Attn Everyone: Things Actually Kind of Panned Out

Shit, well when I get distracted, I really get distracted.

I moved to Nashville. In December of last year. Man, I can't believe it's been almost a year already. A year ago I was throwing things away, dropping clothes off at Goodwill. Planning on moving my entire life. And now it's moved. My mail still gets forwarded (I just got a piece of mail from my eye doctor in NJ a couple weeks ago. Funny.), but none of my stuff is there anymore. Except the stuff I had to leave behind because it wouldn't fit in my car. Just the other day I re-mourned a Coldplay poster I had to throw away and a surge protector I accidentally forgot. But it's done, and it's totally great.

I was lucky when I moved here that I was able to keep my job and just work remotely, but I realized quickly that I cannot work from home. Not alone. Since I have no pets or kids, my life was working and the gym, pretty much. Exhausting. Luckily for me, I finally got a call in January for a job I had applied to in November (and thus forgot I even applied for it in the first place!). So now I'm in an office again, with people, and it's pretty great. I still miss the people from my old office in NJ but life's not so bad, you know?

Things are going pretty well all around. I've even been able to really turn my attention toward writing again. Pretty big news: I actually finished the first draft of a novel I've been writing since I was in high school. I started writing it, and left it abandoned for YEARS while I worked on other things that never panned out. But I finished. It actually has an ending, and I'm working my way through a second draft. Exciting times, I tell ya!

Since this is my oldest blogging home, I may return from time to time to muse on various things. I know I say that a lot, but that's all I have to offer: from time to time. Now, I should probably go work on chapter 4. Or maybe I'll sit on the couch a bit then watch some hockey. Go Preds!

Untitled

Well, holy crap, it's been two months already. Man, time really flies when you're agonizing over your next ginormous life decision. I alluded to this very decision a couple of posts ago when I mentioned saving my money for my next big project. This is it.

I'm moving.

I'm finally getting out of this place. How long have I been threatening to do it? A really long time. No, I haven't decided to pick up everything and move to Sweden or Germany. Nor did I get any glowing reviews of Austin that made me decide to U-haul my ass out that way. But I did fall in love with a new city, a city that I had maybe briefly considered, but never really thought I would consider as a new destination.

I'm moving to Tennesse, you guys. I'm moving my happy ass to Nashville.

I don't know why I never really considered the city seriously before my friends convinced me to go down there this past May. I mean, yeah, I had thought of it hypothetically, the way I thought of Austin hypothetically, but I didn't know anything about Nashville except country music. Well, let me tell you: there is SO much more to that great southern city than the CMAs (though those DO snarl traffic and annoy locals every year -- but, you know, also boost the economy, and do good for the city too, I'm sure). It's not a major sports market, not like the one that I currently live in, and care nothing for. But there are major league teams. There are a lot of young people (which was always my fear if I had to move to Florida to live with family). Colleges (and good ones, too) abound if I ever decided on that advanced degree. There's land, there are trees, there is space. There are shopping malls too, and chain restaurants. God, there are even hipsters if I ever get a nostalgic craving...

(Unfinished post written November 2012 and found October 2013.)

Waiting for 'Babel'

The new Mumford & Sons album, Babel, is due out on Monday, Sept. 24th, and I am beyond excited. This really shouldn't come as any sort of surprise to anyone. But I don't know if you really get it.

I. am. BEYOND. excited.

I talked about them on here before, and how they make me feel ALL the feelings. They are my soulband (soulmate, soulband... see what I did there?). There have been bands throughout the years whom I have referred to as my favorite band, whom I have loved, but nothing I ever felt for those bands can come close to the things that go through my brain, my heart, and my soul when I listen to Mumford & Sons. Perhaps that sounds cheesy and cliche, but I can't even imagine what my life would be like if it hadn't been for four boys from London deciding to form a band. 

And I know that sounds melodramatic. But it is what it is.

