Chapter 72: The Climb

Today was a pretty damn good day, as evidenced by the fact that I am writing the day’s blog at 6:12am on the following day. This surely is not a good thing for my sleep patterns for the rest of the week, but I think I can keep it under control. All I have to do is not get anywhere near enough sleep tonight/this morning so I will be extra exhausted by the time I go to bed tomorrow night/tonight. That shouldn’t be too difficult, honestly, although it seems like every time I say I am going to do this I wind up sleeping until late in the afternoon. Not this time, though. I am going to make sure I get to bed at a decent time. My sleep patterns have been extremely out of whack recently, and I am determined to make sure that this changes this week. I have just proven to myself so many times before that the week at work goes much better for me when I am sleeping properly.

I woke up today around noon. My Mom went in to work to do some overtime and wasn’t off until 1pm. She had mentioned last night that she wanted to go out to brunch today, so I got up and intended to get dressed and be ready by the time she got home. That didn’t quite work out, but I did wind up getting dressed and ready eventually. We hopped in the car and wound up going to this really interesting “Country Buffet” style place in Bradenton. I have mentioned before how I am not entirely comfortable in those types of places. This place was much better than most of the ones we’ve tried before, though. It was considerably bigger and had a more sterile, professional atmosphere. Plus, the food was really good. After lunch, we decided to go drive for a while, as we often do. The whole time we were driving, we were listening to a new playlist I am working on. I used to do this thing frequently where I would create “playlists of my life,” which were basically songs that capture that moment in my life. They would normally be a selection of 20-25 songs that really kind of capture where I am in life at the time. It’s a pretty cool thing, I think. I enjoy it, anyway. These playlists normally begin with a group of around 100 songs or so that I select from my iPod and then slowly whittle down to 20-25. This playlist currently has the 100 or so songs, but hasn’t been whittled down yet. It was pretty interesting listening to the playlist, though, and kind of discovering a recurring theme that I didn’t necessarily realize was there while selecting the songs. Songs like “In The Rough” by Anna Nalick, “Pick U Up” by Adam Lambert, “That’s The Way It Is” by Celine Dion, “Wonderful” by Chantal Kreviazuk, etc., all kind of share the themes of loneliness and longing for love. I’ve got to say, now that the whole California issue is settled for the moment, I have been feeling a lot more open to the whole idea of it. In some ways, I think it would be really nice to have somebody around for companionship and such. At the same time, though, I still really feel like that is not somewhere I should be putting my focus. That is not what is important in my life right now. Still, I can’t deny that it can be kind of lonely sometimes.

One song, in particular, that really stood out to me was “How Do You Love Someone” by Ashley Tisdale. I know, one of the stars of “High School Musical” isn’t exactly going to be the most thought-provoking artist in the world, but this particular song is really impressive. “How Do You Love Someone” is basically a song about growing up with terrible examples of love and relationships, and finding yourself kind of lost on the idea of what love really is and how to actually do it. It is an excellent question, and one that I can certainly relate to: How DO you love someone? I guess I’ll figure it out when I get there. It’s a big, scary concept, though. Another song, in the same vein as that one, that is included on the playlist is “The Only Exception” by Paramore. This song takes a much softer approach to the same concept, stating “When I was younger I saw my Daddy cry and curse at the wind. He broke his own heart and I watched as he tried to reassemble it. My Mama swore that she would never let herself forget, and that was the day that I promised I’d never sing of love, it does not exist, but you are the only exception.” I love that whole concept. I don’t really feel like I have seen any great evidence of the existence of love, at least that really special, romantic form of love. I suppose I simply haven’t found my “only exception” yet. Do I believe I ever will? I’m sure it’ll happen eventually. I’m not in any huge rush to get it started, though. I still honestly believe that I’ve got much more important things to achieve before I can put any of my focus on that. I’ve got to keep my eyes on the prize in my sights currently. All the rest will have to come later.

After lunch and driving across the bridges on both Longboat and Siesta Keys, we decided to make a stop at Walgreens. I had wanted to go shopping for eye shadows for a while now, so I decided to take advantage of the trip to Walgreens. As it turned out, they were having a special sale on makeup items today. This sale included some really awesome Maybelline eye shadows that were buy one, get one 50% off. I grabbed a couple of those, one with various shades of pink and the other with grays, silvers and blacks. I also found this really cool Maybelline gel eyeliner, which is pretty amazing. It goes on very think and stays in place for hours, as I discovered this evening. Makeup is a lot of fun and a really cool way to experiment with self-expression. I’ve been toying around with various influences and trying some new things with it. It’s really something I am having a lot of fun with and, unlike a few years ago, not going overboard with or causing drama for myself with. When we got home from Walgreens, I spent a little time playing around with the makeup and getting ready for the evening, then spent a while cleaning up my bedroom and bathroom and such, in preparation for my friends coming over tonight.

