All posts by 27mateoe

I invested in stocks?


So, for the past few weeks, my Language Arts class has been pretending to invest in stocks and seeing how much we gain/lose. This was inspired by Turtle from “The Westing Game” passion, which was the stock market. We learned about how to calculate the money we got, how to check our stocks and how hard being a broker is. I think this was a very good experience, so let me share it with you.

First, we needed a way to calculate our stocks. The way we ultimately ended up using was calculating it using the Google spreadsheets. We could put in a “formula” (a way to calculate things put into the spreadsheet), and every Thursday we would put in our stocks to see what we got. This was a great experience, and it was a good skill to have in the future.

We had designed logos for our “stock companies,” and names too. I drew an arrow pointing up on a graph for mine. I thought it was a good touch. We also had a notecard on which, every Thursday, we wrote the date, and how much money we had gained from our stocks. The last time I checked, I had gained $438.55, which was pretty cool!

The stocks I had invested in were Apple, because I thought we would be using a lot of electronics during the pandemic, Amazon, because, again, people would be buying a lot during the pandemic, Disney, because people would be watching movies during the pandemic, google, because people would be looking a lot of things up during the pandemic, Chipotle, because I love it, and a lot of others do, and PayPal, because on the Internet, it said that it was a growing company that would be good to invest in. As you can see, a lot of what we invested in was based on what was happening at the time and around the world. It’s good to remember what’s happening, and current events when you’re investing because it really helps. When we had first invested, we had 20,000 dollars to spend, and we had to invest in 6 companies. This was a good challenge, and over this whole project taught me a lot about how the world works. I would definitely recommend maybe just trying this, because it’s a good skill to have, and it’s fun. Thank you for reading!

I made a TED Talk?


my slide with conceptual albums on it ⬆️

So, the last couple of days, I’ve been working on my own type of “TED Talk” for my Language Arts class. The one I wrote was about the power of song lyrics. I wrote about this because music is very special to me, and I love it a lot. I’ve always wanted to be a musician, so this was a good exercise for a look inside the music world. So, let’s talk about how I made it.

First of all, I needed a topic. I was originally going to do the power of nostalgic music, but there was already a YouTube video of my topic. So, I trashed that, and then I had an idea. I can still do something about music! Probably the deepest thing in music are song lyrics! So I chose my topic.

I then had to plan my slides. First off, I knew I needed pictures of albums, because I was doing a whole section on conceptual albums. Next, I would need screenshots of lyrics. I wrote them out and screenshotted them, and they looked pretty good! I put them on a slide and finished it up. I then finished writing my script, and that was about it!

But I’m not done yet. Research was one of the hardest things to do because I needed to pick good songs. First of all, I thought of two great genres that are super outspoken: Rap and Punk. After picking those, I found artists from each genre that were very political and outspoken. I was going to put Kendrick Lamar in my presentation from the start, so obviously that was one of the first people I thought of. I also thought of Green Day’s American Idiot, a super political album the rocked the world of 2004, and John Lennon’s Imagine, an Anti-Capitalist anthem. So, next I had to think of some conceptual albums, because I was doing a whole section on those. The first that came to mind were of course, Green Day’s American Idiot (again), good kid m.A.A.d city, and Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. I did some more research, and found Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” Dream Theaters “Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory,” The Who’s “Tommy,” and finally, David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,” the (arguably) most crazy conceptual album ever. And you know I had to put “The Dark Side of The Moon” in there, because that album references topics such as depression, existentialism, and insanity. So, after that, I screenshotted a bunch of album covers, and yeah. For the last slide, I used a lyric from Kanye West’s song Hey Mama, because the first time I heard that song, I’m not even going to lie, I cried. Manly tears. However, that’s besides the point. It was a good lyric. And for the very last section, I talked about Bob Dylan. My man, this dude won a NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE. That’s crazy to me! I’m impressed. Anyway, after that, I was finished, and ready to present.

This was a wonderful experience to do, and I would love to do another TED Talk. I was super nervous, so next time, if there is a next time, it would be cool to see if I improve.

Building a Tree

Over the past MONTH, we’ve been working on making a book shaped like a tree. Let me explain.

We’ve done many stages of working with this book, with some being Akua ink painting, collating, adding pockets and a wish we want! So, let’s start from the beginning, on March 15th.

