Chapter 139: Keep It Together

Today was an interesting day. It had good and it had bad, just like every other day. It didn’t have TOO much boring, thank Gaga. It all started with my alarm going off at 7:30am, which woke me up. I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed, though, so I did the 5-minute snooze thing twice and finally got up at 7:40am. I did the normal first thing stuff – teeth, face, cigarette – until time to workout. My Mom’s stomach was hurting her today and I was feeling really tired, so I offered up the option of skipping the workout today but my Mom said she wanted to go ahead with it, and offered me the option of skipping, as well. It is the morning battle of, “I don’t want it to be my fault so I’m waiting for you to say it.” Fortunately, neither of us did and we went ahead with the workout. We put on “8-Bit Heart,” which you SHOULD know about by now if you have talked to me, seen my Facebook and Twitter postings or read last night’s blog, which turned out to not be a beautiful, emotional journey but also an excellent workout soundtrack. It really is just an incredible record all around, and I am still urging anybody who hasn’t yet to go download it immediately at http://www.simon-curtis.com - it is absolutely worth the time and is 100% free, a gift to the world direct from Simon Curtis himself. My Mom was pretty into it, too, and we got a really good workout to this record. It was amazing and left me feeling really energized and ready for whatever the day may bring. I had a little bit of a skip in my step as I got dressed and did my hair and makeup.

Of course, that only lasted long enough for me to get to work. Once there, I suddenly felt really tired. When I got to work it became clear immediately that there was something going down. There was a very distinct, though thinly veiled, tension in the air. I sat down and signed into my station and before I could even get all of my applications pulled up, I was hearing about it. The issue was basically the same issue we have at least once a month – my department is full of really strong personalities and they are all constantly clashing. People who were cool with each other a few weeks ago are suddenly completely at odds with one another. Then there are the less strong personalities who just allow themselves to get caught up in it all. Then there’s me, making the extra effort to get along with everybody but really just keeping to myself most of the time. This typically works out well for me because I don’t need to get involved in anybody else’s drama, and I am certainly not going to have any drama myself. I have found the easiest way in the world to avoid all that kind of drama, too, whether in the workplace or anywhere else in my life – it is as simple as understanding that nothing anybody else has to say or think about me can make even the slightest ounce of difference in my life unless I allow it to, and that there is not a single thing in that place that is worth allowing that kind of power over me. Not a single thing. I don’t understand why others don’t understand that, but it isn’t really my problem at the end of the day and doesn’t really affect me in any substantial way. I do wish that I could get people to see the light on this, though, because it would make for a much more peaceful workplace. Until that day comes, though, I will be sitting in my cubicle working on things that actually matter to me and can make a difference in my life.

Of course, I didn’t do a whole lot of that today. I’m not sure what it was exactly, but I just couldn’t seem to focus on any of my creative work today and spent most of the day turned around talking to my co-workers, providing a friendly ear and hopefully a bit of a voice of reason in the midst of all the drama. It sucks, though, that I sit at the very end of my row because I was right near one of the involved parties in the drama and talking to her a lot while the other one, who I have hung out with outside of work a few times, was all the way at the other end of the row and seemed to be scowling at me a bit and probably assuming that I was down there talking shit about her. Assumptions are very bad things for people to make and only end up causing unnecessary feelings of hurt. I don’t know what exactly I’m supposed to do in that situation, though. I don’t really want to appear as if I am taking sides because there is only one side I am on in this and any other situation in the workplace – my own. It is one of those things that everybody thinks but you’re not really supposed to say, but if I were asked I absolutely would say it. I am not working there to serve anybody’s interests but my own and that of the company. Anybody else’s agenda belongs to them and I shouldn’t and won’t be expected to take part in any of it. It just all seems so silly, although I can certainly understand people’s points in the matter. I just don’t see why they allow it to become such an issue. As evidenced by most of my daily blogs, I normally wouldn’t take the time to even bother discussing something like this but since I wasn’t very focused on my creative work today it was what consumed pretty much 8 hours of my day.

Of course, also on my mind today was tonight’s piano lesson. I arrived at the Allegro Academy a few minutes early, so I sat in the lobby and waited for Viktor to finish with the lesson before mine. When my lesson began, he had me identify some of the notes in the bass clef, which I learned last week, and I did a pretty good job with it. The rest of the lesson was mainly dedicated to working on learning a piece – an extremely simple piece called “Computer Games.” When I looked at it initially I thought it would be a cinch – then I tried actually playing it. It is, as I said, a very simple piece but I kept tripping up on which notes I was supposed to be playing from the ones on the page. My fingers just kept going to the wrong keys, despite the fact that I could look at the page and think, “That’s a B, that’s a G sharp,” and so on. It was kind of frustrating to me, but Viktor didn’t seem to think much of it. He kept telling me that I was trying to go too fast and confusing myself, which was a pretty accurate description of what I was doing there. It just seemed so simple and I couldn’t understand why I kept messing it up. I will continue to work on it this week, though, and am expected to come back and play it properly at next week’s lesson. I don’t think it’ll be a problem and I am actually really glad we are getting to the more hands-on part now. I really do love my piano lessons and am really excited to watch myself as I make even more progress. It is so worth all of the mess that comes along with it, like having to feel guilty that my sister is going so far out of her way to get me there and the hour-long wait I have every week after the lesson before my Mom gets off and can pick me up. It is worth the money I am spending on it that I really could be using for things like rent and bills and such. It is worth every single thing attached to it. I absolutely love my lessons and look forward to them every week. This evening I even managed to come up with some interesting ways to use the time between the end of my lesson and the time that my Mom came to pick me up. I walked down to the 7-11 on the next block and bought myself a coffee and a candy bar, and then went and sat in this covered bus bench midway between the 7-11 and the Allegro Academy. I decided to use that time to film a segment for my new YouTube series, which I am still trying to come up with a better title for than “Weekly Inspiration.” I was worried about how the sound would come across because there was a lot of passing traffic on the street and such, but it came out okay. I must admit, I am pretty excited for this YouTube show to come together and to actually put it out there because I think it will be a lot of fun and will be something really cool and positive and, hopefully, inspiring to somebody out there. I am really hoping to have it all pieced together and ready to post by early next week. I also started a bit of an impromptu photo shoot on the bus bench, which I intend to work on further when I am there again next week. That was pretty fun and it was pretty cool working with photography in a different setting.

