Dreams.

Wow, everyone has been talking about Dreams a LOT lately.  I think that's sort of a wake up call to me.
See, I don't like trying to figure out exactly what I will do in life, because every time I make a decision, I feel like it closes a million doors, but that's the thing, it does But here's the other thing, it opens a million more!
My main problem is that whenever I have to make life changing decisions I never know what to do, because I don't know where I want to go.  So finally, I'm just going to go for it, this is what I want to do with my life as of right now.

To start off, I don't necessarily want any big PHYSICAL thing.  Like, I'm not looking for a huge house or an awesome lawn. (Though, I wouldn't complain if I were to acquire such) What I do want is a non physical thing.  I want to be famous. There, I said it. I want to be famous for something.
Now, what I would like to be famous for is writing. I would like to be an amazing writer.
I want to write Fantasy or science fiction (Or both) And I want to make people smile. I love making people happy, it's something I'm good at and enjoy.  I love that feeling once I reach the climax of a book and you feel like you want to stand up and cheer, you feel like you could run a million miles!  Like you could beat a dragon or do a years worth of school work in a day. That's the feeling I want to give people. That's what my dream is, that's what I strive for in life.

The Final Stand

Well, it's been a long time in coming, but here it is. The beginning of my first true story, The Final Stand. 

I wrote this last semester and it's gone through a few revisions and some grammar editing.  But not THAT much, so if you see anything, just point it out. :D 

Also, I'd love some plot/story feedback as well if you have any. :D
(Also, if it's a bit small, one zoom [Ctrl +] should fix it. )

Chapter one

Jett walked through the forest trail towards the encampment.  He had dark brown hair, blue eyes, and was a tall well-built man.  He’d just been out to the watch perimeter to make sure everything was running smooth. Jett was a very scheduled person; he always had his days completely planed out. Because of this, there wasn’t much change in the routine every day.  So every morning at dawn he would visit a tower or outpost, and would make sure that things were running smoothly.  Of course, he could have sent anyone out to check… but they wouldn’t know exactly how he wanted it, and thus wouldn’t notice small discrepancies and then things might really get bad.  Jett looked around while he walked, the forest was beautiful. Looking up he could see the morning sun shining through the leaves, casting a light green shadow over everything.  Looking down, Jett saw the myriad of roots which crossed the dirt path he walked on.  While looking around, something bothered him; he kept noticing things that weren’t the same as they had been on his way to the tower.  An overturned leaf, a branch that had been across the trail now moved to the side; small things like that.  And then he heard it; the small, but distinct, sound of someone trying to match his footsteps. It could almost have been the wind, but there hasn’t been any sort of wind whatsoever today.  Without changing his stride, Jett listened more carefully and could definitely hear that someone was following him.    He assumed that they bore him ill intentions, since otherwise they would step out and call to him.  Five minutes later, his suspicions were confirmed.  Two men with fully drawn bows stepped out of the brush. The one on the right gave an ultimatum.

“Stop or be stopped.”

Before he had even finished, Jet had started to move.  He pulled out a throwing knife from his belt and threw it at the man talking.  Then he lunged to the side behind trees to avoid the second man’s arrow. Jett rolled out of the lunge and stood up facing backwards with his sword drawn.  A dull thud and a small gasp confirmed the hit.  Three other men were running up the path toward him, about ten feet away.  Jet deflected the first man’s sword with a swipe and dealt him a strong blow to the left shoulder. As the first man collapsed, Jett turned to the next man, caught his sword on the flat of his blade and gave him a kick to the stomach, then a pommel blow to the head.  Since the first bowman was recovering from the surprise of losing three men in about ten seconds, Jett turned so that he was behind a tree for cover. He then picked up a decent sized rock, feinted to the left, then leaned right and nailed the bowman in the head. The bowman’s taunt bowstring launched the arrow ineffectively into the air.  Now that he had taken care of the major threat, Jett turned back to the final man, disarmed him with a twist of his sword, tripped him and as he fell, hit him in the back of the head with his gauntleted hand. Out cold.  Jett jogged the rest of the way back to camp, which was only another 80 yards down the trail.  When he reached the camp, he ordered to some of the soldiers watching the perimeter of the camp,

“Go see to the assassins.  Help those who can be helped and bring them back under armed guard to be questioned. Hurry, they’ll be waking any minute. Two of them are in dire need of medical aid or perhaps they’re already dead, I’m not sure. See to them.”

