You have never truly lived until you have exhaled an inferno of light and heat the size of a room from the palms of your hand. The fluid motion and pure mental concentration that produce such a spectacleof devastation can only be accomplished from hundreds - no - thousands of hours of practice and dedication. It is a feeling like no other to call upon your inner energy and harness it carefully up through your feet, having it gain momentum and power through your core and finally take that pressure and energy and force it through the nozzle that is your palms. The fiery blasts of heat that I have trained so hard to create have obliterated many monsters and villains that have meant to damage people's live and corrupt the very essence of this world.

Of course, I've never actually summoned a fireball. However, as a kid I imagined I could. I would fight various ghouls and adversaries. I would memorize hand signs from Naruto and spend hours poring over spells and determining magical characteristics that I would one day discover I had. As I grew older and could better understand religions and superstitions, I became Wiccan. In this religion, there were other people - real people - who claimed to be able to do magic! They claimed to be able to make paper spontaneously combust, make stop lights bend to their will, and make others fall in love with them by uttering daily chants or making the person of their dreams concoctions to drink. There were cloaks, wands, ouija boards, mystic pendants, spell books, incense, stones with magical properties, palm readings, past life readings, tarot cards... the list goes on! If I was to find something magical - real magic - I would definitely find it here. I was a bit discouraged with my switch from cartoons to Wicca because no one seemed to be able to do the fantastical things that I was interested in like moving water to make it a shield or making a fireball or to summoning lightning.

As I got older I grew to abandon that religion. However, this time I was not disappointed with the switch. I realized that I could actually do some of the cool things that I dreamed about as a kid, but it was going to be a lot more difficult than simply memorizing hand signs from a TV show. Instead, it would take a good understanding of physics and math. It wasn't until the end of high school that I began inventing things - things that could actually work, that is - that piqued my interest.

As an example of my inventions, for about 4 years in a row I made more and more effective weapons to kill the infestation of tent worms that was slowly taking over my parent's house. The first year was a rubber band powered gun that launched a stick with a ping pong ball on the end of it. It killed through blunt force, but it worked. The next year I decided I needed more power so I moved from rubber bands to springs. The springs had a larger spring constant. The next year I found that I wasn't satisfied with the springs so I went even more extreme. I made a pressurized tank attached to a quick-release valve. By pressurizing the tank (a 2 Liter Pepsi Bottle) with a tire pump, I could launch my deadly bullet (the same stick and ping pong ball, but on the other end was a cork to stick so that it acts like a cork gun). The last year, I took apart the flash portion of a camera and figured out that instead of squishing the tent worms, I could electrocute them. The 2 AA batteries would charge up a capacitor (which was audible at my age then) and simply by touching the two exposed leads to the tent worms, I could fry them! This sounds a bit twisted as I describe in in retrospect, but it got the juices flowing (no pun intended). I also made a small flame thrower with a butane refill can and a caulk gun that could shoot a 2 foot flame. It worked better than the flash portion of the camera, but it wasn't as cool as the one in the picture below.

My crafting stopped because I had to go to college for engineering (which is good or bad depending on how you look at it). At college, I have learned the secrets of physics and mechanical engineering! Now my inventions work. On the plus side, now that I've learned more, my inventions are typically more noble and about 99% of the time actually moral (not intended for destruction). If you were worried about my direction as an inventor, don't. I'm not aiming to work on the next Manhattan Project. However, I do have a very specific goal - a dream, if you will. I want to do nothing more than spend the remaining years of my life inventing things that satisfy my need for folly and things that will change the world for the better (the two don't need to be mutually exclusive, but usually are). So I devised a plan.

I heard about this shop called The Tech Shop. There are other businesses like it, but The Tech Shop is the first one I heard of. The idea is that it is a public machine shop. People become members by paying a monthly fee, get trained on the equipment, then have free-reign on the equipment that they are trained on to make whatever their heart desires. There are classes held all the time on making various projects and on getting better with the tools. The most beautiful part of the whole deal is that the owner gets free access to all of the machines too! In fact, owning the machines makes the owner money! My scheme, then, is to own a public machine shop of my own one day (maybe within the Tech Shop franchise, maybe not), and then I can not only be an entrepreneur (as I have also dreamed of becoming, but that's a different story) and being able to live out my days spending my time inventing and fabricating whatever I want. I basically want to do what this guy (Colin Furze) does!!!

I'm still working out the details, but rest assured I'll follow this dream of mine. I'm too determined of a person to not accomplish that goal. Often times I have to remind myself, though, that patience is a virtue. I am dreaming a little dream. It's a dream that motivates every fiber of my being, but it also scares me to my core because I'm not sure that I can accomplish it. I can't say that I'm the best at encouragement, but I can say that if you have a dream, you should pursue it dogmatically. Keep it a priority in life and don't let it die. For me, the saddest thing is for dreams to die because of re-prioritization.

Stay encouraged my friends!