I

I

”I”

-not I

I don’t want to do this, and I see no useful purpose in doing this. I’d much rather take my time to write slowly, rather than fast, because that’s just what I prefer. Writing fast seems sloppy, and I don’t get time to think out my thoughts thoroughly. The structure becomes weird, I can’t get the sentences to flow and link together properly, and it just becomes excessively tiring after a while. I can’t quite seem to decide if I want to concentrate more, and speed up my thoughts to properly process what I’m writing, or concentrate more to slow down my thoughts, and write them down as they occur. Both don’t seem like good options. 

Either way, I’d quite honestly rather not go back and edit this later. It sounds painful, and I’d rather not relive this experience again. I can’t think through any of my thoughts properly, and at least while writing this, everything becomes a mess. I don’t remember what I wrote three minutes ago, and nothing has structure to it anymore. The only thing keeping me somewhat sane is the occasional obligatory swipe to check how many words I’ve written, and the fact that the clock somehow is moving at an unsteady pace. 

Interestingly enough, I don’t know what to write now. It might be that my brain has begun to shut down, but it also could be because, I don’t know, “things.” I’ve also made up my mind to not come back later to check over what I’ve written. Surely there’s no need for me to do that. All I know is that I don’t want to do this again.

Journal Entry no. 3

Can’t be surprised when something fails if you’ve never had faith about it in the first place. 

“Trust is like blood pressure. It's silent, vital to good health, and if abused it can be deadly."

—Frank Sonnenberg

Trust is an interesting thing. Interestingly enough, like many other interesting things, it also causes quite an incredible amount of pain and pure annoyance for everyone involved. Presumably, a fair portion of that comes from the way that humans have evolved, and from human society in general. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and, quite honestly, I don’t really have the motivation to care. Unfortunately, even knowing where trust comes from doesn’t alleviate the pain. Fun.

Take something like the coronavirus, for example. Everyone’s in quarantine, and apparently, some people are stocking up on various things. This means that now, no one else can buy those things, and so therefore we have a shortage on those things. As a response to that, other people pointed out the fact that if no one stocked up on anything, the world wouldn’t have a shortage of those supplies anymore, or at least not to this extent. Which both makes sense, and would work—if two conditions (there might be more, I’m too lazy to think about them) are met. One, the world can’t lose a significant amount of “producing” power from the quarantine. It might be possible considering the amount of automation nowadays, and looking at the fact that companies haven’t completely stopped restocking/manufacturing things, it seems fairly plausible. But, the second condition is trust.

If I was living as a grown, self-sufficient (or not) citizen of the US (or any other country, really), and if I knew, for certain, (idk how, let’s just assume this person can see into the future for this particular situation or something) that there was going to be a severe shortage of basic supplies because people hoarded them, then I would probably do the same, out of pure necessity for my own survival. Not necessarily to an extreme extent, but certainly more than what I would normally get. And that’s where the problem lies. 

If the government officially told everyone to not hoard supplies, some people might still naturally assume that other, not-trustworthy people were going to disregard the order/“not hear” the order and hoard supplies anyway, and therefore begin to hoard themselves because well “they’re doing it too.” The government couldn’t really do anything about it because there’s no good way to enforce that law (how do you tell someone that they can’t buy three packs of toilet paper instead of two) even if they did make it a law, and then we get into the same situation as before. Even if there’s no one buying like thirty packs of toilet paper in one go, if most people were to buy a couple more packs than usual, there would still be a shortage because the manufacturers aren’t prepared for the sudden increase in need. See, unless I’m being an idiot and missing something here, things are never going to work with our current society “setup.” And so, this is why we should switch to communism. If we did, then literally no one would be able to hoard, and distrust wouldn’t matter as much anymo—no.

Journal Entry no. 2

How to waste time

Being indecisiveness is annoyingly stupid, yet also strangely interesting at the same time. On one hand, I do have a half-decent topic to write an essay/journal entry  on. On the other hand, I’ve been sitting here for over twenty minutes, thinking about whether or not I should actually do it. Fun. Very fun.

Ewing Style Blog Post

Things might be more complex than they seem.

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
-Kurt Vonnegut

We all have our hobbies. For me, one of the hobbies that I have is pen spinning. I got started quite a few months ago, and this was one of the videos that really got me into it. 

This video was posted to YouTube on December 1st, 2012. It shows a person spinning a pen while singing along to One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful,” presumably while also quite drunk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzElkC9y9nk

According to him, he tried to “provide encouragement for the people not in the (pen spinning) world.” Interestingly enough, it worked out surprisingly well. The humor, drunkenness, and general sense of “I don’t care” made it strangely inspiring, and it’s made me want to achieve his level of skill many times before. Although this video wasn’t the thing that got me into pen spinning, it’s definitely one of the ones that made me truly realize what I could do with it.

