－（ 𝓈𝑒𝒶 𝑔𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓈' 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝒷𝒷𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 ）

[sea glass.]

hi
hi
hi
yo
┌────────────┐
ᴛᴀʙʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛs
i. intro
ii. ode to g-ma
iii. to where you are
iv. being cyber-schooled
v. my college essay
vi. titlexvii. title
viii. title
└────────────┘

┌────────────────────────┐
xx❝

ʜᴇ ᴛʀᴜᴇ ᴀʟᴄʜᴇᴍɪsᴛs ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴅ ɪɴᴛᴏ ɢᴏʟᴅ;
ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴡᴏʀᴅs.

- william h. gassxxxxxxxx❞xx

└────────────────────────┘

[sea glass.]

ello all! It seems you've stumbled across my
writing thread! Welcome! I'm glad you're here.
Basically, I adore writing. I first discovered my
passion for writing lwhen I was about eleven &
it's grown ever since. lI've been writingl for my
local newspaper since l2015,l & I have way too
many notebooks x& lword documentsl that I've
filled with random thoughts, poems, & short st
ories. lI even started a novel l&l wrote 70,000+
words before I scrapped it. l(Ah, thel painsl of
writing. It breaks my heart!)

nywho, I digress. So this thread is basically for
me to share my writing with you, lwhich I'm sure
you've already figured out. In order to make this
less confusing I've labeled each piece in the post
subject; labels will include "article" (denoting an
article I had published in the paper), l"school" (a
piecex I lwrotel for lschool),l orl "miscellaneous"
(something I wrote lfor fun / on a whim.) This is
by no means all of my work,l but rather the piec
es I wish to share. So read on, friend! Read on.

[sea glass.]

author's note;; originally published november 22nd, 2016
dedicated to my grandma. i miss you so much ♡


cars of Saturday (Nov. 19), it's been two years since I literally watched my grandmother leave this world. I can still remember it like it was yesterday, and sometimes it feels like it was.
carAfter a long and passionate fight against lung cancer for three years, God decided it was her turn to go.
carWhile sometimes my heart wails at the injustice of it all, I find so much joy in all the memories I have of the times I spent with her.
carGrowing up, my siblings and I went to G-ma’s house a lot. Sometimes, we’d go there when our parents were working, and maybe even get to stay the night (a special treat).
carAs I look back, I realize that it was the little things that made her so special. Like the way she loved to play solitaire on her computer, or how watching “Jeopardy” together became a mandatory thing — or our visits to the Philadelphia Zoo every summer.
carOn a trip we took to New Orleans and Atlanta in April of 2013, she swam with beluga whales, held a baby alligator and did other awesome stuff that I could never picture a grandma doing.
carShe always urged us to practice the piano more and study our hardest in school and be the best that we could be. She cheered us on through countless musicals, sports events and recitals. She encouraged me to write more because she knew I loved it so much.
carThe finality of selling her house was the worst, because I think that’s when I realized she was never coming back. I realized that I’d never return to the place where I’d spent so many Christmases and sleepovers and everything in between with her. I realized that the memories — oh, the memories so precious to me now — were all I had left.
carIt’s so hard to explain a person as wonderful as G-ma, but I miss her so much it hurts. I’m blessed to have spent so much time with her, and I cherish every one of those moments, no matter how silly or trivial they might’ve seemed at the time.
carWhen I find myself missing her again, I like to think of this quote: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

[sea glass.]

author's note;; originally written in november of 2014.
dedicated to my grandma.
i wrote this between the day that she died & her funeral. i read it at her funeral service.



november 19th, 2014━the day your world stopped turning

Almost
Three years ago
They told us of your cancer
I told myself there was much time until
The day your lips stopped smiling

Now it's last Christmas
We're all gathered in your living room
Safe and sound
You look around the room and say
"this may be my last Christmas with you all"
we rush to speak
"don't say that, Grandma"
But I truly believed
that I would spend so much more time with you before
The day your eyes stopped seeing

My mom is waiting for me
In the car
I get in, she looks at me
"they don't think she'll make it through the week"
She tells me
I grab her hand
We start to cry
And it is then I realize
Your time was coming much too soon
The day your lungs stopped breathing

That same day I'm in your house
Sitting next to you in the hospital bed
I'm holding your hand and
You tell me "I love you very much"
"I love you too, g-ma" I say
And brush away my tears
You see and say, "it's ok babes"
Like you always used to
I held your hand a little tighter
Unaware that those words would be
Your last to me until
The day your hands stopped feeling

Wednesday, November 19th,
two thousand and fourteen
We're crowded around you
We say our goodbyes
-
Your struggle is ended
You fought so hard, you really did
Until
The day your heart stopped beating

I still can't believe
That you are gone
It seems that only yesterday
We were watching Jeopardy
And swimming with beluga whales
And you were trying to fix my grammar
I just want you to know
I love and miss you so very much
And I regret
The day your world stopped turning~

[sea glass.]

