Essay Pre Write

so what can I say about communities? I haven't known many. See the thing is when I leave I'm not really missed and yeah that can be kind of sad but at the same time its liberating. I think it reflects what people know about me, which is that I don't let go of things. even though I'm not with you your still in my heart good or bad and maybe it is something I should change but its a huge core part of what makes me who I am. its apart of who I am in a community. Maybe I'm not the guy always there or the guy that you can always count on but I am genuine and I am honest but I'm also not there. I guess finding a home is hard for me. Staying in one place always brings up bad wounds still bleeding. Its kind of a constant reminder of the now I don't want to live in. Everyday is a day I wake up working towards my dreams and quite frankly sometimes living in them. I still work hard to go forward for my dreams but in a community, sharing isn't always caring. come to think of it whenever I think of communities I have a negative thought to them. I think there have been maybe 2 or 3 communities where I really felt I belonged but even then it was hard. It seems its hard to be me in a group of people and that hurts but the pain fades away with friends and believe it or not I do make them. My friends are like my community and I guess we all share something that I never really thought of before. We are all ourselves, we present to each other our true personalities and try to unashamedly lay our problems out. There is a name for this, I know what community I belong to just not its name. The underground community? The new generation community? But no I want to break it down, I want to find a community where I truly belong because who I was may be the same but I'm not the same even with everything going around I keep my friends close. I guess to me belonging to a community or being missed never mattered because my communities appreciated my "grenade" personality. I want to write about my church though because of the community I felt there and the people I miss because I'm not there. On the other hand writing about year up also brings to mind alot of stuff I want to put down. Its just so much such a big choice; I can't make a choice that big. I can't answer the bigger question of "which community do I belong to" I just don't know.

I am learning to know myself

Topic:

What are some of the things you learned about yourself as a student or a professional in Module I? Did you surprise yourself in any way? Were you proud of yourself? Were you at all disappointed in yourself? Why? 

Module 1 was some “manure” but I gained more growth from my problems then I did get held back. I took adversity or problems I faced and turned them into solutions for problems.  What grew from me in module one was a branch with new types of fruits on the tree of my life. The fruits were sometimes very sweet and memorable like a Fuji apple, which is my favorite. Other times they were much like a grapefruit, I knew it was healthy for me even if I felt it was unnecessary.  Each day I grew to understand the fruit more than how it tasted. I understood what it did for my body and there were days I didn’t eat it, but maybe I would draw it. I learned and grew from the fruit of module one and it made me hunger for what module 2 would bring. 

I was surprised by how much I was appreciated which had never happened before for me. I was proud that I did my best to fight for what I believed in. I was disappointed that I couldn’t communicate properly or at least knowledgeably enough that my words conveyed the meaning I intended.  I want to be a professional technological mercenary. I want to tackle projects sometimes two at a time but only held by my whim as appose to another pencil pusher like what I’ve seen. I have the talent now all it takes is learning how to fly…so to speak.

Neighborhood Know-how

Write a post on your blog- 300-350 words- in which you talk about your surroundings and how this environment has affected you as a person:

• Briefly describe your neighborhood.
• Which statement best fits you and why?
• I am who I am because of the neighborhood I live(d) in.
• I am who I am despite the neighborhood I live(d) in.

From the outside Alameda can look scary but on the inside...well its still sort of scary but for different reasons. In a "small" city of a little over seventy thousand it can seem "barren" but I look at the housing and the community like Powerlight computers, Jim's coffee shop, south shore central...I mean Alameda town center and the wild life community much like an extended part of my own house. There hasn’t been too much of a need to work on our appearance except maybe a little up keep here or there and the big changes that have been made enhance not change our city. Sure we remodeled our mall of the mall from south shore central to Alameda town center but it still remained an outdoor mall. We also saw renovations to the Dunes apartment housing which made it much more aesthetically marketable but what always made it so wonderful is the actual layout which was not changed. Even though Alameda to me is home I know to many it can seem scary but that just makes me feel like I’m living in a haunted house and friends with all the scary monsters there, it really brings home the feeling don’t judge a book by its cover.
A lot of qualities Alameda carries I inherited. For example a lot of people might think Alameda is like a sort of Hitchcock film city, meaning that it’s eerie and scary and I feel people look at me the same way with misunderstanding. Once they see me welcome them, much like Alameda does when you get to know it, I do everything I can to offer whomever comes my way whatever I can. In many ways I want to spend the rest of my days in Alameda because it truly is the one place on earth I’ve found that I truly call home. I am who I am because of the neighborhood I lived in.

Prosperous Poverty

“Hey I’ve got an amazing deal for you, anything you want for free!!!! All you have to do is Surrender to me your soul and everything of value you have now and forever also worship me.” Seem like a joke? Well it should be, however it’s an unfortunate reality that makes our going forward as a united people near impossible. How can people care so little about their fellow human? How can they wake up in the morning and go to work? All good questions regrettably dwarfed by the statistic that banks like Stephen Inc. make sales that total more than 250 billion a year off of people who can’t find the time to read the fine print. This entraps them into a cycle of debt that carries on for generations. It must be stopped, not just to make our family and friends quality of life better but to make hope for tomorrow brighter.

Some might say the most prudent method is finger pointing. “Why hasn’t the government regulated how much big corporations can squeeze from the individual?” The truth is closer to home than we might care to admit. We need to empower and motivate the people around us by sharing our stories of failure, not as a curse but as a badge of honor for the knowledge we have learned and must share. The resources to stop the cycle are in our hands, our minds, and our hearts. We have all been hurt on this level but we must break the silence and spread the power of knowledge.

In the end, yes, I say the responsibility lays on the individual to provide help for their fellow human being to help bring down this parasite to our very lives. While it may seem like a challenge, we must sit down and put aside our pride. To let our mistakes feed a new generation of growth to become stronger this environmental accident.

My Passions

One of my greatest passions and motivations is animals! From dogs and cats to reptiles and birds, even small furry critters, I love them all. I’ve always been curious about the bond between man and man’s best friend and to this day it’s a constant source of joy. I think about the day that I can spend a Saturday out on the beach playing catch or sitting down inside curled up with a loyal friend and good book during a rainy day. Animals represent the best humanity has to offer and I’ve seen it first-hand.

I am also a huge fan of comics. From Bill Amend’s foxtrot to Rumiko Takeshi’s Ranma ½ to Jeph Jacques QuestionableContent.net, you will almost always find me with my nose in some form of comics because of the story and culture they bring to life. In foxtrot, it was reliving the 90’s, for Ranma it was the zany unbelievable stories that all seem to happen in hour long increments, and in QC it’s an alternative offbeat humor that almost always makes me laugh. It is always the best feeling to find people who I can connect with through comics because we have the greatest of laughs and happiest of times reminiscing about our experiences in each “world” we have been to.

I think my greatest passion comes from sharing myself and my knowledge with others. I can’t think of one place that I’ve been too where someone didn’t ask me for help. On Treasure Island at the Job Corps Center in my class I was almost something like a student teacher helping nearly the entire class. It was such a great encouragement that I could use my experience and knowledge to help others that it is probably one of my most precious some-what secret passions