. "Laura," Mike gasped. "They can't be that far behind us. I can't run anymore Laura. Maybe we can't get out of this." He was breathing heavily and limping as he ran. He figured he must have pulled a muscle in his right leg when he feel, the knees of his jeans were torn and the skin of his palms were scraped raw.

“We have to keep going Mike,” Laura, who was in much better shape, breathed. Her voice was not more than a whisper; it was as if she was trying to keep the brick walls on either side of the street from hearing them. “Giving up would here, now, would be giving up on our lives. I’m only nineteen Mike! I’m not ready to give up.”

Mike often thought that Laura was over dramatic, but of course an actor would be. Now though, he was sure she was speaking the truth. To stop running, to hand themselves over to the police would mean a lifetime in jail for both of them. He couldn’t deny that he did not want that for himself, but to say that he had what it took to run from the law would be the biggest lie anyone on the west coast had ever heard.

Suddenly it seemed as if there were a thousand noises around them. Police sirens and the roar of car engines were coming on their backs rapidly. Mike could also hear the voice and running steps of the police men who had begun chasing them on foot a quarter of an hour ago. ‘This is it.’ Mike thought, ‘we’re as good as dead now.’ He didn’t know why they were still running even. The cars would catch up to them any second, the men on foot not long after that, and then it would be suicide to keep going.

There was an ally just ahead of them and Laura pulled Mike’s arm as she turned into it. They flattened themselves against the wall and Mike thought that he might laugh if the situation wasn’t so serious. It was just like being in a movie. People always said not to trust movies because they were inaccurate but being chased by the cops was just like it was on the big screen, minus the helicopters.

They were both breathing heavily, their chests moving up and down faster than either could have ever imagined possible. They were safe. They had managed to find a hiding place where they could watch as the police ran right past them. Mike looked at Laura and saw the relief in her eyes. “I guess we won’t have to give up today, Laura. You were right. We did it.”

And they had… Almost. The cops were just about to go running past the ally when Mike’s watch alarm went off. Twelve o’clock midnight. It was an appropriate time, he thought, a great time to be caught. The dawn of the new day would see two criminals to jail, already the day was proving to be a safer one.

Laura’s eyes were squeezed shut as tight as they would go and tears were streaming from them. Mike was looking frantically around the ally for an escape. Laura had gotten them this far; it was his turn to make a move. Toward the end of the ally there was a door. He couldn’t be sure it went anywhere but he did know that if they got there fast enough the cops might just think that they had gone out the back, it was dark after all.

Mike shook Laura’s shoulder to get her attention. He pointed toward the door and watched as she looked from his face to wall he pointed at. She seemed to be confused for a moment before realization lit up her eyes. She nodded; all hope that they would live through the night had come back to her in a split second, making Mike feel very accomplished. He had managed to save her, or at least came up with a plan to do so.

At the same time they pushed off from the wall and sprinted toward the door. He could hear the police behind him but kept going anyway. “Come on, Mike.” Laura whispered, “We can do this!” They were only ten to fifteen yards from the door and getting closer with every second. ‘We can do this,’ Mike echoed in his head. ‘We are strong and we can do this.’

Laura reached the door slightly ahead of him and grasped the metal handle as if her life depended on it, which it did. She grabbed Mike’s hand with her free one before shoving the door open. One more second and it would be too late. They had to get out of sight now. She yanked him inside and slammed the door shut leaning against it with her eyes closed and trying to catch her breath.

Mike was sitting on the floor. He couldn’t quite tell what the room was because his head was swimming and he wasn’t really paying attention. He placed his palms flat against the ground on either side of him and found something that he had definitely not been expecting. Grass. His eyes flew to Laura at the door and found her looking around wide eyed and shocked. She was no longer against the door, but feeling it with her hands. It was wood. Not cold metal that it had been on the other side.

Mike looked to other side of himself and found that he had to squint because of the bright light. He shook his head slightly and looked around again. They were in what appeared to be a field that went on and on forever. Laura was leaning against the door of a small shack or a shed that looked more than abandoned, but not necessarily old.

“Where the hell are we?” Laura asked quietly. Mike had stood up and was coming to stand beside her.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

And on a side note: The October issue of the newspaper came out last week. I am very proud of it. My very favoritist twin did some art for the center page and it looks amazing. Plus I have two less than amazing articles. Woot!