FInal paper

To begin this final project, I started with my interests. What is it that I like? What is popular yet holds personal meaning? I thought immediately of books. Reading is an enjoyable, comforting and wholly personal experience. The text within the covers is text available for you to interpret, the characters for you to imagine, the adventure for you to undergo.

So what do I do now that I've selected my desired subject? What aspect of reading could I possibly cover, all the while needing to show a process of progress? On an entirely personal level I've been evolving as a writer every day since my early years. Now, that to me shows progress. What better way to interpret my love of reading than with my own writings of the past?

I immediately went to my mom, scoured the house for all my past writings, and decided to put together an homage to myself, my own personal literature collected since the early years until now.

Now, several hours later, I sigh with mixed emotions, nostalgia dripping from every page, photograph, note, or memory. Ever since my childhood I seem to have been an imaginative child, always with writing of adventurous or perilous fiction. Some early stories being " Wishes with the Genie", "Soccer Troubles (with a sequel basketball troubles)", "The Big Race","Attacking ants", "The Sewer Adventure" and a couple of untitled works of adventure.

Perhaps the best way or maybe the only way to understand one's present is to go backward, self understanding being tied with one's life's experiences. I reflect on just how familiar everything feels although I'm reading the works of a boy twelve years ago that physically does not resemble this man. The brain works overtime, my eyes close, and suddenly everything goes back. I time travel to that moment, mentally the physical space expands and I am who I was. I am really not so different. I laugh as I see myself then and now. The switch in priorities aside, my character, or maybe that "inner child" people like to talk about lives strong. Just thinking I am the same corner-cutting dubious, gleeful boy spreads a smile wide on my face.

I peer at the clock, thirty one minutes until I submit my most modern work. The culmanation of all that has been, all that was written once, flowing into this paper. Ego is the ultimate project, every single act and choice a building to my character. It's funny how people state the "life is too short" because life is the longest thing one will ever do. You and only you are master of your domain, and only you have the remote to change yourself. My head is now thick with scraps of modest philosophical thought, tied in to endless mementos to my past.

I now think that this paper has little or nothing to do with...anything. It feels like a silly cop out, of course life is a project, unfortunately it is not tangible in any sort of growth sense except in my own brain, as I have obtained a sort of understanding of myself. As my third grade teacher put in my report card, "Occasionally Simon's work is compromised by speed, and needs frequent reminders to stay on task". But this to me is the point, and perhaps what I was most able to get from the class. It was not in any curriculum, but in your ability to have us think freely, to truly be ourselves.

A little introspection never hurt anyone I suppose, as I feel that life is the biggest and most blantant series of pimps, hacks and mods. And now this little boy, this teenager, and this college student has contributed yet another work to memory, and another modification to his life. Go in peace.