My mother sometimes requests things from the library for me. Oftentimes she gets test prep books and things like that, which I try to avoid touching unless she bothers me about it. But this time she got me the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, a book I have been meaning to read for some time.

This book has made me see success in a different way. I have to say, I am like the majority of people - I like to hear those stories about a poor person who works hard and is talented and becomes successful (rich and happy). But really, you need more than talent to be successful.

What happens to you is shaped a lot by the kinds of circumstances you have. Sometimes it takes a lot of luck for you to become successful. In the book, there is a list of the 75 richest people in the world. Many people were wealthy because they happened to be royalty. But there were also quite a few Americans, all born at about the same time (around 1830's to 1840's). This was a good time to be born if you were going to be an entrepreneur.

I've been thinking how a person's experiences can also change their personality. My parents have said that I was placed in a combination class (meaning a class consisting of students of two different grades) because when I was in kindergarten I was thought to be mature enough for it or something like that. I'm probably more afraid to talk to teachers now that I'm older than when I was younger... It was a struggle for me, the time after one of my closest friends moved away, in fifth grade. I had other friends, but they had become closer to their other friends, and I didn't want to be a third wheel, a tagalong. I turned to books and to the Internet (and ever since I've been hooked on the computer...) and became rather reclusive. I didn't want to make friends, since I felt that I would lose them again, and even if I had wanted to, I'm not sure I would have been able to. I was losing my ability to communicate.

There was a time that I was angry at my friend for moving away, and at her father (because he had gotten a job elsewhere, and in order to keep the family together, they had moved). And then there was a time when I was really sad. But eventually I subconsciously had moved on, and I started to mingle again. (It was slow, though, and one of the friends I made that year moved away the very next year...) I guess there's a part of me that fears getting involved and attached to things because I suspect that I will lose them. But I hope I can become brave enough to overcome this.

I feel oddly peaceful nowadays, after having gone on a few walks by myself. I visited the recreational sort of place in my town. Unfortunately, it wasn't the quite oasis that I had suspected. The pool was quite loud since there seemed to be some kids from summer camps there. There were older people playing volleyball (meaning older than the kids swimming, not meaning senior citizens) and there was a group of adults walking over to some benches. (I kept wondering why they weren't at work. I mean, it was a weekday, after all. My mom says they were on a group outing or something like that.) But it was still nice to be by the creek. I'm grateful to photography because it has made me pay more attention to little things, and I appreciate the beauty of nature much more than I used to. And I can take my time thinking. I feel like I'm reliving my life, and returning to my old self. Or maybe I'm discovering my true self for the first time.

Labels: bravery, circumstances, discovery, emotions, fear, friends, introverted, luck, malcolm gladwell, memories, outliers, peace, personality, success, thoughts, timing, truth, walk

When I was younger, I would always sleep without socks on. It felt too uncomfortable to me, wearing socks to bed. On hot days, I even stuck my bare feet out of the side of the blanket just to keep them feeling cool. This went on for many years, even in the winter, when my feet became all cold and numb. I didn't like the alien feeling I got from wearing socks.

But that has changed this past winter. My blood circulation has not been good. (At least, that is the theory that my mom and I have; if you have a better idea, you should let me know.) My body temperature isn't always as it should be. When the weather is cold I cannot seem to keep my body heat unless I am wearing a thick jacket (and even then sometimes it's not enough). My hands would be icy cold while my parents' hands would be quite warm. One of my classmates was surprised that I was wearing a jacket since she thought it was pretty warm. I myself am shocked to see students wearing t-shirts and shorts even on chilly days. (In fact, in elementary school, we would joke that one kid never wore anything besides t-shirts and shorts, winter or summer.)

My feet were really feeling too cold, so I decided it was better that I wear socks to bed. At first it felt all wrong, but after a while I got used to the feeling, and so it became a habit of mine. In fact, it feels a little odd not wearing socks. But since the weather is really warm, I figure it's better to sleep with socks off again for the time being.

