Spelling and Grammar

This was written on September 9th, 2010

So my friend asked me this question that she considers controversial yesterday, "Should technology ever be an excuse for poor grammar?" At first I was more concentrated on the fact that to me that's not even a controversial question as in my eyes there is only one answer. That is to say that there is never an excuse for bad grammar, not in writing at the very least. If you're having a conversation with someone and you say things wrong, well as long as you get the message across its fine, but in writing, you have as much time as you're willing to devote to make sure that everything is proper.

If you don't take the time to make sure everything is proper then obviously you don't care about what you're writing. Which naturally makes me wonder, "Why are you writing it if you don't care?" If you do care, then why won't you take the time? Why would you not make sure that there are absolutely no distractions from what you have to say by making sure that everything is spelled correctly, punctuated properly and written with grammatic accuracy. It doesn't make sense that you would slack on something you care about.

So for someone to ask me, "Is it okay if since I'm just texting on my phone, that I don't write everything with proper punctuation and spelling?" I'm just staring at the word texting and I forget about the rest of their sentence. How did this word come into existence, is it in any computer based dictionary, because personally when I write the word. It has a giant red squiggly line of death underneath it. One that breaks my focus and forces me to reconsider the intelligence of what I'm reading and writing.

My answer to this question, when not distracted is this, "Is it okay for me to burn the Koran just because I don't believe it is relative to me?" The answer is obviously no. Burning any text, let alone a religious text, is the highest form of blasphemy I can conceive. Yet you people choose to destroy text and language with your misuse and misunderstanding. Naturally by, "you people" I am referring to the entire world, including myself. We are all guilty of it, "lol" and "roflmao" or even "hahaha" when we're laughing in a text. How else are we supposed to explain our emotion, which can't be read in a message unless you have serious experience with reading and understanding language. Which most people don't have in this day and age.

So to your question, Rachelle, I will stick with my answer. However, I will also pose a question to you, "If I say that we all need to learn to better ourselves and our usage of language and its rules, regardless of technology. How is it that we incorporate the technology that makes it harder to communicate and give ourselves a way to communicate well without brutally murdering our own language(s)?"

The Giant Brick Wall

This was written on August 27th 2010

There's this giant thing that is over the heads of humanity, pushing down on our shoulders and condensing the air surrounding our heads. This thing makes it very hard to focus, hard to stand upright and just hard in general. It gives us all headaches and pushes tension into our backs until we literally can't stand anymore. This thing that hangs over all of us is our own progress.

Now, this may sound funny as everyone believes that progress is a good thing. We all know it's a good thing and that progress helps us grow. Still, so many people are afraid of progress, afraid of change and success. So they see it coming and they start running away from it, running away from the chance of success. They do everything they can to keep success from themselves because they're afraid of what may come from success.

I know I'm guilty of it. My senior year during my final Cross Country season I ran a 18:36 for a 5k. I never ran even close to that speed again, in fact in my final race that season, I faked blacking out and just lost all will to continue racing. I sabotaged my own success because I was afraid of the pressure of being better than I had been before, so I caved.

There are plenty of situations that people have been through like mine. We see something coming and as much as it is unreasonable to do so, we sabotage ourselves out of fear. There's this giant brick wall in front of you, a wall you've tried breaking down, climbing, digging under, going around. You've tried everything you can to get past this wall and all of the sudden a large rumbling begins to roar around you. You can see the dirt on the ground bouncing and leaping and the world seems to shake. You can feel in your bones the fact that something is coming to break down this brick wall of yours, to give you a chance to get past it. You have no idea what is coming, how dangerous it could be to you. It could put you in a struggle for your life, or it could be a kind creature which protects you for the rest of your journeys. You don't know.

This is when fear takes hold, when the unknown stands in our way, when something that we cannot calculate for is produced for us to deal with. It's a reasonable fear, but our reaction to that fear is what changes our character, defining us to be the best we can be. If we are to succeed in life, we need to let that creature crash through our barriers and then grab it by the horns, harnessing its power to move forward for our own goals. For me, that creature was the realization that I could do whatever I wanted. I had this wall in front of me waiting to be broken down and I could feel what was coming and so I stood and waited. Deciding that running away from all my progress was something I didn't want to do this time. My bones shook, my sweat rolled and I could feel the fear welling up inside of me, telling me to get out of the way, but I did everything I could to resist and I kept persisting.

It is my goal to own three houses outright by the time that I'm forty and I was given the opportunity and started down the path toward that goal. Despite my fears of how much it would change my life, I pursued this idea because what matters most to everyone is security, whether it's a house to fall back on, family who loves you, or a lover. Everyone needs security, and everyone finds that at some point their progress may take them further away from that security. That is a scary thing. So, I ask you all to consider, what is it that makes you afraid of your own progress? Then once you realize that, ask yourself this, will you run away from progress again? Or will you stand and fight for what you want?

The Beginning

This was written on August 27th 2010

This is the beginning of what is going to be a collection of essays.