Hectic Days are Far Behind, But Looming in the Future

There is a time in your life when everything feels like too much. A time when you wish that everything that you have to get done would take a break so you could catch your breath. But most often it's not the case. And then there's that moment when you finally find time to yourself, time to do whatever you want: catch up on your favorite T.V. shows, finish reading the book you started a month ago, take a walk pausing to smell the roses and embrace your surroundings or continue your hobby that was postponed months ago because you were too busy to finish. Yet when the time to yourself comes, most often it takes a bigger toll than you think. This free time, the time you've been wishing for, for days, weeks, months, years has finally arrived and pretty soon you have nothing left to do. When there's no deadlines to rush towards, you finish the tasks that you've been waiting to complete in record time. All the free time you wished for becomes too much, because you don't have enough activities to fill it with, while still maintaining sanity. When you applied to colleges, there was a stress on your shoulders. Being a high school student, waiting for decisions based on your achievements and your triumphs, is the most nerve wracking experience. And the time leading up to those submissions is filled with, club meetings, sports games, homework, community service, studying, applications, all along with the social pressures that come along with the high school moniker. Then college comes and while its still challenging academically, socially it becomes easier to adapt. In college your next phase of life isn't dependent on all of the A's you get and the difficulty of your courses. In college, the clubs you join are just for your own satisfaction instead of using them as resume fillers. In college, unless you are a truly gifted athlete, sports no longer dominate most of your time. College gives large pockets of free time, time to unwind and find happiness in things outside of school work. But there comes a point when the monotony of your life becomes a bleak existence and nothing else can fill the void, no matter what you would love to do. It's played out. Free time after awhile can become boring, practically begging your body to give up its needed break to find something to occupy time. Stress is cyclical. If you've been stressed before, you'll be stressed again. And stress causes the desire for a little bit of a breather to constantly float through the mind, pleading its case of being overworked. And once there is free time, it begs to once again to rejoin the stressful environment from whence it came, and once it returns there it longs for the freedom from the damaging effects of stress. Yes, it's true, there is a need for a hectic schedule. The crazy days that were a constant part of high school life are in the past, but somewhere in the future you'll long for the break again, and when you do, enjoy it while it lasts.

Poem

INSPIRED BY A DREAM
Phenomenal, sensational, inspirational change.
Change that can hinder, change that can thrive;
Change in the sense of change of things as they were before our time.
The alteration of things that have always been the same.
But today is for us, tomorrow for the generations who will feed off
our inspiration, our prospects, our new future that awaits as we look forward.

It's been coming for awhile, and all are awed
whether positively or negatively
by the moments in history that have stayed
relevantly prevalent in our minds,
that have bloomed into our memories of moments
that altered the lives we lead.

Try not to think of where we would be
without these people within the past
and in the now,
who take up the role of leader,
the role of leader to people who believe in quality.

Look around and see the different faces,
the different tints, different genders, different races;
sitting side by side,
learning that they can use today
to start their own path towards change:
That for all will be phenomenal, sensational and definitely inspirational.
(C) January.22.2009

Get a Real Bike!

Bike traffic is one of the most dangerous parts of living on a college campus. Living here has heightened my sense of awareness of approaching vehicles that could easily collide with me and inexperienced handlers. While I fear for my life at times when walking across the main street of campus to get to my afternoon class Mondays through Thursdays, my biggest problem with the vast sea of bikes is the fact that they aren’t even real bikes. Sure they have two wheels, a metal frame, handlebars and an uncomfortable seat packaged to look like it was made especially for your ass but in reality, these beach cruisers look like inexpensive pieces of crap that create an eyesore for the admissions tours. I know, I know: this is California, Southern California; of course there will be cruiser bikes. But why can’t they have real bikes? Besides the fact that it’s hard to differentiate between male and female bicycles, these cruisers don’t have gears or brakes; they might as well throw training wheels on all the bikes. Cruiser cyclists need to pedal backwards to come to a halt, isn’t that what we had to do when we first learned to ride our bikes? The whole thrill of mountain bikes was that they were big kid bikes with brakes for the front wheel and the back wheel. In addition to the wonderful braking system, mountain bikes had gears to switch and had the occasional chain pop out of place yearning for repair, yearning for its rider to get their hands dirty. But it seems that the mountain bike has all but faded in these parts of California. Aside from their elegant style, mountain bikes were obviously worth the money, beach cruisers are not. Bicycles are often a sign of maturity and aging. As toddlers we begin with our tricycles, zooming around the backyard with nowhere to go, content to just fly around in circles for the pure thrill of adventure. Next we get our first bicycle, complete with a set of training wheels and a parent or older sibling attached to the little seat helping us as we learn the principles and develop the muscle memory involved in learning to ride a two wheeler. Soon the wrench comes out, grinding against the nuts and bolts of the training wheels, willing them to come off, so that the bike is properly a ‘bi’-cycle. From there we learn balance and control, learning to detach our parents or older siblings from the back of our two-wheeler and ride off into the sunset, or the bushes, whichever comes first. And then when we reach that final stage of bicycle maturity, which most often correlates with our first foray into double digit ages, we get the piece de resistance, the mountain bike. The mountain bike is the final stage, even if there are no mountains in your general area. The mountain bike signifies the ability to use reasoning when biking, it helps find solutions to challenges – such as gear changing to climb a hill, or when racing down one. Bicycles are a key part of development and to revert back a stage, to the time before brakes attached to the handle bars, and where pedaling backwards is your safety net, is to disregard the steps taken to become an adult. So next time you go into a bicycle shop look past the shiny new beach cruisers and pick out the 18 gear mountain bike instead.

