Back to the Grindstone -- With Help, As Always

"If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't."

- Ian Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World      

Only three days into the development of this journal, I feel compelled to admit that it has effected my mind in such a way that is vastly beyond what I would ever have expected. Such a simple tool the written word is, and it's something we often take for granted. How can I explain this high it provides? It's definite, it's real, and it essentially serves as a window into the depths of our mind. It looks into us in a way we cannot simply because we we cannot fathom the complicated system that contains our thoughts. We could not possibly explain its entirety. It has baffled itself for millenia... I could go on and on.

The human mind may very well be among God's finest creation.Yet he understands it completely, and not only so but he was the one to design it and prepare it for use. It is through him that we can access it. By his grace are we allowed the privilege of such a mighty gift. The funny thing is we did nothing to earn it. We don't even really deserve it. He just gave it to us. Needless to say, God's generosity and grace stretches beyond the extents of my considerably wild imagination. I could incessantly write of his wondrous qualities, but I won't. Not yet anyway. I just want you guys to know first and foremost that I love him and am inherently amazed by his generosity. I'm proud of this fact, even though I don't profess it near as often as I should. To be honest, one of my largest problems is a fear of evangelism to the people I know. Strangers are okay. Homeless people off the street are okay. But the people I know best are perhaps the least aware of this hidden side of me. It shouldn't be hidden, and I shouldn't trying to take credit for his work in me. But I confess that I do. And I feel horrible about it. I seriously need to work out a way to improve. Maybe this is a start.

Can I go back to talking about the ways this journal is changing me? Of course I can. I don't need your permission. This is my journal, remember?

The main thing it's provided me is clarity of thought. As I go throughout my day, I think of all the cool things I can write down at night. It might be a little silly, but I feel like I want to make blogger.com proud. I want My Written Essence to be admirable, honorable, and all that good stuff. In turn, I feel like this is generally improving my living essence. Go figure, right? I also think of it as a great way to wind down, secure myself into myself, and a place to just publicize my thoughts. I'm still trying to break the habit of writing it like it's going to be graded by Vilarino and making it inherently personal, but it's hard. My schooling's really starting to interfere with my education. It kinda sucks. In fact, it really does.

I can't relax right now.

And you know who's fault it is?

Mine. I put myself up against the grindstone.

(If this were a movie, this would be the end of the beginning part. It'd zoom out and in big letters would appear the title. I'm imagining it right now haha. 

  BACK TO THE GRINDSTONE

and then that would blow up. Smoke's everywhere and with suspenseful bass in the foreground we've got small letters sayin'

With help..

As Always.

then that fades away. 

I like it!

I'm a bit silly sometimes, as you can clearly see now.

(I just finished writing what you see below. It's basically just a description of my day, not very entertaining. It's directed more at a future audience. Like 100 years from now. There's a bit current readers might be entertained by, but that was basically just included to make sure I didn't die from boredom. You probably don't want to read it unless you're really interested in the boredom of daily current life. Most importantly, remember the focus of my journaling is not my audience. All the positive feedback is nice and encouraging, but it's not my intent. This is mostly for me, but I admit parts of it are probably going to amuse you. What follows, I'm just warning you, probably won't.) 

Then commences my day:

I woke up this morning at what sounded like 7:13, coming from my brother Wesley's hysterical screams. I look at him a little funny, though he does this every morning. A comical way to wake up, I gotta hand it to him. I relax for a minute then hop out of bed and head downstairs to get ready. Pop on some clothes, comfortable slim jeans and one of one of my favorite long sleeves. Down some breakfast, wash it out, put on the shoes and the backpack, snag my Bible and walk out the door. Haven't really done this in a while, so when we're out sitting in the car pulling out my Mom is pleasantly surprised. As according to our monthly cycle, I read Proverbs 3 aloud which said some more stuff about seeking wisdom and before I know it we're at school, filled with some nice food for thought.

