OUTLIVE

15 days... that's where the count down is at until the end of my high school days. As of now, I'm this close "<>" to passing my english class. Good news is that we have a chance for a lot of extra credit, and all I have to do is read a book that I've been wanting to read for quite some time now called The Last Lecture. To summarize the book, it's about a professor at Carnegie Mellon named Randy Pausch who is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. CM has a series of "last lectures" where professors give speeches on what they would say/do if that day was their last. With Randy's situation, it literally is his last lecture, so he decides to focus his lecture on advice that he wants to leave for his children (who are very young and likely won't remember him) after he dies. So far the book has already been extremely influential and extremely eye-opening. The book has already inspired me to take a different approach with lyric writing. Since I want to be as sincere and real with my writing as possible, I've decided that I'm going to start writing songs as if I were on my death bed and this is what I wanted to share with the world about my ideals and experiences.

On a lighter note, I got a new tattoo:

Yes, it's a black sheep. Ink was done by EMS, who is apprenticing right now and doing tattoos for free... hit him up! It's not bad for his 11th tattoo. As for the meaning behind it, there's 2 main ideas. For one, if you look at my family, I'm definitely the "black sheep" but that's not to be taken in a negative connotation. My parents gave us (my siblings and I) a lot of freedom growing up and I turned out a lit bit differently than Cara and AJ. Second, I've never liked to concern myself with being part of the "in" crowd. I have many different groups of friends and in those groups of friends, I've always done my own thing and never worried much about trying to cater to or impress the different people I'm around. It's hard to say that with out sounding like a self-righteous prick, so take it for what it's worth.

I've already written a lot of shit with out meaning to, so I'll stop. I'll do another update in a day or two to focus on other things.

Stay you.

Song of the day: "It's Raining Again" by Grave Maker
"And if I've learned one thing from you
It's never do the things you do
You're hoping the sound of your voice will save me this time
Swearing ignorance is the key to the perfect life
But I'm better than that, than to leave my heart behind
And live for nothing"