author's note;; originally published july 4th, 2017


caret’s face it: there are some pretty big stereotypes when it comes to home-schoolers. Because we are schooled at home as well, cyber-schoolers tend to be grouped right along with them.
carI’ve grown up calling myself home-schooled, because it’s true – I do school at home – but technically I’m cyber-schooled. My school program, Agora, is different from traditional home-schooling because we have live online classes and a teacher for every subject, so I can get individual and specialized attention from a certified teacher. If our grades are good enough, Agora allows students to choose whether we attend live classes or not, which is incredibly convenient.
carI’ll say this now: I love being cyber-schooled. I’ll also have you know that I’ve never attended a public school (or “normal” school, as I’ve heard it referred to) – I’ve been cyber-schooled my entire life.
carThere are several stereotypes out there about being schooled at home, the first and most prevalent being that children who learn this way are anti-social. This is ridiculous, because while public school kids sit in classrooms with other students all day and see these other students every day, home-schoolers have to actively seek out friendships in activities they do with public schoolers or other home-schoolers.
carSure, there may be some shy home-schoolers, but there are shy public school kids too – and who said there was anything wrong with being shy anyway?
carAnother stereotype says that home-schoolers don’t get real-world experiences like public school kids do. Actually, we probably get more than they do, because while they have to sit in a classroom for seven hours a day, we’re off visiting zoos, museums and amusement parks, which are conveniently less crowded since everyone else is either working or in school. We’re also able to get jobs with hours during the school day and go on vacations during the school year, since we can do school basically anywhere as long as there’s wi-fi.
carI feel that I’ve gotten so much real-world experience through my schooling itself, because I don’t have a physical teacher looking over my shoulder all the time. I’m more independent and get to make my own choices, and I have to be responsible for those choices. I have to balance out and budget my own time, and (this one is huge) I don’t have to ask a teacher to go to the bathroom.
carLast but not least, people seem to have this crazy idea that we do school in our pajamas. However, this one isn’t a stereotype – it’s absolutely true.

[sea glass.]

author's note;; this was the essay that got me into my top college.
there was a 650 word limit, so i had to cut down my original essay quite a bit, which leads me to believe this is definitely not my best work.
however, i was accepted to the school, so that's pretty awesome.



carver since I was a child, reading has been one of my favorite pastimes. I guess it was only natural that I would turn to writing one day. I was about 12 or 13 when I first discovered my passion for writing and it’s grown ever since, as through the years I’ve penned various short stories, poems, and other literary pieces. The most life-changing and exhilarating moment of my writing “career” occurred in October of 2015, which was the start of my sophomore year in high school and the beginning of a part of my life I’ll remember forever.

carMy local newspaper, the [classified info], is extremely special because teenagers can write for the paper. Seriously. In a weekly ‘newspaper within the newspaper’ called ‘Voices’, every Tuesday, teenagers across my hometown of [classified info] get to open up that paper and read opinion pieces, news stories, and columns penned by ourselves. And here’s the best part: we get paid for it. Joining the group only took a quick application, and I was soon an official member of [classified info] ‘Voices’!

carAt the first meeting, I was beyond ecstatic to receive my first assignment: an article on the local Renaissance Faire in [classified info]. When the day for my visit arrived, I felt pretty important strutting around the Faire, snapping photos and holding interviews with different vendors and performers for my big article. Clear the way, folks! Journalist coming through! My first day as a reporter was awesome, but then came the real challenge: settling down with my laptop that evening to pen my first-ever newspaper article. I worked on that thing for hours before I was finally satisfied, and I turned it in with fingers crossed and a stomach full of nerves.

carTo make sure the stories for each week are turned in on time, ‘Voices’ articles run two weeks after they’re due. That meant I had to wait two excruciatingly long weeks for my first article to be published – but the day finally came on Tuesday, October 6th, 2015. My family doesn’t actually get the paper, so we had to drive to a gas station to pick up the newspaper that day. We walked into the small convenience store, ignoring the potato chips on the shelves and the refrigerated sodas along the walls, making a beeline for the newspaper stands instead. My mom handed money to the cashier and we hurried from the store as I grasped the paper, staring down at the day’s headline. I stood on the pavement outside in the warm morning sunlight and gently unfolded the paper, finding the ‘Voices’ insert and rapidly flipping it open to scan the pages for my work. It seemed that an eternity passed as I searched for that article – then, lo and behold, there it was. My hands froze when I saw it. “Turkey legs and more at Renaissance Faire” proclaimed the headline, punctuated by the vibrant photos I’d taken. And below it, my words, my writing. Every last word on the page was mine. I could hardly believe it. Here I was, standing in front of a Sheetz, or Sunoco, or whatever it was, and I was realizing a dream I’d carried for years…and it was coming true. It was truthfully one of the best days of my life.

carSeeing myself in print for the first time was such a powerful experience because it showed me that I shouldn’t be afraid to dream big. My enthusiasm and hard work paid off and I was able to accomplish something at age fifteen that some people don’t accomplish until they graduate from college or even later. The experience of opening that newspaper and seeing my words marching across the page in fresh ink is one I’ll never forget. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing,” – and I certainly intend to.