History
My Life Story
1983-1987… | 1988-1989 | 1990-1992 | 1992-1996 | 1996-1999 |1999 | 2000-2001 | 2001-2003 | Present
This page will be later used to summarize my life to the best of my ability, in different sections. I’m not really sure how best to organize this, so as of yet it’s a work in progress. Life seems to have various ways of being defined. I could choose to focus on my life from a spiritual view, professional view, or by the friendships I have had. Though the intermingling of all of life aspects seem to be what make it what it is. Plus, I’m still young there’s no way to see where this life will take me before it’s through, so anyway this is my story as best I can pump out for now.
1983-1987…
Robert Wayne Colburn was born on July 11, 1983 in a hospital in San Leandro, CA to Steve and Lorie Colburn. Most of the details of my life at this point are sketchy. I’m sure of the name of the hospital, though I do know that the hospital now only handles special disabilities. Remembrances of stories told to me my parents, though I have an occasional memory or two. I remember we had a cat Sneakers, white with spots, and I remember she had kittens before she “ran away”. I also remember we had these oversized blocks, they we’re about half of my size, which must mean they we’re about a two sq. ft. My older brother and I used to make little forts in the house we had.
Some time around 1987 my parents got divorced, so they both moved from San Lorenzo to other parts of the East SF Bay Area. I moved with my mom to a little brown apartment in San Leandro near to aGeneral Foods factory. I think she started working there at that time, due to some things I won’t discuss here I have a bit of… dislike for that factory.
1988 - 1989
My memories are a little more defined in that there are definite instances that I can remember. However, I do not fully know the order in which they took place. For instance, I remember the 1989 earthquake. I remember sitting in my bedroom upstairs, I was playing with some toy when my grandma, who was living with us for a few months, yelled to me in our quite-southern accent, “Robert ‘git down here right now!”. I remember all news coverage, and the pictures of the Cypress, the Bay Bridge, the slightly stunned Giants batter looking around while Candlestick held it’s ground. Luckily enough, our apartment held together quite well minus a few fragile things here and there. I don’t remember living in that apartment until I was seven. I do know that we received Tiger (my cat - yeah he’s still living) before the earthquake, and he was still a kitten.
I remember my first day in first grade at a new school which must have been in fall of 1989. I’m not sure when it exactly happened. But, at some point during the awkward stage of learning to be around peers, I never quite adapted to it. I managed a few friends, but I was somewhat of an outcast.
1990-1992
These years probably felt like the longest of my life, I don’t remember much of the drama going on between my parents, except there was a lot of it. My parents shared custody in a since that we (my older brother Steve and I) saw our dad once every other weekend. I remember a few of my mom’s boyfriends, I didn’t tend to like them much - not because they were dating my mom, but because they were just jerks. My mom was a biker of sorts, and was pretty tough so she managed to send a few of them home with bruises. Though I also in this period remember staying up late to see if my mom made it home, I couldn’t sleep not knowing she was there. Somewhere around ‘91 we got our first computer a Packard Bell with a 75Mhz Pentium - oh yeah.
1992-1996
In ‘92 my dad started living in the house he now owns in Castro Valley, CA. In that same year he went to court and won custody of us, until the end of that year where my mom won custody back over me, my brother on the other hand was old enough and decided to stay with my dad. I remember not wanting to go back, with every part of me. I remember thinking then that even my bad memories (which included vomiting in class all over my desk) weren’t that bad or embarrassing.
So life returned to Washington Manner Elementary, which I hated, I had a couple of friends here and there, but for the most part I was that kid, the one picked after the girls for softball. It bothered me a little, but I really got into reading. I think I read better and faster then, than I do now.
1996-1999
Life became a bit of turmoil, as I started high school (we didn’t have jr. high so high school started in 8th grade). In the summer of 1996 one of my better friends was a girl named Tony, and I remember the day her dad died like it was just the other day. Her dad was a Baptist preacher on his way home from Oakland when some gang put him on a railroad track. On a brighter note, I started one of my longest friendships began with a guy named Jason, previously and after my longest friends have only known me for a little over two years. For the most part I liked high school, I discovered that I could hide a little and start to put my past social failures behind me. The people of my past could disappear and I could disappear into obscurity. I knew it wasn’t the best way to solve those situations, but it worked and I managed to build other friendships, but no real close ones.