I’ve spent many, many frustrating hours banging my fist against the table while trying to figure out a seemingly easy trick, just for that little bit of a “rush” that I get when I finally land it. Is it worth the effort? Probably not.

But I enjoy doing it anyway

Getting Sick

It’s an interesting world we live in.

Sickness. It doesn’t sound like a fun word, and unsurprisingly, it’s most definitely not fun. Far less fun than you, or anyone else might expect. Even the mildest sickness can have a significant impact on people’s lives, throwing away the most precious resource that we have; one that every human treasures above just about anything else: time.

An Experience with a Friend

We can’t accomplish everything alone.

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.”
– Arnold H. Glasgow

Friends give us different viewpoints. Whenever I’m out of ideas; struggling to do something, it’s often my friends who help me, and give me inspiration. However, I didn’t realize this until quite recently. It was a couple of weeks ago, when one of my friends gave me the inspiration, and the key to finishing my homework.

Empathy, Bigotry & Marginalization

When not to be sick.

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
― Joseph Fort Newton

      People are influenced by fear. Although one person’s fear often doesn't harm other people, when it does, the impact can be quite noticeable. Fear can take many forms, but right now, one of the more prominent and widespread fears among humans has been the recent coronavirus outbreak in China. Although I hadn’t really paid it much mind before now, it was only recently that I realized how much of an impact that it can have on people.

      Yesterday, I had a fencing competition. Normally, this would have been fairly uninteresting. It was a fairly small competition that didn’t have much of an impact on anything, really, and there just wasn’t anything too special about it. However, there was a slight problem: my entire family was sick. Although it was just with the flu and (thankfully) not the coronavirus, those two diseases were similar enough to potentially make people rather... unhappy. We even considered not going at all if we looked “too sick” because of the potential fear that we might cause. But, in the end, we decided to go anyway. 

      Interestingly enough, it didn’t go too badly. I got a half-decent result, and not too many weird looks were given when we couldn’t control the occasional cough. But then again, I wouldn’t have blamed them anyway even if they did do something, because I probably would have done the same if I were in their position. Although virus’s are quite interesting, they also aren’t the most friendly things in the world, and approaching them without fear or caution wouldn’t be normal. Funnily enough, I think it was my sister who passed the disease to the rest of us. My parents don’t go out often, and they got the disease before I did.

     So, I suppose one lesson could be taken out of this experience: try not to go near babies who are sick.

SATIRE ON PAYING CALLS IN AUGUST

Well, I guess I’m switching my piece. I found it in the book of poems that Fitz gave me, and although I only looked through it for a couple of minutes, it was the only one that caught my eye. Although translated poems never really “flow” that well, the humor still made this one seem quite interesting. It’s also not too long.

The thing that holds our society up.

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
― Winston Churchill

      Without respect, one cannot move forward in life. If I hadn’t learned to respect the people and things around me, life would surely have gone much differently than it has now, and in a bad way. Out of Fenn’s four core values, respect has been the one that has affected me the most. Throughout my time at Fenn, it’s value as a core value has been proved time and time again.

Perspective matters.

”What you see depends not only on what you look at, but also, on where you look from.”

~James Deacon

      The world can be viewed in more than one way. This chapter in the book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, taught me that there is always more than one way to approach a specific task at hand. With it’s seemingly complicated, yet also surprisingly straightforward logic, this book shows in a funny and understandable way the benefits of creativity when faced with a problem. I approached this book with what can only be described as a heavy heart. Exams, studying, many failed attempts on trying to write The Power of Respect, they all sort of combined together to make a very... unexciting moment, to say the least. But, as I finished reading through the chapter, my mood began to lighten. After all, wasn’t my situation kind of like Tom’s? We had both been struggling on a task that seemed endless, yet he had succeeded in the end, where I had failed. Yes, I wasn’t completely done yet, and yes, we were doing entirely different tasks, but did that really matter? Maybe I could get some fun from this. We face so many problems in our lives. Although many can’t be improved or changed just by switching up how we do, or approach things, the problems that can be improved/changed can lead to unexpected outcomes. It might be good, or it might be bad. But, either way, it’s going to make an impact. As Tom Sawyer showed us, all it takes to get to one of these outcomes is just a bit of luck, and a stroke of inspiration. Although a change in perspective probably won’t change the world forever, it could definitely make yours, or someone else’s day go far better. But then again, maybe it can change the world.