Chapter 82: Welcome

Today was a day. It wasn’t the greatest day of my life. It wasn’t the worst day of my life. It was just a day. It started off the way I have decided to start all of my days at this point: Wake up, morning routine, coffee & cigarettes, workout, cereal, shower, get dressed, makeup, off to work. It’s a good routine for me. I like it a lot. I feel like I am starting off my days with a sense of purpose. This morning I was ready to skip the workout, but I pushed myself to do it. We put on Madonna’s “Confessions On A Dance Floor” and got to it. It was a good workout. It was a bit of a struggle still today, but less of a struggle than yesterday. It just sucks because I already know that we have to skip a day for the next two weeks. This week, on Friday, my Mom’s boyfriend will be here and she won’t want to do it. Next week I have to go to work at 8am on Wednesday because I am getting off at 3:30pm then I am off to the Owl City & Lights concert! I could always work out after work, but I most likely won’t. I’ll probably end up getting a workout at the concert, anyway, with all the dancing and such. I used to not be a person who danced at concerts, but over the years I have become much more of one. I enjoy it. There aren’t many feelings like just getting caught up in live music, letting go and just dancing. I am very excited for this concert. I have been listening to Owl City a LOT lately. Adam Young, the sole member of Owl City, is such a huge inspiration to me. I have been feeling a lot of inspiration lately, to be honest, from a lot of different places. I am inspired by my Mom with her dedication to her quest to lose weight. I am inspired by my friends with their drive to figure out what to do with their life. I am inspired by people who go on TV every day and change people’s minds about things, like Oprah, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, etc. I am inspired by art, fashion, film, television, and all forms of media. I am inspired by music, most of all, though. It is with me at all times. It is always there. If it’s not in my ears, it is in my head. Music may not be what makes the world go round, but it is what keeps my world spinning. The more I listen to it and the more I write, the more I just understand the world; even more, I understand myself. It also helps a workout run much more smoothly. Like I said, the workouts help me start the day with a purpose, but adding the music to it helps me start out the day with inspiration.

When I got to work today, I pulled out the “Crying At The Disco” drawing and began working on it further. As much as I may have had my misgivings about it yesterday, I wound up extremely happy with the end result. I don’t know how exactly it happened, but I got a burst of inspiration and figured out exactly what it needed. I absolutely love the way it turned out. I also completed the last of the 4 designs I was working on to submit to that company in town. It was a slightly different interpretation of my “Monster” drawing before, and I kind of like it much better. My sister gave me a really good idea about these drawings, too. She was asking me about how I intended to color them, which I had been planning on just doing with colored pencil. When I told her that, she said that I should take them to Kinko’s and make a few copies of each one in case I wind up screwing one up in the coloring process. She also gave me some ideas about possibly coloring them digitally in Paint, or if I can find a decent cracked version of Photoshop. I’ll definitely tinker around with that once I have the pictures scanned, but the idea of making copies of them is one I definitely intend to move forward with. The thing is, though, I don’t know how much of a sense of urgency there is about these submissions. It’s already been like 5 days. I’d kind of like to get something to these people ASAP before I miss my chance. Of course, they didn’t have any sense of urgency about it. Still, I feel like it is better to get them something sooner than later. Plus, I am just kind of anxious about the whole thing. It’s just so funny to me because I never would have imagined that I would be finding myself so excited and feeling so much passion about drawing. It kind of makes me think about what Jewel was talking about in the blog she wrote that I mentioned yesterday. I always said that I wasn’t a visual person and that I wasn’t an artist in that sense, but that whole idea was just something that I needed to chip away to get to the fact that I actually am. It’s like I was actually capable of it the whole time and the only thing stopping me from accessing that was the idea in my head that I couldn’t.

The more I have been thinking about art lately, the more I have kind of been considering trying my hand at painting. I have tried it a time or two in the past and never really got anywhere with it, but I wonder if I couldn’t pull it off better now. The only thing that makes me feel kind of strange about it is the fact that I’m not really sure what the purpose of it would be. With the drawings, there is a goal and a purpose: fashion. With buying the camera and trying to make a short film/long form music video, there is a goal and a purpose: Music. With the music, there is also a goal and a purpose: Life, inspiration, change, EVERYTHING. I can’t really think of what the goal or purpose of painting would be. I could try to get really good at it and have a showing, and maybe even sell some stuff. That’s never really been a goal that I have ever had, though. Still, it could be a good move for me. I love art shows. I love art. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t focus on too many different things at once. Still, another part of me asks, “why not?” It’s all really focused on the same things: Creation and inspiration. I want to create things that will inspire others. Why not create a lot of different things to inspire others in a lot of different ways? I don’t know whether or not I will explore that further any time soon, but it’s something I am considering. I also kind of feel like with so much focus on these drawings lately, as well as the focus on diet and exercise, I have been feeling like I have been focusing a lot less on music. It’s not that I haven’t been focused on music – It has been the inspiration behind everything else I have done. I do feel like, in some ways, focusing on these drawings has taken away from my focus on working on my own music. I haven’t really done much with the keyboard lately. Of course, I also understand that a large part of why I haven’t been doing anything with the keyboard is because I have realized that I don’t entirely know what I am doing with it and am waiting until I can take lessons. That has been on my mind a lot lately, and I am just waiting to receive my income tax. I do feel like maybe I should go ahead and get back in touch with Eliezer and try to actually schedule a date for some time after I know I will have gotten my income tax. I think I will feel better about it all once I actually have a solid start date set up for myself. I think maybe I will do that tomorrow. The last thing I want is to feel any sort of disconnection or lack of focus on that because music is my ultimate dream and goal in life. While it is certainly a good thing that I am exploring these other parts of who I am, and experimenting with other mediums, I do need to keep in mind that music is the ultimate medium for me. It is what I am meant for in this life, and I need to make sure that no matter what else I am focused on in my life music remains my main focus.