In ‘97 this was all left behind when bought a brand, new house in Ceres, CA (near Modesto, the center of California). The house was great, it was so new we got to choose the color of the tile, and pick just how we wanted it. The house was more than just a nice place to live to me, it was a chance for me to change my life. I was moving to a place where nobody knew me or could have any preconceived notions of me. Plus, since it’s the beginning of their high school years I could easily pick up friends from a large group of other freshmen. I could reinvent myself, and make me who I wanted to be. That same year my mom married Brian, and for their wedding they went on a [motorcycle] run to Carson City, NV. Life moved fairly smoothly for a good while. My grades were good - not quite excellent like they were years previous. I think this partly due to my bitterness at the fact that I was held back in math & science where before I had been a year ahead of everybody else. I walked a lot back then - being that nearly everybody lived about a mile east of school and I lived a mile west. Also, I gained a really great ability to wake up on time at 5 or 6 am every morning, and arrive at school refreshed. Plus, because of my abilities with computers I was able to help fix the school computers and actually know the administration, then came the spring of ‘99.
1999
< p>This is probably one of the most influential periods of my life. My mom died on April 18, 1999. I remember it quite clearly, I just don’t want to get into it right now, perhaps later. Anyway, the week after was fairly painful, and after many conversations with my dad I was able to stay living in Ceres with my step-dad, until I finished school if I didn’t get into any trouble. So the school year finished out ok, my teachers were all supportive to my loss, I still wonder if I would have passed my Spanish 2 if my teacher didn’t have sympathy for me. Life eventually started to normalize out, until my best friend at the time Jon Lynch arguments with his grandparents started to get in more serious. Before the end of that summer he moved out to live with his girlfriend’s family who were planning to move to Nevada. So I went back to hanging out with another good friend James Brown (no relation) who coincidentally was Jon’s cousin. Short of the blazing sun in the central valley sun, I was managing all right. Having a glass of ice cold Pepsi with central air conditioning making your house just short of 70 when it’s over 110 outside is a little piece of heaven. Topping that off with laying on your back on a thick carpet with a four speaker stereo system playing a little over half-volume can just about take you there. That is until an eager half-grown half-lab doesn’t feel that laying around all day is the best way to spend time 
.Anyway, this came to a holt when school started up again. I remember being called into the disciplinary office and sitting next at the principal’s desk with a detective sitting in the chair next to me reading me my rights. It seemed, a prank me and James had pulled over the summer had gone a little to far, and keeping secrets about playing serious pranks on a friend who happens to be a teenage girl is very bad idea. I don’t really care to get into details, but sufficed to say it was fairly bad and federal agencies to have the ability to track e-mails quite well. I was in juvenile hall for two nights, long enough for me to think long and hard about all the friends this affected, and how I would probably lose everything about Ceres if I manage to get out of hell-on-earth. For one who isn’t much for physical exercise has a love and appreciation for good food such as myself juvenile hall isn’t such a fun place to be. The result was house arrest back home in Castro Valley for six months. It would be off my record when I turned 18, but I lost any ability to communicate with James, the girl, or their families for at least one year.
2000-2001
I remember coming back home and my first day back before school started, I sat down in his new hot tub, not to shabby. I thought about my life and the fact that as crazy the year had been, and as sad as I was about losing my friends I could move on. I thought about how my run-in with the law should serve as good reason to start going to church. I had gone to a church growing up, I can’t say it was a good one or that I learned anything about god. Our first pastor had ran off with some girl, leaving his wife of who-knows-how-many-years and his kids. I did learn there is a God, to say my prayers before going to sleep and to try to live a good life or else. I delayed on acting on this for quite some time though, due to some reluctance and a little fear. I had tried going to a few churches in Ceres, and after seeing how they worshiped, I decided I was better on my own.
Back in the real world life does move on. I started spending time with my dad, and I even started a serious weekly workout routine. Also, due to juvenile hall plus my mom recent death, I had to start seeing a psychologist. I didn’t care for it much, and the little chats didn’t really help me with anything. Despite how I seemed on the outside, I was holding off a bit of depression.
