Chapter 124: Look At Those Eyes

I woke up late this morning – 7:50am, to be exact. I got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face with Clean & Clear Morning Burst facial cleanser and went to the bathroom – typical first thing in the morning stuff. Unlike a typical morning, though, it was already 8am when I finished with all that. There have been days where I have just gone right into working out after doing these things before I have smoked or drank coffee or anything. This wasn’t one of those mornings, though. I wasn’t feeling very motivated to work out in the first place this morning because waking up late just automatically puts me in a bit of a mood. Still, despite my lack of motivation, I was determined to do it. I told my Mom I was just going to smoke a quick cigarette and then I’d be ready. It was 8:16am when we finally started the workout. This morning I decided that we should workout to a playlist of Scissor Sisters songs that I had arranged previously. Scissor Sisters are one of my favorite bands of all time and I think my Mom loves them even more than I do, so I figured they would make for good workout music. It didn’t take long to discover, though, that I was wrong about this. They have a lot of really upbeat, dance-style music but I’m not sure what exactly the problem was, but we both kind of agreed the music just didn’t work out for us. Between the music and waking up late, I just wasn’t feeling the workout this morning. Still, I went through it. Okay, I quit a little short of where I normally would but it was getting late and I still needed to get ready for work. I ate a bowl of Trix, then smoked a cigarette and drank my coffee before getting ready. I wore my gray Marc Ecko sweatervest with a pink argyle design on it and this pair of jeans I found while cleaning out my closet. It was a pretty cute look, I think. I wanted to use my new Mocha Mirage duo from Maybelline Eye Studio today, so I paired the bronze color from that with my Christian Siriano Sandstorm eyeshadow and did a very cute, but much more subtle look today. I liked it, and I left the house feeling like I was looking pretty good… maybe not as good as yesterday, but good nonetheless.

Unlike yesterday, work felt extremely long today. It was really slow and there wasn’t much going on. Around noon or so this afternoon I started feeling really exhausted and like I was going to pass out right there in my cubicle. I was trying to do some drawing, in attempts to come up with some ideas to try out on t-shirts. Of course, I always have the drawings I did before to send to the t-shirt company but those are really ambitious for me to try hand painting. At the same time, if I could pull them off they would be quite brilliant, I think. I don’t know what I’m going to try next on a t-shirt. I was talking to my sister about it a bit and she gave me a really good idea. The instructions on all the fabric paint packages, as well as all the instructions I found whilst Googling the topic, recommended putting a piece of cardboard or something along those lines inside the fabric, so the paint doesn’t bleed through to the other side of the shirt. Well, Amber had the idea of drawing the design on that piece of cardboard first and going over it with Sharpie or something like that, so that when working on the actual shirt it would basically be like tracing. This seems like an excellent plan and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it myself. It’s so simple. I’m thinking I’ll try experimenting with that a bit over the weekend. As far as my drawing today, I didn’t really come up with much. I drew one picture that I really kind of liked – a woman, very 60s Flower Power looking, with a giant rainbow coming down from the sleeve area all the way to the bottom hem of the shirt, with different random things sliding down the rainbow, like music notes and hearts and stars and random other things. I like the idea of it because it is basically an image of a hippie tripping out, but I feel like the initial drawing I did today is really lacking something. I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s definitely missing something. Maybe I will work on that a bit more tomorrow. Aside from that, though, I did a bit of a concept drawing of a woman’s top that I thought was pretty cool. I basically spent all day at work drawing to keep myself awake.

