Out of the Picture

My family, especially my mom, wouldn’t let me spend time with my friends. She would say that it is more important to spend time with family anyways, but my friends kept me entertained to a level that my family could not. Family time shouldn’t deprive friend time, and friend time shouldn’t deprive family time. There needs to be a balance to find. Because of my moms view on this, I rarely got to see my group of friends even while they always hung out together. I was always unable to go even if there were n o family plans, but again and again I find myself restricted to go out. Weekends were no exception.

Almost Never Satisfied

My parents didn’t have any dinner ready or planned for the night, so it was a night to dine out. To where it was not yet known. I proceeded to go to soccer practice that night, and it went late. Overall, I was starving. Practice ran me tired and hungry, and I was about ready to eat anything. I went to look in the cabinet. There was an entire array of food that I could eat from. I go to take something out. A little tiny bar. THEN BAM! Mother walks in and reprimands me for eating before dinner, the dinner I didn’t know we had planned. The dinner still wasn’t planned. Hungry and an hour later, there we are sitting at the table. Chicken nuggets, in front of me. Not the dinner I had expected, but food nonetheless. I decided to eat it all, but still I was starving. I went to get more food, but my mom yelled at me. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, so I just decided to go to bed hungry. Nope I didn’t do that. Around 11 at night, I snuck into the kitchen to finally fill my stomach. I was happy, I went to bed happy.

New Set of Eyes

The summer of 2019/2020 I can’t remember which one it was. I took a trip with my family to East Asia. There I completely learned about a whole new culture, way of life, and customs. It was a super interesting experience. Thailand and Cambodia have taught me a lot about where I live and my life. I saw the rich and the poor. I experienced the top quality hotels and the bottom end ones. I really enjoyed the trip overall, but I really missed the comforts of my everyday life back in California. I tried my best to understand the life of a typical Thai person, and it made me realize how fortunate I was to be in California. I really miss being back in Thailand, because the experience is so much more than the memories. I want to relive that different aspect of my life that I will never have to live through. My gratitude for what I have has grown so much.

New Way More Play

For about 8 years I’ve played piano. It wasn’t easy, and I was having a hard time learning songs, but eventually of course I would learn them. I didn’t understand or have a good work ethic, so for me practicing everyday was torture. This really gave me a bad experience with piano, even though I was really good at it. My teacher would be mad at me for not practicing and so would my parents. There would be standardized tests for piano theory. I would always do good on these things because I would try my best and work hard, but that’s not the point of piano. Of course you need to practice, but this seemed like another academic lesson I had to suffer through. I decided to quit. But there was a problem with that. I love to play music. I absolutely love music. I wanted to pick up a guitar. It seemed really fun, and sounded amazing. I started taking lessons. I picked it up pretty quickly because of all my experience with music and instruments. I fell in love with it instantly. My teacher was and is amazing, opening me up to all the possibilities of guitar. I love to play guitar, and I do it as much as possible. I feel like I’m better at picking up the guitar and stopping the piano. It makes me so much happier and that’s what I care about.

The Final Result

Only about less than a year ago, I had to drive out about 9 hours to Palo Alto, near San Francisco, for a soccer tournament. My excitement was immense. Me and my club have been training so hard waiting for this tournament and this moment to prove ourselves to the league to move us up to NPL. As we drove up, we met the team and got ready with all our rooms and belongings and such. We messed around a lot throughout the trip because we felt that we deserved this as our break from hard training sessions Monday through Friday every week. But when games came up, we made sure to shape up and get ready. We played our first game. We played very well, and created many opportunities. I scored the final goal that brought us out of our tie, and we won the game. Everyone was so excited, especially me. This gave us energy to go into the second game that day, and we absolutely dominated that one as well. I scored again, and so did our other striker. The hype was overbearing to us. We were absolutely pumped for our next two games. We had a secure spot in the semis. We played it. Our team was getting exhausted from the constant physical and demanding activity, but we ended up winning regardless, it was a very close game. We made it, finals here we come. Everyone slept very well and rested before the night came. We made our way onto the pitch. We reminded ourselves to treat this like any other game to prevent the nerves from getting to us. Everyone is already exhausted. We played our absolute hardest, but ended the game 1-1. Penalties. One shot and one save after another, it came down to next shot wins, was this all for nothing, why had we come this far to not earn the win. We worked our asses off harder than any other team in the entire tournament, WE DESERVED THIS. The other team’s kid walked up, he set up his shot, and he missed the goal. That was it. We had won this tournament we worked so hard towards. Overjoyed with emotion, we walked off the field, celebrating and cheering. It was absolutely amazing.