Building A Better You

Don't Be Afraid of Your Future  There’s nothing to be scared of….Right? At one of the high schools I work at, they have these blackboards near the entrance to the school that they like to write cutesy little sayings on: “Throw kindness around like confetti” and that sort of thing. Things that sound they came from a Dove Chocolate wrapper. Today’s message was, “Don’t be afraid of your future.” Being the cynic that I occasionally am at the beginning of work, I thought, “What the hell does that even mean? Who, generally, is afraid of their future?” After a moment of reflection, I realized that I was. Shit. I  am . What’s more, I’ve known plenty of people who are, even if they don’t realize it or speak it out loud. Two years ago, I was asked to talk to a 12th grade student that I had known since he was a freshman. I’d watched him grow from a 14-year-old pain in the ass to an 18-year-old, respectful, studious, less frequent pain in the ass. His teacher asked me to talk to him, beca...

  Better to Stumble Forward Than to Stand Still My first article took years to write. It’s something I had thought about for a long time. I read books on writing. I watched YouTube videos made my writers. I researched the best things to write about, and the best places to write about them. Where did all that planning and research get me? Nowhere. At the end of it all, I still wasn’t actually writing anything, and therefore, not actually a writer. Maybe I could be called a researcher, or planner, or dreamer, but not a writer. The day I became a writer didn’t come until I was fed up with the way my life was progressing. Looking around, I realized I wasn’t doing the things I really wanted to do. I also realized that nobody was going to come along and say, “Kevin, it’s time to start now.” That was entirely up to me. What was holding me back? This was the question I had to ask myself. There were several answers that came to me: I was afraid of failing. I didn’t feel prepared. I was afra...