You are the moneymaker...

Good evening. First and foremost, one of my fears has come to full realization as I notice that my only two contributors have apparently found my absence as a perfect excuse for abandoning me. Just kidding - I'm sure you guys are busy. Either way, I shall continue my obsessive posts as I have come up with more random topics and finally figured out my life forming story, although to be honest, it is more of a time period in my life that was most formative in my personality than anything else, sorry it's not a specific story like when I got my first dog or something, but honestly I think my mind sees the big picture in much clearer of a scope than individual details. Stupid head. This is, of course, raises my first side topic;

Nature vs Nurture - your thoughts?

This entire post has two possibilities, either it will be extremely long and rambling as I drift through aforementioned years of my life, or extremely short only hinting at my true, deeper thoughts. Based on the time (it's only 9), I'm guessing long. Now on the drive home today I came up with loads of questions to ask all of you - all of it really leading up to who are we and why are we here, but I think jumping into such a deep philosophical topic without first examining a few surrounding parameters, would be foolish - before discussing such things with eachother, I think it is necessary to discover where we each are on several different fronts. I forget, naturally, most of the questions that had plagued my mind earlier, thus you are left with a few random questions pertaining to absolutely nothing by my own crazy whims - feel free to play along or ignore me completely.

Does true, pure evil exist?
Fate or free will?
Soul = mind or body?

In my last post I finished with a heavy question involving the existence of God and I think a lot of these other questions with hinge on that response, of course, that question in itself being impossible to answer without sufficient debate, so I look forward to long posts and conversations on that. Moving on...

My story - let's start in first grade when I took my role of class clown in my family into the classroom with, well...terrible results. Thus, I decided instead to use my mind and with great success, although I found myself somewhat friendless and then I became a compulsive liar making my life seem more interesting via celebrity relations (Melissa Joan Hart is my cousin, etc...) with great results, until of course fourth grade when people began to get wise to my tall tales and unlikely life events. So I was left friendless again so in fifth grade I started a new scheme towards friendship - storytelling. I created this absolutely fabulous tale using Lincoln's history as a high school for my backbone. Basically, the story went that an elevator broke carrying a couple of popular kids, the school mascot (a real lion!) and one kind and understanding teacher. The elevator fell as a result of a bitter old janitor who was, in fact, a wizard (or vampire...I don't remember) who lived in the basement (a la Phantom of the Opera). I forget the whole story at this point, but it was good and detailed and, well, looking back I'm proud of my fifth/sixth grade self for coming up with it.
Now I told you that story to tell you another story which then leads into my actually story (confusing, I know). So I moved on to South Middle School (now Maple Street Academy of the Arts?) and many things happened. 1) For the first time, I was in school with my best friend - Josh, 2) my supposed friends from elementary had either gone to another school, were still at Lincoln or abandoned me for the "cool" crowd - that's not to say they didn't talk to me, but instead of a main member of the core group, I was merely a side note whom occasionally spent time around them, 3) I flourished in music - although this talent fizzled with my ability to memorize complicated bit of music (thank you Flight of the Bumblebee) but my inability to sightread (thanks for pointing that out Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp). Now, in elementary school I had two groups of friends - younger boys and older girls, I don't why this is how my friends grouped themselves, but it's undeniable - and to this day I find myself most compatible with girls older than me, although I my male friends are also older than, me so half of this is no longer true. Anyways, my fantastic ghost story was a hit! So popular in fact, that in seventh grade my science teacher told the story, out loud, to my entire class and when asked where she got such a bizarre story of local lore, she simply replied that her fourth grade son, who went to Lincoln told it to her and when she asked him who came up with it, he dropped my name. I guess, although I cannot confirm, that my story survived at least a couple of years with my name still attached - I was amazed. It had a bizarre effect on my psyche, always looking for that ability to create something everlasting. I think this had a direct influence on my failed attempt at creating a religion in the seventh grade (basically, Martians planted us here as an experiment and to prove our worth, we must return to them - it sounded good at the time, shut up). So this is where I am, a lonely, disillusioned young man and entering the eighth grade, everything changed...which brings me to my story.
Over the summer, I moved out of New Horizon Village and into the house with my mom's cousins, the Kooys. With four children, it seemed I had gotten my large family I had always desired. Naturally, I was the second youngest, and I was still an outsider not having grown up with them. This was also when I first began truly questioning my faith (seems odd after I just mentioned creating my own religion, but that was more fun than philosophical). This part of my story is the most awkward as the Kooys are religious, putting me even further on the outside. Athletically, I was a three-season busybody, but not where one might expect. Despite my loathing of it in the seventh-grade, I continued my terrible career as a cross-country runner. In the winter, I shocked everyone by joining the wrestling team (I was technically the team tutor, keep up their grades, but I was forced to actually wrestle). In spring, I was on the track team - I still don't know why. These were, of course, my only school sports until the bowling team the last two years of Norrix. To make matters more difficult, Josh was a no show on the first day and I had no idea what happened to him seeing as I moved out of New Horizon - and so had he! It turns out he went to Parchment for all of two days before transferring to Mattawan, abandoning me alone with people who did not seem to particularly care for me. However, despite all this, my story telling became more and more obsessive as I took a bizarre code language that a few of the cooler people developed, including code names, to a deeper level as I created a back story for my two names - Nona and Myra. I have kept up this story throughout my days and its now quite the adventure, although not really and most people get upset by it since it involves sisters becoming lovers which naturally ends in a double suicide. I like it - I don't know why. Anyways, the whole point of all this rambling, and I hope this makes sense because it did to me when I came up with - composition notebooks. Those were the two words that sparked this memory about why I am how I am - in eighth grade science, every Wednesday we would take composition notebooks and write whatever we wanted - talk about our day or our life or whatever and then turn it in and the following Wednesday we would get them back with comments - questions, asking us to flesh out our stories, or answers to whatever part of life's mysteries we were struggling to unravel that particular week, etc...I think it was probably these notebooks that lead me to create, not only this blog, but all of my blogs - particularly my personal one way back in June 2003. It may be shallow desire for attention, or maybe comments on my writings - people wanting to know more or knowing the answers to questions I ask, but whatever it is - I love that feeling. The thought that my writing, my thoughts cause an emotional reaction in people and they, in response, share that reaction with me. I wish I had a blog then, or even kept a journal - if I desperately search I might be able to find the composition notebook in question, but then I'm afraid it'll lose some of its nostalgic appeal like watching Rocko's Modern Life or something - it just isn't as good as you remember it. But I wish I could look back into Nathan's head so many years ago - I can go back four, when I typed like I was better than anyone reading it possibly could be, throwing out every four syllable word I could think of in every post as if that made me smarter than my audience, or that they'd care how smart I sounded when I was writing about Taco Bell drama, which will always sound as stupid as it is. It's amazing to see the writing evolve into what it is today and how it will change, I'm sure, as I get older. I think these blogs - over time - will provide the greatest insight into the changing human mind, one more reason to keep this baby flowing. So that's what I have for tonight - sadly, an hour wasted on that pointless story, but that's how I choose to spend it - bed time, ta.