While I was waiting for my Mom to get off I also decided to go ahead and call my brother. I had missed a call from him yesterday and tried to call him back last night but didn’t get an answer. I found that I had missed another call from him today while I was at work, so I figured I would use this time to call him back. I actually got an answer this time and he had something really interesting, although not entirely unexpected, to ask me. We just found out over the weekend that my brother’s girlfriend is pregnant and my brother is actually really excited about it and has asked his girlfriend to marry him. They have had this ongoing back and forth for a few years now about getting married and my brother was always really opposed to the whole concept, but he has really turned around about the whole topic. He actually seems pretty excited about all of it and I couldn’t be more excited about it. While I was talking to him this evening, he asked me to be his best man. My Mom had already told me that she thought this was why he was calling me yesterday, but I wasn’t so sure. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that my brother and I are not close we are just very different people and haven’t spent the most time together in our adult lives, so I wasn’t sure if I would be the person he would ask to do that. We do get along really well and have gotten considerably closer in recent years but I just wasn’t sure if I would be the person that he would want to be at his side as he goes through such a big change in his life. I am extremely honored that he has asked me, though, and I am really excited for the wedding and to take part in the whole wedding process. It’s funny, though, because it isn’t the part of a wedding that I have ever imagined myself taking part in – isn’t the best man the one who organizes the bachelor party? Dear God, what the hell am I going to do with that? I’m sure I can figure something out. I know that the best man gives a speech at the reception and at the rehearsal dinner and such, which my brother said if I ever asked him to do for me he wouldn’t. He’s considerably more of a shy person than I am. I have absolutely no problem with public speaking and am actually really looking forward to it. I am really looking forward to the whole thing. It really makes me think a lot about my life and the roles that my brother and sister have played in it. We have all gone very long periods without one another in our lives and such but I think we also all know that we can depend on each other if we ever really need to and while we may not be the biggest part of each other’s lives, we are all very connected where it counts. It really makes me feel a lot better about where I stand in this world, with all of my feelings of being alone lately and such, it is a beautiful thing to really stop and think about the fact that I have, at least, these two people who I can trust will always have my back. Like that classic Madonna song, “Keep It Together,” “When I get lonely and I need to be loved for who I am, not what they want to see, Brothers and Sisters, they’ve always been there for me.” You got that one right, Madonna. Score one for her. Actually, score about eight million and a half for her. She gets everything right, as far as I am concerned.

Once my Mom picked me up, we went out and picked up sub sandwiches from Publix and came back home to watch “American Idol” before getting ready for bed. When I first sat down at the computer to start this blog, I decided to pull my camera out of my Calvin Klein bag and check out the pictures and footage I took today. When I reached into my bag, though, I noticed that my hand got wet. Then I remembered something – my spill-proof cup was in there. When I pulled it out, I found that it wasn’t so spill-proof anymore. The lid had somehow broken and Mountain Dew Code Red was spilling inside of my bag. The first thing I did was check that my camera was safe and dry, which it was. Then I quickly pulled everything out of the bag to see what kind of damage was done. Fortunately, nothing important was damaged at all. The sheet music notebook that I had been using got a few small wet spots on it, but none of the work I did in it was damaged at all. I’m concerned about the bag itself, although part of me does feel like this was the Universe’s way of condoning me purchasing this other Calvin Klein bag that I have been eyeing up on his website. I can’t afford to do it right now, of course, so I am temporarily reverting back to my old Kenneth Cole bag, which I had stopped using because I thought it felt too professional for the summertime. Now it just feels old, although it is still gorgeous. It will get the job done until I can get the other one run through the laundry… or until I get that new one ordered! It really is adorable – made of a dark gray colored denim with a big, bold Calvin Klein logo on the outside. It is also not a messenger bag, which is my usual forte, but a “daypack” bag, 11” wide and 11” tall with a zip closure at the top. I really love the look of it and think it could be the perfect bag for me for spring/summer 2010. The best part, though, is the fact that it is only $33.60. I love Calvin Klein! For now, though, it is 12:30am and I should be getting to bed. Good night.