Singer Wordsmith

So the other day I was listening to CCR, smoking some really good weed, and wondering if I should post an ad on craigslist advertising my wares and abilities as a singer/wordsmith. I'd be lying if I said CCR didn't have any direct effect on the decision I ultimately made. So far I've gotten two replies in 24 hours. One is a dj looking for female vocals, the other is a band wanting a demo/pic. The wanting a pic is dishearting but theres no real reason I should be put off by it. I'm just feeling fat and not so sassy. It also just occured to me that I don't have access to my demos anymore since my laptop took a dive so... If anyone has a windows vista cd they'd let me borrow, it'd be totes sweet. In other news I applied to a few new places and got on the boss ladys ass about more hours. I work a little over 20 next week. Hope it stays up. I need the dough like a crack head jonesin for the fix. TAP ME IN, BRO, TAP ME IN X_X

I find myself in the midst of pretending to relax before I go on shift when I'm really becoming more and more aware that working for Ross puts me in panic mode where tensions are high and all for what? I won't go into the details of that, though, as I am more concerned by the knot in my stomach, the urge to throw in the towel, and the idea that maybe, just maybe, I should have had three cups of coffee today instead of two. Either way, I don't want to be here today.

Just call me Pesimism Inc! Amazing things are happening but the same old annoyances persist. If what I want is what will fall through, and what I need is going to pick up the slack...what I need is pretty fucking amazing in comparison. It's just...but w/e. I guess I have music to make...

le sigh

This long distance thing is getting to me, but not b/c of the distance. The gentlemenfriend's laptop took a dive a week or so ago and he lost his cell a bit before then. So now both of the usual modes of communication are lost, with no apparent sign of being restored to what it once was, and not talking to him for long periods of time is starting to take it's toll on me. I feel like we're not even dating anymore, which isn't the case obviously, but damn it. I mean...I think I would feel better about this if it was like a planned radio silence, but it came w/o warning, and it's left me feeling way more wanting than I like. I feel that stupid nagging feeling all the time to see his stupid smile (it's not stupid, I love his smile, but I'm not exactly being an adult right now lol) b/c just that would at least let me know that I've still got his attention b/c...chicks need that shit.

Awful, I know. How did this happen? Fucking feelings, man. ~.~

lol

I'm such a dramatic person behind closed doors...

I never let on when I feel as low as I do in some of these Negative Nancy posts. I always soldier on, keep a smile, and joke a lot when I'm down. Distractions help and laughing keeps the seams together. And almost every morning after a night of feeling down is almost always sunnier and full of potential again. I'm a flower, and as soon as the sun comes up again, I'm full and open to the fuzzy bees of opportunity! It's the variables in the moments after I wake up that slowly chisel away at me and get me to the point of being down.

So I've gotta take better care to pay attention to these things that pick away at my wall paper and set them up like a carnival shooting game. Carry a mental red rider bb gun and when I see them pop up POP POP and shoot 'em down!

I feel like I've written these words, in different ways, a million times. These morning after posts that make me out to be super positive and sunny side up. But if I have to keep writing these and reminding myself that I have happy days, so be it. Eventually, I hope they'll bring me back to the point where I really can become master over my bad habits again. The ones that get me fixated on one trouble spot with a tear and pick away at it for countless hours until it's a huge canyon of destruction.

I think...I need to start smoking weed again. When I first started as a teenager, it was kind of like a meditation thing since I always smoked right before I went to bed. I'd write, a lot of the time, or just sit and think a lot. It was a great way for me to objectively look at things and I miss having that ability. I mean I can still do that, but not w/o some great effort lol. But with weed, it was always so...smoke, relax, and I'm there, molding the cosmos of my existence in this world with my mind and becoming a better person through that meditation. And I think, and really I'm pretty damn certain I know, what happened with my weed habit was I just...did it all the time and to the point where it was just what I did. I smoked weed to stay in a constant state of being high to deal with the crazy shit that was going on around me. And eventually, as do all things that get used for escapism, it turned on me. The things I was trying to get away from came through the fog and sunk their teeth pretty deep in me.

