Orbitting Izzy review

Every day there is someone who got out of jail just trying to get a second chance at life and trying to do anything in their power to get on with their life. Unfortunately for ex-convicts it’s hard to get a job when you are just fresh out of prison or if you have a stained record because of a crime and a prison sentence. Despite that some of them are fortunate enough to find a job and keep going with their lives. It’s true that the jobs they usually get are very hard and most of the people don’t want them but something is something and they have to take whatever they can get.

 

This is the case of Nancy Whiteley, the author of "Orbiting Izzy" in which she tells a little bit of her story. In this story Nancy tells us her process of getting out of prison and getting a job and how it was hard to get accustomed to her new life. She first starts off by saying why she went to prison in the first place. It all started with a man, a bad man that led her down a criminal of stealing people’s identities and having a rich life because of this. Her glamourous life was cut short though by the law, who caught up with her and landed her in prison. After her time in prison she got out and got a job at a financial firm with a man named Isadore Weintraub, but she called him Izzy. Throughout the story she narrates how her process of getting accustomed to her non glamourous life, to which she never really gets accustomed to because she spends a lot of time thinking about how much she misses her old life and Aldo, the man who got her in her criminal life in the first place. During the rest of her time she spend it having fun with Izzy and showing him how to loosen up and on the process she learns responsibility. At the end she goes back to her old life because Izzy fell in love with her. After all she ended up in prison again.

 

This is also something that happens a lot. The people that get out and try to go on with life sometimes end up going back to their life of crime because of the lack of opportunities they have or rather get. It’s sad to see this but it happens. This becomes a cycle in which the person keeps getting in and out and just wanting to get better but can seem to do it.                  

 

Running Brave,a movie full of emotions

We all can say that we have some kind of dream that we would like to chase and accomplish. The difference is in whether the person decides to make their dreams come true or just set them aside because whatever reason they have. A lot of people life the rest of their lives in regret for not chasing their dreams so that is why people are always telling others to follow their dreams. We can see something like this in the movie Running Brave which tells the story of the North American Indian boy Billy Mills, who had a dream to be a professional runner and go to the Olympics.

            In the movie Billy Mills is an Indian that goes to Kansas City University after his high school coach brought the track and field team coach from the university to see Mills run and hopefully get him a scholarship to the university. The coach was hesitant at first because he already had bad experiences while working with Indians but after all he did agreed to take him. After much training and being pushed by his coach Mills got his dream and spend the next four years in KU running with the team in a display of great speed and talent by beating his opponents by a considerably big margin and not really getting that much tired. At the end of his four years he just lost the love of running and went back to the reserve until his brother killed himself, which made him go to the marines and later to the Olympics to end up winning in a tide race and fulfill his dream and bring happiness to his people.

            I have to say even though the movie is very old it is very entertaining and very inspirational. I definitely enjoyed watching the movie, especially the final race, which was the best part in my opinion. I have to say that I was like "come on Billy you have to run, you have to win, this movie can’t end like this, it’s too much sadness in one movie". In my 18 years of life not one movie has created that effect in me in which it is not something that is currently happening but I cheer the person anyway and I have watched "Space Jam" a lot of times. What made it more emotional for me is to know that it is based on real life because I tend to connect more and like more movies that are based on real life.

            I have to say that it is a very inspiring story to see in a movie and those people that are in a fight to follow their dream should see it to find some inspiration. The most inspiring thing for me was to see from where he came from, as we can see in the movie being an Indian at that time did not bring you too many opportunities, all the contrary it restrained you to stay in the reserve. Plus he lost his father when he was 12 and that is not something easy, if my dad died I wouldn’t want to do anything. Then his brother killed himself to make everything worst and he got rejected by his own king at one point. Plus he got sick of running at one time. To see him overcome all those odds and difficulties is a true testament of what will power and dedication can do when you decide to do anything against all odds. For me it was one of the best movies ever and everyone should see this at one point in their lives.    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sN-CGgdZl4





      

First Thoughts Journal

The First Thoughts Activity was something new for me this year. First of all I have to say that I am one of those persons that doesn’t like to write, I find it boring. Never the less I have to say that I really enjoyed doing this activity. Like I said it was something new for me and I really liked the activity, it gave a new perspective of what writing is. I use to see it as something that they made us do in school just to do work but this change my way of thinking a lot. This exercise made me even enjoy writing for the first in my life that wasn’t writing my music. It even made it fun and gave it a meaning for me. It was all because I felt free writing with that activity. To know that I didn’t have to worry about how I’m writing, my grammar and that I could write whatever I was feeling at that time was liberating. It helped me blow off some steam a lot of times and it helped me in daily situations. I really plan to keep doing this even though the assignment is over because it is a really positive way to get everything out of your system.

To be honest I didn’t have any problems doing this activity because even though I don’t like to write when I do I always kind of write what’s on my mind. So I don’t when I started doing this it was like continue doing what you were already doing but now I have a reason to do it and that’s why I liked the assignment so much. That is why I was so successful at carrying out this assignment. As for not caring about the grammar and everything of that nature I was relief because I’m not the best at that. This exercise even made me find more time in the day for doing more stuff which is a relief really.

As for me as a writer I don’t see this changing my view. I am not someone who will write books for someone else to read. I will always write for myself, the only person that reads my stuff other than me are the professors and that’s because it is an obligation. This is unless it is my music and even this I don’t show to just anyone I have to have confidence in the person. The only that I show my writing is that I become a singer and that is not likely to happen.

Life compass

The life compass is the second activity that the professor has given us to have a way to express ourselves while we write so that we can have a way to let out everything that we have inside. This activity consist on, basically, making a circle with four extensions coming out of it. This extinctions represents the four core parts of a person, the spiritual side, the mental, the emotions and the body. So in this exercise you have to look at yourselves in very individual wat because you have to separate every aspect from each other in order to know how each one is feeling. After this the next step is that you have to give each aspect a score or rating between a 1 and a 3 depending on how each aspect of your person is feeling. A 3 is that you are feeling the best you ca be and the 1 is that you are a lousy as you can be so you have both sides of the coin. If you are feeling in between the two then you have the 2 score for those days when you are just good. Now to talk about my experience doing this assignment. Tobe honest I really liked to do this way of writing as oppose to the journal exercise for a variety of reasons. The first one being that it is more short and it is not that I don’t like writing it’s just that right now I have a lot of work and it’s hard to have to write ten minutes when you have so little time like we had to do with the journal, so to have a way to let out all my frustration and talk about what I did in the day that is much shorter is just an advantage for me and I really loved this exercise for that. I really plan to keep doing this even after the assignment is over just because of the huge impact that it had in my life. When I did the life compass I felt a huge amount of satisfaction with myself and it made me want to make myself better when I was down so it helped me a lot in my daily life. Maye know I won’t do it so often but maybe once a week just to let out all my frustrations off my mind. As for the numbers on my compass they were almost always a two in every category except in spirit which I always try to keep at three. Only one time it went down to two.