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I was homeschooled for a couple years around fifth and sixth grade. My “language arts” work primarily consisted of spending time on the BBC News for kids website (reading), and taking pictures of things to make blog posts about (writing). My daily blog post assignment was one of the most beneficial things that I did at that point in my life. My parents required me - every schoolday - to take a picture of something with a digital camera, write a few paragraphs about it, and publish it to my blog. There was a lot of variance. Sometimes I got bored and frustrated - here is a sample of three different “I hate school and/or I’m bored” posts - which happened closer to the beginning of my blogging “career”:

February 15, 2008 (I think I was 11)

Title: “The bookshelves that no one ever uses”

Picture: Wall-mounted bookshelves filled with books filling up the entire frame

This is a picture of the top three bookshelves in our house. It’s not the complete picture because the bookshelves stretch all the way from one end of the room to the other. Anyway, people hardly ever go up here. The last time I remember coming up here was to get one of those beat up books at the top. (Wizard of Oz collection.) We go every now and then to get that ruler shaped like a T but otherwise, we hardly ever go up there. The closer you are to the bottom of our bookshelves, the more often you take a book from it. Probably because they’re easier to reach. But I’ve also realized that the top books are more interesting than the ones at the bottom. We have a whole bunch of cool activity science kits that no one touches up there. The Wizard of Oz is pretty good. Basically ALMOST all the books up there are interesting while as you get closer to the ground, the books get less interesting. Like those books that say: “See the dog? Jane sees the dog. Yay Jane!” I mean, whats the big deal? That’s all there is about the bookshelf. Here are the new things: I still don’t like school, but since it’s a Friday, I get a break after school! I’m going to play Runescape and do a whole bunch of cool, non-school things. I got hooked on Harry Potter after my mom said I have to read it… which proved me wrong. I’ve been in a bad mood lately due to lack of non-school things. My sisters are still annoying. All the kids that go to real school got a whole bunch of candy yesterday. The math I’m doing right now doesn’t make sense. I have to do a book report after I finish Harry Potter which ruins the whole fun of reading which is the ONLY reason that I don’t like reading. I’m learning Runescape songs on piano. That about covers everything. The end.

April 2, 2008

Title: “You’re just wasting your time reading this”

Picture: Mostly consists of stairs and a wall, a bookshelf is visible on the edge

Yes, the title IS true. You’re wasting perfectly good time on this beautiful day reading this post that every one knows will meet no expectations. Take the boredom of the picture, multiply that by five billion, and that’s how miserable I am. Yesterday was April Fools, which was awesome until my sister got ME banned off the computer Friday because of HER dumb tricks. I got a trick bike a few days ago, but I hardly have time to practice on it because of school. Since there’s nothing “important” except school today, tomorrow, and the day after, I’ll just spend my post writing “important things” that I learned. 1+1=2… wow… I’m sure that will help me through life. The boring old Greeks had their own alphabet… Maybe that fact will help me when I’m trying to escape from the top of a burning building. You spell dictionary like: d-i-c-t-i-o-n-a-r-y even though you’re still understood if you spell it dcoarnoitiy. In fact, I would still be understood if I said: Sellpnig is not ipmortnat jsut so lnog as you keep the frist and lsat lteter in palce. If you could understand that, you can realize why learning to spell isn’t important. Okay… what subjects have I missed? Oh yeah! My blog! The blog isn’t so bad because I can write whatever I want. I could write: jalfjlgjlfjlfjljoeioulc,.jaotjolfjlkjl; if I wanted to because it’s a free country… or so they say. Oh well… time to move on to the two most boring subjects in the world.

April 30, 2008 (this would have been close to my 12th birthday)

No title, no picture

I have no particular subject to talk about right now so I will give you boring updates dating from last week. (Hint Hint: these are boring) Monday, last week: Sorry, I’m skipping that because I forgot what happened. Tuesday, last week: I went to boy scouts and was told I would be having a camping trip. Wednesday, last week: I forget. Thursday, last week…. My mom told me that I would go to my neighbors house to work at 10:00. Friday, last week: We forgot to go to the neighbors house, I packed for my camping trip and I had to leave for the WEEKEND. Saturday:I’m at my camping trip, we do a whole bunch of activities including going fishing for the first time in my life and doing this rock climbing wall thing. Sunday: We’re finally leaving and my sisters go to girl scouts for like the first time in months whereas I go every week. Monday: It was my brothers birthday and he got his favorite toy: transformers. He got a cool one which is one that actually transforms and an electric one which makes weird noises that you can’t understand. Tuesday: I went to boy scouts and got elected ‘cheer master’ which is the person that leads the songs because I’m apparently the most ‘cheerful’. I’ve decided I want to make up my own songs instead of the old old old old songs that we always sing. Today: I woke up half an hour before my sister and now I’m writing my blog. That’s everything important so: Bye Bye until I have something better to write about.

As you might be able to tell, I had a decent amount of education-related angst (which set the stage for a very atypical high-school experience at the time), as well as a poor grasp of English grammatical convention (though my experience reading BBC News for kids actually significantly improved this over time). At the same time, the blog got me a lot of experience writing about things I was interested in. I would post “tutorials”, write about my experiences/memories, document my hobbies, etc… My crowning achievement was a 6-part, 6,000+ word blog post series on the game “RuneScape”, which I was obsessed with. My dad was so impressed that I would willingly write that much content, but it was only because it was a subject I was interested in. I would never have done the same if it was for a topic that was selected for me. During my teenage years, I became embarassed and ashamed at these posts, and took them down, to the dismay of my father. After seeing how much it saddened him, I found a way to recover the deleted posts, and re-published them.

Since then, I continued to periodically update my blog, but never with the same consistency as when it was a school assignment. Now, rather than blogging, I am much more likely to write in a private journal. Often, when I write one of these entries, it is filled with words and emotions I later regret, and I am grateful that these entries are private, for my eyes only. They are a tool and historical record of what goes on inside my head, allowing me to understand my own thoughts, reflect on my headspace in the past, and figure out how to move forward.

But not everything I write needs to be for my eyes only. In fact, the more I engage with the world, the more I feel that I have something to share. It is barely perceptible - existent and palpable, but vaguely defined at the same time. There are a lot of things I want to discuss, but they aren’t often things that others want to discuss. It used to be that I would direct all my conversations to the same depressing topics, to the point that I alienated myself from my friends and family. And although I have learned to more healthily communicate with my loved ones now, I feel that if I don’t ever put my thoughts out into the world, they may just be thoughts forever, never to be engaged with seriously, by me or others. Haha, it sounds like I’ve alienated myself in a different way this time :)

Serious topics aside, I also have a bunch of random interests and hobbies that I could imagine writing about some time.

TLDR: welcome to my public journal. My intention is to post random, potentially unrevised, potentially poorly articulated content here that may help you to glance into my mind. My hope is that this may be beneficial for someone, and nudge them a little closer to beauty (even if that “someone” is me alone).

I don’t ever intend for this website to be a shared space for others to freely post or comment (you can make your own website if you want that), but I could imagine receiving feedback and corresponding via email (email me at mobvyb@gmail.com), and even posting about the resulting conversation and amending my thoughts from previous posts. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this random corner of the internet.