Once the soldiers left, Jett walked toward the second command tent where there was a meeting of the army generals today. The military camp was nested in a sort of bowl shaped valley.  It was oval shaped and on one side there was a pass that opened down into a large plane.  The entire bowl was heavily wooded. There were three decent sized camps in the bowl.  Each camp was set in a circle with three watch towers around the perimeter. They had to do quite a bit of ground clearing to make space for the camps, but since they had been here for months, it was worth it.  Jett’s camp was the one in the middle, directly in front of the opening to the pass, where Jett had gone to the watchtowers, facing out onto the large plain. The three armies were stationed here as sort of a last line of defense between the invading army and the populated area of the country.  It looked as though they were going to be needed, since messengers coming from the front lines had said that the other armies sent to fight had been practically decimated.  Luckily, when Jett had been out looking, there had been no sign of the enemy army anywhere.  Walking through his camp, Jett noted the straight tent lines and how clean and organized everything was.  The men were doing well. Leaving his middle camp and crossing to the southern camp, Jett also noticed how very unorganized this one was. It wasn’t terrible, but the soldiers obviously didn’t take pride in their work and didn’t care much for the appearance.  Arriving at the command tent and stepping inside Jett saw the other two commanders.  Naphe was a tall man with a tan complexion. He had black hair, deep green eyes and always wore a small golden arm cuff.  Dan was a broad shouldered well-muscled man of average height.  He was as pale as pale could be, no amount of sun could change that. 

“Jett,” Naphe said after he they had all been seated, “what have your watchmen seen?”

“Well,” Jett responded, “I was out thirty minutes ago and I saw no sign of the enemy anywhere.”

“You didn’t have to go out yourself…” Dan said, “That’s why we stationed the watchmen out there in the first place.”

“I just like to see how my men are doing,” Jett said, “they’re all still new.  Many haven’t had much experience.”

Naphe rolled his eyes, “Not this again… Jett, most of these soldiers have been fighting just as long as you have!  Half of them are older than you.”  

“Still…” Dan and Naphe sighed at the same time. “Look,” Jett said, “Soldiers have to be told what to do. They have to be lead along.” Jett stood up. “They don’t do well independently. For instance, look at your camp, Dan.  The men aren’t disciplined enough.  They need to be orderly.  That’s what will make them efficient.”

“Okay,” Dan said resignedly. “We’ll agree to disagree. But even with your opinion in mind, you’re over the top, don’t you think? You go way beyond disciplined and into micromanaging.  Besides, you’ve disciplined them enough; they could walk through a field of cacti without breaking ranks.”

Naphe cleared his throat, “Terribly sorry for interrupting your philosophical debate on leadership, but we have to talk about the very much non-philosophical problem of 70,000 men marching on our position now.”

“Well actually that could be a-” Dan started, Naphe glared at him.

Jett snickered; sometimes Naphe could take things a bit too seriously. A few hours later they had come up with a plan.  Jett was skeptical, but Dan and Naphe liked it; so he was willing to go along.  It involved making their way south by the mountains next to the plain, setting up a group on the hill and trying to hide their numbers.  It had promise.  But Jett was worried that the men wouldn’t be able to do it right. He also worried that with so many men, there could easily be spies mixed in. Dan had suggested that they do random checks to make sure everyone was there.  But even with Jett’s army, which was the most organized and with leadership all the way down to groups of ten and with squad leaders in charge of them, it would take way too long and would miss too many people to be useful.  In the meeting they’d also talked about the assassination attempt, which was the fourth this week and the second on Jett. Dan and Naphe each had faced attempted attacks on them.  They were increasing in number, which meant that the enemy was getting closer.

Finally, after three hours of talking, they ended the meeting and went back to deal with their respective duties.  Jett wished that he could just stop working, eat and sleep. It had been a long day.  But, considering that it was still only midafternoon, he headed back to his command tent to work.  He had just arrived and settled down to work when a messenger came in. “Sir, a man has shown up with five other men and is now waiting to talk to you.”

Jett sighed, “Alright, tell him he can come talk to me.”

