I Fear Greatness.

There is so many amazing revolutionary things happening around us every minute and we are just too afraid of their possibilities. The minute that lady speaks up in the meeting where you did not want to volunteer to help with the upcoming event, we as humans suddenly often times get possessive and defensive over this woman’s want to fill the position. Now it is these “positions” where we are afraid of change and its potential. We did not want to sign up for the morning shift at the bake sale, or to call everyone on the phone tree because our Tuesday blood drive will be postponed, but when someone we find unqualified steps to the plate to take the position we become outraged. “Trina cannot even multiply, but we are letting her play the kazoo in the winter concert?” wonders Marlene. Randall exclaims to his twin Sherry, “Really, with that hair cut Mathew will be representing us at the chili cook-off award ceremony? He looks like a mix between Cindy Lauper and Gene Simmons!” Why are we so afraid of people pursuing greatness when we are too terrified of it ourselves?

I believe that the fear of greatness is instilled in us when growing up like many other traits we now possess as young and elderly adults. It closely relates to the fear of being different from anyone else. Currently, I truly have no want to be like anyone else around me and the idea of conforming to a mass group of individuals is terrifying to me but I often find my peers and myself just settling. I will settle no longer. To be great is to be something much different from what feels comfortable or ordinary. And being dissimilar in a society and culture where everyone just wants to fit in can be intimidating. We are afraid of truly letting go of our inhibitions in life and just living to our fullest intentions due to what others would think. I can no longer be afraid of my future self. This “self” is much more driven by the iron strings close to my heart, not afraid to do and only would like to feel and it has no reliance on social boundaries put up, that we now call insecurities. This “self” is willing to act, look, feel dumb for the instant rewards granted to those pursuing themselves at a completely new level.

I often find myself indulging in the fear of being great when I sing. I will sit in choir and look around; tenors, altos, sopranos and then at the other baritones and I can feel that we all are just holding back, all waiting for the moment we are able to open our mouths and notes will not come out; emotion, expression and everything great will come bounding out of our hearts and enrapture us. But as a choir, we all are afraid of feeling dumb individually but most of the time if you are you feel awkward you just need to let go of your inhibitions and submerse yourself. You know that high F# octave is approaching and instead of going for it you fake it because you think you are going to crack or go sharp or something. Those thoughts are irrelevant because it is only through experience that we can finally understand something foreign to us.

Now in regard to my singing I am not the only one holding back. You can tell by just looking at someone, if they are truly untied by their personal reservations. And looking around in choir I can tell we all are afraid, but of what? Of looking like a fool? Of being different? Or of actually going for it and achieving something? It this idea that we have the capability of being great in so many ways, that inspires me for tomorrow. Because, it is things like this that spread. Love spreads. Happiness spreads. The feeling of facing your fear of being great has the ability to spread and change the world we currently live in, but must start within us individually.

Song of the day - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skillex

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Excuse Me, The Dancers Have Arrived..

Song of the day - Not An Angel by City Sleeps

"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation" - La Vie Boheme, RENT

Growing Up.

I find we have huge, major, and multiple responsibilities that we do not exactly sign up for, that are more shoved in our face as a human in our current society. Now this is even more true for what we term as adults or grownups in our society today. As a sixteen year old, and a current highschooler who everything is practically handed to, these real life responsibilities are quite daunting and intimidating. Luckily, these responsibilities are slightly gradual and are in a way passed on and you acquire these “chores” through people who are the current elders and make it all seem effortless. But, what happens if you cannot handle these as an adult or fully do not grasp these ideas that are just expected almost suddenly. These are the basic concepts and ideas that we discussed today in my Challenge American Greats Class and really was intrigued by the social responsibilities that are just expected from us as being apart of our society.

