Chapter 75: No Boundaries

After I finished writing the blog last night I wound up on the phone with Whitney, instead of getting into bed. I probably should have gone straight to bed, but she needed to talk to me and, as it turned out, I kind of needed to talk to her, too. I told her the whole thing about Eliezer Rivera and our emails back and forth, and she turned around and gave me exactly what I needed about the whole thing: Encouragement, support and mutual excitement! I just feel like my contact with him thus far has been a really great thing. I just get a really positive vibe from him and I feel like we could probably end up working really well together. He wrote me back again last night and said that he liked my ideas and quoted me rates, which are very reasonable and will be well worth the small price. He also said something that kind of stuck with me. He said that he asked about the genre I want to work in because it would give him a better idea of what he needs to teach. He made a comment about how a lot of people come to him for lessons but don’t really want to learn technique or anything along those lines, just some shortcuts to learn to play popular songs and things of that nature. He said that he would like to not just teach me about playing and technique, but also include lessons on ear and theory. Ear and theory are two things that I feel like I absolutely need help with, as well as technique. I just love the fact that his ideas for teaching me are so close to my ideas for learning. I really feel like this could be the beginning of something absolutely incredible for me, and it makes me feel really great to have my friends, like Whitney, be just as excited about that as I am. I really cannot wait to get started. I just emailed him back a little earlier this evening about trying to actually schedule my first lesson. I am kind of hoping to start the second week of February because I will get a full paycheck that week and may even have my income tax by then, so I should definitely have the cash to pay for the first couple lessons. Aside from being excited about the whole thing with him, I also feel like this, in some ways, really kind of validates my decision to stay here in Sarasota. Here I am, already making progress towards the dream I was going to California to pursue. Plus, I feel like in Los Angeles there are so many people going out there chasing the exact same dream that I am, and even if I could manage to come across a producer my silly little ideas probably wouldn’t impress them because they hear the exact same thing all the time from a million other nameless, faceless dreamers. Here in Sarasota I can at least work at becoming a big fish in a small pond before going off to pursue being a big fish in an oversized pool full of big fish. Plus, as I have mentioned many times previously, I really kind of want to do this “grass-roots” style. I feel like getting it down here and then going bigger is a good way to do that. Plus, in this day and age, I have an amazing tool at my disposal: The internet. I can get a LOT done by way of the internet. Just ask Panic! At The Disco, or Esmee Denters, or Justin Bieber. Okay, maybe that last one isn’t the BEST example I could come up with.

I didn’t wind up falling asleep until after 2:30am last night, but I still managed to wake up as soon as my alarm went off at 7:30am. This time I didn’t have that feeling from yesterday, but I still managed to get myself up and alert enough to work out with my Mom by 8:10am. The workout didn’t go as well today as it did yesterday, but I’m sure that can be attributed to the fact that I got about 2 hours less sleep and was wearing these sweatpants that kept trying to fall off. I still only got as far as the one-mile mark, (the whole DVD is 2 miles,) but that’s pretty good for somebody who hasn’t really exercised at all in quite a few months. I’ll work my way up to my Mom’s level eventually. Still, I felt pretty energized and was feeling the effects of it all throughout the day. My Mom and I also kind of discussed muting the thing and not having to listen to John Abdo’s lame, unfunny jokes and playing music instead. I think that would really make the whole process considerably better for me. My Mom has talked a lot about how music helps her during her workouts, as well, so I think that’d be a good thing. Plus, my Mom and I enjoy a lot of the same music and would both feel happy and inspired working out to Madonna or Lady Gaga. I am really excited about this whole thing. Back when I was working out regularly with a friend I really enjoyed it, as well. I honestly actually enjoy working out, I just get lazy or distracted or feel like I have other things to be doing. I am pretty determined not to let that happen this time, though. Like I said last night, I’ve got a couple of really good pieces of motivation: Fashion, and my future. If I keep those two things in mind, I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping it up. Those are two major driving factors in my life, after all.

Speaking of fashion, when I got to work I pulled out my sketchbook and did exactly what I talked about needing to do last night: I started drawing with a focus only on doing something fun that I enjoyed, and I wound up doing what I think is probably the best drawing I have done so far. This drawing was the second to last in my “Fame Monster” series, “So Happy I Could Die.” It is just a woman lying naked, with long, beautiful hair kind of scattered all over the ground with her eyes closed and a joyous smile on her face. It is probably my favorite of the whole collection. I also started working on my final drawing for this series, “Teeth.” I think this one may turn out pretty cool, as well. I like what I’ve done with it so far. I still need to look further into the website that I mentioned previously, Threadless, as far as submitting designs for their t-shirts. I just love the idea of seeing people wearing a design that I created, even if it is just print on a t-shirt. Perhaps that shirt that I designed could be somebody’s favorite shirt, and make them how I feel when I wear my green and brown striped, v-neck DKNY shirt or my black Calvin Klein polo with the logo down the side. Clothes really do have the power to make you feel special, and the idea of somebody feeling special in something that I created is absolutely amazing to me. I’m not 100% sure that my sketches are something that really fit the feel of their site, but it can’t hurt to try.