I kept realizing right after I turned off the lights that I had forgotten to put on socks before bed. But it's such a hassle turning the lights on again and getting up to get socks. My mom says that I should just keep socks under my pillow. She said that she did that when she was young. I've been thinking to myself that maybe she didn't have teeth to give the tooth fairy, so she left socks instead. That makes it the Sock Fairy instead.

Recently I've been feeling some discomfort in my feet. The bottom of my left foot (specifically, the area known as the "ball" of the foot) pained me slightly during the day. I was still able to walk and run, but it sure made things uncomfortable. I looked at it at night and saw there was something like a blister on it. A dry, hard part of skin...Yikes. And then my other foot, the right foot is a bit odd around the ankle area (the side that is facing inward, facing to the left). It hurt me to bend it in a certain position, but only sometimes. At other times it is just fine. I keep wondering if perhaps I have injured myself without knowing it. Maybe I was sleeping in a really weird position. (I recall waking up some days with a stiff back or with pulled muscles from sleeping in a bad position.) Or maybe it's just one of those unexplainable aches that goes away after a while.

I've been stressed lately as well, due to a group project we have to do for language arts class (it's just so hard to meet up with my group members, so it's really bothering me). And I've also had to take quite a few tests. The STAR tests aren't really that big of a concern to me. But I have been taking awards tests. Since eighth grade is the last year of middle school, if you can show your excellence in a subject (essay writing, speech, poetry, mathematics, science, social studies, or art) you will be given an award. I was a bit reluctant to take a test for some of the subjects since I felt there was no way I would get the award (unless by some stroke of luck I managed to bubble in all the right answers, and it would be unfair for me to win the award when I didn't know what I was doing), but my mom urged me to, saying it would be a good experience and I might as well give it a try.

Well, the history was okay (though I didn't remember a lot, or didn't even know if I'd learned it), the science was tolerable, the essay writing was not too bad (just a bit of a time constraint)... But the geometry was something else. I could only understand how to do a few problems. Many of the things were either forgotten (like the formula for the volume of a cone or something along those lines) or I hadn't ever seen such a problem. These problems were beyond my abilities, so I ended up having to bubble in randomly at the end of class. (I should have taken Mr. Kulla's advice to just skip what I didn't understand immediately. I actually heard the problems at the end of the test were a bit easier...) Anyways, I am a little upset because I feel I had wasted a perfectly good hour of my time on taking a test that just ended up confusing me, but I suppose there's no use crying over spilled milk.

Labels: academic, awards, blood, circulation, discomfort, eighth grade, feet, geometry, health, luck, pain, pillow, problem, school, sleep, socks, STAR testing, temperature, test, tooth fairy

Just a little while ago, I mentioned copic markers, right? Well, just yesterday, I went into a store called Memories Live On. I was trying to find a scrapbook because I need one for my French project (we are supposed to make a family tree, and write about our grandparents and direct family, and ourselves too of course). Memories Live On is a scrapbooking store, and also has some art supplies. When I went in, I wandered around, and then I saw the Copic markers! (They are not exactly cheap. Costs four or five dollars just to get one) They are some nice markers that have two different ends. If you take off the cap on one end, you get a chisel tip. If you take off the cap on the other end, you get a fine pointy tip. And the markers are cool since I tried them out and if you color a blob, and then put a different color on top, they sort of mix a little since they're kind of watery.

Anyways, I feel like I have some magnetic pull to me or something. If something is mentioned or shown to me and I remember it, then pretty soon I will see the same thing or something similar. It's kind of freaky, but it's kind of cool, too. (Nowadays I am immersing myself into superstition, heh heh... I count crows whenever I see them, and one of my friends keeps wanting to "read my palms")

Not only that, but I always gravitate towards my number in PE. We all stand on white numbers that were painted on the blacktop so our PE teachers can count how many people are absent easily. I have this tendency to always go to my number, so usually if someone wants to talk to me they'd probably have to move over to me, not the other way around. In fact, I once joked that I was attracted by unseen forces to my number since I almost always head there.

The other day, my father was watching a movie called Nothing But the Truth. It is based off of some real events. The movie is about a journalist who publishes an article, and people are pressuring her to reveal where she got the information, but she won't reveal the source. She even went to jail for it, as it was a very delicate matter (she had discovered the name of a CIA agent, which is supposed to be top-secret, and things like that). Only in the end of the movie did we find out the true source. Skip the next paragraph if you don't want spoilers.

