《The Book of Questions》 It Goes Like This Week 1: December 29, 2024 - January 4, 2025 Sunday, December 29, 2024 No School The Prompt: What is the most important thing you learned this past year? Definitely self-reliance. I''ve been a latchkey kid since I was thirteen so Mom can work two jobs. I call her when I get home from school and our neighbor, Ms. Corbin, looks in on me once or twice. It''s always been an "it is what it is" kind of thing, and I never gave much thought to it. This past year, though, I''ve had self-reliance brought to my everyday consciousness. I''ve been taking proactive steps to do more than get my homework done and stay out of trouble. Mom needs to be able to rely on me even though (through no fault of hers) I can''t always rely on her. I guess this is another "it is what it is" but it''s something I think about now. Maybe last year is the year I actually started growing up, not just accumulating candles on my birthday cake. Mom''s working today, both the diner and the grocery store. That''s the bad part of holidays ¡ª I wake up alone and don''t see Mom until 2:00 and she''s out the door again by 4:30 and not home after 1:00. By then she''s too exhausted to do more than take a shower and go to bed. Days making my bed: 29
Monday, December 30, 2024 No School The Prompt: What skills did you learn? I taught myself to cook! Mom can cook but she''s never home to do it, and she has reasons for being uncomfortable teaching me. On weekdays during the school year I eat breakfast and lunch at school, and supper is whatever mom brings home from the restaurant where she works. Weekends and summers are cereal and sandwiches. It''s boring and not very healthy. Thank goodness for YouTube. I typed in ''teach yourself cooking basics'' and watched several videos before I attempted to actually use ingredients that cost money. The first thing I made was meatloaf, baked potatoes, and steamed broccoli. I''d have been okay if it had been just edible but it was actually good. Mom really liked it. But she did say that she didn''t want me to ever feel like I have to cook or keep the trailer anything beyond basically tidy and not gross. If I want to do it, that''s wonderful, but I should never be forced or expected to. What''s next? Now that I''m confident I can follow a cooking tutorial I want to try something else. I guess housework is the next logical step, but I want to alternate domestic chores. Fixing things that break around the house would be way more helpful since the repair guy hasn''t done a damn thing in four months. Days making my bed: 30
Tuesday, December 31, 2024 No School The Prompt: What habits did you start? Good habit: I started making my bed every morning. I''ve heard a lot of self-help and productivity people say it starts the day off with a feeling of accomplishment and so far it''s working. Bad habit: I don''t clean up when I''m done cooking, so Mom comes home to a mess as well as an okay home cooked meal. Usually she cleans up but sometimes she''s too tired and I''ll wake up to cruddy counters and a sink full of dirty dishes. Yuck. Habit I shouldn''t have to do: I keep all my books and supplies in my backpack and carry it with me all the time, because someone has been pranking my locker. If my textbooks get damaged Mom will have to pay for it even if it''s not my fault. Until I actually catch someone in the act and can prove for sure it''s them, my stuff stays with me.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Mom''s got the night off from the diner. She''d have taken the day from the store, too, but she took the overtime because we need the money. We''re not going to sit up for midnight. I''m nagging Mom to go to bed early and get some really good sleep. I''m making rosemary pork chops, black-eyed peas, and asparagus for dinner. Days making my bed: 31
Wednesday, January 1, 2025 No School The Prompt: What are you the most proud of this year? I''m proud that I''m learning to handle things for myself. I do my homework and got my grades up from mostly C''s to B''s and A''s. I learned to cook. Mostly I learned I can figure out how to do anything that needs doing. Sometimes I get overwhelmed, though. I''m sixteen and I''m raising and adulting myself. It''s better than what Mom went through when she was my age, by a lot, but I still wish some things could be different. I talked to Mom about doing the repairs around the trailer ourselves. At first she said no way, she was afraid we''d get in trouble. I have to tread carefully when she balks so she doesn''t go into a full-blown freak out. I told her we can''t be arrested for fixing things, and we shouldn''t be evicted either since we''re paid up with rent and the maintenance man has been MIA for literal months. Then I dropped the matter and did the laundry. By the time I was moving the clothes to the dryer Mom was ready to talk some more. We looked up how to replace the bathtub faucet handle that came off. The YouTube video made it look easy so this Saturday we''ll go to the hardware store and at least see how much it''ll cost. Days making my bed: 32