Through some computer work I was doing for my dad’s religious neighbor I was invited out to a church and going to a church he went to and I even made some friends. At first it was quite good, I learned a good deal about the bible and God and I gained some biblical conviction about beliefs I had held onto for a long time. I’ve never used any drugs or drank any alcohol, but this mostly me not wanting to become my parents. It seems a pattern for my family to have kids young, which then forces them to marry young, and never go to college. I wanted to break the cycle, I wanted to be different.
Eventually, I started to realize the church wasn’t quite what it seemed. Most everybody talked about things in church, put scriptures in their cards, chatted about life, but in the end the way they talked didn’t seem to match the way they lived. The time I had spent trying to learn what I could about church seemed wasted. I realized that both the lives of my friends and my own personal life didn’t reflect that of one who called themselves a Christian. I wanted to believe that maybe I was wrong, but as I looked at some of thing I did and the result of my life. The only thing that seemed to be different about my life was my guilty conscience. As much as I talked about living one way, when I saw an opportunity for something I wanted I took it. Finally, high school was starting to come to a close. I took the advise of teacher I had in sophomore year and planned to move to a school just far enough to be out of reach, but close enough that traveling and school would be affordable - LA.
2001-2003
The summer of 2001 I started packing again. I had my license for two years and got in my third accident that summer, fortunately no points on my record at this point. The insurance settlement gave me enough money to help buy my third car, a 1990 Acura Integra, that I still drive today. I was moving away in one respect not only take my teacher’s advise, but to reinvent myself again. I decided that I didn’t really know if I wanted to go to church anymore. If I lived so far away, I would only really have to go for holidays, and no one had to be the wiser about how I really felt about God. If God had kept me safe, watched over me, and directed my life in such a way to bring me back He would do so again. So, I said my goodbyes to the bay area, determined to find a new life for myself in Northridge, CA.
I moved into the dorms at Cal State Northridge with three other freshmen. A motley enough crew of people - one was comm. studies major with a bit of a quick temper which expressed itself through a quick wit, another a business major who didn’t really know where he was going, and the last - I ended up sharing a room with - another comp. science major like myself but seemed a bit too into philosophy and a bit too little into his studies. In that time I shared a little in common with each of them. So, I sort of browse around to see which direction life would turn next. I prayed, and then at the end of the week God answered.
I was walking home from some Friday class evening class - didn’t like morning classes then, and now I still don’t. When two guys strolled up and invited me to their church, which happened to be meeting at a park on Sunday. I had seen some of the other Christian groups on campus and they seemed to echo some of my past experiences, but they had asked nice enough, seemed like alright people so I figured why not? Well, I probably would have missed my alarm and just slept in had it not been for one of them calling me that morning and offering me a ride. So I got up, cleaned myself up and headed out.
The church was different from any I had been to before. They all seemed to be actually dedicated to what they were doing and genuinely seeking to live their lives for God. The good food, friendliness, and even a convicting message could all still just be Sunday demeanor, but then after the service came to a close they asked me to study the Bible. Well, they had been the ones to invite me out, ensure that I got there, and the service seemed well enough so why not see what they would say. Over course of the next week I learned more about God and the Bible than I think I did in my entire years previous, and everything they said was backed up by scripture. I learned what it meant to truly be a disciple of Jesus, so after an amazing week of spiritual epiphanies and such I was baptized on September 9, 2001. After more than two years, I’ve more than learned that the Los Angeles Church of Christ is of those who truly follow Christ. So, now I actively share with others what I was, and though most don’t listen, some do and in fact I’ve had the pleasure of baptizing one person and studying with a number of others.
The past two years have also provided many other lessons. I’ve had to learn how to handle money, and have worked three different jobs, as well as time spent at labor ready. I’ve had many highs and lows financially, academically, emotionally, spiritually…, but in God has helped me through it all. And all these numerous events lead us up to the present.
Present
About the present I could go on and on about the many things that have gone on, but why fill this space to the brim - go to mylive journal if you want to learn more.