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awesomecreativewritingmike-blog · 8 years ago

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1. Final Essay.

Mike Laing

Professor Lavina Ahmed

Introduction to Multi-Media Composition: Digital Communication 01:351:209:08

May 1, 2017

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I was just a normal high school student with the typical high school crush. Most of us probably have similar stories but, to me, this meant the world to me. The girl was gorgeous, and way too far out of my league. At this point in my life, I was very overweight. I would wake up in the morning completely excited to get to school just to say hi to her in the morning and see her in our 7th period class. She gave me the time of day and it kept me going. My major problem was that I was so obese and I had no confidence. Around November in my junior year, I made a decision that would completely change my life.

Up to this point in my life, I was always active and played sports such as basketball and baseball. I played these sports year around so I felt that I was being healthy enough. My setback was I had no self control over what I ate. From cookies and ice cream, to pizza and burgers, I was eating anything and everything that I laid eyes on. This occurred throughout my whole life until 2013 on Thanksgiving. Before this, I always knew I needed to be healthier and try to loose weight, I just could not stop eating. I would always set dates where I would “start” my diet and have dates where I wanted to be a certain weight but I would never have the motivation to follow out with my goals, until I met this girl. On Thanksgiving of that year, I told myself that I would have one last feast and then I would start to become more nutritious. After my delightful meal, I went down to the fire and sat with my dad. At this point, I knew I could ask him for an incentive to become healthier and lose weight. Here, we agreed that if I got my weight down to 170 before baseball season, he would give me $500 cash. This meant that I had to get grinding and becoming a gym rat. I remember I just told him, “you’re on”.

I went maybe a day or two of eating healthy and working out until I went back to not caring about the way I ate and I completely stopped running unless I was at a practice or just playing sports with my friends. I do not know if just gave up or told myself I’d start at a later date but I completely disregarded everything that I wanted to achieve deep down inside, and at the time, that is all I wanted. Christmas and New Years come around and I still have these incentives to get in shape but all I really could think about is how many tasty dinners and desserts I would be missing out on. At this point I had the mindset of getting through the holidays then starting to workout. New Years day of that year, I was on vacation and I told myself for the millionth time that that was the last day that I wasn’t going to workout or eat unhealthy until I achieved my goal. What set this time apart from every other time is that I grasped the fact that I was not happy with myself or with what I looked like. At first I had the mindset that I was becoming fitter to fulfil what I thought other people wanted to see of me. I did a lot of soul searching and registered in my head that I really wanted this for myself, not for other people. I knew deep down I wanted it for myself. That night I weighed myself, weighing in at 230 pounds, then took a picture without my shirt on, and went at it. The next day on January 2, 2014, the grind began.

January 2 hits and I hit the ground running, literally. I was fed up with the way I felt about myself and I took that self disappointment and turned it to motivation. Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted to fulfil the goals that I told my Dad I wanted to fulfil but I was just using that as a foundation and a start to what I had to do. I knew I had until the first day of March which was just about two months to loose 60 pounds. I just started running and did not feel the need to stop, for a long time. That first day, I just started running and I ran for an hour. From that day on I was not excepting any other day where I would do nothing less than run for at least an hour. I also promised myself that I would not eat anything unhealthy until I did what I set out to do and I achieved my goal.

Within the first couple of weeks, I was not improving like I wanted to. When I do anything in life, I need to see noticeable improvement because it helps me motivate myself. At first, from comparing my original picture to my newer ones to see progress, I didn’t improve like I wanted to and it was very discouraging. I was working so hard and it felt almost like it was for nothing. I could not give up though. I am a person who does not except failure. I would do anything to achieve a goal and there was no way I was going to let this one slide away from me. It was a struggle, especially at first. I would be so sore because I was not used to running like that at all and my body had some adjusting to do. Although not feeling successful at first, my own satisfaction of knowing I was doing everything I could to accomplish my objective kept me going. As time went on, I started to finally be more comfortable in my own body which helped me gain self confidence. This started happening for me after about a month of working hard and eating well. After that first month passed, I realized I was on track with where I wanted to be.

I lost 30 pounds and I just had to do the same for one more month. At this point, I turned up my routine. Instead of running on concrete or the elliptical machine, I hit the beach. Before I started to run on the beach, I thought I was in shape. I was wrong. The first couple of days of running and working out on the beach, my body felt as if it was going to fall apart, but I loved it. I learned to love this pain and embrace it. I knew if I wasn’t struggling, I wasn’t doing all that I could do. At this point I could see a difference within the way I looked, the way I felt, and how much my stamina improved. It was amazing the way that I fell into this routine. It went from feeling like I would never be successful and in pain to realizing that my routine was not that brutal, to feeling bad and uncomfortable if I missed a day of working out and running. The last couple of weeks were easier on me and I stayed right on track to where I wanted to be. From one of the first days, I planned out what weight I wanted to be for every week and I made sure I kept on that schedule. It came down to the last day. I remember I woke up, ran into the bathroom where my scale was and it read 169.5. It felt awesome. I felt great, on top of having so much better confidence. On top of having this feeling of being where I wanted to be physically, I felt so self-fulfilled in knowing how hard I fought for something that means so much to me. The best part is that I know I did it for myself.

