For my last Thursday Night Reflection, I would like to reflect on the recent tragedy our school has faced and the fear it brings me. Looking back on what I've experienced and from what I've seen, Jordan (may she rest in peace) was a very inspiring person. Just from simple observation, you can tell everyone around her's mood was improved being around her. She really emitted happiness. And anyone one of her close friends could tell you that, as they've told me. In addition to that, Jordan was extremely popular. There aren't many people at Mount Pleasant High School that would need further explanation to who Jordan Rae was. She was not only part of the school's cheer team, but also had a fairly sizable social media presence. The fear that I feel really lies in the fact that somebody surrounded by so many people that loved her would go to this drastic of a measure. That being said, I'm not sure the full background of what else she was going through or if she suffered from mental illness. But it scares me for the people that don’t have what she had. Now I don’t say that to belittle her situation at all, but she really was surrounded by people that would have loved to help her. And the fact that that was not enough scares me for the people in my circle that don’t have the same. I won’t mention their name, but my best friend for the past ten years struggles with depression and has had experiences with scary thoughts and actions. He does seem to have gotten better than he once was, and I feel solace in the fact that I remind him I’m there for him every so often. But this recent event has really shaken me to my core, mainly because I can’t seem to deal with the fact that I might not be there for him when he needs me the most. I’ve been talking and thinking with my parents about it, and we’ve come to the obvious conclusion that it’s too much pressure for me to put that on myself. Which is true, but the fear still lies. It still lies because he isn’t like Jordan. He isn’t known around the school or on social media like she was. Again, may she rest in peace, but he isn’t like that. And not many people are. Although this does scare me, I’ve also been reflecting on the ways I can help prevention of anything similar. I recently took to Twitter to say “There’s never a problem that can’t be solved. Always reach out if you are in need. You matter too much and life’s too valuable” which was pretty well received by the people who’ve seen it. But I feel I, we, can’t stop making the message clear. Because the more I think about, the more I realize that there truly isn’t any situation that is worth more than human life. Now as much as I’ve been thinking about all of this, please don’t worry about me personally. Just try to think of your friends and check up on them. And if you can’t do that, just try to find a way to let people know that you’re there for them. Because we can’t control the thoughts that go through others’ heads, but we can let them know that we have a place for them.
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Recently I have been thinking about what makes me happy and what keeps me inspired. With most things, it’s easy to get bored after a month, week, or even a day. I seem to have short spurts where I get really into something for a short period of time. For instance,every once in a while I’ll make a youtube video or a video project. But I usually only keep the inspiration for it for short instances. I’ll get my hopes up and think that I’ll be able to pump out projects left and right. But unfortunately, I can never keep the inspiration past the first project. Funny enough, I struggle with the same thing from video games. For example, my friends and I will get back into minecraft after a year or so and attempt to keep constantly playing for long periods of time. But after putting the hours in for around a month, we get discouraged and end up quitting. The most recent streak of inspiration is playing “Rocket League”. To give you the rundown, it is basically a game of caer soccer. Except you can fly. There’s more depth to the game mechanics than it sounds, but that's the jist. Anyway, me and my friend Christian have been trying to climb the ranking system that lays in the game. I’ve seen numerous videos on how to improve at the game, and have also been watching a ton of professional play. One thing that our duo has been struggling with is rotation. It seems like Christian is too afraid of the ball to get out of our defensive half. It’s weird, because it seems like I excel more than him in our duo games. But once we get into 3v3 games with our other friend, he gets more confident and score lots of goals. Anyway, the point is, that’s something that I have not lost the inspiration for yet. Especially because there’s always something to improve upon. There’s a 1v1 gamemode where (surprisingly) you go one on one with a random opponent of similar skill. This keeps me inspire but also has its disadvantages. It’s great because it blatantly shows what areas of your game need improvement. On the other hand, because of it exposing where you need to improve, it’s very rage inducing. But everytime I play the game, I feel like I’ve gotten better, so that’s a rewarding feature. Furthermore, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, because it’s a videogame. What I really need to figure is what my Rocket League in my adult life will be. I need to find a job that I am also passionate about. I need one with a high skill ceiling so I can continually have a purpose. I wouldn't want to have a job where I am the best I can be at it as soon as I start working (if that’s possible). I guess that’s the real goal. I find video editing to be close to one of those things so I hope one day that.
