On the second day of the Writer’s Fortnight Carousel, I attended the talk by 4 IB students at our school: Zubin, James, Anthony, and Arman. I knew Zubin before from being in the HS Law Society with him, and James knew because he was obviously the older brother of my classmate Eddie.
Their stories were either about following their passions (Zubin’s for politics, and James’s for ant keeping), or overcoming personal challenges (language barrier for Anthony, and shyness for Arman). They were rather mundane compared to the other talks I attended, but they nevertheless still worthy of note. All of them went out of their way against resistance to achieve a goal they personally set, with more perseverance than most (except James perhaps). I suppose that this makes this perseverance feel much more achievable. Like many people, I have many interests or wanted projects that I just do not do, due to the feeling of not enough time, a strange lack of motivation, or it being “useless” – such as circuitry in Minecraft redstone (yes that is a thing), designing clothing, or writing surrealist stories. Perhaps if I just let myself get really emotionally invested in it, I would be able to force myself to make the time and effort for them – because I do, theoretically, have quite a lot of free time.
Essentially, even if they didn’t motivate me to do anything amazing, they did motivate me to actually do the things I constantly put off doing, and realise that life’s too short not to make some story that’s so bad, it’s good.