Jake Crystal

Hey I’m Jake. I enjoy a lot of different things such as playing football for the High school. I also enjoy running, soccer, photography, video creating and editing. Writing and creating music, Playing the piano, keyboard, ukulele and guitar.  Above all, I enjoy sitting around being lazy binge watching Netflix with a tub of ice cream. You will never see me without headphones in my ears cause I’m constantly listening to music, it's what I practically live for. I really dislike school for I was a middle school drop out in seventh grade. Not because I was a bad student, I had a 4.0 GPA all years of middle school. It was because I got bullied and picked on so much. After a while I couldn't take anymore and I dropped out and took that time to do home school and teach myself what I was interested in such as photography, poetry, and the environment. 

  This is officially my first year playing football and I really like it so far. I play Corner, punt return, outside wide receiver, X, and H. If you Don’t know much about football, let's just say I’m the guy who catches the ball when it’s thrown and then just book it to the endzone. Surprisingly I’m taller than most guys on the team and more aggressive even though I’m one of the youngest. Ever since I’ve been playing my bench press went from 125 to 185 and I’ve become better and better with every practice. You may notice that all the positions I’m play in football involve a lot of running. That is because I played select soccer for 7 years and I played outside mid and they never stop running, so I’m used to running for long periods of time. To help maintain that I try to run 10 miles per week in my own time. 

Photography is my passion and what I’m best at out of all the things I do. I always have my camera with me, any money I get it goes towards camera equipment or one of my many other hobbies.  Photography has always stuck with me because the only limits are your imagination and my imagination is freaking bonkers! I’m constantly looking for the next amazing picture and noticing every little detail that could turn an amazing picture into a spectacular one. I will sit and wait hours and hours and try and try over and over to get the perfect shot or the perfect angle. Sometimes people ask me if it gets boring editing photos but it never does, I just put on some good music and make the best of it! 

            Video Creating and editing is one of the many things I do. I use the same camera for photography as I do video, it’s a canon T6i mark III. It’s an amazing camera and has so many great features. I use it for everything I do that involves photography, video, and audio. Video creating and editing isn't easy and it’s EXPENSIVE! It takes a lot of time and money and patients to make good video. I should just be glad I have nothing better to do with my time. I do all my editing on a Macbook pro that’s connects to my monitor so I have a 34 inch 4k screen instead of a 13.2 inch  screen to see what I’m doing so I can see any flaws possible.

            Writing and creating music is one of my favorite things to do because once again the only limit is my imagination. Me and my friend Casy are always making beats and lyrics for songs and just having fun with it. He’s almost 18 and we have always been the best of friends since I was 7 and I love him like a brother. He’s quite a good rapper and I’m very tech savvy so the two of us make a good team when it comes to writing and producing music. Most nights in the summer we are up till 2 a.m. making music and just chilling. During the school year we cut it back too and only work till 11 p.m.. We don’t really take it seriously but we try our best and have fun in the process.

          I love music, I don't know how else to explain it. If there's an instrument I wanna learn it, if there's a beat I wanna make it, if there's lyrics you know I wrote them. I've been playing the keyboard and piano for a while now, I’ve played the ukulele since I was little, and the guitar for three years. Every second of learning, playing, and creating I've enjoyed it. It is an escape for me, I’ll just lock myself in my room for hours and screw around and accidentally make something awesome. I just tune out the rest of the world and do my thing and enjoy my own company. Every once in a while I stop what I'm doing and go on a walk or clear my head so I don't work myself to death. Even though it’s fun its still work, just like this paper and if you do too much you will burn yourself out and crash hard. I’ve crashed hard before and I fell into a deep depression and basically did nothing with my life and made some bad choices that I now regret.

Somedays I just check out and watch Netflix all day and lay in bed and eat junk food and just relax. Like a fat cat laying around well its owners out of the house. I guess you could say I have a lazy day to give my crazy mind a mess. I normally do this on the weekends because it’s not a lazy day if you have to go to school and do work. My mom really hates it when I do this and that's because I eat the whole entire pantry and fridge and then she has to go buy more food. Then I stay up super late doing the same this because I'm not tired because I didn’t do anything all day long. When I finally fall asleep I don't wake up till around 1PM the next day. It is hard to do this though because I constantly have football and it takes up time so I always have to get up early for school or football.

                    Since I’m a teenager I naturally dislike and love school at the exact same time. It’s kind of like receiving a gift and a curse at the same time. I hate getting up early but I’m used to it so it’s not that bad. I like school because of the teachers and I love to learn. I don't mind school work, I actually enjoy it. The only problem I have with school is the kids. There are good kids and bad kids, weird kids, annoying kids, funny kids, rich kids, poor kids, and popular kids. I don't care if your skinny, fat, tall, short, gay, straight, trans, be who you are but one thing I have zero tolerance for is kids being mean to other kids and belittling them for no reason. There is never a good reason to be bullying because crossroads has a zero tolerance for bullying. No matter what they have no right pick on someone. The reason this upsets me so much is because I was one of the kids who got picked on and ripped on for no reason. All the way through first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grade.

You may be thinking what about 8th grade, well let me get to that. In the middle of seventh grade year I dropped out of school because I got bullied so much and did home school. Well I was homeschooling I took an online collage photography course. And got certified as a photographer. In 8th grade I came back strong and did let anyone get to me and kicked butt!  This is just a little bit about me and how I got to where I

am today, and became the person I am today. I hope you all enjoyed reading.