And so it begins…

It seems to me that everyone gets to a point in their life when they start to wonder what it is they should do with the rest of it.  Recently, I have begun to feel the very same way, and it has led me to a few realizations about my life.  These realizations came when I started up classes again at Utah Valley University.  I had taken the summer off, considering it a well-deserved break from 5 straight semesters of school-not that those 5 semesters were very stressful or difficult.  The interesting thing about taking the summer off is that I had things that I wanted to accomplish during the summer, like starting a website for instance, and writing a novel.  As it turns out I failed miserably and spent most of my summer doing little more than working full-time and wasting the remainder of the days playing computer games.  Now as I look back, it does seem like a bit of a waste.

So I admitted that to myself, promising that I would get back into school with an added measure of zeal, making the most of my college experience.  The one other thing I was supposed to do over the summer was to decide what my emphasis would be, within the Digital Media major.  I failed to do that as well, and upon returning to school I was again at a loss for what kind of career I would like to pursue.  At first, I figured that I would just go through this semester, and then at the end; decide.  There are still plenty of classes I can take that would apply to any emphasis, so I thought it wouldn’t be a terrible thing to wait another semester.  Besides, nothing had really caught my attention yet.

This was exactly what I had decided right before I got an email for the financial aid office saying that I wasn’t eligible for financial aid because I hadn’t made “satisfactory academic progress.”  It wasn’t really a big deal.  I hadn’t declared my major, so naturally I needed to do so if I wanted to receive any kind of federal financial aid.  I’d already received a scholarship to cover me for the next year, so it didn’t really matter, but for some reason it mattered to me.  It was almost as if somebody had come right out and told me that I had been a bum, and that it was about time to make a decision.  I mean, it really got to me.  Over the next few weeks I was constantly weighing my options and think and praying about what I should do.  I’m sure a lot people go through something like this, and I’m sure nobody wants to make the wrong decision, even if there may not really be a “wrong decision.”  For me, I just didn’t want to be stuck doing something for the rest of my life that I didn’t enjoy doing.  More than that, I didn’t want to end up going back to school again like a lot of older people do nowadays.  One major, and that’s all for me, thank you very much.  I’m not gonna be one of those eternal students that just doesn’t know how to move on.

So under these conditions classes began, and I found myself once again immersed in the world of Digital Media.  I was taking a Marketing class, a Interaction Design class, a Project Management class, in addition to a Digital Audio Restoration class.  I had registered later than I should have unfortunately, so I had been forced to pick some of these classes based on schedule rather than a desire to take them, so none of them were web design based, which I was pretty sure would be my emphasis.  Over my first few weeks of school, while I was still in the mindset of needing to pick an emphasis once and for all, I became rather disinterested in the major all together.  I started looking around at my peers, and listening to what they had to say and thinking that I just didn’t belong here.  What was so strange about it, was that I had never felt that way before.  When I first started college I thought that maybe I would like to be a teacher instead, but since that time, I had been wholly engaged in the realm of Digital Media.  Regardless of the indecision that I felt in picking an emphasis, I had resolved that I would one day do so, and finish my degree in Digital Media.  It was so weird to suddenly have a complete change of heart and wonder whether I should even be there at all.  This was the 1st of my realizations.

Somehow during this time, I started thinking again about my desire to be a writer.  I had always enjoyed writing, in fact, I had been writing creatively since I was youth.  I had always been very creative, and had quite the imagination.  In my teenage years I had turned my writing skills from stories, to writing songs instead, and continued that until the present day.  Thinking about it now, I’m surprised that I never considered becoming a writer at all.  Aren’t people supposed to pick something that they love to do as their profession.  Yes, but do we?  No.  Most people pick a job that will make good money, and they end up loving it because they love having lots of money.  Not for me.  I want to work normal work hours so I can be with my family, and I don’t really care about what kind of salary I have so long as it is enough to provide for family.  The only trouble with this approach is that you have to know what you love to do.  You can’t just decide to be a doctor or a lawyer because the money is good.  So if I love to write, why shouldn’t I do that for a living?  I always wanted to do some sort of writing on the side anyway, but without some instruction it always feels so laborious.  If I needed to take some creative writing classes anyway, why not just major in it; a second realization.

This was the decision that led me to one conclusion.  After this semester I was either going to be a writer, or a web designer, and if I was going to be a writer, then I need to read more books.  If you want to be a good writer, then you have to be an avid reader.  I read that somewhere, and when I did it was like a brick hitting me in the head after it had dropped from building.  It’s one of those things that makes you feel like an idiot because you should have known it all along, only you were too stupid to figure it out, so you had to read it somewhere.  It was these realizations that made me think about literature in a way that I had never thought about it before.  In school I had always avoided reading literature, and found summaries on the internet to read instead, so I would have enough information to take a quiz or write a paper.  It is a dishonest thing to do, but almost every kid does it nowadays.  Now that I think about it, it’s one of the saddest facts that I know, right up there with the amount of starving children in the world.  Literature used to be a huge deal, but now it’s been replaced by movies, video games, and a whole lot of nothing worth watching on television.  To those who still love literature, books continue to be written and added to the list of must-reads, but to those who have their minds elsewhere, literature might as well not exist, and the classics of literature that have been praised for so many years are all but forgotten by the rising generation.  Sure children may read Harry Potter, but only the rare child will read Sense and Sensibility, or The Great Gatsby from cover to cover, even when they get to college.  As I consider all the books that exist in the world, and the fact that I have never read any of them, it hurts me, especially when I consider how many lame movies, and dull TV shows I have sat through.

So at this time in my life I have decided that I am going to be a writer.  I am going to meet with an advisor in the English department of Utah Valley University to make it official, and I am going to stick to it like gum on the bottom of a rubber soled shoe.  In addition to that decision, I am going to read all the classics of literature that I have been missing out on all these years, because of the world, and it’s unnecessary distractions.  I am going to be a well read individual and though I may not be able to quote every book that I read, I will at least know the storyline, the main characters, and what it was all about.  And if I don’ know what the author was intending to say to me, I will at least know what I got out of it.  And if I am going to read a book at all, then I might as well get something out of it, otherwise, what’s the point of putting in the time at all.  From here on, I will populate this webpage with my thoughts on the books that I have read, and who knows, maybe one day I will read them and remember that it was time well spent.  I will remember that I shutdown the computer, that I turned off the television, and that I kept the netflix movie for a few more days, just so I could open up a book and let my imagination take a ride every now and then.

I know that in this decision I am all but alone in regards to my peers.  Only a handful of them will ever read the list of books that I am intending to read.  But that’s ok.  Only a handful of people in the world really have unique experiences.  Most people just follow in the footsteps of those who went before them, without really doing anything new, and for many, it turns out to be a tragic cycle.  I refuse to allow this to happen to me.  I am going to do something different.  While the majority of my peers go through the motions of college life, writing papers when they must, and reading books when required, I am going to do something academic by choice.  While the majority of my peers spend most of their spare time engaged in activities that produce only temporary joy or pleasure at the expense of brain cells, I will increase my brain capacity by choice.  And while the majority of my peers will never read what I write, or know even the most miniscule amount about the books I will read, I will do it by choice, and it will be a great experience that will start me a path that can only lead to more good and worthwhile ventures.  I only hope that somewhere, at sometime, someone will derive something useful from what will be my journey through literature

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