“Well, uh,” the messenger hesitated, “He said that he wants you to come talk to him.”

Annoyed, Jett said, “What does he think? That I just sit around all day doing nothing? I don’t have time to wander around looking for him.”

The messenger said, “He, uh, he said that his name is Keth, Keth Seventhor.  He also said that that would change your mind. Uh, sir.”

Jett got up with a sigh, “I suppose I should go talk to him, blasted old man…” Jett stood up, buckled his belt, adjusted his shirt and put on his gilded cloak.

Turning to the messenger he said, “Lead me to him.”

With a salute and a quick, “Yes, sir,” the man left the tent.  Jett followed him to find his old mentor.

And there's the first chapter!  That's about one sixth of the story. 

Also, I think that the formatting got thrown off a bit when copy-pasting. 

Anyways, yeah! If you want the rest I'll be posting it within the week. Or just like tell me and I'll give it to you. But yeah, if you got this far I guess you read it, so thanks for reading! :D

Determination

This summer I'm doing a chemistry class.  It's actually really pretty fun, but it takes me a long time to get through.  So, today I'm going to make my self do it.
I'm kind of odd; I can force myself to do things, but ONLY if I give myself STRICT guidelines, and an endpoint. So, my guidelines are, do set amount of chemistry (already decided) BEFORE getting on any social media. and if I make myself do that, it should work, since for some reason it does...

Now if I said, "do Chemistry for an hour" that wouldn't work since I would just get on Facebook or G+ and tell myself, "I'll work extra hard later in the hour"

So be determined and set exact goals, at least that's what I have to do for myself.

"A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop." Robert Hughes

And another good quote that also ties into what I said yesterday:
"A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough."
John Christian Bovee  

Perfection

Today I was thinking about something.
Perfection

In most religions, including mine, the final goal is perfection.  Because if you are perfect then you can always be at your happiest and so will everyone else because THEY are all perfect and so on.
Anyways, what I was thinking, everyone always says, "Don't worry about it, no one is perfect!" And that's what we think about our entire life, but you know what? Why on earth do we say that?!?!  Why should we try, if we have already decided that we can't be perfect? Well, that why I'd like to say: Be perfect!! Don't strive for near perfection, strive for perfection, be perfect! And if you have a day when you aren't perfect, the that's sad, you failed.  But that doesn't mean you can't get up and try again.If you EXPECT failure it will happen no matter what.  but if you expect perfection then IT will happen no matter what. So go, try!
 We can not expect to become perfect, if that is not our goal.


"Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection."
~Khalil Gibran 

"Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable. "
Lord Chesterfield

BE PERFECT

New Years Resolutions

So, I realized what I just did. I just spent the last half an hour reading scriptures, Listening to music, and while doing that I was thinking about this semester. I think I'm ready, but from past experience, unless I write it down and have it exact goals. So I came up with some that I will follow. In other words, for the first time ever, I have made some new years resolutions that I am writing down and will follow without fail.

#1 Read scriptures at 7:30 for at least ten minutes. This is something that I CAN do I will never have classes that early, and I should almost never go anywhere during that time. The only thing I'd be cutting into would be my sleeping time.

#2 Check chickens right before doing scriptures, give them new water, check eggs, the like.

#3 Wear a white shirt and tie to every class and for much of the day while I'm doing school. I've heard and experienced that when you wear different things, it has different effects on you. A white shirt and tie will help me focus, I can take it off when I'm DONE with whatever assignments I need to do on the computer that day.

#4 Pray every morning and night. I have done Scriptures every day without fail for the last year, maybe longer. But I almost never say prayers at morning and night.

#5 Get every single World history assignment done before class. NEVER EVER EVER not do an assignment unless there is nothing I can do.

#6 Follow these things. I will look at them, and I will follow them, It WILL change me, it'll be a huge change. But I need this type of discipline in my life. I am WAY to undisciplined. My Yellow (carefree funloving) personality had recantly compleatly overrun my red (determined strong forceful) personality. But, if I give myself these types of goals, super specific, my super determined personality should take over, and I should soar. So no more of the super determined yet never-follows-through person. I will now, finally, stand and throw off the bonds of laziness.
I'll keep you posted.
~Nathan Owens