I also got into a couple of interesting conversations with one of my co-workers who was kind of trying to justify the use of the word “gay” in the slang sense. I was saying that I don’t see anything wrong with being politically correct even though a lot of people complain about people being too PC. My belief is that if you can word something in a way that isn’t going to be offensive to others or hurt anybody’s feelings, then why wouldn’t you? It just seems mean-spirited to say things in a way that could offend others when you have a whole vocabulary of perfectly good alternate words to use that won’t offend anybody. I understand that we should be able to express ourselves in whatever way we see fit but I also feel very strongly that I don’t want the way that I express myself to be something that will be hurtful to the people around me. I am all about freedom of expression and am a very big fan of pushing the envelope and provoking thought and emotions in others in all kinds of ways, but I do try to make it a point to not do anything in a way that would be hurtful to others. It’s all a matter of treating others how you want to be treated. My co-worker and I kind of agreed to disagree, but that seems to me like my co-worker saying, “Well, I’m not going to stop saying things that may be offensive and I don’t really care if other people are hurt by it.” I hate that type of thinking. Some days I feel like I’m surrounded by that kind of thinking and I have to figure out some way to be light in the midst of that darkness. I do the best I can, though, and it hasn’t worked yet. That just means I need to do better. One of my program managers handed out these little papers to everyone today with motivational quotes on them which sounds kind of silly, I know, but I think it is a nice way to kind of perk up people’s days. Mine was really good and I felt really relevant to me, specifically. It was a quote from Henry Ford that said, “Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we allow ourselves to look away from our goals.” I have long believed that things like horoscopes, fortune cookies, tarot readings and such are the Universe’s way of delivering messages to us. Perhaps not every one you read or anything, but I think that if the Universe is trying to give us a message that we just aren’t seeing in other ways it will get it to us SOMEHOW – often through one of these silly, frivolous type mediums. I think this random quote from my program manager was definitely one of those, and I was grateful for the reminder of what I was already thinking but may have needed reiterated.

On my first break this morning, I was checking Twitter from my phone and noticed a tweet about something that I knew was coming but didn’t realize was arriving TODAY. What was it? It was the debut solo album from Alexz Johnson. I’m sure none of you know the name Alexz Johnson and it is extremely unfortunate that this is the case. Back in 2004, shortly after I first moved back to Florida, my Mom and I shared a love of a certain Canadian teen melodrama called “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” “Degrassi: The Next Generation” is one of my favorite television series of all-time. It airs on a channel that, at the time, was called The N. It was kind of a teen version of Nickelodeon. Most of the original programming on this network was not actually original at all, but imported from Canada and “Degrassi” was it’s most popular show. Then they premiered a new show from the makers of “Degrassi” called “Instant Star.” This show was about a girl named Jude Harrison, played by Alexz Johnson, who won a fictional Idol-style reality show called “Instant Star.” The show followed her creating an album after winning the show and kind of followed her career and her personal life as she dealt with an on again off again relationship with her producer and all sorts of other drama. It was a really great show, but the best part of this show was Alexz Johnson and her music. There was a new song from her featured in each episode of the show and they would release an album for each season of the show featuring all of the songs. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is some of the best music to have come out of the first decade of the new millennium. Alexz Johnson has the most incredible voice and also wrote a lot of the music for the show. It was one of my favorite shows while it was on. Sadly, it only ran for four seasons, and thus only bore four albums. Anyway, starting with season two rumors started spreading like mad that Alexz Johnson was working on her own album separate from the show and I was extremely excited for this to happen. Shortly after the rumors started they were confirmed and I started getting even more excited than I was already. Unfortunately, when the show ended in 2008 there was still no album. She posted a small bundle of songs on her official Myspace page, all of which were completely brilliant, and got me even more hyped. Then she got dropped from her label, got picked up by another label and eventually parted ways from them, as well. It was beginning to look like her solo album was just never going to happen… then it did. I knew the album was set to come out sometime this month, but I had completely forgotten the date until I got on Twitter and saw a tweet from her saying, “Hey, the album is out NOW.”

