Decadence Hackneyed

E: Past tense T: Amused

  Reading back into Venture and criticizing myself always has something new in store for me. I forgot about the twenty two books in middle school. I've lost quite a few of them but if I can locate them again I'd love to protect them an hope one day they'll mean something to someone.

  When I first started writing on Wattpad I came to the conclusion that I should write in order to help with my memory. Three years later, my memory has improved, my native tongue is surfacing, and I'm being complemented for my choice of wording. I doubted my brother in law and sister when the said that I wouldn't have the same friends as I did from all those years ago but it's true. 

  It was a fear at first but now, I embrace it and I know that I can make a difference with the people who choose to interact with me. In this particular entry I am writing about my turn of events in life. It has been eight years since then and at that moment in time I thought my life would have collapsed. Now, I'm more than happy to look back on the tragedy and say  that I lived through it and luckily I made amazing friends who still stand by me no matter what the cost. 

  It'd be nice to have Vas back in my life but if he ever needs anything I know he'll show. Ali and I aren't close friends. We never have been. She's there and I talk to her if we have to. I believe she's off at college somewhere. I don't know she's dating but I do know that Luey and her and not planning on getting back together or plan on being friends again. 

  In the entry it states my idols: Manny Paquio, Costello, Davis, and my aunt. I have many more people that I look up to currently. Costello, Davis, and my aunt still stand. When I think back to my aunt, however, I've come to decide that if she didn't pass I wouldn't have become the person I am today. 

  Davis is in a different city now working with an orchestra. I'm glad for him. Costello is still teaching hoping to retire (so she says) but who knows what she'll do. She's still a mother figure to me. She called me a friend and that touched my heart to the break of exasperation. It was difficult to respond to her saying such to me especially since I never thought of her as that. But she spoke to me on an equal term since I graduated and it meant everything to me. 

  Manny Paquio isn't really an idol of mine anymore because he's an amazing figure of the Philippines but I'm more American than I am Filipino. I feel that if I were more of a local I'd be praising him but to me, he's a boxer and political fighting for his country and he's made a difference in the world so all I want to do is follow his example and make a difference in the word. 

  My additional current idols are: Lily, Bethany, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, My sister, my brother in law, and Jem. I've written more poems than G. K Chesterton. My philosophy in writing is to surprise the people that I appreciate the most and so I checked the amount of poems and I have surpassed seven hundred by a considerable amount. 

   All I have to do now is publish and in all honesty I don't know if I want to. Not yet. There's a saying that one stays the age that they become famous. I don't want to stay eighteen of in my twenties. Charles Dicken's published through a magazine. That seemed like  great idea. However, send it out so many times and keeping up with where it has gone is a hassle. I've been told that Amazon is the easiest way to go about publishing but in all honestly? I haen't figured it out yet. 

  I still write in journals. I mainly do so when I take notes but I still have many journals with hidden stories and characters. There's a whole drive I'm planning on publishing through this book to try and clear out some of the old and bring in the new ideas. 

  Now this paragraph I'm reading over is an interesting one. I think I'll translate it to this book as well. I spoke of my teacher and how she tricked us. (Breaking the fourth wall her for a moment.) 

  Here's what I want you to do. 

  Raise your hand as high as you can. 

  Have you done it? 

  Okay, 

  Now, 

  Raise it higher.  

  .

  .

  .

  Did you do it? 

  Good. 

  Now let me as you something as you continue to read and scroll down. 

  . 

  .

  .

  How could you raise your hand higher when you rose it as high as you could? 

  Through this trick Mrs. Costello taught me that one is always capable of doing more even though they may or may not realize it. In my World Lit class we had to read and analyze an aphorism and compare it to a story we had read. The lesson that we had to preach was "ones who doubt themselves, fail themselves" and to me that is true. Although it is nice to have someone have your back and tell you, "hey, look over that one more time, I think I saw something" or "let's go over your game plan really quick. I want you to hear yourself." 

  Three years ago, I would have slapped older me for doing what I decided to do in the end. I focused more on Yearbook than on band and my grades dropped, my participation dropped, I even got sick in the last week when we made yearbook because I had stressed myself out to the max. Every winter I would get sick for winter break because I stressed myself out all those month before and that week was it. It made me sit down and say that I was done. 

  Younger me would have thought that putting yearbook before band would have been a sin. What wsa my motivation? I wanted to get published. I wanted do get on with my life, move into the business world and make money through my writing. Well, with copyright having to kill everyone in this modern age it didn't occur to me that I would have so much trouble. I also didn't realize I would have hated myself for publishing something so awful as the original Countered Reputations but as time went I gave it thought and ran into a quote that helped bring up my motivation. 

  It takes a true author to write and publish crap. I don't know who said it but it was on an interview. From then on, someone can improve on their writing. I have a person in class who ask for my help through grammar because he knows I can help. He says I'm good at grammar and thta's a complement I'm never going to throw away. 

  After all these years of writing, after all these years of pursuing, of making mistakes, of staying up late so that I could finish a story, or a set of poems, I finally met my goal. I have a better memory, I'm not considered an amateur writer anymore, people come up and complement me, and they even ask me for help. It's an amazing feeling. 

  (Venture: Reaching for an Answer 1)