Jeffrey Alexander Martin

I remember when I was eight and my father, your grandfather, had a talk with me one night. We were outside of the house on Nichols Rd. in Blue Lake. The firepit was just a little way from the house and made out of cement. When the fire would heat up enough sometime parts of the cement would explode, because of the expanding air bubbles in the cement. We had larger bonfires further away from the house, halfway to the barn, but this night we had a smaller fire by the house. Grandpa Roger explained to me that now that I was eight I was old enough to understand that I was responsible for my life. I knew I had choices, and I knew there would be consequences. A lot of people think eight is too young for that responsibility, but they are wrong. You make hundreds of choices per day about what you're going to work on and what you're going to ignore, how you're going to talk with people, what you're going to think about and plan, and more. So I give you this same advice, realize ...

At nine years old you're halfway to eighteen, so you're half of a legal adult. It's amazing how time sometimes seems to move slow, and sometimes it seems to move fast. When time seems to be moving slow it's because you're not interested in now. Many people spend their days wishing away their days. Wanting one thing to end, then another thing to end. Before they know it, they are old and have wished away their life without having really been there and lived it. You can find some value in anything. Humans are made with that unique ability. Discover what the value in the moment is and enjoy it. And, take that time to think about what you would be more interested in, and make a plan to do that. When time seems to have moved by too fast, remember that everything you've experienced contains an infinite amount of information. Even tiny things, like a piece of sand, have an infinite amount of information. When you look through a microscope at a piece of sand you can see...