I hop out of car, go through the "Thanks for the ride mom, hope you guys have a good day." routine and walk into school. Go to CAD, first class back, taking it slow, nice and easy. Grab the drawing book on the way in the door - which surprised me. I knew I wasn't going to use it. I almost felt like a cheat taking it with me to my seat. (hey, that rhymes!) And I did what I knew I was going to do: did the SAT question-of-the-days that are going to be more useful to me than CAD anyway, got them all right, then pulled out solitaire to just chill until it's over. Bored by my own accord, you know. I'm bored just writing about it. Someone a century from now, like my great-grandkids might think this stuff is interesting, but not me. 

If they do, first off I say hey, this is what I was like when I was 15. Probably a little less interesting than that tombstone you know me as now. Second off, a little peak into the olden days: CAD stands for computer aided design. That means humans still had to do quite a bit of the work, but it was definitely easy and certainly boring. For me at least. I don't like computers. SAT stands for nothing, by the way. It used to stand for lots of things, but not anymore. It's just one of the important aptitude tests colleges use to assess our ability as critical thinkers. It's worth 2400 points: 800 points for each subject. The subjects are math, writing, and reading. We're basically brainwashed into thinking it's important so that we can do well on it, get into a good college, and have successful lives in the business world. The last thing I want to do is business though. Let me know how that plays out, all right?

Just so you guys know, you're probably some of the coolest pen-pal buddies a guy could ask for. My only regret is that you most likely can't write back. If you can, don't hesitate to. I'll probably be really happy with whatever you guys give me, and I can't imagine myself being anything less than enormously proud of y'all. Unless I turn out to be some crazy old coot, then you can just leave me alone and stay the hell away from me. If that's me, I don't deserve you guys anyway.

So, back to my day: 

Next class was computer apps. I've been assigned to making a movie on a program called Scratch, where you basically make characters do you what you want them to and it finally results in a short little animated movie. Mine's about this crazy little gobo sprite, who inquires upon a mysterious snowman waiting outside his igloo home, who turns out to be alive, which scares gobo enough to force him to run back inside his igloo home. Once inside,  the snowman internally analyzes his situation. From this, we learn that the snowman was just "swinging by to say 'hey!'" and that he just wants to befriend gobo. He decides to try to comfort gobo, respectfully keeping his ground outside of his door, but gobo will hear none of it. He basically tells the snowman that he shouldn't be alive, which breaks the poor snowman's heart. They mutually conclude that he should leave, by which gobo assumes he will just leave him alone but snowman takes it that he should go away forever. But who can blame him? He's just been told that he's not supposed to be alive, after all. It's rather sad, but I'm hoping to pull it around somehow in the end.

That's about where I'm at. Other than making that movie, the class isn't  all that great. Sure, we learn to code and use various computer programs, but the teacher doesn't conform to the general rule for electives: they aren't supposed to be like real classes. Except it's full on quizzes and there's even an upcoming "final," based on the series of three quizzes we started today. It's a little ridiculous, but it'll be okay. They're graded on effort, not accuracy. I've never heard of that before, but at least we know it's more than possible to get an 'A' in the class.

The next class I have is Chemistry and is what I consider to be the first real class of my day. I think I have a B, but I hardly understand what we're doing most of the time. It certainly isn't my cup of coffee, chemistry. Science in general really, everything's so definite and formulaic. There's not much room for inspired creativity or originality, but you basically just have to put up with it. You can't bluff answers like you can in English or History or any other class that's majorly subjective. It's all objective. The same goes for math. Sure, they're a little more practical if you're going to be an electrician or a science teacher, but other than that, do you really need to know what's happening inside of everything that surrounds you? Not really. It's interesting and painful/fun to think about, but I'd rather not spend this much time on it.