The eating pattern I have come up with worked out really well again today, except with some variations. I ate cereal after working out this morning, and found myself feeling hungry again right before my lunchtime. Instead of a meal replacement bar, my friend/team lead brought me some Chicken & Rice for lunch, and it was delicious. I really want to learn how to make that myself, because it is fairly healthy and extremely tasty. That kept me satisfied until I got home around 7pm, (after having gotten off at 6pm, which is a long story.) When I got home I ate some fruit out of this fruit bowl that my Mom and I picked up at the grocery store the other night. It had grapes, strawberries, watermelon, honey dew, cantaloupe and pineapple. It was really tasty and more satisfying than I had ever found fruit to be in the past. This all worked out really well until my Mom got off work and we decided to have McDonald’s for dinner. Like I have mentioned before, I really think it is much less about what you eat so long as you don’t eat too much of it. I noticed the past two nights that, when it comes to dinner, I seem to have a problem with portions. I’m used to eating a very large dinner because before now I normally wouldn’t have eaten anything all day and would have been hungry enough to warrant eating such a large portion. That isn’t the case now, though, and the past two nights I have wound up making myself feel kind of sick at dinner. Tonight I had two of those little cheeseburgers, fries and a 10-piece chicken nugget. It never really seemed like it before, but even just saying that now, it really is a LOT of food. More than I should have had and I am still feeling a little overstuffed from it. So, I am making it a goal for tomorrow to eat a dinner that doesn’t leave me feeling this way.

This evening I watched a little bit of TV and found a little bit of inspiration in it. First off, I watched an epic piece of gay television that I have even given it’s own celebrity couple nickname: Roprah! That is, yesterday’s episode of Oprah, which was a full hour with Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie O’Donnell is an inspiration for many reasons. Not only is she a wonderful icon for the gay community, but she is really doing her part to change the way that the world views gay people and, mainly, gay families. She has a documentary coming out on HBO called “A Family Is A Family Is A Family,” documenting the plight of her and her former partner, Kelli, in trying to raise a family in spite of their recent breakup and the media spotlight and such. It sounds pretty amazing and the clips that Oprah showed of moments between Rosie and her children were really beautiful. Aside from all of that, though, I love the fact that Rosie is such an open person, never shying away from discussing her childhood, her relationships, her family and her many issues that stem from all of those things. I love that in a celebrity. It is incredibly refreshing and I have always thought that, should I wind up a celebrity on any level, I would try to be like that, as well. Another celebrity/artist who has that same kind of stance is Gwen Stefani. She has been a huge inspiration to me throughout most of my life, as well. She doesn’t hold anything back, particularly in her music with No Doubt. Christina Aguilera would be another great example of that type of fearless artistry and celebrity. I just have a very deep respect for anyone who is willing to put themselves out there in such a way. I also watched today’s episode of “The View,” in which they had a discussion during “Hot Topics” about the fact that teenage pregnancy is on the rise for the first time in over 10 years. Joy Behar took the stance that this was evidence that all of the abstinence education being funded by our government is simply not working. Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shephard, on the other hand, felt that this probably had a lot to do with the fact that television and films targeted towards teens is so inundated with sexual imagery. Honestly, I think both sides are right on this. Yes, teens are completely surrounded with sexual imagery and that surely inspires them to feel more comfortable diving into sexual situations. At the same time, though, there is so much sex in teen-targeted media for a reason: Art is a reflection of life, and the reason so many kids are having sex on TV is more than likely because so many kids are having sex in real life. Teaching kids abstinence isn’t the solution, either. Pretty much every teenager knows by now that, according to their elders, they just shouldn’t be having sex. No matter how much you tell them that, they are still going to do it. In fact, the more that you tell them that, the more likely they are to end up doing it. The answer here seems so clear: Teenagers are going to have sex regardless of what you tell them, so you should be educating them on the importance of using protection – that way if they do decide to do it, they are more likely to do it with protection. The problem with this answer is that the fundamentalists are going to bitch that educating kids about protection is going to encourage them to do it. That is ridiculous. They’re already thinking about it. They are teenagers, their hormones are raging and sex is on their minds, whether they are having it or not. Those damn fundamentalists will ALWAYS find something to bitch about, though, until we are a completely puritanical society. Thank God for the other side. I also watched “American Idol,” which is always kind of inspiring to me. No matter what stage the show is in, the early auditions like tonight or the actual top 12, I can always watch and compare myself to the artists on the show. Particularly in these early audition parts, where they are giving away golden tickets to get to Hollywood Week, I am always surprised by some of the people they wind up letting through to Hollywood. In many cases, I really feel like I am better than some of the people they send through to Hollywood. I have always said that if I auditioned for “American Idol” I would definitely be able to get through to the Hollywood portion. Whether or not I could get past that point, I don’t know, but I have always thought I could get to that part, at least. Their cutoff age is 28, and I am going to be 27 this year. I really feel like when the next season comes around I should go audition. Of course, who knows where I will be by that time. I don’t think anything major will have changed between now and this summer, which is generally when they do the auditions, except that I will possibly be a better artist by that time. Ideally, I will be a few months into music lessons by that time and will have a much better musical ear, which will surely help out with an a cappella audition. I should have lost a decent amount of weight by then, as well, so I will have a better look to show up with. Again, I don’t know what will be going on in my life by that time, but as it stands, I think it could be a really good idea to go audition this summer. We’ll see about that, though. In the meantime, though, it is now 12:30am and I should be getting to bed.