On the topic of my drawings, as well, I did something kind of dumb this evening. I don’t know what it was that made me do this, or even put the thought in my head, but I decided to do some googling. Not just any googling, but full-blown cyber-stalking. I punched in an old familiar name that I don’t think of near as often as I used to and came upon the website of someone that I thought I loved once. His website basically serves as his resume and portfolio for his artwork. I don’t know what I expected to find there exactly, but what I did find was something that could have been a major setback for me if I let it. There was a section added to the site of “Renderings.” These renderings were essentially computer-generated artworks. Now, no matter how much I try not to think of this person at all anymore, one thing I can honestly say that I think of him is that he is a brilliant artist, and these new renderings were no different. There was some pretty amazing work in there. While kind of scanning through these renderings I happened to notice something interesting. There were 8 of them that formed a little series, with similar styles but very different images. Then I looked at their titles. “Speechless.” “Bad Romance.” “Alejandro.” “Monster.” “Telephone.” “So Happy I Could Die.” “Teeth.” OF COURSE. I had to have known that he would do something along the same lines as I have been doing. Great minds think alike, I suppose. My initial reaction was that this only served to “put me in my place.” As much as I have focused so much of my life on creation and art, I will never be able to do anything like he does - He is on a level that is impossible for me to reach. I also have to remember that his work is completely different from mine, and done with the newest and best technologies available. Still, my automatic reaction was one of “he’ll always be so much better than I am.” I wrote a song about it, even. “A Part Of Me Dies” is the title, and there is one line that really kind of captures it all: “Every time you come to mind there is only one thing I see, it’s how much you are everything I will never get to be.” That was my initial reaction, though. That is what Kabbalah refers to as reactive behavior, which is pretty much always brought on by the ego. That is very clearly the case for me right now. We make a connection to the light every time we are able to identify that reactive behavior and resist it. That is something I struggle to work on every day of my life. Now that I have identified that, though, I am resisting letting it affect me any further. After all, he and I work in very different mediums and I have never been a very visual person. These drawings I have been doing lately are really my first works delving into the world of visual art, and I can’t expect them to be on the same level as somebody who actually went to a College of the Arts, who makes a profession as a set designer. Also, it is ridiculous for me to feel any sense of competition with him anyway. As I mentioned, he is a brilliant artist, but he and I work in completely different mediums. We are very different artists. Plus, at the end of the day, there is no need for competition between artists, anyway. We are all working towards the same thing: Creating something to inspire and affect the world. It is nothing but ego that makes me feel the need to compete with this person, who doesn’t even know that there is any sort of competition going on, anyway. It is a completely silly reaction to have, and I will not allow myself to fall into it.

The workday was mainly spent drawing, but a few times today I found my co-workers commenting on how I am off in my own little world and have been for a little while now. One co-worker even went as far as to ask if I was unhappy or if something was wrong with me lately. I told her no, and that there is just a lot going on in my head that is keeping my focus away from the workplace and all the silly dramas and messes it entails. I also told her how I think that is a very good thing. The thing I don’t think came across was the fact that the things in my head are very wonderful, positive things. Lady Gaga was on Oprah last week and, much like any other time I see her, really inspired me in a lot of ways. One thing that she discussed with Oprah was the fact that she has a head full of ideas and is constantly coming up with something new and different to try, so much so that she doesn’t actually do anything else. A day in the life of Gaga, she said, consists of waking up in the morning, looking through all of her source materials and inspirations, then talking on the phone to the Haus of Gaga all day, collaborating on how to make her ideas actually come into fruition. While I don’t exactly have a Haus to work with, I do have the head full of ideas and the ingenuity to make a lot of them happen. I have kind of been trying to live in that headspace lately, where my mind is completely immersed in art and maintains a constant flow of creativity. I understand that I am not currently in a position where I can really keep that going at all times, but I can certainly fit it in as often as possible. I have been doing a pretty good job of it lately, and managing to find a very comfortable balance between my artist headspace and my regular, every day person headspace. This all makes it very clear to me, though, that my artist headspace is the one that I prefer and is kind of “the real me.” So, aside from just achieving my dreams, a goal I can work towards is getting to a point where I am able to live my life in that headspace, the way that Gaga does. I want to live a life where that artist headspace is my primary and the regular every day person one is secondary. I could say to myself, “Well, that’s not very realistic,” but I am a person who doesn’t really believe in limits and understands that just because something isn’t realistic doesn’t mean it can’t be true.

I’ve just come to realize more and more lately that my fear that staying here could wind up as something I will regret for the rest of my life and could prevent me from achieving my dreams and goals in life was completely ridiculous and unfounded. Here I am, not even a week after having made the official decision not to leave and I have done more than just plant the seeds of my future, but have been proactive in taking steps towards making things happen for myself. There isn’t a chance that staying here could prevent me from achieving my dreams at all. The only limit that can be placed on achieving my dreams are the limits I place on myself and, like I said before, I believe in a life without limits. It’s like a very cheesy, but very true song sung by both Adam Lambert and Kris Allen, written by Kara Deoguardi for the American Idol finale. “With every step you climb another mountain, with every breath it’s harder to believe you’ll make it through the pain, weather the hurricanes to get to that one thing, Just when you think the road is going nowhere, just when you almost gave up on your dreams, they take you by the hand and show you that you can, and there are no boundaries.” Okay, so it’s not the greatest set of lyrics ever written and is kind of cheesy, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I absolutely believe in that sentiment – there are no boundaries.