So now that I am on some weird flip sided opposite shit of when I was 16/17, experiencing weird opposite similarities to things that have happened to me in the past BUT BETTER, I think weed will help me become a better person...again...and shed the strange monsters that attached themselves to me all those years ago. They're actually pretty cute since my imagination makes them out to be fuzzy and funny looking, but they're pretty fucking annoying with their teeth in me. So I'll smoke some weed, relax, and then hopefully I'll get the monsters to let go and stand in front of me. I'll look at them all, one by one, and see them for what they really are. Silly, pretty colored, but greatly annoying habits and fears I must keep corralled like little children on bungee kid leashes. Oh, what was that strangely irrational fear monger monster on leash number 5? You want to run wildly into the night with my imagination and make me have a panic attack? WELL TOO FUCKING BAD, MOTHER FUCKER, LOOKS LIKE YOU GET TO SIT IN THE TIME OUT CORNER FOR BAD LITTLE MONSTERS!

(some day I'll illustrate these posts)

I'm in such a weird place. I can't describe it but then again I don't really want to. I hate the feeling I get when I'm here. I just wish I knew how to keep my ambitions going. B/c I don't know what to do when my faded wall paper starts to become a brighter hue. Do I need to leave? Do I need to stay? The only thing I'm certain of in this forsaken place is I'm unsure down to the core of me. And I just wish I knew what exactly it was that gets me so blue.

Fears take shape but only just enough to get it's strangle hold on my scruff. I can't breath all of the time and sometimes I wonder if it's all in my mind. Do I bring this upon myself while I pursue what I thought was a good time? What do I do while I'm trapped in this place where shadows caress my fear strickened face? But at least their touch is easy enough to take, compared to what they leave in their wake.

It's been an overwhelming experience since day I was born. I've been doubting my abilities since then as well.

photo accepted to upcoming show!

So this is the photo that got accepted into the show. Super stoked about this. Gotta go out and find a frame for it. Might reprint it and touch it up a bit. I'm selling it for $25. I doubt it will sell but who knows!

photos 11

The first of many photo posts I'll be making in the next couple of months. I had issues scanning due to the photo paper being glossy, so the weird lines in the images are just...technical irritations I didn't care to put effort into correcting. The point is that the originals still look boss lol.

Submitted these to a show going up in April at the college gallery. Lets see if any of them are picked!

the longest february

Despite this month being the shortest month of the year, so much has happened to me and around me that I feel like it's been February for two months. It hasn't been a bad month, though it's had it's low points, just busy. There was one really awesome happy thing that happened, but again, no reason to make this month feel as though it's been dragging on for 8 weeks.

I hope this pattern of awesome things, as well as things to keep me busy, continues. I would really like to have a second job. A second job, or a better job than my current one b/c it's not the greatest nor does it provide me with the greatest hours, would be amazing. With a second job, or one with good hours, I could move in with the coolest bitch I know late this summer. Words can't contain the awesome that would be living in that apartment. I am already so excited about the idea of moving in with her that I already feel like it's a done deal, but I'm going to need that second job or better hours if I'm going to be able to handle the huge increase in rent. OK it's not THAT HUGE of an increase but it's more than I can handle with what I'm working with right now, so my ass has to pound some pavement like GOD DAMN! Carpet bomb businesses with my resume and hope someone, somewhere, finds my application worthy of an interview, and my interview worthy of a position at their fine establishment.

I had this plan to save a grip of money when I started my current job but...I've been living pay check to pay check since I started in October. This needs to cease. I really have to start saving money. I really have to start working somewhere better haha.

listen

rain rain
come my way
pay no mind
to what the children say
b/c everything is covered in gray
and I need some cool headed
clean, clear rain
to help the next day shine
through all the grit and the grime

it's raining, and I love the sound
it heralds a new beat where life can be found

the age of distraction

We are living in an age of distraction. To the and way past the point of being overwhelming. All of these distractions act as the catalyst for procrastination. "I"ll do it after this article. I'll do it after this one last webcomic. I'll do it after this one last song on youtube. I'll do it after I finish watching the girl who's pretending to be a teenager take it in the ass." Then when it's 5am and your priorities are rotting on the floor behind you, you're at the tipping point. Do you blame a sincere lack of self control and take the blame for letting yourself do nothing but shit around all night, or do you reach for the cop out of a.d.d.?

I feel most people reach for the cop out. Not that I have little to no faith in humanity, I've just observed enough to know that the majority of people tend to swing for that cop out a lot more than they take responsibility for their own actions. It's just...human nature. People are finicky and full of denial, and I personally feel that to ask every single one of them to be authentic enough to willingly admit being in the wrong is asking a lot. Being wrong is icky and puts you in a bad feeling place, which, on top of living in The Age of Distraction, goes against what we have also been living in: The Era of Feel Good. It's all gotta feel good or it's no good.

