Struck by Lightning: The Carson Philips Journal

...because a life without meaning, without drive or focus, without dreams or goals, isn't a life worth living.

You've got to show the world who you are before it tells you. Otherwise you become victim to someone you're not.

You don’t get to pick where you’re from, but you always have control of where you’re going.

Whoa, I've really got to stop making plans with fictional characters. It can't be healthy to develop relationships with people who don't exist.

High School. Society’s bright idea to put all their aggressive, naive youth into one environment to torment and emotionally scar each other for life.

Like having a great idea, life comes at you fast. It hits you and tries to escape and be expressed in any way possible. In a way, it's a lot like...lightning.

What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world` With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)?? And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering. Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time. Get my point?

From this day on, I refuse to let anyone bring me to a point where I can't take a horrible situation and spin it into something beneficial. I will never let anyone make me feel anything I don't want to feel again or rob me of the passions that make me who I am.

To Grandma: Once upon a time, there was a boy who flew.

You're sad-looking," she said. "My grandson used to be such a happy boy. He used to write me stories. I remember the first story he ever wrote me, 'Once upon a time, there was a boy.' And that became 'Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to fly.' And they kept getting better and better over time. I never found out if the boy got to fly." I gave her a small smile. If only she knew the boy's wings had been clipped.

I know I'm bitter and a little jaded, and mildly enjoy it, but am I a sad person? Am I happy? I plan on being happy in the future for sure, but it isn't here yet. So what does that make me, exactly?

When one thing takes another away, what do we call that?” she asked my class. “Homicide!” I called out

I may have no idea what I'm talking about," I said, a little ticked off now. "But we're all a part of a minority waiting for a majority to pull their heads out of their asses.

Roses are red, Violets are blue, No amount of money, Can stop me from loving you, Try as they may, Try as they might, I’m not letting go, Without a fight, Some say it’s wicked, Some say it’s sinful, Some it’s wrong, And just wrong, I don’t know much, But when push comes to shove, I definitely don’t believe, There’s such thing wrong as love.

I was reading that lightning is a negative charge that comes from the friction that clouds carry. And since opposites attract, I would like to think that he was so positive the moment that he died, so happy, he pulled that bolt right out of the sky. I don’t know if that’s possible, but that’s what I believe.

You've got to show the world who you are before it tells you.

I don't necessarily consider myself a virgin, probably because I have such a penetrating personality

I don't know much, But when push comes to shove, I definitely don't believe, There's such a thing as wrong love.

My grandpa had a saying before he died: You can hope in one hand, shit in the other, and see which is filled first.

Creatures of the Darkness BY VICKI JORDAN It was world of vampires and demons, where innocence was rare and so were the living. It was a world of darkness, where light had been outlawed and nightfall had swallowed us whole. An epic war had been fought, and the creatures of the dark had finally prevailed over the promoters of the light. Finally, for the first time in existence, the people of the shadows could come out and freely walk among one another in the rays of the dying sun, which had once been used to shun them away. A little girl, a child of the light, had survived the battle and crawled out from under the ashes of the destruction. She looked around at her altered world in dismay and confronted a vampire about the changes, of which she did not approve. “Why did you turn my world into a world of night, and make wrong into a new form of right? How could you make all the light disappear, and with it everyone I once loved so dear? Why are the shadows now the new sun, and why is everything lost what you have won?” The vampire looked down at the little girl with amusement and delight. “Because, little girl, this is the real world you see, where there’s no light to shine on false identities. We didn’t destroy the world just to scare; we simply uncovered what was already there. What has come out was all the darkness that was once hidden within, and you’ll soon meet the darkness in you once my fangs pierce your skin.” We are our own greatest fears…..

What grinds me the most is that we’re sending kids out into the world who don’t know how to balance a checkbook, don’t know how to apply for a loan, don’t even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world?

Sometimes for your own sanity you just have to agree with idiocy.

A few of the girls and I jumped into my jetta and took off. "Lets go stand outside someone from Glee's house now," one of them said

I remember wanting to laugh, but I held it in. I guess even then I thought laughing at someone's dream was one of the cruelest things one person could do to another.

All great writers have issues with their hometowns; guess I'm not the exception.

It was one of those moments when you want to help, but don't know how. You think of a million things to say but are afraid you aren't the correct person to say them.

Youth is not an excuse for insanity.

I almost shat my pants. Literally, the floor was almost covered in my shat.

What prevents my life from being a sad after-school special is I don't give a shiiit.