People

All I have to say to start this off is ugh people… I have no idea why, but everyone I put in my life creates issues. I can never do anything without feeling severely watched or judged. Any moment I do something I have to stop and think. Will this trigger anyone? Will anyone be mad? People in the world we live in are never satisfied. Can I be friends with this person or will someone think I am weird for that? To be honest I have no answers… And the closest I can get to the truth is you and I will always be judged. Someone will always be mad. And no one will ever be happy with the decisions that are made in life. Many people just get mad for no reason whatsoever. While others will continuously stand by and be happy because they want others to be happy as well. To be happy in this modern age we live to make others happy. Most of the time that is a lot of work. I will try my best to make the others around me happy but at some point, in time, I realize… they will never be happy with me or the decisions made. Even if it is for their benefit. People always will have something to say. And it does not matter if you asked them or not. Some people just can never mind their own business. People crave to create, hear, and see drama. Which every person can be guilty of. But at an indefinite time, does that not get old? Friends, relationships, judgment, and anger always circle back around. All of those things circle back. And that’s what life does. Life circles back. The reality of the world is no one will ever be 100% happy. No one can change my mind or my opinion. The world is imperfect. I am imperfect. And people are imperfect. So take this as my apology to all of the people in the world. I am sorry for the mistakes I have made. I am sorry for the mistakes other people have made. And I am sorry for those of you who can not see through the imperfections of life. 

pc: me

Reflecting

Since we have been back at school so far, a lot has happened. The first week of school consisted of meeting an incredible amount of new people from all grades, getting back into dorm-living, and and having an overwhelming amount of homework. There was a camping trip last week, and now we are just approaching the end of the second academic week. I’ve been loading my plate up a lot recently, and I’m not quite sure if its the right thing to do. However, this stressful-ish energy has been motivating, in a way. It’s exciting because it reminds me of how many opportunities that high school can provide.

However, I feel as if school has been rushing past me all too quickly. I’ve been to many schools in my life, and lived in many places. It feels sometimes as if my life is on autopilot and I cannot slow down. Only yesterday does it feel like I was scrappily coloring, eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich that had been tossed around in my bag, and coming home begging my parents to have more time to play Minecraft. Now, I’m held up to a standard, where everything in my life is more complex.

I know, thats quite literally what growing up is about, but I feel like it has all gone by too quickly. I might never get back living in such simpler times, where the only thing to worry about was what color crayon I was going to use, but I will always appreciate and feel grateful for how those moments shaped me and led to me becoming the person who I am now, and who I will continue to become in the future.

pc: me

To my sister

You are the most important person in my life. 

Sometimes, the more you discover about a person, the less you like them. The more I discover about you, my little sister, the more I admire you. You have a capacity for kindness that I aspire to have one day. You are always there for me, whether it is to help me put away the dishes or to hug me when I cry. 

I try to comfort you too. You cry more than me, but I also cried a lot when I was nine. I think that at some point, you will find out that while your emotions and feelings and distresses are valid, some things are not worth your tears. You will find that some things are there not to knock you down but to build you up, and you will find that you are so much stronger than the things that aim to knock you down. You will find that when opinions will differ from yours, there is an opportunity to learn rather than a cause to feel hurt. You will find that when life throws difficulty at you, you are not the only one in the world who has difficulties. I don’t mean that lessens your challenges, but rather we are all, in the wise words of Mr. Alvarez, slaying dragons. Together.

However, this is not something I can tell you, I think. I think you will come to your own conclusions, in your own way, in your own mind, in your own time.

I believe in you!

Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema

Love

To think about love terrifies me. The scary thing about love is that you never know when it is coming or when it is about to end. To my mind the scariest fragment of love is whether I get to have the experience of loving another or another loving me. For the majority of people this is not something that is in the line of thinking on a regular basis. The ongoing want and urge to have the ideal teenage love as if we were starring in our own movie with nothing to fright because we have each other to hold on too. Immaturity gets the best of us during these situations. At this age, in this generation, the little things are considerably left unnoticed. Where has all of the innocence gone? Now we have to worry whether the person we desire has opened our snap or text message rather than opened our hand written letters sent through mail. The meaningful moments within love have simply disappeared. Do I look good enough to snap him right now? Runs through my head like a bullet. Where have the simple walks through the park retired too? Now all the meaningfulness has taken a leave. The falling asleep on accident while admiring the world’s beauty has changed, to the falling asleep watching a rated R movie with no thoughts at all. No simple conversations, just silence. The silence that comes along with the “love” of this generation is not as peaceful or calm as it once was. What happened to the innocence of painting together with the one you like while the sunsets below the mountain tops? What happened to the stargazing on a picnic blanket in a large open field? Where has the love in the world gone? And then one day you wake up and suddenly realize real love is gone and life is not like the movies. Life is not like how it was decades ago. Life has changed and love has developed into a scary step into the long road of life.

