An Exciting Journey with a Help a Simple Journal

For my English Advanced Class we were asked to keep a personal journal were we would write for ten minutes at least five days a week for a few months. At first I wasn’t too excited with the idea, because it was something I had to do everyday. After a week of giving it a try I actually started to enjoy the dynamics of the project. For ten minutes I felt like it was just me, myself and I. The rules to this journal were simple: don’t’ think, don’t worry about grammar, and go for the jugular. At first I kept thinking about what I was going to write and I wanted to make sense. I found myself explaining what I was talking about, as if I talking to someone other than myself. After getting used to it I started writing down everything, it didn’t matter how random it was. Sometimes I would be talking about a test I had soon and suddenly I would write down a comment on something that I saw that morning. 

Now, I normally don’t have a problem with writing “deep” things. I’ve never worried about someone reading my journal and blackmailing for the rest of my life. Since elementary, I’ve kept a few diaries and journals and looking back at them I laugh and cry at the things that I wrote. So I guess going for the jugular wasn’t hard for me… or so I thought. I started to notice during those ten minutes of writing continuously a lot of thoughts come to your mind, A LOT. Including thoughts that can be scary and have never left your mind, meaning they come around once in a while. I took the liberty of reading a few of my entries and I noticed there was always this one thought that kept appearing in almost every entry.  It was a personal issue that I kept avoiding because I thought that writing it or talking about it made it official. I was in denial and I thought that writing it made it … real. This pattern continued for a while until I decided, in one entry, to just go for it; go for the jugular, right? I wrote it down and I realized that by doing that I wasn’t making it more real than it already was. Writing it down helped me accept it and move on. I can say that this happened to me with a few avoidable thoughts and writing them down helped me move on in a healthy way. 

As of my writing environment I can definitely say I am a night owl. I found that during the night is were my thoughts flow more easily and also is when I am more willing to write. I tried composing in the mornings but I was always too tired or too late to do it. This journal made me understand the power of writing. It also helped me comprehend how many issues we avoid daily and how unhealthy it is to do it. This journal wasn’t just an assignment it was a journey. I am sure I will continue writing in my journal and I am curious as to what other “truths” I will uncover of myself. If you don't keep a journal I invite to do so. You'd be surprised of how much you can learn about yourself with just a paper and pen.

Different People Present Different Perspectives

Perspective is something unique to everyone’s personality. Some people decide to look at the bright side of things, while other look at the bad side. I guess it depends on your attitude towards life. If you are the type of person that loves living everyday to the fullest or maybe the type of person that does not stress too much over things, you’ll probably find yourself thinking positive most of the time. Now, if you’re the type of person that gets mad easily or worries too much about things, you might see things another way.

In the short part we read of On Looking by Alexandra Holowits, we see how this woman decides to pay attention to everything around her while she took a walk. It was impressive the amount of detail that she presented to the reader, but it helped to imagine what she was looking at. Although we didn’t read the rest of the script were different perspective were to be exposed of different people, I can already imagine what was going to happen. Recently, two female students in the Social Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus interviewed me as a class project. The interview was about the condition of ADHD and the purpose of the interview was precisely to capture different perspectives on what it was or what people understood it was. As a student from Natural Sciences, my response was that ADHD is a mental disorder were people can get distracted very easily and are constantly hyperactive due to their lack of control, neurologically speaking. Immediately, the two females looked at me and said: “That was one of the most elaborate answers we have heard. People usually just say: well it says it in the name, attention deficit disorder (leaving out hyperactivity) or they say its just a kid that is super hyper”. For me, my answer was just what I have constantly heard in my groups and/or in my classes, but for people coming from other majors that was a totally different perspective.

I think that besides the fact that all of us have different perspectives and that these in fact are due to our different experiences in life, what we can really extract from On Looking is a desire to pay more attention to what happens around us. We live each day thinking it’s just another day when in reality it’s so much more. Have you ever heard of Carpe diem? It means, “Seize the day” in Latin. Isn’t that motivating? Seize the day! I think it’s telling us to live everyday to the fullest and find happiness in everything that surrounds us, in our friends, in our family, in our job, on the street while we walk or in our cars when we drive. Wherever we are, pay attention, what happens today may not happen again tomorrow.

