Tag: essay

Don’t Let Your Smile Become a Smirk

“There is a time in your life when smile becomes smirk.”

Slaughter Beach, Dog, “Mallrat Semi-annual”

A smile, a ray of joy caught up in the moment, pure, sincere, a universal sign of happiness.

A smirk, a beam of irony that “sees through” the moment, smug, sarcastic, the tool of the self-absorbed.

To let one’s smile become a smirk is to embrace the false wisdom of cynicism, seeing through all that one believes has failed them as a coping mechanism of sorts. A coping mechanism meant to inoculate one’s self from the fray of life which can be written off as beneath one’s self when convenient. This, in essence, is not a terrible thing, but it can become a terrible thing because it’s easy. It’s easy to tell one’s self that when something doesn’t go your way, it doesn’t matter because it was meaningless anyway. Once this action becomes habitual, there exists no possibility for growth in the individual, for growth occurs when one confronts that which one fears and conquers it. This is the state of the cynic, delighting in “seeing through” everything and smugly smirking.

The cynic, however, is not doing himself any favors by trying to transcend sentiment out of fear of being human. The cynic’s ironic smirk exists as a cheap-version of the sincere person’s smile. The sincere person can recognize that not all things will go their way and this presents opportunities for growth, and by not attempting to to “see-through” any potential failures or shortcomings as devoid of meaning to save one’s self-esteem and not make one responsible, the sincere person can struggle and then overcome. The sincere person by not “seeing through” things can see that there is meaning to all the failures and shortcomings along the way to the goal, which can make the failures and shortcomings tolerable, and sometimes appreciated. The resigned cynic has no meaning to grasp on to, for as noted by C.S. Lewis “to ‘see-through’ all things is the same as not to see”, and when you’re staring into an abyss there is nothing to latch onto.

Rather than embracing the easy way out which leaves one devoid of meaning, it seems necessary to have a dogmatic belief in the value of sincerity.

Don’t let your smile become a smirk, and remember that sincerity is always in season.

Five Tips to Improve Your Essays Immediately

You need to find some incriminating dirt about your professor to hold onto throughout the semester.

I just finished my first year of college, and I had to write a few papers which all turned out pretty well. So, I thought I would share some pro tips and tricks for how to crush any essays you ever have to write.

The quality of your paper has nothing to do with the arguments and perspectives you put forward. All that matters is that your paper has the style of presentation which makes it seem like you know what you are talking about.

  • Tip 1: Make Your Topic Clear

You do not want your reader to be confused as to what your paper is about. To make sure this doesn’t happen, you should have within the first paragraph of your paper a sentence that says “This paper will be about…”. This makes it clear what your paper is about so the reader can not misinterpret it.

  • Tip 2: Make It Clear Who Wrote Your Paper

You might think that putting your name at the top of the essay, would make it clear that it was written by you. However, it is better to play it safe and make it clear. If you make it clear that the paper was written by you, you can avoid any charges of plagiarism being thrown at you.

Example Sentence: “I, myself, Aaron Baughman, hold in my mind the belief that peak sausage is better than peak bacon.

  • Tip 3: Make The Scope of Your Topic Abundantly Clear

You might think that the substance of your paper would make the scope of your topic clear, but remember substance is not what matters. What matters is having presentation that makes it seem like there is substance! To make the scope clear, you should put in your intro paragraph something along the lines of: “Throughout history…”, “Many people hold opinions on…”, or “[Insert Topic Here] is the most important thing in the world as noted by important people”.

  • Tip 4: Do Not Be Confident

This is where presentation is really important! Instead of saying something assertive, such as, “the sky is blue”, you’re going to want to say something more along the lines of “the sky might be blue” because nothing can be known for sure. If you use qualifying statements for everything, you can never be wrong.

Make sure to use the Socrates quote: “True knowledge exists in that you know nothing.” Also, if your professor challenges you on this, point them to the aptly placed Socrates quote in your paper. If they challenge you on not being assertive, they are challenging Socrates, which you could use to publicly shame them (I’ve heard blackmail is an effective way to crush any essay).

