Chapter 175: Dynamite

I woke up late today, around 7:50am, and found my Mom already awake. She told me she had been up for about an hour and was rushing around the house cleaning stuff. She said that she just randomly woke up early and decided not to go back to sleep but I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that she did it on purpose because she wanted to obsessively clean the house since her boyfriend is coming tomorrow. I totally don’t mind her boyfriend coming and have no complaints to make, really. One thing that does kind of get on my nerves about it, though, is the fact that my Mom gets really obsessed with trying to make our house look perfect and she really stresses herself out over it when it doesn’t actually make any major difference. The house wasn’t ridiculously messy before or anything. The dishes needed to be done definitely and there were some things that needed to be picked up, trash taken out and things of that nature, but her boyfriend has seen our house a mess. He has even made our house a mess. I just don’t understand the obsession with cleaning up the house. She is doing it even now, when she should be getting ready to go to bed. Still, despite the fact that I don’t understand it and find it kind of irritating, I leave her to it and don’t make much comment. I even did a few little things to help out, like taking out the trash and gathering up all of my shoes that have been lying around the living room. The thing I have to keep in mind is that, regardless of her reasoning or my lack of understanding of it all, apparently she feels it is necessary and it makes her feel better about things so what does it really hurt for me to go along with it. I think the issue in my head is that it is like she is trying to cater to a man in her own home and I almost kind of feel like she is valuing the man over herself and over me, who lives in this house and is at her side day in and day out. Still, the key words in that statement were at the very beginning – “the issue IN MY HEAD…” It is simply my own issue that is irritating me about the whole thing. The act itself is not an issue, it is just triggering an internal issue that I have.

So, I kind of assumed that because she was busy doing all of this random cleaning first thing this morning she may not want to step away from it to workout. Still, I rushed through washing my face and brushing my teeth and smoking first thing to be ready to workout. We did go ahead and work out and wound up getting some really good exercise. I am glad we did it. I am feeling pretty proud of myself, honestly, because I haven’t punked out of working out once this week. I mean, we didn’t workout on Monday but that was because my Mom was out of town. I could have done it on my own Monday but I normally don’t. I think moving forward I will workout by myself on those days when my Mom is out of town. Of course, with my Mom’s schedule changing, those days may not be happening so much for a while. I don’t know but I am very focused on getting my workout in every day moving forward. In fact, I am very focused on accomplishing all of the tasks I have set for myself daily. I have been doing a really good job of them, although this is the first week that I have had these tasks set for myself. Still, I am starting off strong. That is a really good thing. Tomorrow is the last day of the week and I would really love to be able to end the week saying that I managed to complete my daily tasks every day this week. So, I have to make sure to get it all done tomorrow, as well.

Work was like hell today. It just felt like the day took a really long time to pass and I was really bored through most of the day. I wrote three new songs today. These three were much less dance/pop than the songs I have written over the past few days. They were all still very pop, but considerably less dance oriented. There was no song about being in love with the beat today. Ha. I would say that the songs I wrote today would work as more guitar based pop, like something Natalie Imbruglia would have done on her first record. They were pretty good songs, though, if I do say so myself. If any of these daily musical tasks has come back to me really quickly and just as good as it was before, I would say it is songwriting. I have always said that before I am anything else in this world, I am a songwriter. Before I am gay, before I am fat, before I am 26 years old, before I am a “customer service representative,” before I am Jason Michalchek, before I am even Jason Davis, I am a songwriter. It is, as far as I am concerned, the single most important part of myself. It is my core. It is weird to think that I had kind of stopped doing it for so long. It is very out of character for me. Like I said when I established my daily musical tasks, though, I think I just became so focused on experimenting with so many different types of art that I let music fall to the wayside. That is not something that I intend to let happen. I have kind of been thinking about possibly devoting one of the weekend blogs each week to kind of showcasing the songs that I have written that week. I don’t know if I really want to focus the songs I am writing in this particular venue, though, because I am only 5 days away from hitting the 6 month mark on this blog and I have never made it a place to feature my lyrics before. I don’t know that I want to start that when I am already halfway through the blog. Perhaps I can post them up as a note on Facebook or something, though. I kind of feel like it would be a good idea to share these daily writings but I don’t necessarily feel like the blog is the best place to do that. I also don’t necessarily want to sacrifice one of my blogs every week for that. It just seems like that would kind of be going against what the blog is about. The blog is supposed to be capturing a year in my life, and while my songs are definitely a look into my life I don’t necessarily feel like they would fit in with the general theme and tone of this blog. I do like the concept of a weekly Facebook note featuring my songs from the week, though. That may wind up happening.