Thursday, January 2, 2025 No School The Prompt: What did you learn about yourself? Wow, that''s a loaded question. I knew Mom was pregnant with me when she was fifteen, ran away, and was in foster care until she was eighteen and I was two. The woman I call Nan ran the group home where we were located. Mom never talked about her parents or my Dad but promised to ''when I was older''. She''d get so upset when I asked that I just stopped pestering her about it beyond, ''am I older enough yet''. A couple days after my sixteenth birthday she told me. And no wonder she didn''t want to talk about it! Here''s the bullet points. Mom grew up in a weird Christian-ish cult. Her parents forced her to marry a man who was twenty-eight years old when she was fifteen. The man ¡ª my father ¡ª actually helped her escape. They didn''t know she was pregnant . The cult was shut down. Mom ended up in a group home until she was eighteen years old and I was two. Mom doesn''t know what happened to her parents and she''s still scared of them. She doesn''t know what happened to my father either. That took a lot of processing, and it explains so much about how she is, and why she sometimes acts like a scared kid. She is a scared kid! The people at the group home did the best they could, I guess, but yeah. Days making my bed: 33
Friday, January 3, 2025 Back to school today. Rant to follow. The Prompt: How did your relationships (family, friends, school, etc.) evolve? I got a much better understanding of Mom. I admit, there was resentment for a long time about why she was so¡­ I don''t know. Anxious to the point of being skittish. Unable to handle the outside world sometimes. Now I know and I see her in an entirely different light. It''s changed our dynamic. I think of her more like she''s my age, or I''m closer to hers, or¡­ something. Man, wording this is hard. I shouldn''t feel like Mom and I are equals. I should be rebelling, she should be a pain in my ass. But that''s other kids and moms, I guess. That''s not how this is. So how is it? I''ve been raising myself alright. I know Mom loves me or she wouldn''t be working so hard to move us out of this shithole trailer. But like most parents want better for their kids I want better than this for her. We need to work together on equal terms. I guess that''s going to be a Conversation. Oh, goody. Anyway, it''s Friday. Why the hell are we going back to school today instead of waiting for Monday? What''s the bloody point? The vibe was so weird. I managed to stay off the radar, though. Days making my bed: 34
Saturday, January 4, 2025 The Prompt: How do you want to be different at the end of the year? I''m still trying to get a grip on right now! I want to be able to stand up for myself at school. I want to keep learning things that will actually make a day-to-day difference. I want to help Mom become more confident and figure out who she is and what she wants. Keeping in the theme of useful, we went to the hardware store today. I coached Mom before we went in because the staff would be looking to her, not me. She did okay. We showed a clerk a picture of the tub handle that needs replaced, and the video with the instructions how to do it. He agreed that was the way to do it, sold us new handles and a Phillips head screwdriver, and wished us luck. Mom took a few deep breaths in the car before we drove off and it was over. At least that part. We''ll actually do the fix tomorrow. I listened to a summary of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey on YouTube to see if I want to read it. I do. The full audiobook is up, actually, so I''ll be listening to that while I try to clean out the fabric jungle I call my closet. Days making my bed: 35 And thus concludes the first week of 2025. Good luck, Next Week Me. Reaching for the Sky Just to Surrender Sunday, January 5, 2025 The Prompt: What are your top three financial goals for this year? Well, I''m not the one making the money but I do get a voice in it, so: 1) Move! To a better, safer mobile home community. This place has too much drugs and fighting, and the cops are here at least twice a week. We''ve got our eye on a place that''s $120 more a month than we''re paying for this nightmare carnival ride. 2) A "new-to-us" car. The one Mom drives to work should have been put out of our misery over a year ago. It costs more to maintain than it''s worth, now. But I think we shouldn''t get a car yet. The new place is on the bus line, the bus goes everywhere, and when the bus isn''t running we can call a ride share if we absolutely have to. That''ll save money for¡­ 3) Nursing school. Mom''s saving most of the money she makes so she can go to nursing school without taking out loans. I don''t think she really wants to be a nurse, the pay is better than anything she''s ever seen. Mom and I fixed the faucet handles in the bathtub. It cost $20 and took ten minutes. Makes me wonder what the maintenance guy was talking about when he said it would be an expensive fix and he didn''t have time.
