As many of you know, this is my final year as a high school student, and next year I will be moving on to college. You also may know that I am deeply involved with tech stuff at Kennedy, my church, work, free lance projects, and Venture crew. After all these are done, it leaves me with very little free time, to use as I please. In my early years of high school, this worked good for me. It made me not have to actively peruse a social life, it was handed to me. I never needed to figure out what I am doing next weekend, because I knew I would be working. It wouldn’t be unusual for me to have my days planned down to the minute making sure I had time to fix everyone’s computer issues. This is how I wanted to spend my life during my beiging years at Kennedy.

Now that my senior year has started, I have begun to realize, I have all the REST of my life to work, why not take a year off from working hard, and kick my feet up. Be in the stands, and not in the press box for once. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t let anyone down, but I also didn’t want to let myself down.

As this year started, I felt lonely. I didn’t get as many calls from Mr. Schmucker asking me to fix the Mac Lab. I didn’t have the drama department calling me to do a show, nor did I have as much to do at home. How did I feel about this major change in pace? I was confused. I realized I could do ANYTHING I wanted. I could take 2 hour long bike rides after school, and know I wouldn’t get home to four voicemail messages. I knew I could go out of town to see friends at college, and not have an agenda. I was not use to it, it was different, and quite frankly, I didn’t like it. I wanted to be busy 24/7 365. I wanted to be WANTED. I wanted people to need me to help them, to be USED. I wasn’t ready for that major change.

I also wasn’t ready to get into the social active high schooler role. I spent many weekends sitting at home, having nothing to do. Calling, texting, facebooking, and twitter communicating trying to find a group of friends. It was hard, I went from an unavailable friend, to a constantly available friend.

As my school year began to settle down, I realized I liked working, I wanted to be able to express myself with video, I wanted to solve problems, and I eventually became more involved. While this was not my original goal, I realized in that break, this is what I do, technology is me. It defines me. I am not a homecomming king, I am the computer king. The keyboard is my domain, and its what I can do, and figure out how to do it. 

As I come back to my technogoly roles, I realized that I have benifited from my slight sabatical, and I have new approaches to old problems, I can solve problems I couldn’t before. It helped me think in a new light. It will continue to help, I am sure. 

So, the moral of this story would be that when I am older, Ill need a lot of vacation time from work!

And that is my life as a high school techie.