When I got home from work this evening, the first thing I did was come to the computer to download the album. I was pretty excited, considering I had been waiting anxiously for over 3 years for this to happen. I was so excited, in fact, that I actually went the full length and PAID for it. I am pretty extreme when it comes to downloading music in those various forms where you don’t pay for it, but I make it a point to try to actually purchase music when it is from artists who aren’t on major labels or, like Alexz Johnson, are actually self-releasing their music. Let me just say – the album is worth so much more than the $9.99 that I paid for it, (at http://www.alexzjohnson.com/pages.php?sec=14 if you want to check it out – it is ABSOLUTELY worth it, and you can get a free download of the first single there, as well, if you want a little preview.) The album is called “Voodoo,” and the first thing I want to mention is the album artwork. The cover is this very cool, old-timey looking picture of her and it reads, “Voodoo” starring Alexz Johnson. The album artwork all has this cool theme of one of those classic mystery/suspense films from the 40s or 50s. It really suits the album very well. The album itself is absolutely brilliant, as well. Her music would basically fall into the category of pop, but is nothing like the pop that you think of when you hear the words “pop music.” It is all guitar-based and all played on real instruments, (there is not a synthesizer to be found on this record,) and has some really cool “world” style beats and a very classic sound. There are 11 tracks on the album and every one of them is brilliant in it’s own way and, while many songs have very different vibes, the album works perfectly as a whole. The standout tracks for me are the title track, “Voodoo,” a song called “LA Made Me,” which had a very immediate anthemic feeling for me, “A Little Bit” which is probably the poppiest song on the record, “Superstition” which is a bit haunting and has a very large, epic sound to it, “Trip Around The World,” the album’s first single and “Hurricane Girl,” which is a gorgeous, heartbreaking ballad. My very favorite track on the album is a toss-up between two songs, though. The first is a song called “Taker,” which stood out to me just based on the title. My Mom read this book ages ago and has talked to me a lot about it, called “The Givers & The Takers.” It is basically a book about relationships and how there is often a Giver and a Taker. My Mom, in all of her relationships, has tended to be a Giver. Me, on the other hand, have a tendency to be a Taker. It’s funny, though, because in my last couple of romantic dealings the tables kind of turned on me and I became the Giver… well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I became the Giver in the monetary sense, but I was still always a Taker in the emotional sense. This is really a topic for another blog, though. This song does really make me wonder, though, if Alexz Johnson hasn’t read that book, as well, because this song really suits the concept. Essentially, it is a song about being a Taker and taking so much that you wind up hurting the Giver. It is something I can definitely relate to. My other favorite song on the record is “Look At Those Eyes.” This song really struck me right of the bat, with a bridge that says, “No, tell me it’s not so, that people will come and they’ll go, we push away all the love that we know, No, tell me it’s not so.” I found myself REALLY relating to those lyrics, but the song goes on to a chorus that says, “But look at who’s right beside you when you’re alone and barely holding on, Leave your worries behind you, You’re not alone in the dark, Look at who’s right beside you, you’re looking back thinking oh my God, that somebody’s never left you, You’re not alone in the dark.” It is a very powerful message that this song sends and one that really means the world to me at this point in my life. I have discussed many times in this blog how much I sometimes feel like I am completely alone in this world. I know it isn’t true, but I feel that way a lot of the time. This song will serve as a reminder to me that I am not alone and that there are always people there, even if I don’t see them or feel them all the time. Like I said, this is a completely brilliant album and I HIGHLY recommend everyone take the time to check it out – it is beautiful and worth so much more than the $9.99 it will cost you at the link above.

It is almost midnight now and I need to get to bed. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow, after all. My Mom and I recently discussed perhaps selecting a day of the week that we will skip the workout, since we seem to keep missing days for other reasons. We figured that Wednesday would be the best day for that, since it is the middle of the week. So, we are not working out tomorrow. My Mom is taking her car to get an oil change in the morning and I am going to use the extra time to take a nice, long shower and be leisurely whilst getting ready for work. Tomorrow is a big day because it is my rescheduled first music lesson after work! This evening, my Mom went to the bank for me and pulled out enough cash to pre-pay the rest of the month and I am extremely excited to get started! I am not feeling as nervous as I was before… at least, not right now. I will probably get the nerves again tomorrow, though. It is a good kind of nervous energy, though. I am really excited to get started on this journey and I am confident that tomorrow’s lesson will be incredible. I can see it now – soon enough, I will be writing and playing my own music and really getting the ball rolling on writing my very own record! The ball is about to officially start rolling and I cannot wait to see what happens next! For now, though, I must retire for the evening. I need my beauty rest, after all. I want to strut into that place looking cool and confident and ready to take on the world with my weapon of choice being a piano! Goodnight.