We first started by painting a blue background that would be the backdrop for our book. This background would one day have many layers of stuff over it. We painted our background blue, because since our book was going to be a TREE, it had to be about nature. So, we were going to be making a little forest on the inside of our book. To make a forest, we needed a sky, of course, which is why we made our backdrop blue. I picked a more light shade of blue, and then painted a darker shade. Since there was no way of keeping track which paper was who’s, we all painted two different papers, with two different shades of blue, and then for the next part of the process, just picked whichever paper we liked. So, onto the paper folding!

Since we were only using one piece of paper, you might be wondering, how did you make a book… out of one piece? Well, it was similar to the way you would make a card. We folded it sideways, and then folded one piece in the middle, to add a sort of flap that would become a page. One very important part of that flap was to make it hollow, because we were going to be putting something in there. Anyway, now that we had our pages, what are we going to do next? You may be thinking that we would collage our forest onto the backdrop and be done, but no, no no. We still have much too many things to do before that!

Next, we did some printing. Not the Akua printing, but word printing. We got some really hard paper, it was like poster board, and we painted onto it. But before I tell you the rest, I have to explain what we did before this project started. We had written little poems about trees. It was a little Haiku, and if you don’t know what that is, it is a traditional Japanese type of writing poems. The first and top line is 5 syllables. The second and middle line is 7 syllables. The third and bottom line is 5 syllables. So, in total, you should have 17 syllables in your poem. The thing about Haikus, is that they don’t have to rhyme, and traditionally they don’t! This makes for some interesting poems about trees. Here’s the one I wrote:

This tree is quite nice.
I appreciate the leaves.
They blow in the wind.

I think it was a pretty good poem. Anyway, we put those poems on stencils, and printed onto the poster board with them. Before we did that, though, we had to paint the poster board. You could either paint it green or brown! Naturally, I chose green, as it’s the nicest color ever, and if you disagree, you’re invalid. You didn’t get to print your exact poem, like for the backdrop, instead you picked random ones and did those. It was very fun because if you twisted the stencil it made some funny letters. I think I stenciled very well. After we finished “stenciling,” we put away the poster board. We would then pick a random poster board (like the backdrop, again). This part was very important for the last part of this post. We cut the top of the poster board to look like branches! We then folded it so it matched the back of our book, after that, we glued it on and that was that.

Next, was our Akua ink printing. This was most definitely the coolest part of the process, and we even got help from local artist Peg Gignoux (here is her website:https://gignouxart.com/)! She helped us with a lot of things during this project, so a big thanks to her. Essentially, what we did was use this rare ink named Akua to print onto paper that we would later use to collage. This was really a connection with nature, because we got leaves, flowers and sticks all the print with. To Akua print, first you get a roller, and put it in the ink. You then roll over a paper that has what you want to print onto it, such as a flower of leaf. You should get a paper covered in Akua ink, with a blank spot where you put your object. After printing onto that paper, you roll the roller on a blank piece of paper, and since most of the ink had gotten on the first paper, it’s a bit lighter. But, you still have ink on the roller where the object was, so that part is darker. The result is an extremely realistic print of a flower, leaf or stick. I chose some leaves that were almost symmetrical, some dandelions and one of those flowers that you blow on. The best I can describe the flower, is that when you were a kid, you probably picked it up and blew onto it? I don’t know what it’s called, but I used two of those. I also used a leaf I found on the ground. I think the final project turned out great, and we would later use those to collage onto our book.

Now, the part you’ve (probably) all been waiting for. The collage! Peg also helped us with this part too! This was probably the longest part of the process of building a book. The first thing we had to do was cut out our “trees” and “plants.” At first, I did the trunk first out of, maybe brown or green and then the leaves of the tree. The cool thing about this artistic freedom is that the trees and plants could be any color! WE WEREN’T RESTRICTED BY THE LAWS OF NATURE ANY MORE. And it was great. I’m pretty sure I made one tree trunk purple! But it looked great, so who cares. Anyway, after doing that for a little bit, I took inspiration from one of my classmates, and made one big pillar for a tree. Basically, what I did was cut a big spike and add little cuts going through the tree. And it looked really cool, like a big staff crashing out of the ground. Totally worth it. That’s not all, though. You think we can have just trees floating around in the air? Well, if you said yes, you’re not just wrong, you’re stupid, because that defies the laws of physics in about 20 ways. Anyway, the point is that we had to add a ground. And, if you were normal, then you probably would have just added a green slab as the ground. But if you know me, I’m not normal. I mean yes, I did add a green slab, but that’s not all! I also added water! I mean, nature has ponds and lakes, so I added a blue slab too! How interesting. Anyway, now that I had finished the trees, I wanted to add a more realistic vibe, so I added moving things, such as leaves flying in the wind. And let me tell you, it was definitely worth it. I thought it looked really nice in the wind! Also, by the lake, I added a boy walking his (green) dog. I had recently adopted a dog, and I wanted to show him in it! But, there was a problem. He broke! The dog in the collage not in real life. I fixed it though, and to top it all off, I added it raining beside the lake/pond. This was definitely a nice touch, because unlike most people, I really, really like rain. I also like sunny days, but when it’s rainy by a lake… beautiful. And to finish it, I added a couple shrubs from the Akua ink prints we made. I cut out the leaves and added little mini trees and shrubs. Perfect.

