Sick Day

Blogger was not working yesterday, and so here is my post for yesterday:

Today I woke up feeling extremely lousy, so I decided to work from home. I felt distracted all day by my lousiness. It was difficult to work because of this. I feel that my writing was not as strong because I had trouble concentrating.

I wrote about the playground and how it always seemed like a political place. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but because our class was a community, we definitely seemed to develop a social order, which is natural. I attempted to chronicle our evolution as a community from first to eighth grade.

Here is the introductory paragraph:

"Politics always have been in operation on the playground, at least for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t like there was an explicit hierarchy applied such as in the playgrounds in movies. There wasn’t one popular girl who controlled everyone else’s lives nor a bully who took our lunch money. But my classmates and I were a community, and like any other community, there was a tacit social order established. It’s difficult to articulate, because it wasn’t something that was necessarily clear. And of course it changed as we grew up. The invisible dividing lines were constantly shifting and transforming. It’s difficult to communicate exactly where they lay or how they were to be interpreted. But our actions sometimes seemed to indicate a sort of collective agenda."

This particular essay will be interesting in the context of the rest of the essays. First, I'll explain what I've discovered the purpose of this collection to be. As you've probably figured out through reading my descriptions of the essays, they are each based on a place. I chronicle (I know I already used that word but I can't find a better one) my experience with this place through the years. So, it's like looking at my personal development through several angles. In the case of the library, it was my development of language and learning. In the case of the church, it was my spiritual development. In the case of the yard, it was my development of myself in nature. It's interesting that the essays turned out this way because I originally thought that it was going to be about moments in my childhood that contributed to who I am now. It's actualy like exploring Haley Peters in different lights. I think I just figured this out today. Nothing ever goes according to plan.

Anyway, this essay is about the development of myself socially, and I believe it will be interesting because it also chronicles the same development in all my classmates. Basically, this essay is about me learning to function in a community, but at the same time, every other kid in the community is learning, too. So the subject itself, the playground, will change, whereas in all my other essays, the place stays the same while I change. Just interesting.

I can't wait till next week when I can revise this essay while not feeling lousy. It's going to be a cool one.