Time Flies Finding Yourself

By Maurice Houston Jr.

Taking a deep dive into "TFFY" you will have real life examples of a boy that has had some major trauma points in his life that he had to navigate through. Using those points they were used to cast as an example that others can see and relate to. Painting the picture for the reader. The author wants the reader to view the troubles from the lenses of the author. The reader will exeprience flashbacks and different parts of life, and even understanding that the author himself couldn't make the correct decisions all the time. This story is based upon understanding that life isn't perfect for people because during the art of perfection usually comes with a lot of grief and sadness behind it. Good things, happen to good people but at what cost? The idea of the book is to get the reader to believe in themselves again, or continue to. That after the storm the sun will shine again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667810409

Book preview

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Time Flies Finding Yourself

Maurice Houston Jr.

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-66781-039-3

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-66781-040-9

© 2021. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: What Did You Expect?

Chapter 2: False Advertisement

Chapter 3: Who Am I?

Chapter 4: Change Starts with You

Chapter 5: Instant pleasure = satisfaction?

Chapter 6: Anxiety Depression?

Chapter 7: Wondering Mind

Chapter 8: I Did Not Expect This

Chapter 9: Choose Them Wisely.

Chapter 10: Fitting in with Casual Racism.

Chapter 11: Finding Your Way. (Outro)

Maurice’s Outro

Introduction

Growing up, we were always told to literally be whatever we wanted and to do whatever we wanted as kids. The key, our parents told us, was to always follow our dreams. We were to never let go of the dreams we’ve always wanted for ourselves. I remember I wanted to be a professional basketball player. I would play day in and day out thinking I was playing for the Detroit Pistons. When I was about 10 years old, my responsibilities were at an all-time low, and the only things I had to keep up were my grades and my room. I spent most of my time outside playing with my neighborhood friends. I will always hold a special place in my heart for those friends. A couple of them I call my brothers, because still 12 years later, they’re there for me, sometimes more than my family.

Growing up is a part of life. Years go on, and you grow bonds with different types of people when you’re entering the next chapter of your life. These are the years when you’re most influenced by the people who surround you. You may catch yourself in some amazing opportunities, and sometimes you could catch yourself in some terrible situations, but you don’t know any better. Life is a learning process at these ages. Now we are going to fast forward a few years and push ourselves to finally finishing up the last couple of years of high school. By this time, you’ve seen most of what exposure and life has to offer, or maybe that’s what we thought at the time. These were the years that we thought life would be just a walk in the park, although things tend to get a little shaky around here. In high school, I discovered myself going with the flow I wasn’t the brightest kid in school, but I wasn’t the dumbest either. As I think about it now, I wish I could’ve applied myself as much as I do now in my schoolwork, but I didn’t. I watched all my friends prosper and get into amazing colleges to better themselves. I was happy for them, but I felt a little bitter because I had applied to the same colleges they did, but I didn’t make it in. It’s the way life works, and things happen. Life is something we must accept.

The point I wanted to address in this story is to express that the sun will shine and set every day. You have to make the most of the time you have. As you get older, the harder things become. We place ourselves in situations that are harder to get out of the older we get, and that’s just the way life goes. I am writing this story for those before that, before you think it’s too late. This is for the readers who have kids who think it’s too late. Let that change in your path start today. You must capture your life and grab every piece of information you can before you catch yourself in a bind. Your 30s and 40s will be knocking on your door sooner than you realize. This can be both exciting and scary.

Chapter 1

What Did You Expect?

In high school, we never really think of life outside school. In the 21st century, most things are taken care of and handed to us. Not everything, and some instances are worse than others, but the moral aspect is we don’t have to do much of anything. We’ve let our minds become adapted to accepting laziness, not physically but mentally. We seem to be a generation that does things to get by just to get it done and not retain the message that’s left behind. We’re people who keep track of the result but lose the knowledge we’ve been handed to us on the way to our goal.

I’ll explain a story about myself and why I feel this way. During my junior year, I had just turned 17 years old. I was a licensed driver and had my first car. It wasn’t anything special, but if you had a car at all in high school, you were one of the cool kids. This is also when I got my first job at Meijer; I was a bagger. With this status I had on me, I honestly thought I was popular in my school. For me, it was all about being the coolest and the most noticed. I cared about the stigma I had, more than the learning aspect of high school. This hit hard when it was the most important time of junior year, spring, which also meant A.C.T.

For those who aren’t familiar with what an A.C.T. is, it is supposed to base your whole life and where you’ll end up, at least that’s what my school made it seem like. I’ll give my perspective on this a little later in the story. Anyway, I took the A.C.T. This test was supposedly the most important test of my high school career. I did not take it as seriously as I should’ve, and if you read my introduction, I gave a brief summary as to what happened when I didn’t apply myself as I should’ve when this test came about. I ended up with a 17, which was below average for my class. I could’ve done better if I had applied myself in the right ways. At this moment, I was scared of what was bound to happen to me, because of all the stress teachers put on this test. I wasn’t ready to face the consequences that followed with my actions, but they came anyway without any remorse. In fact, it actually put a huge damper on my dreams because I was continuously getting declined by colleges I wanted to attend so badly. This is when life began to hit me. It was nothing I expected or prepared for at all.

The only places left were community colleges. Everyone had always told me, Hey it’s way cheaper to start off at a community college anyway! But that’s not what I wanted at the time; my dream was to go away for school at a 4-year institution, not knowing the responsibility that came with it. I wanted the status of it. I only did things for the status they gave me. I needed to find a way to shake this, and the person I was destined to be.

Junior year ended, and my senior year was only 3 months from beginning. So, in the summer, I decided I needed to redo my image. Something had to change. I constantly saw throughout the summer on social media my friends being accepted with scholarships and grants about being the next biggest thing at their preferred college home when they’re done graduating. It took a toll on me, because my classmates were already planning their lives outside of high school, and here I was not knowing what classes I needed to graduate high school. I battled with myself, and before a blink of an eye, it was fall and the leaves started to turn brown and red. The weather began to get chilly, and the endless summer nights of video games all day started to come to an end. Hoodie season had finally begun, which also meant I was a senior at Redford Union High School, class of 2013.

I walked through the hallways as an official senior. I couldn’t believe this time had finally come, and in 9 short months, I would be walking across the stage. As I strolled through the long-animated hallway, I saw new freshman faces that were beginning their high school journeys. The most familiar faces around me belonged to the class of 2013. I could hear many different