Now that our tree was mostly finished, it was time to add all the little things. The first thing I added was little envelopes to put things in. Remember the pocket we made for the little flap? We glued the envelopes on the inside of there. But, I couldn’t have the envelopes just being there, all yellow and ugly! I covered it up with some Akua prints as a solution! It looked great. One of the things I put in the envelopes was a picture of my face! One might say it’s egotistical, but I just say it’s art!

The next thing I put onto my book was a paper we wrote called Salute to My Roots. The point of this was to reflect on someone that’s guided us through life. I know everyone was going to do their mom, or dad, but no! I was different. I was a visionary. Basically I just did my brother. It was cool. I talked about him, and how we used to fight a lot, but now we get along better. Here’s an excerpt of the paper I wrote (he’s a sophomore now, for comparison):

We both like the same general music, even if we’re a little different. And we both have the same sense of humor, that’s for sure. I actually remember when he was in 6th grade, and he seemed so old and mature. But now that I’m in 6th grade, I wonder how younger people see me? Do I seem old and mature?

I think it was pretty we printed it out, and glued it onto my book. It looks great!

What is a life list? Well, imagine this. What would you do with no limitations. Infinite money, you never die, no one stopping you… what would you do? Write it all down, and you have a life list. Of course, we HAD to write one of these for our book. They’re so cool! I definitely would recommend doing it. It was so fun to do, and it really made me think. I think the point of this was to just see how far our imaginations could stretch. And boy, did mine stretch. Here were my top ten on my life list, just to see:

10. Blow up a skyscraper of an evil corporation in an act of goodness

9. Become the richest man in the observable universe

8. Go back in time

7. Change the future

6. Visit the fourth dimension

5. Visit an alternate reality

4. Conquer all realities, universes and other planets

3. Ascend to a higher plane of existence

2. Become the king of all gods

1. Draw a circle
I do think the circle one was necessary. It is very hard to draw a perfect circle. I glued this onto the side of my book, and it looked great.

We are in a global pandemic at the time of this being written. So what would you do when it’s over? A famous poet wrote a poem just about this. The poem itself was beautiful! But we wanted to write one ourselves. So, of course we did! And what better place to put it than our tree book! This was a very fun, and it really gave me insight onto what I want to do when this pandemic is over. I think the main theme was that u would want to revisit my friends. We haven’t been able to see each other for so long, and now that this pandemic is finally ending, I think we can finally start doing this again. This was a good brain exercise, because I do want to know what will happen when this ends? Will we go back to normal? Will we never be the same? Will people still wear masks? I guess we’ll see in a couple months.

Right when we were finishing up this project, our class read a book call Wish Tree, by Katherine Applegate. The main character in the book is a tree called Red. And this tree is special. Many people gather per year on one day to hang up wishes on her branches. So, she has come to be known as the “Wish Tree.” And since the character in the book is a tree, and we’re making a tree book… it made sense to put one of our wishes on the “branches” of our “tree.” This is why I said the branches were important. We wrote the wish on a piece of paper, and then tied it on to the branches. I would tell you my wish… but it’s a secret. Good luck figuring it out!

After this month long journey, we were finally done. And boy, was it worth it. The final project was so beautiful. It looked like something that could be in an art gallery. And that’s because it was!

It was put in the Frank Gallery (here’s the website: https://www.frankisart.com/  and on May 15th it was opened to the public! It was an extreme honor to be in a gallery!  Making this book was an extreme experience, and an amazing time! I loved working on this project, and I really loved the support given by everyone.

Frances Dowell: My Blog Post

The past 6 months, I’ve been writing a story under the teachings of Frances Dowell, who is an accomplished writer and author of multiple published books. I’ve learned a lot from her, including these parts of a story that I am going to share with you now.

