...so why not, let's forgive EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME

It's always beens awhile since I wrote in this thing. Every time, it's beens awhile. 

I had the best time ever in Nashville. It was absolutely wonderful and was a greater blessing than I could have thought possible. Then I came back up here, to where I am this very moment, in Michigan at my parent's house. My mother's day present was me. Selfish, I know, yet appreciated (but why?) very much. Tomorrow, early, earlier than I believe exists, in fact, I'll be leaving to go to L'Abri in Mass. where my sister so eloquently dwells for the summer. (Whether or not you can, indeed, 'dwell eloquently' is still up for debate. But at this point in the discussion, it stands). I'll be there a whole 10 days. I thought that maybe 8 months was my semi-nomadic time limit for staying in one place (Cleona, anyone? w00t woot! no? yeah ok, nevermind.), But apparently, now I have trouble staying anywhere more than 2 weeks. Iownevncurr. Word.  mewithoutYou's new album weirded me out and then took over my soul. Go buy it.  After L'Abri, I don't know what I'm doing.  Maybe I'll come visit you. (yes, of course you, silly. it's meant directly AT you, everyone.)  It's more likely than you think.

be.

cause.

you're.

everyone else, you're everyone else, you're everyone else, you're everyone else, you're everyone else amen.

Designer Skyline/ Rainbow Veins

This week has been a week of changes. And it's only Wednesday/Thursday, depending on how picky you are about that sort of thing.  

The band is falling apart, and that is surprisingly very okay with me. 

I quit my job tonight. Tomorrow is my last day. 

Despite the immediate and annoying question of "what the heck am I going to do for money, now?" Now, I feel very strangely calm, collected and ready for whatever the next adventure in my life is.  Changes come. Welcome.

I'm probably moving back to Michigan, the very state I foreswore to leave forever some 4 years ago... Never make promises, I guess.

I am hopefully going to become the vocalist for a very promising band from Detroit whom shall remain nameless (until it is official, for either good or bad). I'm excited at this possibility. It's not what I've been doing, and I think it could be extremely refreshing.

I have this strange new zest for life that I think is related to my addiction to change and a nomadic lifestyle as well as the fact that,

I am allowing my heart to feel warm again.

Now go listen to Owl City. The boy is a genius of the finest variety. 

Laughter

Is the best medicine. I've been feeling kindof stressed the last few days. I saw this picture and couldn't stop laughing. It's amazing how laughter shakes weights off of you you didn't know you were carrying. I hope it at least makes you smile :)

see more dog and puppy pictures

I'm Tired of Whining

It really does get you nowhere, and I'm pretty sure it actually decreases the chances that you'll do anything about whatever it is that you happen to be whining about.  Sadly, I'm not talking about someone at work (that would be whining, too). I'm talking about me. 

I complain too much. I am ungrateful too much. I take things for granted way too much. 

And I don't want to anymore.

It's time to be thankful each and everyday. It's time to realize that I am blessed beyond belief: That I am beloved, that I am lucky to be the child of a G-D who is 'especially fond of me' and whose love I am incapable of comprehending. 

I just finished reading 'The Shack". My dad is teaching a sunday school class on it back at our church in Michigan, and he and my mom have been bugging me t

o read it for about a month now, so when he handed me a free copy for my own while I was

 home for Easter weekend, I finally caved in. I'm very glad I did. It took a little while to get in to, but it has been a long time since I have read a more refreshing view of G-D and our relationship with Him and each other. It really hit me in a way that a book hasn't in awhile. I would even say I was blessed to have read it. I highly recommend it. Allow it to make you a lover again. 

I just want to be a lover. 

I really want to be a part of a community again. Of lovers of course. 

I miss all of you.

 

Frustration, Determination, Inspiration, Motivation, etc

Hey Everyone,

   I realized I've been on kind of a hiatus from blogging the last couple months.  I apologize.  I guess I've just been busy with a lot of different other distractions and never felt like taking the time to write out my thoughts.

 A Lot has happened since my last update- here's a quick recap...

With Walking Trees:

Found a bassist, a lead, and a rhythm guitarist for the lineup!  ...Still looking for drums.