We all have that that one band that we use to get through everything. Back in the summer of 2001, that band was Live. Being 15 sucks, you know? I don't think I need to elaborate on the reasons for my need for music then. In the summer of 2006, Josh Rouse reminded me what was so great and so beautiful about being alive. A year and a half later, the only thing that could get me through the heartrending agony of losing my dad was Bain Mattox. I had the opportunity in early 2008 to thank Bain, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, even though the words were on my tongue after a live show I had commissioned for my college. It was too soon, and I knew I would break. I just couldn't. I regret that sometimes. With almighty Facebook, I suppose I could still tell him, but...

Same Old Song and Dance

Earlier this year, I had the brilliant idea that I needed to start my own website. Sell my own brand, you know? I needed a place where I could put all my work to showcase it to the world. A sort of online portfolio.

I think that was the original purpose of buying that damn domain, and setting up the website.

But when it came down to it, I fell SO short content-wise. I couldn't think of anything to write about. This wasn't really a personal blog, after all. Was it? No, it was. Sort of. I wrote a total of 8 posts, and 2 of them were personal. The other 6 were about television. Because once I exhausted myself on those 2 personal posts, I could do no more. And after four months, I finally realized why. Having the domain intimidated me. I felt like I had to perform for the whole of the internet. My last name was in the domain, so it was a showcase of who I was and what I could do. But I quickly realized that I didn't have enough clips to really justify the site, and I didn't really have many plans to add more. Sure I've written things on other sites, but other people whose sites I envied had SO many more. They wrote for big name sites too. I just don't have that clout. I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer for my blogging experience to warrant my own web presence.

But the problem of wanting to blog still remained.

It's a Cycle

I'm getting restless again. I can feel it. Like, I need to move, to travel, to go somewhere I've never seen before, but the mere thought of doing it is exhausting. I'm not totally sure what to do anymore.

I have decided something recently, though. I am done with the Northeast. For so many years, I thought that New York was it for me, you know? This was the place to be, the place I had to be in order to even survive. I don't even know why. I have delusions of grandeur I suppose. Or maybe it comes from my family, or society, or whatever the hell else it could come from. But I realized something, and I think this is big: I don't need to be here anymore. Yes, I would miss being so close to so many things, especially when, whether against better judgment or not, I have become so attached to easily accessible entertainment. The possibility of seeing a celebrity out on the street. Going into the city on a whim to grab bagfuls of Swedish candy, or to see a concert that I wouldn't necessarily seek out, but hey, it's here, it's close, what the hell? It's all going to be so hard to leave.

Oddly, the people I've met here, and the connections I've made... I don't think those would be that hard to leave. I have great friends here. There are people here who know my secrets, who know what makes me cry and what makes me laugh and what kind of shit I live for. But I could leave. Because I know they'll still be here, and there is always Facebook. Beautiful, flawed, annoying, omnipresent Facebook. I suppose then, this goes for people I know everywhere. Maybe what I need to do is go somewhere where I don't know anyone, and just start anew.*

*God, I feel like I'm saying the same things that I've said so many times already here. If you read my blog, I probably just sound like a crazy person, complaining about the same shit day after day (or month after random month, as the case may be for me).

I need something new and exciting. I need some new opportunity. I need.

I've recently become obsessed with the idea of Austin, TX. I don't know what it is. I say I've become obsessed with the idea Austin because I have never been there, and I know virtually nothing about it. It's hipstery, but it's not NYC. It's got music and art and movie houses and lots of awesome things that I know I love. It's a "young" city. It's a liberal city in a conservative state. I know these things, and the idea sounds nice. I need to go visit. I need to scrape together my money, and just go, and see what it's like. But I know I won't do that. Because I never do anything I mean to do.

My cousin is going there for SXSW. I'm sending him on a recon mission.

The Color of Hunger

I came up with that title this morning while I laid awake in bed around 2 or 3 a.m., willing myself to go back to sleep. I don't know what was wrong with me, but I'm pretty sure I only slept about 2 hours the entire night. The rest of the night was spent in a sort of... drifting, floating sort of way. The whole time, my brain didn't stop thinking about something. At one point I think I had a song stuck in my head, but it was nothing that I could identify. Sort of like the soundtrack at a grocery store. You know it's there, but rarely ever do you think about what's playing. So I'm lying in there in a sort of suspended lucidity and I am hungry as shit. I knew I was hungry when I went to bed around midnight, and I was still hungry an hour later when I finally decided to stop reading and actually go to bed. My theory was that it would be okay, that I could go to bed hungry, and I would just worry about it in the morning when I would be starving.

