The thing I have been most passionate about is soccer. I started playing soccer in Junior high school with my friends, and it has helped me grow in many ways. One of them is to have a goal and never give up until the end. I was very clumsy in kicking, lifting, and everything else I did for the first year. However, I went out to the field and practiced from 8:00 in the morning with the goal of lifting more than 100 times during the year, and I was able to lift more than 700 times in a row. The other thing is leadership skills. I became the captain of the soccer team and took on the role of organizing everyone. At first, I was unfamiliar with many things and had a hard time talking to people, but now I can talk to people on my own. Soccer has given me not only a sense of fun and maintenance, but it has also helped me grow as a person. I am not sure now if I will play soccer this winter season, but soccer is my youth and I would like to continue to play it.
When I began high school I was no longer eligible for the Scholastic program, but I knew I wanted to continue to pursue journalism. Although freshmen were not typically allowed to apply for the school newspaper editor position, my junior high English teacher put in a special word and they made an exception. I was elected, and again the following year.
Last summer I applied for, was accepted to and attended the New York Times Summer Academy, which was an amazing experience.
I’m (obviously) taking journalism at OVS now and have had the chance to publish a couple articles in the OVN. This coming summer, I will be taking a course titled Storytelling for Social Change, which I imagine I can tie back to journalism. And for my senior capstone project next year, I’m hoping to create a Humans of New York-esque video or book in which I interview strangers.
Yesterday, we had our second volleyball game against the Pilgrim School. The first time we played them it was at their court which was nice cause it was indoor and stuff, but this time it was a home game. Having it as a home game definitely makes a difference too. We have an outdoor grass court which is far different from an indoor court, you lose a lot of energy jumping on grass compared to jumping on a court, as the grass absorbs a ton of the power you put into the jump to go for a block or spike. Anyway, we did a lot better this time around than when we played them a month or two ago. We were playing our best then but our best was not very good, now we played our best and we held our own. The first time we played them we lost every set and only scored around 12 or 15 points in the three sets, but this time we were able to win two sets which were just awesome. We have never played like that before and we might not again, but honestly, I’m proud of what we did. This is the first year that our school has even had a boys volleyball team ever, and not a single one of us has ever played competitive volleyball in our entire lives. But man do we love it. I think it might be the favorite sports season we’ve had for most if not all of us even though we are probably not going to win the league like we have for the other two sports seasons. Despite our complete lack of experience, we have some incredible players that have held it down for the team in quite a few games. Anyway, next year we are going to beat Pilgrim for sure, we will all have more experience and since none of us are seniors, we will be playing with the same group of guys we have been playing with this year which means we won’t have to relearn the game and how we play with one another. Anyway, I love volleyball and I think our game against Pilgrim only reinforced that love for the sport.
Why is it so hard to let myself fully fall into a relationship.
I may be passionate about the person and they hold a deep place of significance in my heart, yet I still struggle to let them in and take the walls surrounding my heart down.
I remain guarded, in order to protect the innocence and intensity of love from reaching me. Is it that I am not capable of feeling and accepting it? Or is it I’d rather stay safe and remain living a simple life of independence.
There are many times of questioned that. Where I think, could he be the one I decide to try and dive into love once again with?
But instead, I sabotage it, I turn the passionate feelings off, I shut down…
So why is it that my mind must do this to my heart which longs so deeply for human connection?
Why must there be something that reminds me of the joy I feel when I am a free spirit?
Maybe it is simply that I have not met the person that can match my sense of adventure and unwavering free spirit that can be overwhelming to some.
The problem is, I hurt people with this self destructive behavior of mine even though that is far from my goal.
I’m craving to write something, but I simply can’t. I’m sitting here with so many thoughts running through my mind, yet none of them can leave.
I sit here with my hands immobilized while trying to think of what key to touch next. I’m mindlessly staring at the glaring screen in front of me trying to think of something to write that’d make someone in this world proud of me, but I can’t. My mind is empty, and my heart is too drained to come up with any creative concoction of words to form some poem or sad element of my life to send chills down someone’s spine just reading it.
My thoughts are begging to be expressed in writing, yet they’re trapped inside my mind, and I’m sitting here helplessly trying to figure out how to let them out.