Yeah, you’re probably wondering about how things went with my high school crush and unfortunately, things did not go well. Although I recognized she is not the girl I was hoping she was, I was able to recognize I am in fact happy she came into my life because without her, I wouldn’t have been able to start this recognition of self-fulfillment at that time in my life. I feel blessed to have come across the incentives and the extra emotions that drove me throughout this process. Ever since this period in my life, I wake up every morning thinking about what I can do to better myself and what I should do each day to make my life the most successful and happy life I can live. One of my biggest role models in life recently wrote me this quote from Colossians 3:23 which I feel goes hand in hand with the lesson this experience taught me and I have been living by it ever since, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”.

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awesomecreativewritingmike-blog · 8 years ago

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6. Film Review

“Where to Invade Next” by Michael Moore Summary

Michael Laing

Michael Moore’s European vacation tours through the United States shortcomings while also representing a slight sense of patriotism. The idea of going to other countries to “steal” their “good ideas” for the U.S. seems like a strange facet to enter. Moore, it seems, like to put himself front and center and this film isn’t actually about America at all, but Moore’s take on it. The film, “Where to Invade Next”, is a harder one to understand since the basis is from Moore’s standpoint only thinking that we, the audience, find him as amazing as he does. Moore advocates, however, with things I do believe in such as the end of the death penalty, more protections on workers’ rights, the need for us Americans to confront the history of slavery, and racism.

In the film, Moore talks to Italians about the fact that they have weeks of paid vacation and months of paid maternity leave without even considering that American culture heavily prizes success and ambition. This makes implementing such a change in this country so fundamentally difficult. When he visits Norway to examine its relatively comfy prisons and 21-year maximum sentences (even for murder), Moore is astonished, but doesn’t stop to ponder how American politicians have won elected office for generations by promising to be tough on crime. These two points, I actually had no idea about. It makes me think on one hand if Italy is so great and thinks about its citizens like this why not move there, but also I do believe that America is more economically stable and a better place to live. The U.S. has its perks, Moore is just choosing to highlight the ones that we can change as a country but haven’t yet. Moore’s mindset throughout was one of “If they are doing this, then why can’t we?” I do agree, but it’s not that easy to change a mindset of an entire country.

While Moore was off traveling the world to hear about the opinions and ways of life of others he was, at the same time, too interested in his own take than to hear the wealth of different voices. The term myopia means that something or someone will disregard everything else that is going on and only focus on themselves or a certain subject. This film, I believe, was made to shame the way our culture does so. Moore visited Tunisia where he spoke to a radio journalist named Amel, explaining how she was disgusted with our music and fashion which in my opinion are just her own personal beliefs, anyone could not like other countries way of dressing themselves. Then Amel went on to discuss how America knows nothing of her country, which is most likely true seeing as though I do not know of her country. It is almost as if I agree with what she is saying.

This point leads me to what I think was the biggest takeaway from this film, and that is to diversify your portfolio, your mind, and knowledge of not only America but other countries as well. However, the last point I want to make is that Moore isn’t actually stealing any ideas. Majority the U.S. just simply forgot or abandoned. For example, Iceland’s prosecution of its bankers’ was inspired by the U.S. crackdown on the banks after savings and loan scandal. Norway’s abolition of capital punishment connects with Michigan’s similar decision in 1846, when it became the first Anglophone government to do so. The irony argues that America is so awesome and that everyone is ripping off our ideas, but really other countries have probably evolved because they aren’t stuck in the same bubble of expectation that blinds Americans to do so.

Lastly, as for film themes as stated before: Italy has a work life balance, France learns the truth about sex, Finland gives more time for recess while being the top of global education, Slovenia points school as a basic human right, Germany gives employees equal say in company matters as opposed to Hitler and the Holocaust this acknowledgement of the past fuels the positive for them now, and there are a few others but these stood out to me most. Moore stated: “My mission is to pick the flowers, not the weeds,” and he did pull some key takeaways to learn from these other countries, but as I said above I believe that these countries are not trapped beneath this bubble as we Americans are. Writing this review reminds me that this is something that bothers me and my way of life, but it isn’t something I cannot change as I go about my days. I have the right to learn and travel and get out of this bubble and so do you.

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