Chapter 74: I Have A Dream

Today was… today. There was good, there was bad and there was some in between stuff. Let’s start with the start of the day, which was some of the good. I woke up right when my alarm went off this morning, at 7:30am. I felt this really strange, unfamiliar feeling. I googled it and apparently this feel has many names, including refreshed and, my favorite, rested. Rested. Who fucking knew? It’s a really nice feeling and one I would like to try to have more often. I wonder if there is some sort of pill I can take to achieve that feeling? The pills I am already taking certainly haven’t provided that one before! In all seriousness, though, I woke up feeling pretty great. I got out of bed and did the whole morning routine bit, then had a cup of coffee and a couple cigarettes until around 8:10am, when my Mom was ready for the morning workout. The workout we did this morning is one that my Mom has been doing for a while when she doesn’t have the time to get to Curves or anything like that. It is a DVD called “Walk-a-dobics” hosted by John Abdo. I’ve got to say, John Abdo is an exceptionally annoying guy and he spends much of the workout making really lame, unfunny jokes. In spite of that, though, the workout is pretty good. It is fairly low-impact, although not quite what I expected. I kind of thought it was one of those super low-impact programs specifically for old people and that I wouldn’t really like it or get anything out of it, but I was completely wrong on both counts. I’m sure there are some older people out there who could pull it off, but I can’t imagine it. I was kind of sweating my ass off by the end of the thing. I actually liked it a lot and got a really good workout out of it. I did a whole mile, along with all the extra lunges and arm workouts involved in that mile. The best part of it, though, was the fact that it really made my Mom happy that I was doing this along with her. She really is a great inspiration to me. She is working hard to lose weight and has done an amazing job of it so far. She has also been extremely dedicated to the whole thing, and I could tell she was very happy and excited to be sharing it with me. The whole thing just made me feel really good, so much so that we are doing it again tomorrow morning.

When I got to work I was surprised to find that we were completely dead. We stayed that way the entire day, too. I took my first break at 11:40am and got back at 11:55am, and didn’t take another call until 1:45pm or so. That is basically two whole hours that I didn’t take a single call. It was THAT dead. The theory amongst most of my co-workers was that it was because most people thought we were closed due to the holiday today. I spent the first part of the morning trying to do some reading from the Florida Driver’s Handbook, but spent the bulk of that time just holding the book and being too distracted by talking to my co-workers and such to actually do any reading. I also worked on a couple more drawings in my “Fame Monster” series, and wound up completing pictures based on the songs “Alejandro” and “Bad Romance.” I only have two tracks from “The Fame Monster” left to do drawings from: “So Happy I Could Die” and “Teeth.” I really love the concept of my “Bad Romance” drawing but the execution was a bit of an issue. It is essentially a drawing looking through the rear window of a car, where a woman is being abducted by a menacing looking shadowy figure. The main focus of the picture, though, is the expression on the woman’s face. Her eyes are wide open and her mouth is in screaming position, but you can’t really tell whether she is screaming out of fear or excitement. It’s not a very good drawing, per se, but I love the concept of it and feel like it really kind of captures the feeling of “Bad Romance,” which is the point. I do kind of feel, though, like the last few drawings I have done haven’t been as good as the previous ones. I think I may be taking the whole thing too seriously or focusing too much on them being good, resulting in nothing being as good as it could be. I need to get back to drawing in the headspace of just doing it for fun, enjoyment and passing time.

I spent the last couple hours of work just shooting the shit with my team lead and a couple of my co-workers, reminiscing about old times when we first met and discussing different things from our childhood and such. I feel like I have spent a little too much energy trying to avoid bonding with my co-workers recently, since I was planning on moving, that I feel like I kind of missed out a little bit. While I still admit that some of the people I work with are probably not people I would make much of an effort to bond with, there are a good few who I really respect and enjoy getting to know. I think that is important to have in the workplace. While I will probably never form as close-knit a group of friends at the place that shall not be named for security purposes as I did at Borders, making friends with the people there isn’t going to hurt anything and makes the days pass much quicker and include a little more fun. I actually kind of enjoyed the day. When I first got there my great mood from the morning had kind of worn off, due to one of my favorite co-workers seeming pissed off at me for missing her birthday party over the weekend, but by the end of the day I was back in a good mood. I even got out in enough time for my Mom to drive me home on her last break, which is something I have to worry about every day. This is yet another reason getting a drivers license will be a really great thing for me. I even managed to get a decent amount of reading done on the Driver’s Handbook by the end of the day. Hopefully, I will get even more done tomorrow.