Recently, I have been thinking about the best car model on the planet. Also known as, the 2008 Subaru Forester. I don’t blame you if you’re wondering why this is. To be honest, there is no real answer to your wonders, you just have to trust me on its car superiority. But, its relevance is very important. To sum it up, it’s my grandfather’s car and he’s giving it to me for my sixteenth birthday. Let me elaborate.
As implied, I am fifteen and about to celebrate my sixteenth birthday on february tenth. I may not show it, but I am extremely excited for the occasion. Driving a car myself and not having to ask my mom or dad for a ride to places is something that I could not be more ecstatic for. That and listening to music in the car are the two things that will most definitely make my year. I listen to a lot of music throughout the day, but there’s no denying that it sounds and feels the best while you’re in the car. Especially rap music because of its prominent bass. I don’t think I will ever be happier the moment I first ride in the car by myself with my music on full blast. Oh you think that will change when I get married? When I have a child? I guess that’s where we’ll have to disagree. There are so many good things about the Forester that I can’t contain myself. One more is the fact that I don’t have to wait for friends to invite me to things. In the past, if I wanted to go out somewhere I would have to ask them if they wanted to, then wait to see if they can pick me up. And even if they could pick me up, I’d have to wait for them to drive all the way to my house. At this point, I can ask if they want to go, drive over (with my music on full blast), and pick them up on my terms. And, we were all thinking about it, but the women. No longer do I have to ask for a ride or see if the other person’s parent has to pick me up for me to interact with a woman. It’s on me this time, boys. All that’s left to do now is decide what color fuzzy dice to get for my rearview mirror. Well that’s actually not true. I still have to give an enormous thanks to my grandfather. Poppy, this won’t be the only time I say this obviously but thank you. I know the material worth is a lot, but this really does mean the world to me besides the physical value. I know this leaves a lot to live up to for my younger cousins, and at this point, I can’t be grateful enough that I am the oldest. Don’t mean to go off on a personal letter, but he’s been such an inspiration to me over the years that this means even more than it should. Recently I have been thinking about college and all that comes with it. Firstly, I have been thinking about whether or not I even want to go. If it was an option (which I will get to later), then I wouldn’t. I feel like all I hear about it, talks about how stressful it is. In relation to high school, it would obviously be more than that, and I can barely keep up with school as it is. College is more of a job than anything - and most have to work a job with it, just to afford it. It might be more appetizing if I knew what to do, but of course - I don’t. Before I get into that, I have to stay on public opinion. Public opinion states how stressful it is, how much money they lose, how sleep deprived they are, and how their “will to live” is gone. It seems like I rarely see anything positive about college except the part where it’s over. People are only ever happy about graduating. Which leads me to my next point. After graduating, there’s no guarantee that you find a job right out of college anyway, unless you pick a field with a healthy amount of jobs. But even then, what if you don’t like the field? What if you don’t care that it’s the most requested job in America for the next decade, and you just want to do something you actually like? The only thing that I’ve found a real interest in is video editing, and that is more of a creative field than a consistent thing. That’s something that I really enjoy doing. It’s something that I can make perfect, and put hours into without even noticing. But there’s no job reliability. Even the best editors out there work on big movies, but there’s no one to say they have a consistent job forever. Movies are creative, and there’s no comfortability in your work except for the project you are currently working on. And eventually, that will come to a close. So if we rule out any type of filmmaking what are we left with? Well, I would say I have an adequate vocabulary to write, but I definitely do not enjoy it to the extent of doing it for a living. I also do enjoy computers quite a lot, so computer science might be an option, but I’ve never seriously explored it. I guess I have that idea from this writing. But anyway, if we rule that out for the sake of lack of experience, then I really do have nothing that I would enjoy doing for a living. I’m sure there are tons that I could go into for the sake of money, but at the end of the day I would rather have an average home and a job that I at least tolerate than nice jobs and a daily 9-5 that makes me miserable. I have soccer, but at the very most, that’s a way to help with the cost, not something that I could do for the rest of my life. So in my opinion, I’m hopeless at choosing a school that I have a genuine interest in.
