LIVity

Since revisiting Revolt, a paper I wrote as a high school senior, I was struck by how much of my life has been ruled by anxiety. I remember my English teacher printing copies of this piece and passing it out to my classmates. At the time, because she commented on how I developed my own style, I believed she did this to demonstrate how I took the assignment and ran with it. As an adult, I wonder if there was more to it than that. I wonder if it had to do with my teacher recognizing a student on the brink of discovering introspection.

I say on the brink because although I was in touch with my feelings, I wasn't able to move beyond that point. As I mentioned in my previous post, the assignment was to seamlessly link past and present while drawing meaning from the past to apply to present. Although I came up with a well-structured piece, as a more experienced writer I can honestly say I missed the point of the assignment. The story ends in resolution, but doesn't find meaning because I didn't learn anything from any of the mentioned experiences. In all four experiences mentioned in Revolt, I coped with stress, but I didn't learn how to manage it.

Almost 14 years later, in essence, I'm still trying to complete an assignment for 12th grade English because I'm still trying to learn that lesson. And so I write.

Recently, I was able to free up some funds by finally getting the bank to modify my home loan. I don't want to go too much into the process I had to go through to do this, but just know the way big banks treat customers who are trying to do the right thing is shameful. But anyway, words can't explain how great it felt to accomplish the modification - to take money out of corporate America's pocket and invest into something worthwhile, a young life.

When will corporate America stop with the lies and admit people will help themselves (and others) when put in a fair position to do so? My best answer is, when it's no longer profitable. Sad, but true.

I've been in somewhat of a stalemate concerning my career lately.  It's caused me to think about what initially inspired me to want to write for a profession. And as usual, my inner voice would not let me rest.  This time it wanted me to dig up a paper I wrote during senior year of high school.  The paper where I proved to myself that four years of tears and two years of almost daily, after-school tutoring had paid off. 

I always loved English, but never learned to analyze a text or write a paper until high school.  For this reason, I struggled and consistently received Bs on my best efforts, until the day I received any assignment to write a stream of consciousness, William Faulkner inspired paper. 

The assignment was to seamlessly weave present with past to demonstrate how past informs present while giving shape to a seemingly spontaneous story.  Below is the result.  A piece my English teacher described as tighter and more electric than Faulkner - my own style.  A style worthy of publishing and possibly opening the door to pursuing study of Creative Writing in college (probably should've listened to her before I changed my major three times only to study journalism in graduate school). 

After finding and reading it, I feel reinspired by my younger self's potential.  I'm posting the piece below in hopes that my readers will enjoy it, but more so to remind myself if I was able to write this at the age of 17, I'm capable of so much more now.