Then, there's Spanish. I love the content, not the class. We started the perfect verb tenses today. Pretty easy,  considering I've basically already learned them from the computer games and programs I've set to only read in Spanish. I feel like languages shouldn't be taught systematically, rather more like an art class. Language is beautiful, and I can see why many are turned away when teachers are trained to present it in such a clinical manner. I'm planning on perfecting my Spanish in the proper way, by going to a Spanish speaking country and picking up the culture along with the language, and there's a pretty awesome and convenient way to do it. I'm already planning a sneak peek visit with the Elizondos the next time they go, and I definitely plan to eventually spend at least a year there. I'm really looking forward to it.

Then, English. I don't really know what to say about it. Sometimes it's my favorite class and sometimes it's my least favorite. No one else seems to enjoy it as much as I do. I love utilizing the English language and exploring philosophy and enjoying the special connected relationship between author and reader that I find in books, but when it turn to strict comprehension of insignificant details, I become a little annoyed. I feel like it's antagonizing what it stands for. There's not supposed to be a science to it, it's an art.

After that comes lunch. I try to get as good of a meal as I can. That's not easy. They used to have normal milk, 1% and 2%, and then they got rid of it. All that's left is chocolate milk and strawberry milk, two things I haven't really been able to stand since the 3rd grade. Carnation Chocolate Instant Breakfast doesn't count, I could drink that every morning, but the straight up chocolate syrup in milk -- that, I can't stand. Well-rounded meals are a little difficult to come by as well, you mostly have processed crap that doesn't really taste good. I do the best I can, but this stuff's going to be the death of me some day, I swear.

Once we're full, we go off to PE. Physical Education, great-grandkids. It's basically a class where we get to be physically active and move around. We play a lot of basketball, speedball, and volleyball. If one hundred years from now, people don't know what basketball and volleyball are, I'm going to be pretty disappointed. Speedball's okay, because it's smaller, so I'll explain it. It's basically a game of soccer, where you can carry the ball as long as you don't take more than three steps with it and you don't pick it up straight off the ground. It has to be in the air for you to hold it with your hands. The objective is to score more points (get the ball into the net) than your opponent. It's kind of a fun part of the day. Gives your mind a break.

After PE, I have History with Singerline. I feel like the teacher's worth mentioning because he's got his class figured out better than most teachers. You do what he says, and you do well. You don't, and, well, you don't. We're in the first year of US History. We started with the early 1600's when Europeans started forming the colonies and we're now finishing up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I'm doing better in the class, even though I got off to a bit of a rough start.

The final class of the day is PreCalculus. It's basically a repeat of Algebra II, with a few new concepts. It gets you ready for Calculus, if you couldn't pick that up from its title. I'm a year ahead in math, even though I'm not really that exceptional in it and it bugs the hell out of me. Most people my age are still in Algebra II, although one sophomore is in Calculus already. Her name is Daphne Xiang, and if you don't know that name as some kind of super successful Albert Einstein-eque icon one hundred years from now, I'll also be quite surprised. This girl is literally going to have to SETTLE for Harvard, go there, be bored, and revolutionize the world. Just you wait. And I'll get to say I went to school with her, that'll be cool.

After school, I go around to a few of my classes if need be to clarify what we've gone over in class. I then go to the library and get through my homework. It's brutal, but I look forward to the reward of a lift and my fix of endorfins, and finally being done with the day, and I manage to get through it. Today was a little different though. I got through all my homework and by the time I got to the weight room, it had already closed. I was so pissed off that the first thought I had was to furiously stomp home, with which I succeeded, throw some leftovers in the microwave, chow down, and then go straight to journaling so I could rant. How it actually played out was I went home, saw a faintly familiar van that wasn't ours, and when I walked inside I found my mom playing Blokus with two girls from my youth group in my living room. They're pretty awesome and fun to be around, so my mood was immediately improved. I still ate, but I didn't really need to rant anymore. It was cool.

Instead, I chilled out, played Skyrim for a while, then started journaling to more epic soundtracks.

Starting again tomorrow, but that's pretty much the gist of the daily grindstone. I'm tired.

Good night journal.