: Re: How do I structure an essay into a thesis statement and three points in three paragraphs? -this is not a school homework I'm writing an essay but I struggle with thesis statements and paragraphs.

@Phylliss352

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Ah, I remember the five paragraph essay days. They are as structured as a sonnet and the point of practicing them is to focus your writing. The thesis statement is your entire essay summarized in one sentence. I have an easier time writing it last, but you may have a different experience.
Looking at your essay, I can't tell if you are writing about freedom, nostalgia, or different types of things that trigger memories, or what. There are a lot of themes there that are worth working on. I'm going to pick one of these and show you how I would build your essay from that, but you could choose a different focus and build your essay differently.
Let's say your essay is about how your perception of your own entertainment has changed over time. Looking at the rest of what you've written, here are three examples relating to freedom that you talk about in your essay:

Childhood is free of the concerns experienced by teens and adults, and full of the wonder of first experiences.
Once your first experiences were over, you still enjoyed the boundless goodness of simply experiencing the things you chose for yourself.
Now that you are grown, social expectations mean that you must now find ways to enjoy experiencing the things other people choose for you instead.

You will use these three examples to illustrate your point (i.e., your thesis statement). When you have more experience, you can be clever about the examples, using them to highlight different aspects of your thesis or to compare and contrast different views of the same issue. I've chosen three that are basically sequential and show progression because I think it is easier to understand the structure that way, and also because you revisit N64 several times to describe how your perspective has changed and I think these examples could work with that.
Take each example and write it into a paragraph that explains it, possibly using one or two sentences to describe an example of what you mean. You can use the same example, like the N64, or different examples, like Pokemon, N64, and lawn darts. When you go back and revise, the artful part is to make the last sentence of your paragraph act as a transition to the next paragraph. There are bunches of techniques, but probably the easiest is some kind of contrast. Here is an example from your own text:

Whatever this adventure was -- playing Nintendo 64 on rainy Saturday afternoons, watching Pokemon in the basement with my older brother, web-surfing the primitive days of google -- I'll never experience it as pure as I did.
Time has passed inevitably and with time comes change.

Great. Now you have three paragraphs of examples, so it should be a lot more obvious what your point is. Go back and write your introductory paragraph to tell us what point your examples will illustrate.
Then write the concluding paragraph. Your last paragraph should tell us why the examples should have illuminated your point and invite the reader to reflect on your shared experience. I think this example for your writing is a nice ending for your essay:

Whatever that memory was keep it close to you, since it's from your childhood and never again will things be the same.

Especially if you take the time to point out to the reader your expectation that they have similar experiences to your own.

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