Photo Credit: sarwrites.com
It’s just not possible right now. I’m trying to write for me – or, maybe, for anyone – but every time I start a poem or a story, I exit the tab. And draft after draft later, I’m left with tens of unfinished passages into my thoughts, and now I’m just here writing out every insecurity I can think of about my writing.
But even then, these words don’t even share half of it. They don’t share half the conflicts I face when it comes to my writing. How I constantly think my writing won’t be beautiful enough, good enough. That it won’t be something extraordinary, just something plain and forgettable. I’m still battling myself, trying to figure out the right words that accurately express what I’m trying to portray about myself, yet right now it’s useless.
In this moment I have nothing to share. Sometimes, I have so much inspiration I’m writing one blog post after another, one story after another, and I’m sharing one dream after another, but right now… I’m empty.
June 22, 2014 still remains a clear memory in the back of my head.
It was my first time ever going to Vans Warped Tour, and for being a middle schooler obsessed with Mayday Parade and All Time Low, it was a dream come true for my emo self.
Something about Warped Tour is just more magical than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I’ve been to too many concerts to count on my fingers and toes, but which concert is one of my favorites? Definitely Warped Tour.
Warped Tour was beautiful in every sense of the word. So many different people were there. Girls with colorful neon hair, and boys with stretched ears and tattoos over their arms and backs. There were little kids on their parents shoulders, screaming the lyrics to every heavy metal song that played. Worries never existed at Warped Tour. Everyone was happy, and that happiness was contagious.
The crowds were huge and endless. Everyone constantly pushed to the front, crowd surfers were above my head every few minutes, and band members were jumping into the crowds encouraging everyone to let loose. There were no rules at Warped Tour. Everyone was accepted there, and it was accepted for everyone to go crazy.
The cross-country music festival has been going on for over twenty years. Bands like My Chemical Romance, All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, and so many more started there before they were even famous. It hasn’t just been a place that has made my dreams come true, but it has jump-started the careers of so many bands that I love more than anything in my life.
Photo Credit: thebandbloggers.com
When I first went to Warped Tour in 2014, I remember waiting in line to go in, and I ended up seeing the drummer of one of my favorite bands walking through the lines selling cds. When I walked inside, I ran straight to the main stage when I heard “Check Yes, Juliet” playing by We The Kings. Shortly after, I found the singer of We The Kings signing autographs and giving hugs to people for free. I saw over ten bands that day, including Linkin Park, a band who just decided to show up for that day and perform a set. They only performed one Warped Tour show ever in the history of the tour, and I was there to experience it.
Then I went to Warped Tour again in 2015 with my best friend. It was over 100 degrees that day, and I almost passed out in a mosh pit from dehydration. I stumbled out of an Attila crowd covered in dirt head to toe, and I went through three water bottles before I regained enough energy to jump straight into another crowd for another band.
No matter the location, Warped Tour was where anything could happen. I was in the crowd for Black Veil Brides when I got a text from my friend telling me she met four different band members just walking around. That only happens at Warped Tour, because the bands who go there have such a strong connection with their fans that they just walk around the festival they’re performing at. There’s no overwhelming paparazzi, or security guards following the members around, and there’s no one making the band members uncomfortable.
That’s what made the music festival so special for me. There was a connection between everyone there. There was a connection between the bands and the fans, and connections between strangers. Even if you didn’t know the person, if you sang with them at one set, the connection was there. In 2014, I left my sister to head into the crowd for Falling In Reverse. There I met a guy who I rapped along with to “Bad Girls Club” and “I’m Not A Vampire,” and I knew every word to those songs too, and I still do. But we were there, complete strangers horribly belting out the lyrics to two amazing songs, and I still smile at the memory years later. The connection was the music all these strangers had gone there to see.
Warped Tour has always been a second home for me, and I always hoped that I’d still be attending the festival when I was forty, or that I’d be going to the festival with my college friends. Sadly, 2018 is the last full cross-country run of Warped Tour ever.
When I found that out I was heartbroken. I had only gone to the festival twice, but they were some of the best experiences of my life, and I regret missing the last two years. After this year, there’ll be no more Warped Tour. No more memories to create, but the ones I made I could never forget.
However, I’m going to go to all the Southern California dates. I will run as fast as I can in the circle pits, I will hug all the band members I can, and I will sing my heart out while the sun sets over the horizon behind the stages. I will crowd surf to the front, and I will probably fall several times attempting it, but it’ll be worth it one last time.
