Happy new year to all of you!

I wish all of you a very happy and successful 2010. I hope all of you had a very good decade and may the next decade be as good if not better than the last one.

A lot of things happened in my life over the last months and I'll be giving you updates over the next days and weeks. Again have a wonderful and exciting new year all of you!

I had a test today in one of my Accounting classes

That’s right. It’s that time of the year again for those of us who still go to school. Over all I’m very happy how it went. It’s mainly because for the past week or so I studied really hard in hopes of getting a good grade like an A or a B. I usually don’t do this since I don’t like studying but with the support and encouragement from my family I did it and I believe it brought good results. I’ll find out for sure at the end of this week or early next week.

Not only I had a test today but my college also had a fire drill. Some people might like them and some people might hate them since they take away time from classes. But today at least for my class it was very different because this particular fire drill couldn’t have happened at a more inconvenient moment. Like in the middle of our test. You read it right! I’m sure everyone hates it when it happens to them. Luckily it didn’t have any impact on me since I get extra time on exams. I just took that time to relax and to focus on getting a good grade on my test. I hope it didn’t have any negative impact on my classmate’s performance on the same test though…

Did anything similar happen to you?

There is no such thing as normal

That’s right. There is no such thing as normal in our world. That’s because the standards for normalcy shift or evolve as time passes. For example, not too long ago American society was a lot more conservative and moral than it is today. Immoral acts like premarital sex and adultery weren’t accepted by the mainstream society. This was normal in those days. But now the standard has changed and American society is much more liberal and accepting. As a result, average people are no longer shocked when they hear about other people cheating on their partners or having sex before marriage. In fact premarital sex is accepted so much right now that more than 90% of Americans engage or are going to engage in sexual relations before marriage. As you can see this is the new normal today unlike in the old days.

Another reason why there is no such thing as normal is because the standards for normalcy differ from one culture to the next. For example, most Americans frown upon an idea of eating insects and find it disgusting even though insects are an excellent source of protein and eating them has many advantages over eating other kinds of food. On the other hand this practice is widely accepted in other cultures and many people love eating insects outside America. Because of all this, eating insects is not normal in America but perfectly normal in many other cultures.

There are plenty of other reasons I can think of to prove that there is no such thing as normal. I think you probably can too if you think long enough. That’s why try not to judge other things or people that are different from you and seem “not normal”.

Speaking to new people is still hard for me…

Like for most people who stutter, it was always almost impossible for me to speak with new people. In fact it was so difficult when I was a lot younger that whenever I would talk to a new person my mind would literally go blank and freeze. Because of this the only way I would talk to a new person is if I absolutely had to and couldn’t really avoid it. That’s why for majority of my life I have done everything in my power to avoid talking to new people for as long as possible.

I did it and continue to do that to a large degree for many reasons. One major reason why I presently tend to avoid contact with new people is because I feel completely out of control in speaking situations most of the time. Because of this, I feel that in some way a wall exists between me and the whole world that needs to be broken down if I ever going to be free from my stuttering. Now that I’m older I’m beginning to try to change my life for the better by breaking this imaginary wall that only exists in my mind.

The most recent example of me trying to change my behavior is when I went to the financial aid office at my college. Of course I was feeling very nervous, anxious and not being in control as usual. But this time I actually tried to modify my thought pattern inside my head by telling myself that that an average person doesn’t really care that I stutter because I know that surveys consistently show that most people don’t care whether a person stutters or not. At the end this new self talk seemed to help and afterwards even though speaking to a new person was still hard I felt very good about myself. I guess it’s because I was able to do it and didn’t avoid it like I usually do. It also helped that a person I talked to was friendly. This small progress gave me hope that with enough time it would get a lot easier speaking with new people and making new friends.

To my fellow Jewish readers: Happy Yom Kippur! :)

All of us know that the Day of Atonement is the holiest day of the year for all of us. It is a day of atonement, repentance and forgiveness. I hope all of you will spend it asking for forgiveness from those people who you wronged, asking for forgiveness from G-d and attend a synagogue. That is what I'll be doing. May all of you be written in the book of life!

For people who are curious to learn more about Yom Kippur, you can go here. ;)

I received $1,337 in financial aid assistance for the current fall semester!

Right now I’m taking a few extra classes at Brooklyn College, one of the best public colleges in NYC. Like most college students, I have applied for financial aid by filling out a FAFSA. Yesterday I finally went to the financial aid office to find out if any financial aid was awarded to me. It turned out that I still received it even though I filled out a FAFSA not too long ago. This news made me very excited and my family happy because we were a little worried that I might not get financial aid this year. :)

Time is the most precious commodity we all have...

Because it's limited and once it's gone we can never get it back. I sometimes remind myself of this when I have free time. One occasion I thought about it is when I and my family went to Brighton Beach on Labor Day. I had a great time that day and all of us had a lot of fun. When walking on the beach, I thought about how I already lost a lot of valuable time in my life because I still continue to let my stuttering to control my life by stopping me from fully enjoying it and trying to make my dreams and ambitions a reality. Practically all my life I submitted to my stuttering and made a lot of sacrifices like missing on a lot of things that normal people experience. Basically I'm letting life to completely pass me by and not really participating in it like all of you. In other words I'm just like an observer that just observes what other people do with their lives and not doing anything with mine. I admit this kind of life is boring, not exciting and most of all meaningless. I live with this reality as I continue to lose more precious time as I get older by distracting myself with things I enjoy to do like the Internet. Clearly this is not normal and has to stop because I don't really want this kind of worthless life for me, especially when I know that I can completely change my life if I really wanted to and worked very hard.

I know that for me there's a way out if I'll have very strong hope, desire, determination and work very hard every day. That's why at present time I'm trying to change my life and get free from my stuttering once and for all. That means not letting my stuttering to hold me back from living and really enjoying life. At the same time I know that even if I'll be successful at getting free and winning my life back, I already lost a lot of very valuable time that I can never get back no matter what I do in addition on missing out on a lot of things life offers. This is a very important lesson to learn for all of us. I really hope that all of you will learn it too after reading about my experience, won't repeat my mistake and will use time you have left wisely and not just waste it away.