1. What if? question. Every story needs an idea to start with and probably the best way to do it is to come up with a What If? question. If you don’t know what this is, then you’ll be surprised, because you probably do this every day! A What If? question is like a seed, an idea, that you plant and grow off it. Examples of a What If? question would be: What if humans disappeared off earth? What if all the water on earth disappeared? What if animals ruled the world? Those are mostly generic questions, but with enough innovation, you can come up with a very good What If? question and grow an amazing story.

2. Now we have gotten into the beginning of the book, last the planning stage. The next stage is an opening action scene. You have definitely seen these in a book, because they are a great strategy to drag your reader in. If you don’t know what it is, and opening action scene is a scene where someone is doing something, and it’s like a day in their life, except nothing has been explained yet, so you are very curious about what is going on in the story. This influences the reader to keep reading. An example of this would be: Jessica ran as fast as she ever could, her legs speeding across the wet pavement, and then onto the street. She ran so fast that she never even saw the car coming. Now, this is a very short opening action scene, so just like the What If? question, you have to build off this. A more developed opening action scene would be: The pitter-patter of the rain on the wet concrete was drowned out by the noise of Jessica’s heart beating, perfectly in sync with her feet as she ran as fast as she could. Her legs spun in countless circles, and she ran so fast that a second seemed dragged out into years. Suddenly, and opening appeared, and she knew where to run. Where to escape. And as she sped across the street, she ran so fast that she didn’t even see the car coming. This is a great opening action scene.

3.  After the opening action scene, you’re going to need SOME background, or else your reader won’t want to keep reading, because who wants to read a book when they don’t know anything that’s going on? Anyway, this is illustrated in Dovey Coe, which has a great example of a good opening action scene, which is then followed by a background check. A background check is basically a short backstory that can be told in 1st, 3rd, and if you want, but I don’t recommend, 2nd person. Of course, the opening action story can be told in any perspective also, and so can any part of your story. That being said, it is a little bit of a backstory leading up to the moment of the opening action scene. It can be a little long, but your background check should NOT be the whole story. It can be the beginning of the story, and then the rest leads up to the opening action scene, or it can be right before the opening action scene, or whatever. It can be in any time period you want, but do not make it too long.

4. After this, you need sticks and stones. These can be small problems leading up to the big monster problem, also known as the climax. The sticks and stones are seriously under appreciated. They are FUNDAMENTAL in the telling of a story. They can be little clues of the ending if it’s a mystery, they can be small emotional points if it’s an emotional story, and it can be small skirmishes if it’s an action story. But really they can be anything you want. They are called sticks and stones because they are like little sticks and stones that the character trips on in their story, but they should not be sticks and stones for the whole story. Eventually, they need to start getting more severe, as they’re leading up to the climax more. Again, these are seriously under appreciated, and I can’t stress how important they are. They can be hard to control and fit together, though, especially if you’re writing a mystery, because you need to string together everything.

5. The Climax. This is undeniably the most important part of the story because it is like the final boss battle. It is also the most emotional part of the story, so you need to incorporate a lot of good writing in this part. The thing about this part is that its very important to have a good ending. This should NOT be one of the longest parts of your story, and it might even be the second shortest. However, I repeat: this is the hardest part to write, because it needs the PERFECT length to draw your reader in. But if you’re writing a mystery, if I’m honest, if your story is good enough, make the climax as long as you want. People will definitely want to read it to find out what happens! Also, there is a thing in a story called the “emotional low point,” where the character is at their absolute worst. They are either mad, sad, or anything else. This can be during the climax, right before it, or, rarely, after the climax. This takes a considerable amount of skill to do, though, because it’s difficult to weave into the story.

6. Finally, the resolution. This is after the climax, and it basically ties up all the loose ends. Some stories don’t have resolutions, which is acceptable, but it is not really a good idea to do that, because you might have a lot of loose ends left. Loose ends are really bad because they subject your story to a lot of criticism, and if your story is one in a series, plot holes can seriously mess the book, and even the entire series, up. Again, this should NOT be the longest part in your story, and should instead be one of the shortest. If you have a lot of loose ends, then yes, it can be long, and yes, people do enjoy reading what happens to their favorite character(s). BUT, it’s not wise to keep going for multiple chapters saying “then this happened to them, then this, oh and this person turned out like this, and this person like this.” You get the idea. The resolution should be at MOST two chapters. If you have a lot of loose ends, then maybe 3 or 4 will suffice.