Finished recording our five song debut EP titled 'Like a Feather, Like a Fox'. (You can check it out here.)

Album artwork is almost finished for the album and it is 'in process' to be on iTunes, Amazonmp3 and many other digital distributors!

Other: 

Still working at Beni's pizza and living in Cleona, PA.

My parents came to visit last week and it was good to see them. My mom cooked lots of wonderful food.

Although they are 'supportive' of my musical pursuits, I can tell that they have a largeamount of doubt about them, especially due to my 'genre of choice'.

I bought a rat.  Her name is Quin, and she's awesome.

So, things are coming along, but much too slowly for my liking. As usual. My bassist has been gone for the past couple weeks, as well as my lead guitarist which has been exceptionally frustrating. My rhythm guitarist is in Michigan until late May and we don't have a drummer. I spend a lot of my time sitting around wishing I was able to be practicing and writing new material with the other guys, auditioning drummers etc but it just hasn't been coming together as I wish it would.  

I want so badly to be giving this my everything, and it's very frustrating to not be able to... yet. I often lose hope in the whole thing, and for brief moments think that I should go back to college or just give up music all together.  Then I am inspired by something to keep going, and this reinforces my motivation.  I love making music. I love performing it.  I love traveling. This is my dream and I am not giving it up.  I seriously cannot wait to be dirty and hungry and cramped in a van with a bunch of sweaty dudes driving all over the country to play shows to people that have probably never heard of us. 

It's kind of like finally having all the ingredients to a delicious cake, but knowing that you still have to mix it and then wait for it to cook... and in this case that process is going to take WAY TOO LONG.  I want to have my cake and eat it too. Right now. ;) Lord give me patience.

.

I feel very alone right now.

If I could tame a wild animal

Hawk posing by Scot Campbell (Zevotron)

When we acquired Jedidiah, (that's our new Red Tailed Hawk's name), life went from pretty good to awesome like whoa. We don't have to use UPS anymore as he carries all our mail and packages for us. He also rips the eyes out of anyone that even thinks of doing us harm. Our yard is now fully pest free, as he preys on whatever roams there. He's a great listener, and is getting me way more women than I ever could have dreamed. Just walk up to any woman at a bar, show her the slashes on your arms and say, "Man, Jedidiah our Red Tailed Hawk was really playing rough today. Almost had to go to the hospital if it wasn't for our Pheonix, Ezekiel, who was kind enough to shed some tears on me and fully restore my mangled limbs." She'll be all up ons. Trust me. Works. every. time.

When I realized I was a grown-up

Half of the time I'm not sure I ever want to get there. The other half of the time I am relatively saddened that I can never go back to before I was. I think it was when I realized that I had actually dropped out of college of my own doing and that everything else about to occur in my life was now up to me.

Why my hip-hop posse would include Siggy

Siggy
He's got those crazy-mad-white-boy skillllllllzzzz. And knows how to rock dat CMC Hoodie.

Children Dressing In Our Parents' Clothes

It's been a few days.  I have succeeded in being extremely good at distracting myself from doing anything connected with my future by being completely absorbed in watching all 4 seasons of The Office when not working my extremely boring and increasingly irritating job.  I'll have the first 10 episodes of the 5th in about 2 hours. What the heck am I doing. 

I'm beginning to have trouble sleeping again, which is partly why I have been able to watch so much screen lately. If I remember correctly, this is almost the exact same thing that happened near the end of my stay in California, when I watched all 4 seasons of LOST in less than a week, which was as impressive as it was extremely lame. (My actions, not the show). Based on the evidence so far, a lack of sleep and addiction to a TV show is either a sign that I should be moving on soon, or is a result of the fact that I have 'moving on soon' on the mind. Either way, in this case both are probably true. 

I am losing my comfort with being in this place.  For awhile I was extremely comfortable being here, working the job that I still have, frequenting the bar that I used to frequent and living in this town. Now I have become too comfortable, and this makes me quite uncomfortable, if that makes any sense.  When I've been in a place for too long I begin to become numb and apathetic about ever moving on or changing; and this worries me. In fact, it worries me, albeit subconsciously, to the point where I begin to lose large amounts of sleep over the issue, as is the current scenario.  At least this time I have a general idea of where I want to go, and it is nowhere near as far away from my current geographic location as last time.