Movie: A Room With a View (1985)

The 1985 movie version of a A Room with a View, written by E. M. Forster, is basically about a young woman coming from a high social class who meets a young man in Florence, Italy but finds herself trapped between high social class demands and what her heart wants. Since the beginning of the movie I recognized the difference in social classes. For example, when Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin Charlotte are dining with a novel writer who was talking all sorts of complex and proper words, while a man named Emerson and his son George were trying to be nice and offered their room with a view to Lucy and Charlotte.

Throughout the movie I noticed how Lucy was passionate about many things but felt limited because of what was considered proper for a lady. As soon as George kisses Lucy, Charlotte and her cousin leave Florence. Charlotte considered the act improper and Lucy due to her background had to think it was improper too. Later on, Lucy is engaged to an intectual man named Cecil. Her fiancé was not compatible with Lucy at all, but she thought it was correct to marry a man with class. Cecil was constantly reading books, while Lucy liked to bath in the sacred lake (but no longer because she was caught) and play tennis with her brother. Later on, Mr. Emerson moves in next the Honeychurches and George (visited him in the weekends) became good friends with Lucy's brother, Freddy Honeychurch. During this time George kisses Lucy once again and he tries to convince Lucy that Cecil does not love her. He tried to convince her that she felt different after Florence. Lucy, thinking about what George said, breaks off her engagement with Cecil and decides to go to Greece. For me, this trip to Greece was just a way of escaping everything. 

In the entire movie, I saw how the high class had so many rules and limits and Lucy had trouble with this. As a young woman she liked to experience adventure and wanted romance in her life. In one scene were they were riding through Italy, the driver seemed to be romantic with a girl and while the others considered it disrespectful, Lucy thought their affection was harmless. Today we have cases similar to this. There may be young people who's parents want them to acquire a specific profesion or they expect them to marry specific type of people. Thankfully, in most modern day societies, but not in all cultures, young people have a voice and have the liberty of chosing their future. It still surprises me though, how some people take this for granted while some teenagers in other countries cant't even decide what to wear, where to go or even who they marry.

Who's the Girl?

You may ask yourself.. who's the girl behind the blog? 

I should start describing myself I guess...

Physically, I'm a skinny, pale-looking, about 5'6", brunette medium-length-hair kind of girl. I'm always wearing some cheap relatively big orange glasses that I got from the internet and a not so cheap ring on my right hand-ring finger. While I may look like a sixteen years old, currently I'm actually two decades old (ok, I'm 20, but I wanted to sound more dramatic). Now enough about my looks. Let me tell you more about myself... 

I like to get my hands on anything crafty. Im actually a pretty good card maker. Here is a picture of a few that I made for Christmas last year:

Anyways, I am a faithful Christian and I owe everything that I have and that I am to God. I am thankful everyday for the crazy love He has for us and with Him I have found my purpose and meaning in life! I am always up for a good movie and/or hanguin' out with my friends or boyfriend.  I love medicine and everything that compels the human body, therefore I am currently studying biology in the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus (woah, that was long) so I can continue on to medical school. Since I love babies I want to become a Neonatologist! Also, I love-LOVE music. I listen to it constantly and if you're wondering, yes. I am the kind of person that finds a good song and listens to it until I hate it. In addition, I love traveling and I hope I can travel to some really awesome places in the future, like: Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and Africa. Also, I enjoy watching a lot of Youtube. The entertainment there is ENDLESS.

Now I'm not all peaches and cream, I have flaws and lots of them. Just to mention a few, I tend to overthink things WAY too much. I can be really indecisive of just about anything. I doubt myself too much sometimes and I also put too much pressure into pleasing people. 

After all, you could say that the blogger is a girl who is just trying to enjoy the journey of her life and find the positive side of things. A girl trying to be realistic yet dreaming everyday.

I'll end this one with a quote of one of my favourite movies. I hope this inspires you to be YOU, no matter how odd or abnormal you think you are...