I learned a lot from this story, but we’re not done yet. You still need to edit your story, which is what I did, and I learned a lot. When people edited my story, they mostly pointed out that the same thing had different names in the story. This happened because when I was doing different drafts, I accidentally put the different names for things, because I was considering different names at the time. That really saved me a lot of questions from people. Another thing I got was that I had some errors with dialogue lines, and thank goodness I fixed those, because dialogues lines are one of the most important things in your story, and if they’re wrong, then it’s a big mistake.

But I didn’t just get feedback from my peers. I also got feedback from Frances Dowell herself. I’m going to start with what I learned from the feedback she gave to my peers, and then what I learned from the feedback she gave to me. Something I learned from the feedback to my peers was that the first sentence of a story can hold so much power and weight, and it’s really much more important than you think. One of my peers had a particularly heavy first sentence, and it made me want to immediately read the story. Another things I learned from the feedback to my peers was that you need the perfect amount of action scenes, even if your story is a mystery or even an emotional story. The number of action scenes needed varies from different genres, because a Wild West drama would have a lot more action than a story about a nuclear family in the 1950s. Something I learned from the feedback she gave to me was that the traction you give to your story to move it along requires dialogue, thoughts from the character, and narration. Think of it like a baking recipe. Too much of one thing spoils everything, so you must come up with the right amount of those three things. Also, you must think of good character development, because if your character stays the same the whole time, and doesn’t change or learn anything, nobody is going to root for your character, because they’re a bad person the whole time!

So! If you follow all these steps, you should have a perfect story, right? Well, WRONG. Writing is extremely hard, and there are trillions of things that could go wrong, and even the smallest thing can mess up everything. That being said, after I followed these steps, I came out with a story that I ultimately disliked. They’re not bad steps. I didn’t skip a step or anything. What I did was poorly write. I added in things to the story thinking they could add to it somehow, yet I ended up going nowhere with them, so I had random things in my story that were there for no reason. Also, some parts had way too much narration, some parts too little, and a lot of parts of the story had not enough dialogue and too much thinking from the character. The book was over 4200 words, and yet, only a few days pass within the story. And the ending? Sloppy, careless. Remember what I said about plot holes ruining the story? Well my ending was riddled with plot holes and loose ends. I worked hard on this story, yet I hope that next time, I can do a better job.

Frances Dowell is getting a copy of my story, and when she does, I have some questions. What did she think about the ending? My ending was bad, as I mentioned, so I’d like to know what Mrs. Dowell thought of it. What are some plot holes you noticed? I want to know if there were any parts that didn’t make sense. Are there any parts that are unrealistic in the story? I tried to make it as realistic as I could, but there are some things I don’t understand about the world, so I tried to guess about what happens in the world as well as I could in the story. I am going to put an excerpt of my story into this because I want to give her something like a trailer of what’s to come.

     It’s one of the last days of Thanksgiving break. I come back from the shop and reach inside the door. I turn the knob, the jars balancing on my arms. I try not to drop them. That would be bad. As I walk in the door, my mom greets me before we use the jars. I walk over to the coffee table and get the needles ready. As I insert the clear liquid, happiness runs through me.

     As I walk to the shop, I start my daily routine. My mom always told me that I was innovative. I tried the impossible, she would say. My dad would too. So that gave me all sorts of ideas when I was younger. I’ve also always loved some sorts of traditions, so that’s why I do this morning routine. I’m guessing it’s fun. You can’t really tell without the antidote. So I start the routine.

     First thing I do is walk to the weird place behind the elementary school. I go here because sometimes, I find some money behind the place. But I don’t see any money. Most people would feel discouraged or sad about this, but not me.

     So, after that, I go and keep walking to the store. I look for anything discounted on the shops nearby, but still nothing. Again, most people would feel sad, but these days I don’t feel any sadness about it anyway. I would, but… I don’t. I guess I should explain…

I’ve cut out the last part because I don’t want to spoil it. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and thank you.

Window or Mirror?


Window or Mirror? What does this mean? Well, when you read a book, are you looking into a completely new world (window), or realizing you see part of yourself into the story (mirror).

When I read the book “The Black Friend,” I didn’t see how I reflected myself in the story, but I saw my world in the story. I never knew the racism people experienced was this bad, to the point where the author almost got killed for it.

I think this would be a mirror, because I’ve definitely seen things like this happen in real life, like George Floyd and others. So I think this is part mirror, but also part window, because this has never happened to me personally.