Monday, January 6, 2025 The Prompt: How can I improve my daily habits? Easily. I don''t have any ¡ª at least not any that are deliberate ¡ª so just starting a habit is an improvement. There are all kinds of habit tracker apps or I could just make a note in my daily entry. I should probably start with cleaning the kitchen every night. I just got suspended from school for the first time in my life. To be brief: four guys from the basketball team were harassing me in the hallway. They do this all the time and I ignore them because that''s what I''ve always been told to do. Except this time Noah Adams grabbed my arm, turned me to face them, and shoved me against the lockers hard enough it hurt. And I punched him in the eye. His friends thought it was hilarious but still scattered like chickens when the principal, Mr. Thomas, came to see what was going on. Noah went to the nurse''s office I had to go to the principal''s office and wait for Mom. That was the part I was afraid of. Mom is terrified of male authority figures. She managed to sit through Mr. Thomas'' spiel about ''violence only begets more violence'' and saved her panic attack for when we got to the car. To add to my seething kettle of anger, Noah only has to do Saturday detention. Days cleaning the kitchen: 1
Tuesday, January 8, 2025 Suspension Day 1 The Prompt: What is one thing you could do today to help you achieve your goals? Um, figure out what my goals are. Besides surviving high school. Honestly I''ve barely thought about it. Life is just one crisis at a time and all I can really handle. I know more about what I don''t want than what I do. When Mom dropped me off after I was suspended I Googled ''how to deal with bullies''. The advice on the internet boiled down to ''ignore them'' and ''tell an adult''. Like that''s ever worked. I got so frustrated I was about to yeet my phone. Fortunately I didn''t because we can''t afford to get me another one right now.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. One of the answers was funny though. It was a spell. I clicked the link and read it just for fun. It reminded me of that scene in Lilo and Stitch where Lilo had put effigies of her friends in a pickle jar and was shaking it because her friends needed to be punished. The actual spell was a little more complex than that, but it called for things we already had around the house. So I did it. It was cathartic. I put all my anger and frustration into shaking the hell out of that jar and repeating the words. When it was done I felt better. Silly, but better. Days cleaning the kitchen: 2
Wednesday, January 8, 2025 Suspension Day 2 The Prompt: What skills do you wish you had? I don''t know. I can learn anything I want to ¡ª for free, in a lot of cases. Thanks be to the Internet! So, what kind of skills do I want to learn? One that''s free or cheap; one that I won''t have to go to college for; one that lets me work from where ever; one I can use to start getting paid the moment I turn eighteen; one that will get me a job that pays enough for me to live off of. I think I''m talking about coding. If I learn to code I can do a lot of things with it. I''m still doing the spell on Noah, for funsies. The first day was to make him quit hassling me. Today is to punish him, at least more than Saturday detention. I''m so mad he got off with that because he''s a basketball player, I want to hit him again! So that energy is going into shaking the damn jar. The odds of this spell actually doing anything are microscopic, but it sure is a fun way for me to vent frustration! Days cleaning the kitchen: 3 Days studying coding: 1
Thursday, January 10, 2025 Suspension Day 3 The Prompt: What does success look like to me? I''m starting to get a vision of that. To me, success would look like living on my own terms and not worrying about money. I want that for me and Mom. I plan to achieve this by getting the best grades I can in high school even though I''m not planning to go to college. Plans change and I want to keep that door open. Somehow while I deal with high school and homework, I''m going to teach myself to code until I''m very, very good at it. That''s going to be an intense juggling act but nothing like the one Mom does every day. I''m trying to talk Mom into holding off on the car. She says she''ll think it through but she wants to have the option to go anywhere we need to go without relying on someone else. I see where my independent streak comes from! And I agree, I just want to move things along and get out of this rusty hellpit. Day three of working on the spell. Today is about Noah having a genuine attitude adjustment, if he''s got it in him. Days cleaning the kitchen: 4 Days studying coding: 2
Friday, December 10, 2025 Suspension Day 4 The Prompt: What do I need more of in my life? Peace! For goodness sake, everything in my life is so damn stressful! I probably have anxiety. Scratch that, I definitely have anxiety, I just haven''t been diagnosed by a doctor. And I cringe to think about Mom''s psychological issues. ''How to get peace'' is going to be another project. I''m looking into ''coding 101'' type online classes. Once I get an overview of what it''s going to take to learn to code I''ll work out my study schedule around my high school homework. The spell on Noah is done. The instructions say to put the jar in a sunny window until I see that it worked, then release him by dumping out the contents of the jar somewhere away from where I live, dry out the picture, and burn it. I''m not a pyro, but setting something on fire sounds fun. Days cleaning the kitchen: 5 Days studying coding: 3
Saturday, January 11, 2025 The Prompt: 3 short-term personal goals 1) Finish my homework on time and get a B or higher on all my tests. 2) Talk Mom into moving. I like this place less and less every day. 3) Be on track learning to code ¡ª whatever that''s going to entail. I''m looking into how to find peace, as cheesy as that sounds. There''s not a lot I can do about what''s going on in my life, but I can work on how I handle it. So I guess I''ll be trying things like yoga and meditation. Oh, and journal prompts for inner peace since I''m already journaling anyway. I''ve cleaned the kitchen five days in a row. I get a hit of dopamine every morning when I get my bowl of cereal and sit at the table I wiped down the night before. Of course, maintaining it when I go back to school is another matter. I''ve figured out that I should start learning to code with html. The problem is that there are so many apps, online classes, tutorials, and advice posts that I have no idea which to do. I haven''t even started coding and I''m already about to tear my hair out. Noah gets to join the Breakfast Club today. Or the Deadfast Club. Whichever. Days cleaning the kitchen: 6 Days learning to code: 4