Nate and Whitney showed up not too much later and we went out and got a pizza. I am not a huge fan of pizza, in general, but it wasn’t too bad. Plus, it was probably less expensive than it would’ve been to go out and buy stuff to make a decent dinner. We just kind of chilled at my house. My Mom was home and wanted to watch some football game this evening. Football on the TV, combined with a few other elements, kind of put me in a foul mood for the first part of the evening. I just have this tendency to feel like I am off to the side, or a secondary factor, and it puts me in a nasty mood. It’s so stupid, because I have this tendency to feel that way because I have this tendency to put myself a secondary figure. It’s kind of like I feel the need to do this in order to give myself something to be irritated about. As the night wore on, this whole feeling dissipated, as per usual. One thing I was kind of excited about what showing them some of my drawings that I have been working on recently. Aside from the few that I have mentioned here, I went out last weekend and bought myself an actual sketchbook and a really cool set of colored pencils, and have tried to kind of step up my game with the whole drawing thing. I think they’ve gotten considerably better, as well. I’ve been getting a lot of compliments on my drawings at work and such, which is always nice, although I don’t necessarily think people quite “get” the visuals that I am creating. Fortunately, Nate and Whitney seemed to. I have started this little series of drawings inspired by Lady Gaga’s “The Fame Monster” record, with a drawing representing each track on the album. So far, I have done drawings based on four of the eight tracks, “Speechless,” “Monster,” “Dance In The Dark,” and “Telephone.” I kind of explained the idea of wanting to create t-shirts or some sort of clothing from these drawings and Nate kind of briefly mentioned something about the website Threadless. I didn’t necessarily think much of it in the moment, but it stuck with me and I kind of looked into it later, after they left. Threadless is a website where people can submit their designs, then members of the community there vote on the designs. The ones that get the most votes or the best reviews or whatever then get printed and sold on the website. It’s a really cool site and something that I definitely want to look into further. Plus, if your design is selected, you get $2,000 for it. Plus, a $500 gift certificate to the site, $500 in cash anytime they do a reprint of your design and up to $22,500 if your design receives one of their annual awards. It’s a really cool site, and there is definitely some money to be made there. Combined with the desire I have been having for a while to turn these drawings into some form of fashion, this makes the whole concept very appealing to me and something that I fully intend to pursue further.

It was a really fun night and, more importantly, I got an opportunity to kind of discuss things further with Nate and Whitney about my reasoning for staying here in Florida and just generally why I haven’t been able to make as strong of a connection as one normally would. I also kind of made the silent promise to them, as well as to myself, that I will do everything in my power to not let that prevent me from being the friend to them that I know I can and really want to be. I just feel like my life is going in a different direction than I had thought up when planning on moving to California in May, and it is a direction that I am very excited about. I feel like it is going in a much more organic, proactive direction than I had planned previously. I still know for certain that the Universe is working in my favor, but I feel like now the Universe is working to show me how to create my life for myself instead of me just handing it over and letting it make things fall into place. How many times have I said that things are just falling into place perfectly and that I don’t need to worry about things because the Universe will take care of it all for me? While that is certainly an option that I, and everyone, has in life it kind of feels like it would be considerably less gratifying to take that route than to move forward in a life with the Universe as an aid and guide, but that is created by myself. It is just amazing how different these two concepts of my life, the one here and the one in California, look so different but lead to the same things. It is just further evidence, to me, that I know what is meant to happen with my life but that I can take the reins and really control how I make it happen. Those old sayings are true, about how life is less about the destination than it is about the journey. I am about to go all pop-music-geek on you, but it really reminds me of a song; one of my favorite songs of 2009. “There’s always going to be another mountain, I’m always going to want to make it move, It’s always going to be an uphill battle, Sometimes I’m going to have to lose, It’s not about how fast I get there, It’s not about what’s waiting on the other side, It’s the climb.” Who ever would have imagined that Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana would make such a profound statement about life? That is really kind of how I feel about my life right now. It’s all about the climb, and dammit, I intend to climb to the highest point possible! The only place I need to climb now, though, is into bed.