Summer can’t come soon enough, but once it does, and once I step into the fairgrounds where Warped Tour is, I’ll never want to leave. I’ll never want it to end.
I’m not necessarily a person who trusts easily. It takes me a long time to open up to someone, to let them know what goes through my mind or what makes me tick, what makes me happy or sad. But somehow, I manage to put all my trust into a creature who could kill me if they truly wanted to.
I don’t consider myself a daredevil. In fact, I have irrational fears of even the smallest spiders in my room. People question how I manage to be brave enough to get on a 1500 pound horse and ride around an arena galloping over jumps with no anxiety, and honestly I don’t know. The sport is dangerous. Just last year, my roommate had broken her back falling off a horse, and I’ve been close to falling onto a boulder when my horse bucked me out of the dressage arena.
Even then, this didn’t phase me at all. I brushed off the dust, laughed it off, and got back on with no problems. My trust with my horse was still secure even though my luck could’ve been way worse.
Photo Credit: Pinterest
For the past year, since my back surgery, I was constantly warned that one wrong fall would potentially break my back and leave me hospitalized for weeks with the chance I wouldn’t be allowed to ride for a long time.
But I still took the risk, and it’s because my love for the sport was stronger than my fear of pain and injury. Every day I still ride, and every day the fact that horseback riding is considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world barely passes through my mind as I work with my horse.
But that’s the thing about anything everyone loves. Everything is deadly to us in some way and form, and that same exact thing gives some of us life. So horseback riding may be dangerous, but I feel like others can agree with me when I say a rider’s love for their horse is worth devoting their time and trust into these animals despite the threat that floats through the air every day someone steps into an arena.
Monogamy as a concept is a strange thing, but little girls are taught from early childhood to believe that it is the ultimate goals.
More than half of my friends parents are divorced, often times with one parent leaving the other behind completely abandoned.
For me, I don’t even remember my parents kissing because I was so young when they divorced. Yet, pretty much every story I was read at night ended with a boy and a girl falling in love and living happily ever after.
Now, I sit here in my late teenage years watching beautiful relationships turn toxic in the blink of an eye.
What was once the most amazing time of your life quickly becomes a distant and wildly painful memory.
I just broke up with the first person that I’ve ever loved and because of that I’m feeling certain emotions that I’ve never felt before.
I’m not sure how to dispose of these feelings for someone who I’m still kind of in love with, even though they hurt me so deeply and so consistently.
How do you know your last kiss will be your last kiss?
How do you know when he says “I love you” that it will be the last time you ever hear those words grace his lips.
There is no rule book on this stuff – no matter how much I wish there was.
My mom always said “love shouldn’t hurt”, and that is a major factor into why certain relationships of mine have ceased to exist.
But mom, you’re wrong.
Love hurts.
It hurts when you’re so full of passion that your heart could practically explode.
Today, two of my toenails fell off after my final season of track here at Ojai Valley School.
My roommate and I were talking about this to our coach (thebrownguy) and we were discussing how it is almost a badge of honor to have toenails that fall off. It shows our character and dedication in running, that despite the pain that comes with running, we give it our all.
My roommate’s toenail fell off a few days ago.
Now, let me tell you, this girl can run.
She was a new student this year and came to take advantage of the track team at our school. Her previous school did not have track as a sport. Now, for a girl who had no prior official track team training, she did fantastic.
My roommate broke several personal records, brought home multiple first place medals, broke a meet record, and even took the title of Condor League MVP this season. But this is not the crowning point in her high school track career. She ran at the CIF preliminary meet, placed second in her heat, and qualified for finals.
She is one of the most dedicated people I know. And dedication is not something you can fake. When I look at her run, its inspiring. The way she pushes herself to the hardest during practice and the way she takes such tender care of her feet afterwards is just fantastic. There is nobody I know that is as dedicated as her. And all of that dedication stems from her pure love for the sport. She loves running. And that is what makes her good.
Now, my roommate can be hard on herself sometimes but I hope when she reads this, she realizes how great she actually is.
She will only get better as she gets older. College is going to be fantastic for you. I just can’t wait to see how well you do, even in your first year in college. I know you will go on to do such great things!
And so back to the topic of toenails. Now that we have established them to be badges of honor, you deserve to have all of your toenails fall off.
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