So in our modern Age and in our now long lived Era, I can't help but feel a little twinge of "fuck me, is this boring." Everyone and everything is blurry, hazy, and capricious to the point of being flaky and un-worthwhile. And don't get me wrong, I'm no square. I'm right there at the forefront of getting fucked up and expanding my constant curiosity for what is beyond the horizon I met the night before, but what happened to continuity? What happened to the morning after where the worthwhile thoughts of the night before go to thrive and become solid statements and movements. I dare not delve and dwell on those who have taken journey's with me to horizons I've long since left behind who did not care to notice the anthropomorphic blossoms opening up on the sides of the pathways, begging to be replanted through some idea laid to rest in morning light. So many wasted heart beats I've heard while I plucked bundles of these motley colored ideas as if I were picking wild flowers.

So I guess what I am saying is that...I am highly disillusioned with my past and current experiences with those who have claimed to want to make art and move forward, yet spend their time doing absolutely nothing but remaining unfocused and unwilling to put the dagger to their palm and draw blood for something that could, potentially, become greater than they...and I wish to change this. I can't do...what I want to do by myself. I need help. Everyone needs help. Through the gauze and layers upon layers upon layers of fliers, I want to break through, shatter, and shake. And I will enlist the help of anyone willing enough to go that far with me.

crazy happy and can't say why...

Not that I don't know why I'm happy. I know very well why I'm bursting with joy and optimism.

I'm in love, and I can't tell anyone just yet the details of this love. But me and this person are together and this I must confess: I feel like I've come home.

I keep thanking him in silly gushy moments for suddenly showing up and making me feel so at home. I don't even feel like...it's like my favorite Emerson quote.

"Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed: it is a sort of joyful solitude. ...we learn that only that soul can be my friend, which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience."

It is definitely a sort of joyful solitude. I don't feel compelled to act like someone I'm not for fear of turning him off and as soon as I realized that, I had no idea that I had fooled myself for so long and really did try to fit myself into packages that just...were obviously uncomfortable and not quite rightly me. I can be my 100% weird self, with all of my emotionally bottomless and overflowing moments when I'm inspired by everything I see and start telling him about how beautiful the wind in my hair feels or how beautiful trees look in street lamp light. Lol even I think I'm super dorky for that shit but I do it anyways, and he just keeps digging it all. No strange looks or confused faces when I reference Jim Jones koolaid or Spinal Tap. But I'm mostly just happy for that feeling of safety. That it's ok to take my armor off with him, and know I won't be made to feel like a fool for thinking I was in a good place.

There's just one catch: he lives a 6 hour flight away from me.

roommates are dumb and other news

I'm not mad, I'm just annoyed.

The roommate closest to my room is sick and listening to weird, bad, pensive piano music. It's totally slit-my-wrists business, and the current soundtrack for my life is The Doors. Talk about polar opposites.

My preggers roommate is giving me the silent rage b/c I put my food on a shelf (that I can reach) that she doesn't want shit on. So what does she do? She puts them in a cupboard neither I or even she can reach -.- le sigh. So this morning when she walked by me to the shower in a silent huff, I felt the rage pouring off of her as I also spied my missing groceries. When her and her baby daddy left for the day, I took the liberty of taking my food out of the ridiculously hard to reach places, and covertly hid them in the old timey tin Sugar and Flour containers on the shelf where I want my food. When preggers family was here last I asked if I could have them, they said yes, and since preggers left them on the shelf for decoration and they're technically mine, I figured it wouldn't hurt to put my food in them. She wouldn't be the wiser, until she noticed the missing food in the cupboards of course, and if she cares to inquire, I don't care if she gets mad at what I did. I don't need any help in making decisions to not eat. I do that enough already. And yes, if I have to find a chair (which is actually pretty hard to do here) to get my food to eat, then I won't eat.

I don't think she'll get mad, though. She'll get huffy like she is already, but she'll get over it. So far, when she has lucid moments of sanity, she apologizes when she's been crabby and frankly I don't blame her. Shit sucks, and she's almost due. But that doesn't mean I can't get annoyed at stupid shit, either lol.

MY JUICE DOESN'T GO THERE, BITCH! OH NO YOU DIDN'T!

I have work later. I have to take a shower soon and I'm hoping roommates laundry is dry by the time I need my stuff to be in the dryer. However, they think putting in ten pounds of laundry in a home dryer is ok, so I have a feeling I'm going to have to pile their half wet shit on the washer while I dry my meager amount of clothing, and then deposit their clothes back into the dryer again. lol Fuck, they're so dumb sometimes. I need to talk about other news now.