So, the morning was the good and work was the in-between. The bad came when I got home from work. I was just relaxing, watching today’s episode of “The View” and eating dinner, (Tuna Casserole like a mother fucker!) when I tried to text my friend Whitney to say “OMG I JUST REALIZED I WILL BE HERE TO SEE SEX & THE CITY 2 WITH YOU!!!” I typed out the whole text and hit send. My phone wouldn’t send it for some reason, though. I tried a few times. Then it gave me a little pop-up error message saying that I was out of storage space and needed to clear some up. I don’t know what I did exactly, but my phone started doing some really weird shit and wound up restoring itself, at least the phone portion of it, back to factory settings. It shut itself down and came back giving me all these messages like I was a new user, showing how to do different things with it and such. It was really bizarre. When it came back up, though, I found that it didn’t have any contacts in it. What happened after that was an awful mess. I became an awful mess and actually cried a little bit. Due to having a cell phone and being able to just click on people’s names to call them I didn’t have any of my contact numbers committed to memory. I dug up a few that I happened to know I had somewhere around here, like on my resume and such, and added those in. Then I sent out a Facebook blast to all the most important people asking for their numbers again. That wound up being kind of a good thing, though, as it put me back in contact with a couple of people who I hadn’t talked to in quite some time. In some ways, I think this was possibly the Universe’s way of telling me to purge some of the people in my life who I have maybe held on to unnecessarily. I think maybe the Universe was trying to send me a sign of the people who would be important to keep contact with and the ones who wouldn’t. In fact, there was a friend of mine who I had just been talking about at work today and saying how much I missed having around, and he wound up being one of the people who got in touch with me to give me his number again, and it turned out the number I had before wasn’t accurate anymore, anyway. I suppose this whole thing has it’s positives, as well. It’s not an entirely bad thing, no matter what my initial reaction to it may have been.

A little later this evening something really great happened, as well. I went to check my Gmail, much like any other day, and happened to find a response from Eleizer Rivera from Schumann Music Works. He said that he has recently moved to another location, still here in Sarasota, and would love to help out with keyboard lessons. He asked about the type of music I want to make and told me that with the lessons he gives at the studio he lets his students record their progress along the way. He also said that he works as a producer, as well as a composer, and said “we could even end up working on your production.” HOLY CRAP. That would be amazing. One of the main reasons I was attracted to the idea of taking lessons there was that by the time I was ready to actually record something I would have a pre-existing relationship with the studio and that line just confirmed exactly what I was hoping for. The whole thing just sounds pretty amazing. I wrote back to him immediately and talked more about the type of music I want to make; real classic, timeless songwriting with a modern pop/dance/R&B flare. Kind of like Billy Joel or Elton John meet Lady Gaga. Based on some of the work I have found of his, I think it could be a really good fit. I wrote him back kind of explaining all of that and saying that I would like to get started soon, like in February. We’ll see how he responds. The whole thing is really exciting to me, though. I feel like I am taking a major step towards achieving this dream I have had since I was a child. It really reminds me of one of my favorite songs by ABBA. “I have a dream, a song to sing, to help me through reality, and my destination makes it worth the while, pushing through the darkness, still another mile. I believe in angels, something good in everything I see. I believe in angels, when I know the time is right for me I’ll cross the stream. I have a dream.”

Speaking of having a dream, I can’t really write a blog today without acknowledging that it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The man was a marvel and the greatest figurehead in the civil rights movement. He made amazing strides in the fight for equality for African-Americans, and for all people. I will be forever grateful for the work that he did in his lifetime. I found myself wondering today what his take on the gay rights movement would have been. Based on his recorded words throughout his life, I am sure he would stand on our side. I wonder if there will ever be a figure like him for the gay rights movement. One can only hope. Either way, though, I am eternally grateful for the work that he did and will try to keep his sentiments at heart on more than just this day, but every day. It is also really great to be celebrating his birth this year, with an African-American president in office. That famous dream of his has really come true in many ways… but we must remember, there is still work to be done. He brought us a long way, but this country and this world, will never be complete until ALL men and women are treated as equal. Like Gwen Stefani and Andre 3000 sang, “We’ve got a long way to go.” Still, I thank God for men like him who have made such great strides in the right direction.