Easier said than done, I guess. Because as I lay there, I got a really, really fierce hunger for a first world resident, as I was sort of drifting around in my half-consciousness. And I started getting the overwhelming sensation of yellow. The color of my hunger was yellow yellow yellow. And not really like a sunshine yellow. It was darker, more shadowy. Not like a marigold, but maybe more like pollen. The yellow was just there the entire time my stomach struggled to growl. Once the sensation was gone, so was the impression of the color.

It was just really, really weird. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that before. I wonder if it was just the synapses in my brain firing randomly. Or maybe trying to get my attention to take care of the situation. Or maybe in my half-sleep, half-way insomnia state, my senses actually fused? I don't remember if my eyes were open or closed, so I don't know if I actually saw the yellow. But it was there. Is yellow a common color associated with hunger? It makes me wonder what colors my other emotions are.

Alright. I need some toast.

I'm going to need a walker if I keep this up.

I used my last two vacation days of the year for today and tomorrow. That means I traded 8+ hours a day sitting at a computer in an uncomfortable chair, dealing with diva-y, demanding reps, customers and freelancers for as many hours a day as I want spent sitting/laying on a worn out Ikea futon (in Ikea's defense, the mattress is from an old Walmart futon I used to own. It's killer. And I don't mean that in a good way) until my hips start to ache like I'm an elderly old woman, watching sappy, sad, supposedly heartwarming movies on TV, like Soul Surfer, which totally made me cry. It's awful. But it beats sitting at that damn desk. But torture, I tell you. For real.

For starters, I don't own a coffee machine. Well, technically, I own one. It's a little 2-serving contraption that I won at an office birthday party about three years ago. I have never taken it out of the box. Nor do I own any coffee grounds or filters or anything like that. I only recently invested in sugar, and that was only because I had a nasty cold and was forced to drink tea, but I'll be damned if I had to drink it without sugar. Or schnapps. Actually I'm pretty sure the schnapps cured the cold. But I digress. So, I don't own a coffee maker, which means that by the time 6pm rolled around, I had one of the worst caffeine headaches ever. I am so addicted to caffeine, that shit doesn't even keep me awake anymore. It's more like it keeps me a functioning member of society. Like the oil can to the Tin Man. So, I decided that I had to go to 7-Eleven, mostly because I have a reusable cup and thus get a discount. Otherwise, I'd totally have gone to Quick Chek, which, in my eyes, is a better establishment.

So I go in there, and get my French Vanilla coffee, and debate looking for some Billy's Pan Pizzas to eat with my coffee in my Ikea-furnished apartment and pretend I have a dragon tattoo, but in the end just opt for coffee. I get up to the register and it's $1.34. I fish out what I thought was $1.35 to give to the dude, so you can understand my consternation when he asks if I have four pennies, like it would be easier for me to fish out four cents than it would be for him to give me one back. Turns out, I only give him $1.30. And when I apologize to him, it comes out in a voice that I do not recognize at all. I don't know if it sounded weird to him too, or if he was merely reacting to the puzzled look on my face as I listened to a strange voice coming out of my own mouth. It was just an awkward situation, so I took my coffee and left. As I sat in my car waiting for it to warm up a little before I try to force it up the road back to my house, the voice echoed in my head. I can't even begin to describe it. It wasn't Danny Torrence-y, which is surprising given that the cashier was the first person I'd spoken to all day. But I had already been awake for about 8 hours, so the froggy voice had gone away. No, the voice was deeper and slightly detached from my body. I heard it like it wasn't actually coming out of my body, though it was saying the words that my brain was telling it to. It was a very strange, almost out-of-body type of experience. That ever happen to you? I can't quite shake it. The feeling. The odd, displaced feeling.

The coffee was really good though.