My First Time

This is my first blog, thus I feel it’s only right if I share my first experiences for as many things as I can remember in the next forty minutes.

I’m nothing like an adventurer like Bilbo Baggins and neither do I live a lifestyle of material wealth like Jay Gatsby, although, I do aspire to be like those characters. My life is average, I guess. I’ve finished my A-levels and hope my exam results get me into a good University, preferably Westminster, so I can study English Literature.

I began a blog because many people told me that I should. I never really saw the value of a blog because I like the idea of taking several days, months or even years to write a piece. It just feels more valuable that way. Nevertheless, recently I read a book called ‘Yes Man’, a copy of which I bought for my mentor as it’s my favourite book, for the second time. When I first read it I noticed that the author, Danny Wallace, whose life the book is about, was rather like me but better. I say better because his optimistic and hopeful disposition would never lose its flare during his everyday small journeys. Only once did he lose hope and that was towards the end when he felt that his rule of saying yes to every opportunity wasn’t benefiting him anymore, but contradictorily to its purpose, it made Danny broke and broken-hearted also. However, what I loved about it was how heart-warming the ending was because everything turned out just fine for Danny when he realised that he was wrong in losing hope and that the word “yes” was still helping him despite the financial debt. This motivated me to be a Yes Man, and I was once again recently advised to start a blog. So here I am.

The first yes I said, after reading ‘Yes Man’ of course, was one I never regretted. It was last summer and my friends and I were at a stage where we were all still rather new to each other and not yet like family. Most of us had all met in that same academic year after all. One of my friends called me up to come into college on a splendidly radiant day and play basketball with them. My friends had never before utilised the back playground of the college, what we now refer to as the “cage”, and so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to say yes to, unlike Danny, who had gotten a call from “Mark One Double Glazing”, said yes to them installing double glazed windows in his house, only to realise a second later that his windows already were double glazed. Although it’s rather dull, Danny Wallace’s humour is one of my favourite types of humour.

My first home is in Sunderland where I was born. I don’t remember it at all because we moved when I was one year old. I don’t even remember my first vacation, which was in France when I was still a year old. My first pet was a gold fish, which jumped out of its bowl while my family and I were out one day and dried up to death. My first favourite film as a kid was ‘Lion King’ until I watched ‘Treasure Planet’. The first novel I borrowed from the library was a book about different eras. The first book I bought was ‘Tracy Beaker’ from ‘Borders Bookstore’. The first poem I read was about a washing machine in year two, and my so-called friends at the time made fun of me because I didn’t know how to pronounce the word “machine”. My first crush was a girl in year four called Khadija, and my friend Isaac exposed me in front of the whole class. My first drawing of an animal was an eagle and it was only amazing because I completely copied a drawing of an eagle of my brother’s, who drew his eagle from his imagination unlike me. My first video was a lyric video I uploaded to Youtube in year eight of the song ‘Iridescent’ by Linkin Park. Yes, I was deeply inspired by Linkin Park at the time. My first love is food. The first person I messaged today is my friend Keyla, who I talk to most on Whatsapp anyway. My first fight was in year one with a boy called Jamaal, who I saw a few weeks ago rather awkwardly, and he started it, yet I was the one who ended up facing the wall.

On a more positive note, I decided to sign up to the website, justgiving.com, to join a walk for Syria on the 26^th of July with an organisation called ‘Muslim Hands’. This is the first time I’ve ever voluntarily raised money for a good cause and so far I’ve raised one hundred and ten pounds. I feel more accomplished than ever before, even though I’ve had a poem published in a magazine for the first time in the past year and gained some muscle mass by weightlifting for the first time to see if I could lose my title, ‘Sir Toothpick’. And I did! Though, my achievement in fundraising, as I would express to my mentor, simply makes my heart sing.