Reflection of when I first started writing (school years)

I wrote my first time in first grade. It was so satisfying to write a book and be allowed to have it in the school library (Bayou View Elementary). I was very much influenced by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series. I remember times after that in grade school vaguely. I did a lot of poetry and prose, and occasionally wrote short stories. By junior high my rhyme style was greatly influenced by rap rhymes. There was a great influx in rap, especially Gansta' Rap, in society. Much of my personal influence could have been influenced by my father taking out MTV and VH1 because of it's content. I was left with BET. Black Entertainment Television mostly showed Rap videos at the time. I would see images on television and act out on what I saw. sample: "Life is cheap people get lost on the street life's expensive the world's cheap." Like many I was more influenced, at the time, by pop culture more than by parents. In High School with my fascination of ghost, action heroes, and spiritualism growing my works shifted from journal like entries that eventually manifested into stories. A primary example was works where I am questioning the ideology of "God." With hormones shifting emotions and therefor skewing interpretations of society much of what I wrote was against the establishment. These skewing, one sided views, I learned years later from teaching in Clarksdale, are destroying lives for the sake of being "cool." Writing became in later High School and early 20's became...