  • Tip 5: Blackmail

Okay, this tip has nothing to do with your paper’s presentation or substance, and I have never personally tested it, so do not hold me accountable on this one. You need to find some incriminating dirt about your professor to hold onto throughout the semester. Do not make it obvious that you have this information, but make allusions to it throughout class discussion and any emails you have with your professor. They will probably pick up on what you’re putting down and be afraid to give you anything less than a B.

On Joy, Perfectionism, and Water Coloring

All that existed in the world, for a brief moment, was the room I was in, the people I was with, and the watercoloring set.

When envisioning a Spring Break trip to the beach, watercoloring is not likely to enter one’s mind. However, it was the highlight of mine. I think this is because true joy is an outgrowth of experience, and to seek joy in an experience is to make joy unobtainable. When the opportunity to watercolor presented itself, I had no intention except the act of watercoloring which led to a state of child-like bliss where all that existed in the world, for a brief moment, was the room I was in, the people I was with, and the watercoloring set.

I wanted to recreate one of the many cover for one of my favorite albums, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West. So, I started to make the red background to the cover which was easy enough, but the entire time I was making the background I was dreading having to do the center of the album cover. The center of the album cover would prove to be an actual test of artistic ability which I have little.

As I expected my attempt at painting the ballerina in the center of the cover was less than stellar, and I fully considered starting over in the chase of doing it perfectly (what that would even entail, I have no idea). However, I thought it better to embrace the flaws in my creation.

Perfection is a nigh-unobtainable goal. Just like the pursuit of joy, true “perfection” occurs most when it isn’t being sought after, for when perfection isn’t the goal most outcomes can be considered “perfect” in some capacity or another.

If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.

Leo Tolstoy

On Congestion, Chapstick, and Gratitude

I only thought to write this because I have been quite congested the last few days, which is emblematic of the issue: we are ungrateful as a rule.

I only thought to write this because I have been quite congested the last few days, which is emblematic of the issue: we are ungrateful as a rule. We go through life with so many blessings and things to be grateful for that we take for granted, and it’s only once we no longer have one of these things that we feel any emotion about it. This is probably why the popular saying:

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

exists. Sure, it might feel like a sappy cliché kind of thing to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Now, back to congestion, when we are congested and having to blow our nose every 30 minutes it annoys us to no end as it should. We wake up every morning hoping it’s gone, we take steam showers to loosen up drainage, we take medicine to do the same. We will do just about anything to get rid of congestion.

When we finally aren’t congested anymore we appreciate it for an hour at most, and then we completely forget about congestion as a concept until it strikes us again.

I propose that congestion should always be in the front of our minds. We should wake up every day take a deep breath through our noses and let it out as slowly as we can through our nose as to really cherish that specific moment. After this, we should say to ourselves “I am grateful I am not congested.”

And if for some reason you’re the one person who has never been cursed congestion, think about having chapped lips. When we have chapped lips it annoys us to no end. We then search through assorted drawers to find the one stick of chapstick we’ve had had for the last few years and make sure we keep it on us as if it were a member of the “Big Three” — wallet, keys, and phone — for a short bit of time. However, once this short bit of time has passed we tend to put the chapstick back in that random drawer.

I think we should extend “Big Three” membership rights out to chapstick as a daily reminder to ourselves to appreciate that our lips aren’t chapped.

If the chapstick examples means nothing to you either, then you have transcended this plane of existence and I have a million questions to ask you when you have the time of course because I’m sure you’re a busy person.

Mission Statement

Hey, there! Welcome to my blog.

Hey, there! Welcome to my blog. This will serve as a repository for thoughts and creative projects I want to share. Whenever I stumble upon something or have a revelation I want to share it with people here.

This might end up being an eclectic mess of sorts, but it will be my eclectic mess. I hope to share productivity tips, shorts essays, and some creative writing on here. I hope you, the reader, will indulge me and engage with some of this content which I will hope to post every two weeks or so. This is something I have considered doing in the past in passing without actually entertaining the thought. However, recently I read the following quote which served as the motivation to let this passing idea come into fruition:  


“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both.” – Søren Kierkegaard

I hope to fill this with only content I would personally want to read and engage with. With that said, the journey begins.