Now one thing that I associate with the term adult, is taxes among other tasks but before that, I need to get at least a broad definition of what it means to be adult. Now, according the dictionary.com, adult means to be “a person who is fully grown or developed or of age.” I completely disagree, just going off that idea how are you supposed to know when you are fully grown or developed and if you do not know, who else will? It is hard and almost something that I look down upon when people start putting limits on their growing and development as an individual. Yes, I bet then when they were writing this definition dictionary.com was referring to reaching a certain maturity but in my mind that is still too vague when the definition of the word adult, comes with so many obligations. Do we put an age on it? When you turn eighteen you are a legal adult, but are you then suddenly considered a moral, just part of society that people would term as a grownup? Being an adult is a complex state of being that we need to rethink and reframe how we disperse social tasks because I believe that we are throwing the term around loosely. And we as society cannot let things such as the status of who will be our future front bearers of our society be wrongly classified into a large group of now adults, half of them being responsible, contributing member of the current, while the other half are leaches, sponges and worms in the big aspect reality.

A new look on the status of being an adult includes many things because it is something intricate and must be a pillar in our towering monument of a humankind. An adult is someone who takes responsibility for their actions. An adult is someone capable of great things and will or is already contributing things to the world that were lacking. An adult understand that we need together because if we are working against ourselves we will get nowhere. An adult understand that laws must be in place. An adult must understand that we trust them enough to let them lead us because if we set them up for failure they will get fail.

To think that some people from birth are paying taxes really does frighten me. It interesting to think and consider into what we learn as culture, that I really have no idea when people start doing taxes. At the beginning of today I thought it was something that you do maybe when you get out of college or something you do after turning eighteen. Yes, there is obviously people in the world where that is their situation but paying taxes starts when you start earning a substantial amount of money in the course of a year i have learned through google. Parents can add their child’s income into theirs but still the fact that some other sixteen year olds in Winona are already doing thier own taxes is astounding to me. Taxes seems so grownup in my eyes and that is where our misinterpreted view of being an adult ties in. Along with taxes, you suddenly are expected to know if you did not already, about political campaigns and make an educated decision in voting situations. You will truly have freedom from most reign from your parents but is that not scary to think that all the problems we deemed as things our parents needed to take care of, are now our responsibilities as the person in charge. Luckily you just catch on. It is apart of life, taking action and ownership of things that we once tried to avoid due to feeling inadequate and too childish to deal with matters that were meant for the adults in our lives.

Song of the day - Can't Go Back Now by The Weepies

“We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” - May Lamberton

Decisional Happiness.

One of my favorite and most intriguing things in my opinion about life is that the minute you think life could not get any worse, it gets a lot better. Today was such a revolutionary moment in between a slew of days lacking purpose, and the essence that really provides drive to life.


Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. And all day regardless of how I looked at it, I easily fell into the slum of every other single person alive yesterday. I believed that my euphonium playing was lacking musicality and that does not surprise me at all, now looking in retrospect because playing the euphonium demands focus, creativity, an open mind and most of all heart. In Grammar and Composition after taking a test which I may or may not have bombed, we received our rough drafts for an expository essay due at the end of this school week. Now, after talking with people I have come to find that I was not the only person with a lot of criticism in the margins but at that moment I felt like my teacher was personally attacking my writing. There is truly only very few things that are worse than someone stating that your one and only voice is something that is unclear, rambling and lacking purpose. And my day just got worse from that point.

As much as I tried I kept focusing on the negative things that occur occured during my day, when I usually am able to disregard such trivial aspects and focus on what truly matters. It came to the point where I had to resort to talking in ridiculous accents to somewhat forget what was going on and look at Alex Cyert’s life as a stranger with a much different outlook and past because I did not want to take ownership of my life. The one thing we have as human beings on this vast planet is our own life and I just as easily gave it away because I felt incompetent and unable to truly deal with reality. In turn I wasted a day of my life due to a skewed outlook on a single day. I never want to have my out outlook make such a considerable negative impact again and let one day pass where I feel that I have not striven to pursue bettering myself as a person and artist. We are capable as human beings of decisional happiness when being happy seem unattainable to us.