I would quit my job and move to Lancaster tomorrow if money were not the stupid thing that it is. I just can't afford it until I have a roommate AND a job already lined up to go into. Not too mention the recording that is costing me a much larger percentage of my savings than I'm comfortable with. 

 'Such is the life of an artist'. I would love to feel justified saying that, but as I don't even have a single band member besides myself, and haven't played a show since the Vineyard I feel it would be a tad pretentious. Not to mention that my musical abilities are self-rated very far below the level of 'artist', and as selfish as it is, that's who I'm doing it for anyway: Me. Hopefully the desire was placed in me by G-d and will lead to something worthy of glorifying Him, because I'm spending an awful lot of time and energy on pursuing my 'dreams' in the assumption that it was. 

LORD have mercy.

The Office and... stuff.

I've been watching, admittedly, far too much of 'The Office' recently.  Partly, I think this is because my subconscious knows I have some really difficult decisions to deal with and that I'm not ready to yet.  So I intentionally do things to keep my mind completely off of... my mind.  I went and picked up my pills from lancaster today.  Hopefully my emotional state will be back to normal in a couple of days.  It's one of the most frustrating things in the world to have to take a pill to keep your hormone levels in the correct balance so that you don't want- to not want -anything all the time. (That was supposed to describe a general lack of motivation or desire). 

Anyway, I've been 'learning' things that I wasn't expecting to from The Office, mainly about love, I guess. I realize that its a TV show and that Hollywood is one of the greatest culprits in distorting our culture's view on that subject and what it means, but putting that aside, I feel that I still have been learning something.  But I'm not quite sure what it is yet. I think part of it is about patience, and longing, and hurt, and the passage of time, and the fact that I really wish I had a girl in my life, and how just when you think you are over something, you will realize that it is still there in the back of your mind... among other things.  

I tend to blog much more when I'm depressed.  I'm terribly depressed right now.  Nothing is going anywhere fast and I am extremely impatient. I need to quit my job, it's bringing me down. I need to get out of this small town, it's bringing me down. I need to meet some people and make some more friends. The lack of them is bringing me down.  I want some band members. Just a couple. PLEASE?  All I want to do is record a record and go on tour and keep doing it forever and ever and ever while I get paid to, is that to much to ask? Yes, probably it's biting off way more piece of pie than I was ever supposed to have.  Perhaps my mouth wasn't made that big. And if it wasn't would You please tell me NOW BECAUSE WAITING IS FUCKING KILLING ME AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MEASUREMENTS.

Side Note:

Ranting in a blog  barely anyone reads is probably one of the most attractive things a young 22 year old man can do. It shows his maturity level to be so beyond that of his peers that it makes even Mahatma Gandhi's look microscopic in comparison. In fact, if one wishes for countless females to fall immediately in love with him, all he need do is to post said rant on a blog of his choosing, generally dealing with themes of depression, angst, disillusionment and hopelessness, along with his phone number and AIM screen name online. Then he should post the URL link to this blog in as many public places online as could possibly be thought of, but in case of a time constraint, Facebook and Myspace will do. Once these two steps have been completed, all said young man must do is sit back and wait for his phone to ring off the hook.*

* Please note that this is a turn of phrase and in no sense literal, as most young females no longer use phones with actual lines and receivers and will probably just send you a text, facebook message, or IM in the event that they truly wish to get in contact with you.  If one of these females does try contacting you and realizes that you have a landline and a physical answering machine, you might as well castrate yourself because you will never find a mate willing to bear your children. If this went too far, so be it.

If you read all of this, I'm very sorry. 

Citolopram

On Tuesday, I left my anti-depressant medication in the bathroom of my friend Jon's house who lives 45 minutes away.  It generally takes about 4 or 5 days (in my experience) for your body to realize that it isn't getting the pills anymore and so you don't feel any different until then.  Today is Saturday. 

Today. Sucked.