So yeah, I work later. Work finally gave me more than 4 hours. I only got 13 but I nearly fainted to see I got that much. I thought the day would never come. I hate the fucking assist manager who does the scheduling...
You know I need to talk about something more positive *puts on The Doors again* ah that's better. I forgot to drown out the weird, bad, pensive piano music. It was putting me in a bad mood lol.

So last night was good. When I drove to my place, the night seemed strangely open ended. Like I was about to be taking off on a road trip to no where but it would always end where I had a friend. It was a great feeling to fall asleep to. I might have found an instrumentalist too! But he lives in HI. So it'll be one of those "ok, record w/e on the guitar for me and I'll make something up to it, yeah?" kind of thing. I might have to acquire some rudimentary music programs.

Well it's getting nigh shower time. I should not dilly dally much more.

musical representations of my moods

Sexy and Sinful



Pensive



Mellow



Morose and loving it



Morose and hating it



ENERGETIC AND CRAZY HAPPY 8D



When I am fucked up on _____.

discipline

I rack disciprine ^.^'

I feel like I had a lot more discipline when I was younger. Well...there were definitely things I slacked on that I don't anymore, but when it comes to pushing myself, I feel like I am dishonoring my past self's ambition and drive. I need more of this stalwart-ness in all aspects of my life at the present moment, but especially in the direction of weight loss.

So I've been mediating on what would be the best way to keep me focused on maybe actually getting somewhere with weight loss, and I think minigoals might be the best thing. And when I say minigoals, I mean minigoals. Like "wake up early enough to eat something substantial for breakfast" or "go to bed early enough to get at least six hours of sleep." Those don't really have anything to do with fitness, but I'm more than certain they're major players in the apparent lack of energy I experience every day. As for weight and exercise goals, just keep it super low like "lose half a pound this week." It sounds dumb lol but I have a bad habit of setting lofty goals like a mother fucker. I mean essentially I think everyone has that top rung as their ultimate goal, but for me I feel like I tend to see nothing but where I am and that top rung. I forget I can't just reach out and take it without reaching for all the other rungs between it and myself. Thus I am easily made to think it's impossible and get discouraged. So I'm thinking...simple. "Do five crunches today" "Dance to something with a good beat today" just to get myself started since really all I'm doing is hanging out where I am on the ladder and forlornly looking up at my seemingly impossible though very reachable goals.

It's 11:47pm. I have to wake up at 5:00am and be out of here by 6:30am to go to traffic court. Better get started on sleeping! xD

phone post: shark week.

Let me just say that for a long while, shark week hasn't exactly been a regularly scheduled thing for me. I use to go something like 6 months w/o sometimes, and in enjoying the benefit of a whacked schedule I would and did often forget what pms'ing was like. This forgetting, and not always knowing when shark week would come, has caused me considerable grief.

Imagine, if you will, that you feel good one day and then the next, you are PISSED by everything, thrown into fits of brooding, and you don't have the reassurance of thinking "oh man, it's almost shark week" to offer an explanation for your sudden mental afflictions. YOU'D THINK YOU WERE GOING FUCKING NUTS, and I do almost every time it happens now. Then the other physical signs come and a wave of relief literally washes over me. My disposition, though not always 100% remedied, is made significantly much sunnier and most importantly I NO LONGER THINK I'VE DEVELOPED A SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS.

It would be nice to get back to some kind of biological tv guide consistency in my shark week schedule, but with no medical insurance, and not enough money to handle any kind of doctors bills, I'm just going to have to remain at the whim of my sporatic unsure moments and hold out for the painful relief to come.

excuses

I make excuses a lot. For everything. I disguise them as vague explanations but they're really just excuses. What am I making excuses for? I thought it over today and I've come to the conclusion that I make excuses to hide the fact that I don't actually like life. It's like when someone says "I love my parents, but I don't like them" well, it's basically the same thing, I think. I love life, I love all aspects about it and I think it's great, but when it comes down to it I don't actually care all that much for it. And that attitude permeates all other attitudes I have about the little details of life. I ape concern for my health, responsibility towards work and school, etc... but do I actually care about these things? The answer is no, and it's been no for a very long time. I gave up on life a long time ago, and it's getting harder and harder to fake it.

I have a nightmare that I'm on that path that leads to something happening to me health wise that jumps starts me into liking life again b/c it's going to end soon. Or something happens to a loved one and the shock sends me back to living for the moment, etc. And I think, ultimately, fear is what keeps me alive. Not a fear of dying but a fear of wasted time. That I spent too many days brooding and sleeping it off.