Today really was a great turn around and much needed for me to not be discouraged by life, but be a student to life and learn a concept that may have been distant to me before this. Today I thoroughly enjoyed my usual breakfast of a coffee and breakfast sandwich from Kwik Trip regardless of the fact that it is a burning a deep, deep hole in my pocket of depleting monetary funds. During a lesson with my band instructor he was not quick to criticize and point out the obvious. He first asked me what I thought and felt about the performance of my major, harmonic and melodic minor scales and solo literature I will perform at the end of this month to be a contestant as a featured soloist in the grand concert of an honor band I am attending. By asking me what my thoughts were it became more of an I already knew the answers and just need to begin applying them learning moments. He gave me a good share of criticism after that but also pointed out things that I definitely was glad to hear. Through much practice I am improving and that is what is constantly important. My day got progressively better from there receiving insight on my final draft of my grammar and composition paper from a past teacher. To being in the zone singing in choir during fifth hour and having great tone. To viewing Glee tonight and being inspired to have a comeback into a life full of purpose, drive, god and constant questioning because there truly is no point in living unless we are constantly thinking.

Song of the day - Guaranteed by Eddie Vedder

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” - Albert Einstein

Split Ends.

This last week I literally did complete disarray to my hair and do not regret it in the slightest. Cutting my own hair has become a very relaxing, stress relieving, and emotional cleansing experience for about a year now. So as much as you try there is really only so much you can do to change your appearance. You can lose or gain weight but it is still your skin and your body type. You can buy new clothes, but at the end of the day you still are yourself and resemble that. There is something so miraculous in the ways we are able to change and adapt our own hair. It is able to change color, change shape, direction, style, feel to the touch, among other things. Over just the last few years my hair has changed so much in all of these aspects. I believe that anyone really considering what their hair looked like just three years ago would agree with me that change has occurred.


Hair is one of the most interesting parts of our body in my opinion due to it’s unique nature in being. It is alive basically until it has breached life outside of your scalp and is then dead, but it is at the same time nurtured by the tiny root connecting it to your head. So each of your hair follicles are in a weird in-between stage where they are dead but very much still alive. As a culture, hair plays a big role in physical identity and we often use hair to be a resemblance of how we feel and want to be portrayed by others.

Thursday I basically shaved off the hair on my sides and back and left a flat Mohawk on top and then shaved lines onto the right side of my scalp to resemble a simple pattern. When arriving at school on Friday I had a mixed range of opinions and I truly was expecting that. People often said “Wow, you gotta hair cut. You know you have lines in one side of your head? Was that a mistake, or what?” It is extremely enjoyable to baffle people through a insignificant change in your life such as a fake moustache or new hair cut.

I cut my hair for emotional freedom from the ties that I often become bound to. I cut my hair because I need change. I cut my hair because I have split ends. I cut my hair because it is my vision. I cut my hair because after so long I loose sight of my goals, virtues and wants. I cut my hair because I love creating and being an artist and I truly am just… creating.

Song of the day - Ok, It's Alright With Me by Eric Hutchinson

"The best ideas are common property." - Seneca

Photos From A Messy Computer.

Song of the day - Tubthumping by Chumbawamba

"If you want to truly understand something, try to change it." - Kurt Lewin

The Simplicity Experiment.

Currently in school I am taking a class entitled Challenge American Greats. In class we basically read literature, discuss literature all while trying to better understand why this literature has a unique temperament of being great and what makes it American. Earlier this week we discussed Ralph Waldo Emerson who I found to be particularly intriguing. Emerson in short basically came up with the idea of transcendentalism but only really theorized about this ideal state of being in which you are a “transparent eyeball” seeing all, not really making or creating change, all while taking it all in. Emerson’s close friend Thoreau took this idea one step further and tested it by secluding himself from everything and simplifying his life in all aspects and life by the bare minimums in the middle of wilderness. It is here that Thoreau stated that he could absorb more of God and nature, and learn more about his own constitution as well. Thoreau said, "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" . In my Challenge American Greats Class we are not only trying to get a better understanding of Emerson, Thoreau and transcendentalism by looking at their literature, we are going to take a single twelve hour chunk out of our life and simply simplify. Here is my pre-anticipatory essay on my experience with the Simplicity Experiment.