Overall, work was pretty bland today. There was a random moment when I let myself start getting really stressed out and irritated while at work and I had to work really hard to shake that feeling off but beyond that it was pretty well uneventful. I drew a bunch of random clothing designs, including a couple different catsuits, which I feel like are kind of lacking in everyday fashion. Okay, maybe they aren’t but I do think it would be fun to see more people walking around in catsuits. I also designed a pretty cool sweatervest with a brick wall style design on it and now I really want to figure out how to make it happen because it was adorable. For the most part, though, I felt really tired all day and really struggled to get through this workday. Still, I did complete my songwriting for the day and did a lap around the parking lot with my Mom on our first break, so I’d say it was a pretty successful day. I also wore a really great makeup look today – it was a really cute lavender and red look. I loved it. I know I said on Tuesday that I was going to take a break from the Maui Wowie shade in my Urban Decay “Summer Of Love” palette, but I totally didn’t. However, both Tuesday and today I only used it as a brow highlight and didn’t use it at all on Wednesday. So, I think I may go ahead and use it as a main color tomorrow. I don’t know yet, but I think I may do the pink, purple and gold look I came up with over the weekend, (which you can see in my Facebook photo album, “Makeup & Junk.”) I’m not sure yet, though, because I would really like to do a look that incorporates all of the shades in the “Summer Of Love” palette. I’ll figure it out in the morning, I suppose.

When I got home this evening, I recorded my daily singing video doing my own “acoustic” re-arrangement of the song “With Love” by Hilary Duff, which I have been toying around with over the past few years. It is pretty cute. Still, I am really noticing and really not happy with my vocal shortcomings. They are becoming more and more apparent with each video that I do. I really need to take some voice lessons. The only real urgency, though, is in the fact that I am kind of obsessing over the lack of strength in my voice. I don’t know why I am so obsessed with this lately – I’m not Christina Aguilera and I am never going to be. I have always known this about myself and accepted it. I have long said that I may not be Christina Aguilera but I could definitely pull of being some of my favorite artists out there, like Robyn or Vitamin C or Geri Halliwell or, the greatest, Madonna. None of those people have very strong vocals but they all make really great music and have found really good ways to make due with what they do have. I’ve even found myself writing songs, a couple of the dance/pop style ones from the past few days, with that talk-singing style stuff like Leighton Meester does on “Somebody To Love,” or like Britney Spears does on pretty much every song she has recorded since the “Britney” album. I don’t necessarily have to have a really strong voice if I can manage to write really great music that kind of transcends that. In fact, look at two of my other top five favorite artists of all time, Liz Phair and Courtney Love. Neither of them can even carry a tune, not really, but they have both gotten by all these years based on the strength of their songwriting and their attitudes towards music. These are things that I could definitely learn a bit from. Still, I would really like to improve my vocal abilities, if possible. I’m going to figure this out somehow.

Speaking of Christina Aguilera, who I only briefly mentioned, there are three albums that I am anticipating more than any others in the coming months and those are “Night Work” by Scissor Sisters, “Aphrodite” by Kylie Minogue and “Bionic” by Christina Aguilera. Of course, I am also really psyched for the new Miley Cyrus album, “Can’t Be Tamed” and the new Sheryl Crow record, “100 Miles From Memphis,” but Scissor Sisters, Kylie and Christina are kind of my main focus right now. Christina Aguilera is the closest of these and, in fact, the world premier of the video for her first single from the album is taking place tonight at 12:01am. Actually, that’s right now. Be right back.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, if I seemed at all excited about this album coming out before I am going completely apeshit over it right now. The video is absolutely amazing. I got about 15 seconds into the video and already caught a glimpse of a theme – CHRISTINA DOES MADONNA!!! The video is basically Christina recreating various classic, iconic Madonna images from her early career but making it so much raunchier than Madonna did at the time. It is like Madonna goes Dirrty. It is absolutely insane and gorgeous. I am completely obsessed with it. I had to watch it twice. It was just the hottest video I have seen in a long time. It wasn’t quite Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” but it was very close. Christina Aguilera knows how to turn up the heat on her music and image and she is doing a fucking outstanding job of that this go-round. I cannot wait for more of this album and this era of Christina Aguilera’s career – I think it may very well wind up being my favorite! God, that video has got me all wired. That’s probably not a good thing considering I need to be going to bed immediately. It is 12:20am and I simply must go try my best to sleep and stop obsessing over Christina Aguilera paying homage to Madonna. Goodnight.