Checkmate

Ever had those moments where you knew you just couldn't finish a project? After working extremely hard for hours upon hours, the stress and pressure finally hits you. And you begin to think that everything you've done so far is stupid or that there is no way you can possibly carry on. Well if that doen't happen to you, good for you. But sadly I am victim of the cruelest of all creations designed to discourage students from success: writer's block. In reality what i have is more than writer's block. It's a block that my mind creates, a wall of sorts, that enables me to keep from failing. It's my failsafe. I institute the wonderful barrier whenever I feel that I could embarass my self, when I feel I'm not good enough. The most notable examples were when I was an athlete. Not a star athlete, but an athlete who participated in more than one sport. My main sport however, was basketball. I had played basketball for almost 8 years by the time I had graduated from high school. I never was one to practice hard on my own, although I would from time to time. But when I was a basketball practice, no matter how crappy I felt I always went out and tried my best, worked the hardest that I was able to that day. I could play with the best of them but whenever I was put out on the court with a nice clean uniform and my high top sneakers, I internally panicked. I never let it show on my face that I was scared out of mind, mostly because I didn't even realize. I had my game face on and I was ready to take down my opponents, only I couldn't. Every single game during high school, every single one of the 70 or so games I played in, I would eventually screw up so bad that I would want to come off the court. The worst part is, I never realized I was doing this until my last season was over. It made absolutely no sense to me. I was able to play in pick-up games with guys who were twice my size, that were more athletic and more skilled at basketball than me and I could hold my own but put me on a court with girls my age with their uniforms on and I couldn't do anything right. I don't know why the dynamic mattered so much to me, I loved being able to sweat with guys, get close to them playing defense and then show them up by taking it to them but I could never gain that confidence when there was actual pressure on the line. The same barrier would happen in track and field, the other sport that I ended up with a varsity letter in. I won't digress from my writer's block as much as I did before, but in hindsight it is noticiable that I should have been better. I'm not saying that I should have been in first or second but I should have at least been competive with the others. I was a hurdler and a high jumper. I've never seen a video of me hurdling and truthfully I never would want to , but I know in my heart that I should have been able to beat the super slow times that I recorded my junior and senior years of high school. Now back to writer's block.
Writer's block is a horrible phenomena, especially when there is a paper due the next day. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you can write the paper in front of you, you can't. There I go generalizing again, I meant to imply that I can't. Once I wrote a five page rough draft that was excellent, it had a clear argument and a decisive tone but when I met with my teacher about the draft, she told me that my tone was too harsh for an academic paper. That comment, completely diminished my self-confidence. I began to worry about toning down the paper so much, that I found myself inable to work on it any further. Everytime I looked at my draft, I saw the words that scolded the reader come off the page and begin to to attack me. I panicked and I erased almost all of it. So there I was with just a paragraph, the paper due the next day at 8 am and I was stuck. No words that made sense were coming to me. I was completely and utterly lost, having no way to find the path that led back to the topic my mind had strayed so far from. I had no ideas and so come the next morning, I had nothing to turn in. I tried to treat the incomplete assignment as something to shrug off but it concerned me. How was I going to write the rest of the papers for class? Would I ever be able to write an academic paper? That night I went back to me room and just sucked it up and wrote the worst paper I had ever written. There was no flow, no organization, nothing that would make it at best an average paper. My teacher probably thinks I turned it in late because I am unprepared college student or a slacker but the truth to me is worse: I failed. I failed at what I love to do most: be the best I can be. That was truly frightening. And the worst is that I know this isn't the end. Writer's block is sure to strike again...