As a teenager in current day 2011 society, my life as a whole is definitely nowhere near what Thoreau would classify as simplistic. Just as a student at the Winona Senior High technology, a busy schedule, planned out days far in advance and no real dependence on personal or moral instinct really play a big part of my life until I breach the home of my bedroom, late after the day is over. Over the course of my life, my parents have been consistently reminding me that being involved in too many things can have a negative impact on the other important parts of my life such as schoolwork and family relations. It is evident to me that I do let some things fall to the wayside due to the fact that I enjoy being involved in a multitude of activities. It is one of the luxuries available to the people of today’s society and it is something that I often have a hard time passing down. Living in a community where there is some type of fine art related performance, café, or event offered practically every weekend for cultural growth and a good night full of memories is hard to beat in my opinion. I believe that people often take for granted how much control we have over our day and our actions included. There are many places in the world where you are forced into this and that and are expected to not only conform but abide by someone else’s view of how you should live your life. Here we are the privileged and are able to make so many choices down to what we have for lunch every day, to what we wear on our body for clothing, to how we interact socially with other individuals and so many other things. There are many moments that I sit and wish for many more moments in a day, many more seconds to finish that test in third hour, or just time. It is those exact moments when I should instead of yearning for more time, be doing the things I feel like I have no time to undertake in my life.

Life in 2011 is technology and when you believe that you have some how distanced yourself from its grasps on you as an individual; you are then drawn back by documenting your thoughts or sharing it through some media outlet. Every evening before I fall into my deep slumber I set my final alarm on my phone to go off at 6:55 AM and two alarms on my iHome to somewhat get me half awake at 6:00 AM and 6:40 AM. After being somewhat aroused by their consistent toll I wake up take a shower and then turn on some music varying from Nat King Cole to current Shostakovich, and then do my hair with my electric flat iron. It is then when embarking off to school when I purchase a coffee, produced by a machine which often sputters at my angrily or is broken and a sausage/egg/cheese english muffin breakfast sandwich every morning at Kwik Trip. Through the duration of my school day technology becomes less apparent in my actions but is still evident through graphing calculators, my cell phone between classes, overheads, power points and the blaring intercom widely used all day long regardless of the importance of your current actions. My dependence on technology resumes the moment the bell right at 3:30 PM every afternoon. Suddenly the location and current status of my cell phone and what my schedules states for after school become incessant to my needs. Through the rest of my day I will use a car for my source of transportation an average total of six times, check not only my phone but Facebook too many times to count and listen to about four CD’s worth of music. It is only then when I finally will start the pattern all over again by putting on a CD to fall asleep to and set my three alarms for the upcoming day.

Stepping in anyone else’s shoes but your own is always a challenge because we as human beings get so used to normalcy and falling into a routine way of living. For twelve hours, I will be a modern day Thoreau. It will be a trial on my dedication and a testament to how life could be. Personally, I am excited to be able to somewhat be able to step out of myself and do something that is out of the ordinary. Change excites me and can be extremely beneficial, influential in certain situations but an overall experience that we all can learn from as the human beings of today.

Song of the day - Snakes and Lions by melpo mene

"He knows not what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Simplicity Experiment.

Currently in school I am taking a class entitled Challenge American Greats. In class we basically read literature, discuss literature all while trying to better understand why this literature has a unique temperament of being great and what makes it American. Earlier this week we discussed Ralph Waldo Emerson who I found to be particularly intriguing. Emerson in short basically came up with the idea of transcendentalism but only really theorized about this ideal state of being in which you are a “transparent eyeball” seeing all, not really making or creating change, all while taking it all in. Emerson’s close friend Thoreau took this idea one step further and tested it by secluding himself from everything and simplifying his life in all aspects and life by the bare minimums in the middle of wilderness. It is here that Thoreau stated that he could absorb more of God and nature, and learn more about his own constitution as well. Thoreau said, "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" . In my Challenge American Greats Class we are not only trying to get a better understanding of Emerson, Thoreau and transcendentalism by looking at their literature, we are going to take a single twelve hour chunk out of our life and simply simplify. Here is my pre anticipatory essay on my experience with the Simplicity Experiment.

