Tales of Tenth Grade

Its February and as you all probably know, the topic of the month is “Anything Goes.” That means it is time to flex our full creativity, no restraining topics or guidelines to prevent you from writing your heart out about your purest passions and deepest desires. Absolute. Unmitigated. Freedom. And yet, I have absolutely no idea what to write. After spending approximately thirty minutes of my life rephrasing the ways to look up “what to blog about” I finally came up with an idea (no thanks to any of the repetitive sources on the internet telling me to post cooking recipes and how-to guides as if I’m qualified to do anything that involves a hot oven or general life skills). As evident in my title, the topic of my blog is the acceptability of being unprepared for the future, a post near and dear to my hyper-organizer, planning-centered self.  The guidance counselors are probably having a seizure reading this essay, especially with their recent discussion about our c...

The topic for this month is things that are important to me, and, I decided to write about the person I probably care about the most. My anchor in the stormy waters, my inspiration, the one person who has never left me. I’m writing about my dad. I don’t exactly have a conventional relationship with my dad. He shaped my childhood and definitely taught me important lessons, but he never really felt like a parent. He is a storyteller, teaching me by taking me back to his childhood, what it was like when he grew up, the struggles he faced, the successes he had. He is a friend, supporting me through rough patches and serving as someone to talk to without judgment. He is a teacher, yes, teaching me about the brain and philosophy and life, but also teaching me how to be critical (he definitely excelled here).  He was never the one to tell me to brush my teeth or go to bed, or to eat my vegetables, or to do my homework. For a while now, he hasn’t even been around to do so. But, for m...

Purple            I was always called "different" as a child.  No one could understand why I was the way I was, so they titled me.  I never liked fairies or sparkles like the other girls, no.  I know it's 2019 and people are more progressive, but I feel as if I grew up in what was last "traditionalist" generation.  Everyone dressed their little girls in pink and their little boys in blue.  That was the way it was.  I grew up in purple, my own special combination of both gender norms.             When we went to Disney for the first time that I remembered, I was around three or four.  We did not go for the princesses, but rather the pirates.  You see, I had an obsession with Pirates of the Caribbean , a trait that has carried through my infancy and into my young adulthood.  I wanted to be  Jack Sparrow.  I didn't ever see myself wearing a dress, but I definitely could ...

     I grew up listening to music all the time. It was never really my choice what music I listened to, instead it was my dad's. He was always playing the rock music he grew up listening to around me, so it became the music I listened to when I was a kid.      I think this is the case with a lot of kids, that they grew up listening to the music their parents like. It always seems, though, that as kids grow up, they drift away from their parent's music and start to like more current music. This was never the case for me, for the most part I still listen to the same music I grew up with.      I've never understood how everyone else so easily found conemporary music they liked. To understand why I struggle to do this, I looked back on the specific music that defined my taste in the first place. For me it is 70s progressive rock. When I was around ten-years-old, my dad used to play all the great bands of the genre like Yes , Genesis , and The M...

After a bit of pondering on what story I should put on display for the topic of creative writing, I realized that my idea bank is completely dry. So, as they say, write from experience! The holidays are fast approaching, as they always are and with it, a new decade. 2020. That's a big one. When we look back in time, it seems as if everything gets classified by the decade. The '70s are groovy, the '80s are colorful, the '90s are... slimy? All I can think of is Moon Shoes and Nickelodeon-gak. And Rugrats. For some reason, our culture has always been obsessed with nostalgia. The kids that got inspired grew up, and they draw from their childhood, which then inspires the next generation, who writes about their childhood and so forth. For us, that means our generation is going to reflect on the 2010s when we're our parents' age, just the same way they talk about the '80s. It's scary but it's true. Instead of comic books and magazines, we'll be ...