Photo Credits:Me

Best friends

All my life, I’ve considered many different people to be my best friend, and these people have come and gone. During my freshman orientation, my eye caught a girl wearing the same outfit I was planning on wearing. After an hour of name games and icebreakers, I decided I was going to talk to her. The first thing I said, which we still joke about today, is “To be honest you look like the only normal person here.” She brought me to her room and then we went to lunch together, little did I know she was going to be my best friend. On the first day of classes, I realized she was in my history and we quickly got close. The next weekend I had an argument and fell out with my school friends from the previous year. I started only hanging out with her and I learned to love her so much, we found out we had so much more in common then we could’ve imagined. As the year continued we just grew closer and closer, we ended up going to a concert together and hanging out outside of school. In April i got very close with two other girls and subliminally pushed her away. I didn’t stop being friends with her, I just started hanging out with these other girls more. As summer neared I worried our friendship would fade as she lives in LA and we both were traveling a lot. The exact opposite happened, we talked every day and got way closer we only saw each other once which was sad but we enjoyed our day together. In the middle of the summer, I had a falling out with the two girls I mentioned earlier and I was crying in the car with my mom when we passed her mom’s house and saw her mom outside. As our moms talked she came out and hugged me and held me as I cried in her arms. At that moment I realized she was more than just another best friend she was like a sister. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her I genuinely don’t know what I would do without her. Sometimes we make jokes about being platonic soulmates and that may or may not be true but one thing is for sure she’s my best friend. She isn’t like any other “best friend” I’ve had before and I know she’s going to read this. I was thinking about what I was gonna write my post about this week and someone said write about something you really love and other than Taylor Swift, I truly love her. This year we have almost every class together and nothing could make me more happy than spending my whole day with her.

Pc mododeolhar on Pexels.com

an edgy poem like who am I to complain

DIRGE OF A BATTERED NATION

For this, the clay grew tall?

I think as political landscapes crumble

As the fast food employee,

with a college degree,

grumbles.

Into this?

Into the vision of empty factories and shattered glass

Into cafes where no longer,

We talk with one another.

Into fist fights that end in shootings and knifings

Born into this?

Into hospitals so expensive, it’s cheaper to die

Into a land that shakes with explosions

And vibrates with each war cry

Walking and living through this

Dying because of this

The republica fell,

and the clay grew tall

PC: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ec/ff/c5/ecffc50318e785fc353bbaee14e915bc.jpg

One final post… I think

This is the fifth post I’ve written in one sitting, I’m pretty sure this makes me up to date… I’ll ask Alula since she seems to be the only one counting. I think I’m going to clean my room after work today. It desperately needs it, fortunately for me I love cleaning my room, I think the transition from a complete mess to a space that people want to be in is spectacular. It’s not even just the before and after, I really like picking this up, organizing, and throwing things away like the whole process is good.

Ok, im back at home, it’s like 8:30, I’m not going to clean cause im tired but I think I’ll do some work in the morning and then finish it off tomorrow night. I’m going to watch Scent of a Woman and see if it’s actually good, prob won’t be. Alright, I think that’s just about enough words and I don’t really want to be doing homework anymore so I’ll see you next week. Maybe. More likely in a couple weeks when I have to catch up on a bunch again.

Two down Three to go

How did I even get this far behind on blog posts this is crazy. Steely Dan is so fire. I mean Do It Again is just such a head bopper, how does one even create something so in tune with the human spirit? Not to mention the other songs on that album, I can’t remember the name right now but you know the songs I’m talking about. Speaking of music, I really wish I could consume more of it, I actually would like to be able to absorb it, like through my skin, idk I feel like it never sounds high quality enough. I want my body just like be the music. When I die I just want to be a sound frequency, probably of a Steely Dan song, well not really, I definitely would take a while to decide what song I want to be after this life. Maybe A Milli by Lil Wayne that song is excellent. Or White Ferrari which is actually like a mid-song but the way it looks on the oscilloscope makes up for all the averageness of the track itself. Ok, I’d say that’s about one hundred and fifty words so I’ll stop just talking nonsense.

Blog Post??

Hello and welcome back to Emanuel’s blogs. One hundred and fifty words of free thought so that he doesn’t get zeros on them. He being me, I am he, there is only me. Anyway, I love garage sales, it’s like modern-day exploring. Today I got a carabiner watch and a point-and-shoot camera. The camera is a Canon Powershot SD600 I like the way it looks and feels in my hand. It has a tiny viewfinder which I think is cool. I don’t have a charger for it but Ben does so I’ll go over to his house after work and pick that up probably.

I’m so done with school, I know this is a fairly universal feeling for seniors in their last month of Highschool but holy moly it’s getting to be a lot. Something about listening to the junior talk about college as if it’s the most important thing ever really bothers me. Like why are they so keen to change who they are to fit into a school, every single one of them is incredibly smart and industrious and interesting but for some reason they have this competitive, verging on toxic, view of the college process. Like if they would just be themselves they would probably do better than when they all freak out about how to curate the application to a school.

The best movies by genre

Here are my mini-Oscars

In general best movie ever: Scent of A woman. Already wrote an entire blog post about how great this movie is, but overall 10/10 across all categories- especially acting, plot, and screenwriting.

Soundtrack: for me, it’s a 3-way tie between Baby Driver, O Brother Where Art Thou, and 500 Days of Summer.

Action: John Wicks- super basic but true like for me it goes in order of chapters 1, 4, (3 and 2 tie). All the action is super satisfying to watch, but an underrated one would be Scarface

Horror: ok the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is the Lighthouse but it’s not really scary. It’s just really gross and made me the most uncomfortable- I really don’t like this movie.

Romance: to be honest I’ve only seen a ton of romcoms, but my favorite has to be Notting Hill, 10 Things I

hate About You, and My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Comedy: Superbad- it’s just hilarious I love Fogell and the Cops, haha.

Best “film bro” movie: The Pianist, French Dispatch.

Cinematography: The Grand Budapest Hotel.

PC: https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_overlay/public/Scent%20of%20a%20Woman%202211-154_F.jpg.webp?itok=u9ZElJDe