But when I look into the world of Frederick Joseph, I mostly see a window, because I am part of the privileged white people he talks about. But I don’t think this means the book can not be a mirror for me. I think that there are people who would hate me for supporting BLM, or for going to a BLM rally. I’ve never experienced racism towards myself, but I’ve definitely seen it happen, which is why I am debating the fact of whether this book is a window or a mirror for me.

There are reasons this book is a mirror, and for the next couple paragraphs, I’ll describe them, starting with my time at Washington DC.

When I was there, I witnessed a rally where there were racist people there, though I wish I hadn’t. People were standing there supporting a racist person, which makes them inherently racist. Or with the incident at the Capitol. People were doing this because they did not want someone with a part Jamaican and part Indian Vice President to be elected, and though it might not have been for that reason, for a lot of people in certainly was.

I have also seen people with a flag supporting a movement that supports racist beliefs, if you can understand that. And while these things are bad, this is their choice, and nowadays it’s hard to change peoples minds, especially adults.  And I’m disappointed in the fact that that still happens these days, and I hope to be the generation that puts a stop to that. I think we can accomplish that because our generation is still young and impressionable. So I hope to be able to change the racism that older generations have inflicted onto us.

There are also reasons that this book is not a mirror and more a window, and I don’t think I have to go into the reasons of that, but I will.

I am part of the dominant culture. And I have not really experienced racism towards myself, which is the biggest reason I think that this book is a mirror, and why I would never say that I am oppressed as much as other people, such as women and men of color. I don’t think I need to go into much more detail than that, because I cannot relate to the kind of racism the Frederick Joseph  experiences in this book, and I never will. But I will try to make this book more of a mirror to me, because I don’t want to be racist, and I don’t want to be one of the people Mr. Joseph talks about in his book. Thank you.

My New Daily Habit

     For my January daily habit, I did push ups because I thought I was okay at them. In the middle of January, I changed my daily habits a few times, because at first it was too easy and then it was too hard. But eventually, I got to a good tempo, and it was a good experience. And at the end of January, I thought I could always improve, so why not continue push ups in February?

     I realized halfway through that I was doing the push ups wrong, and so that made it harder, and I had to make the daily habit progress slower, and I made the number of push ups I was doing go up every two days.

     Of course there were challenges when I did the daily habit, and one of them was, of course, doing the push ups wrong. This was a big inconvenience because I had to re do the whole way I was doing the challenge, and it made it harder. I did find a way to do the push ups that was good for me, though, and eventually, I overcame the challenge.

     I really liked doing my daily habit, because not only am I a lot better at push ups now, I’m also better at pushing MYSELF. Daily push ups helped me do push ups better, and it gave me the experience of doing a daily habit, and I really liked that. The sense of gratification that came over me when I finished the daily habit was part of the reason that I continued the same daily habit into February.

My Punctuation

 

    
I think I am an exclamation point because I have been told many times that I am loud (or at least that’s what the subtext was) and another thing is that I physically look like the exclamation point. The exclamation point is the tallest punctuation, and I’m also pretty tall. I also stand out a lot sometimes, and sometimes that’s maybe not the right thing to do, and I end up making someone yell. However, I think that there are some reasons I’m not an exclamation point.

I’m not at the end of most things (or at least I don’t like to be) which is what a punctuation mark sometimes does, but I’m not usually like that. I think I am also not always loud, and an exclamation point is ALWAYS LOUD. However, there can be some times that I am not loud

Daily Habits

The first daily habit we did was planking, and this was a kind of hard, but I got used to it. I was kind of disappointed when I only planked for like, 3 minutes, because I heard that last year, some people went for 30 minutes, but at the time, we had only gone up to 3 minutes. But overall it was a cool, fun experience.

My new daily habit is doing push ups, and it’s going good so far. I’m up to 10 push ups a day, and I’m going up around 2 every day because I found out push ups are a lot easier than I thought. At first I was going to do 1 up every day, but that is honestly way too easy, so I started doing more.

Something That Interests Me

Something that interests me is playing guitar. I haven’t played it that much lately, but I really like playing the guitar, and I have one for myself. A cool thing about different guitars is that a bunch of people “name” them. Like Brian May’s is the “Red Special”, and Billie Joe Armstrong’s is “Blue.” I just thought it was cool that they name it.
There are two top brands of guitars (in my opinion) and they’re Les Pauls and Stratocasters. Les Paul was a famous musician, and a music company named Gibson made him his own guitar called the Les Paul, and there have been many different variations. Stratocasters are named after the guy who invented them, Leo Stratocaster. They are both famous guitars that are both really good.