As a teenager in current day 2011 society, my life as a whole is definitely nowhere near what Thoreau would classify as simplistic. Just as a student at the Winona Senior High technology, a busy schedule, planned out days far in advance and no real dependence on personal or moral instinct really play a big part of my life until I breach the home of my bedroom, late after the day is over. Over the course of my life, my parents have been consistently reminding me that being involved in too many things can have a negative impact on the other important parts of my life such as schoolwork and family relations. It is evident to me that I do let some things fall to the wayside due to the fact that I enjoy being involved in a multitude of activities. It is one of the luxuries available to the people of today’s society and it is something that I often have a hard time passing down. Living in a community where there is some type of fine art related performance, café, or event offered practically every weekend for cultural growth and a good night full of memories is hard to beat in my opinion. I believe that people often take for granted how much control we have over our day and our actions included. There are many places in the world where you are forced into this and that and are expected to not only conform but abide by someone else’s view of how you should live your life. Here we are the privileged and are able to make so many choices down to what we have for lunch every day, to what we wear on our body for clothing, to how we interact socially with other individuals and so many other things. There are many moments that I sit and wish for many more moments in a day, many more seconds to finish that test in third hour, or just time. It is those exact moments when I should instead of yearning for more time, be doing the things I feel like I have no time to undertake in my life.

Life in 2011 is technology and when you believe that you have some how distanced yourself from its grasps on you as an individual; you are then drawn back by documenting your thoughts or sharing it through some media outlet. Every evening before I fall into my deep slumber I set my final alarm on my phone to go off at 6:55 AM and two alarms on my iHome to somewhat get me half awake at 6:00 AM and 6:40 AM. After being somewhat aroused by their consistent toll I wake up take a shower and then turn on some music varying from Nat King Cole to current Shostakovich, and then do my hair with my electric flat iron. It is then when embarking off to school when I purchase a coffee, produced by a machine which often sputters at my angrily or is broken and a sausage/egg/cheese english muffin breakfast sandwich every morning at Kwik Trip. Through the duration of my school day technology becomes less apparent in my actions but is still evident through graphing calculators, my cell phone between classes, overheads, power points and the blaring intercom widely used all day long regardless of the importance of your current actions. My dependence on technology resumes the moment the bell right at 3:30 PM every afternoon. Suddenly the location and current status of my cell phone and what my schedules states for after school become incessant to my needs. Through the rest of my day I will use a car for my source of transportation an average total of six times, check not only my phone but Facebook too many times to count and listen to about four CD’s worth of music. It is only then when I finally will start the pattern all over again by putting on a CD to fall asleep to and set my three alarms for the upcoming day.

Stepping in anyone else’s shoes but your own is always a challenge because we as human beings get so used to normalcy and falling into a routine way of living. For twelve hours, I will be a modern day Thoreau. It will be a trial on my dedication and a testament to how life could be. Personally, I am excited to be able to somewhat be able to step out of myself and do something that is out of the ordinary. Change excites me and can be extremely beneficial, influential in certain situations but an overall experience that we all can learn from as the human beings of today.

All Of Me by Frank Sinatra

INSET 09.26.2020

Gawain the Goose.

Gawain is the treasury guard goose. He has lots of friends, including the king. The king trusts him very much due to the fact that Gawain is very honest and loyal. He was betrayed by Derek the mouse. Than he went to court and was found guilty. He flew through the window and into the forest and he hid there for a long time. Derek found Gawain and brought him back to the town. It ended up that Gawain did not steal the jewels from the king, Derek did.