And yet in the midst of all of this I can't help but feel like a complete contradiction b/c there are times when the world is beautiful, I feel great, and I've not got a pair of moody pants on. I start to say "fuck brooding! Fuck sleeping all day!" and I'm back out there doing my thing and being made of sunshine and unicorn poo. But at the first sign of troubles or stress I quickly get back down to this weird, defunct place where I can't take a joke and I shy away from the light.

This constant up and down is getting exhausting. I just wish I could be one way and not both so frequently.

I almost slept today away.

I do that way too often these days. I think it's my security curtain:


It makes the light in my room stay pretty dark through out the entire day, and only gets actual sunlight in the room for a sliver of time early in the morning (if it was open all the way). I think it's time I put real curtains up...

I also think a sincere revulsion to not wanting to get up out of bed due to the fact that I sleep on this is a major problem:

That's an air mattress (in a tent...my room is pretty big and I utilized by 8x10x8 ft tent as a way to make a private space within my room, leaving the rest for entertaining etc...but that' irrelevant). Although I'm no sloth, I find it super hard to sleep for only 4 hours and then try to get my sorry ass UP off the ground and out of bed. You forget how much more conducive it is to actually getting up out of a regular bed, since all you have to do is roll over and put your feet down, when you're sleeping less than a foot from the floor. The effort involved is one that is both repulsive and presumably impossible when the alarm goes off, beckoning you to be as piercingly chipper as it sounds the hour.

My solution for this:


New bed. Now for the hard part...cleaning my tent out and taking it down:


edit. I AM VICTORIOUS!!!!

harvey

Hey there. Your bones are lovely. They make the dusk cry for a better shade of fog. I bet it takes you hours to get that color going before you take to the fret. Do you dig as deeply as I imagine or do you stay where the sun still feels warm? I bet it takes you only a few minutes before you can let that color be worn.

Hey there. Your eyes are dark and they make the night cry for a better shade of light. I bet it takes you hours to get that color going before you take to the night. Do you fly as high as I imagine or do you stay where the sounds of the city can still be heard? I bet it takes you only a few heart beats before you let yourself go higher than any bird.

Hey there, I think I've seen you around before. You make everyone always want to open up the door. It's not a question of want it's just an automatic urge. Compulsory knowledge hidden in the synapses, muscles, and nerves. And although they never think twice, they certainly will once you get through the door and you fly off the hilt. B/c if there's one thing you'll always be it's pleasant with a dash of s m a r t's.

So it was nice to meet you, and I hope I see you again. Btw, did I introduce you to my my *6'3" friend?


*after all, we have to stick to the facts.

favorite song writers (part 1)

I do believe that most men live lives of quiet desperation. For despair, optimism is the only practical solution. Hope is practical. Because eliminate that and it's pretty scary. Hope at least gives you the option of living.
- Harry Nilsson

In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day."
- Tom Waits

I'm just a one man band
Nobody knows or understands
Is there anybody out there wanna lend a hand
To my one man band
- Leo Sayer

SHE'S FIERCE!

I'm not certain what's going on in this picture and congruently, I'm not certain what's going on in my life either.

I sometimes wish I could always be as fierce as this Wonder Woman. Being so devoted to your own definition of freeakdom is never easy, and I'm always rendered back to being a little kid when I'm hit with the all to annoying reality that I'm different. I may be 25, but I still get a little flabbergasted when I meet true and actual opposition too my desire to be...me. I don't cry about it as much as I did when I was little a kid, or get quite as bent out of shape over it when I was an adolescent, but knowing someone refuses to get me for no reason other than an out right refusal to show me the same respect that I show them in accepting the way they are; it's like hearing someone be sincerely racist. I know it still exists but I've traveled so long in circles who treat people as individuals and not by preconceptions it still catches me off guard. And then the idea that I should, as a measure of remaining worldly, be hip to such bullshit for the sake of being better prepared...I'll stop there. I'm digressing, and of that I'm certain.

I forget I have to be fierce. I forget I have to elbow my way through the crowd when, after all, I am technically the one making it a point to go against the flow of traffic. I forget, when I get caught up in wondering if someone's watching and waiting for me to make a fool of myself, how invigorating it is to maneuver my way through opposition as if I were walking through the rain drops without getting wet. B/c damn it, if that isn't the fuck all greatest feeling ever.

I've had to relearn this lesson many times in my life, so far, even though I am still pretty young by many standards. Each time I find myself made of coal, I phoenix-out and find the same thing every time: my heart was always and never was anything other than a diamond. And it cuts through the shroud of doubt and I'm refracting light with the best of them.