Surprisingly, the reporter's source of information was none other than the daughter of the CIA agent. The reporter was on a bus with her son and his classmates since I think they were going on a field trip. And a girl asked the reporter what she was doing, since the reporter had her laptop. The reporter and the girl talked, and then the girl said that her father was a writer too, but her mother didn't like what her father wrote about...And so the girl kept talking and revealed that her mother worked for the government, and that she was in Venezuela. Let me explain... Someone tried to assassinate the USA president (a made-up one, not one of our presidents) and then not long afterwards the USA bombed Venezuela, since apparently it was thought that Venezuela was responsible for the assassination attempt. But the CIA agent was in Venezuela, and so she had said that it wasn't Venezuela's fault. The little girl revealed enough to pique the reporter's interest. The CIA agent was later killed. That's freaky, since that little girl had actually caused her own mother's death.

I know that it was probably very confusing, so if you are interested, you should probably watch the movie yourself. But do note that it is a pretty serious movie, so if you want a nice happy ending, maybe you shouldn't watch it.

Oh yeah, and my teacher has apparently planned for our class to read the book Nothing But the Truth during the school year. I wonder if it's the same or if it's entirely different.

Labels: coincidence, copic, counting crows, luck, magnetic, markers, memories live on, miracle, movie, nothing but the truth, number, palm reading, PE class, scrapbook, superstition, unseen forces

I think it's something the old President George W. Bush said, but I may have mistakenly attributed to him. Anyhow, I heard that he said this on his 60th birthday when he was still in office. If more people thought like that, you wouldn't be hearing a lot of them complaining about their grey hairs and back pain and how their kids are growing up too quickly or how they want to retire but they need to make more money... Blah blah blah. If only we could all be a little more positive and think, sure, this means another year of my life, and that's tiresome, but there are good things and memories to be made every year along with the bad things. Sometimes you might not realize right away, but you could be having the time of your life.

The reason why I started off my post like this is because my age just changed yesterday. Yep, it was my birthday. More specifically, the 13th one. I hope that age really is just a number since I don't want this to be an unlucky year for me. Judging from my school schedule, which I was able to see from Pinnacle Internet Viewer (thanks Shirayuki no Kimi or I wouldn't have known), it seems they plan to put me in village K. I don't really know the 8th grade teachers, so I'm kind of nervous. I've been looking on a site where you can rate teachers, and it seems my French teacher and science teacher are the ones that the students like the least...I hope it won't be a rough year, then. At least you have a chance of changing PE teachers. My intended PE periods are 6th, 3rd, and 3rd. I like 3rd period PE, so that's good to hear. But it seems like I always get 6th period PE sometime in the year. (Oh, well. I'm glad I don't have 5th period PE. Then I wouldn't even have time to digest my lunch)

Today my mom actually did Wii Fit. In fact, a lot of it. I'm sure it was at least more than half an hour. It's been so long since she did Wii Fit, she seems to have forgotten how to do some of the exercises (like Advanced Step, which is in a way a different kind of DDR) but I hope she'll make a habit out of exercising so she can build some muscle. No offense intended to her, but she's not much of an athlete. She could use it. My dad has not used Wii Fit ever since we came home from vacation a few days ago. It's hard for us to get back into the groove after being away for a while.

For this week my mom has been taking time off work and staying at home, so she can pretend she's still in Australia and get some more relaxation time before she must go back to work and get bombarded by unanswered emails and projects and things like that. It's nice to have someone around so you won't feel too lonesome. (Maybe it's just me who gets lonely. I'd actually gotten used to it in sixth grade, after a good friend of mine moved away in fifth, I think, but eventually I started wanting to socialize again.) During school it isn't so much of a matter but when you're by yourself, or/and something bad happens, you feel like this.

Labels: age, birthday, classes, corner of woe, exercise, feelings, george w. bush, lonely, luck, number, president, schedule, tamaki, teacher, thirteen, time, wii fit

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