Lately I’ve been contemplating about what I want for Christmas and the idea of Christmas in general. I do have a computer and there are many accessories that I could ask for. For example I have two keyboards for it that im contemplating buying keycaps for. I’m also on the verge of asking for car accessories for a future car, but even then, it’s existence isn’t definite yet. My grandpa is getting a new car and my mom said that there is a very big possibility that I would get the current one. Which, on a side note, is the only thing that made me happy in a very long time. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about Christmas and what value comes out of the holiday. I can’t lie, I’m looking forward to getting gifts from relatives. But I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about the money that they’re spending on my, after finally realizing how much of people’s income goes into presents. I know that gifts usually have a deeper meaning than just the gift itself. And it’s the fact that they thought of you that actually accounts for the value. But I feel like that only applies to friend to friend interactions. With family I feel like it’s an obligation and I feel bad that it ends up that way. For example, I’m aware that you don’t want to use $60 to buy me a sweatshirt and socks, Aunt Kim, and I don’t want you to either. On the other hand, there’s no real way for me to stop it though. Even if I was adamant about a family member not getting me anything, there’s no way they wouldn’t. I feel like it would be that way with most families. Again, I’m not trying to say I want to go on one of those donate instead of accept gifts, like the inspirational video I saw on nickelodeon when I was 6. I’m just thinking that we can cut the unnecessary, obligatory gifts out from the christmas rotation. For example, just because we are blood relatives, doesn’t mean you’re obligated to send me ten bucks and a card every year. Oh, and don’t even get me started on thank you cards. I don’t mind them for close relatives, but for Aunt Sally, who I haven’t seen since I was 2 years old - I don’t know you, I don’t care about you, and I’m not saying thank you. I appreciate the thought of them, and obviously they mean more than just a text saying it. But I feel like if you aren’t worth a thank you card, you don’t get a thank you card. Again, I understand it’s an appreciation of time and effort, but there are relatives that send me a card with no effort, so why should I put in effort to send one back? It sounds a little snotty, but they obviously don’t care about my existence(which is fine), so what’s the reason that I have to give a careless piece of paper back? If I had to guess, they truly do not care about me. If you think about it, it’s definitely just something that they have to knock off their Christmas to-do list. I’m not actually being that about, I mean, clearly. If they don’t know me well enough to get me a gift, then you don’t have to send me any money at all. That’s not being said in a rude way, just plain and simply - It doesn’t matter to me that you don’t know enough about me to get me anything, so if you don’t, don’t worry about getting me something - and use the money on something else. I get for some people they think that their nephews/neices/grandons etc., could buy something better with the money than they could buy them. But I feel like it’s different. I feel like for that they at least know my interests, but don’t want to spend money on something specific in case it’s not the right thing. This is obviously used a lot nowadays since kids can just show their parents what they want for Christmas from an amazon page. And even then, they know they want the “Epic Elite Gaming Champion Chair”, but even at that, there could be even more customizable options with color and size that could be gotten wrong now. Nowadays, there’s just so many options. Computers have thousands of internal parts that could be wrong if a kid has a specific idea of what they want. So now, we live in a time where parents are at a struggle to make their kids the happiest they could be. If parents try to get their kids the right thing, most likely, there can always be some aspect they got wrong. So in conclusion, that's what I've been reflecting about. What I want, what I don't need, what I'll probably get anyway, and the uselessness of notecards. |
AuthorHi, I'm Brennan Mahokey. That's all you need to know. |