Chapter 179: People

Last night I didn’t wind up getting into bed until nearly 1am, which is not ever what I have planned for a Sunday night. Sunday night is the night that leads into Monday morning and, being the first day of the workweek, is a morning in which you need to be fairly well rested in order to face the week ahead. So, when I wound up writing a full-length blog last night and doing so until well into the 12am hour, I was not thrilled with myself. Still, I got into bed just before 1am and forced myself to fall asleep quickly. This morning I woke at around 7:45am having missed my alarm but only by a brief time. So, I got up and went through my morning routine all on my own, my Mom still sleeping in her room with her boyfriend. No coffee for me this morning. No workout, either. I washed my face and brushed my teeth and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I dicked around online for a bit and had a bowl of Raisin Bran before heading into the bathroom to get myself dressed and made up for the day. I wore the shirt that I bought to go under my tacky sweatervest for the 80s party the other night, which didn’t work for that outfit. It was still a pretty cool colored shirt and I knew that I had an eye shadow color that would match it perfectly. The shirt is a very deep, bluish shade of green and as soon as I bought it I began thinking of various different looks I could try with the color. It is funny because I have a tendency to try to match my makeup to my outfit. Not everybody likes to do that and I understand that it can be a little “matchy matchy,” but I like it. I think it is good for the makeup and clothes to tie into each other a bit because it kind of draws a little extra attention to both things. I don’t always do that but most days I do kind of tie the two together. I just feel like it adds a little extra umph to my look.

My Mom knocked on my bathroom door at 9:14am to tell me the time and basically say that I needed to hurry my ass up. We had already decided yesterday that we needed to run to Walgreen’s this morning before I go to work, because I needed to get cash out of the bank for my piano lessons for the next month and to pay her boyfriend back for grabbing me cigarettes over the weekend. We left the house at 9:20am and I was feeling rushed and kind of unsure about my makeup look, (which is funny, because I received compliments on it from multiple people.) I left my makeup as it was because I didn’t figure I had time to change it at that point and it wound up being one of my better looks. We stopped at Walgreen’s and I pretty well cleared out my bank account. $66 and some change is all I have left in there. It’s not a big deal, though. I can definitely handle it. I just have to refrain from spending this week and next. Fortunately, I am pretty sure I have enough cigarettes that I won’t need to buy any before my next paycheck, or if I do need to buy any I can simply buy a pack or two to get by for the last couple days. I won’t have to spend $30 on cigarettes before I get paid again. I’m going to get buy just fine. I arrived at work at 9:36am, which was cutting it extremely close to getting an issue. Essentially, the way that it works at my work is that you have a 6:59 window to get there in the morning before you get an issue and a 2:59 window to get back from your breaks. It’s actually pretty lenient in comparison to a lot of jobs. I have a tendency to take advantage of that window for getting in each morning and often arrive at 9:34-9”35am, but 9:36am is cutting it much closer than I am comfortable with. Still, I managed to make it in without an issue today. I was kind of stressing myself out, though, because I decided that May was my month that I am really going to push for perfect attendance, and I very nearly ruined it at the very first chance on the very first day of the month. Fortunately, I avoided it.

Work was pretty boring today. Not a lot happened. I accomplished my daily task of writing two songs. Today’s songs were both very dance oriented. The first one, definitely the better of the two, was called “It’s A Drag.” It is basically a song about beautiful, glamorous drag queens living beautiful, glamorous lives. I was really happy with the way that this song turned out. It’s funny because I have been thinking a lot lately about drag and how much I would really love to try it. I don’t want to make a career out of it or anything like that but I would love to give it a shot just once. It just seems like such a blast. There is a LOT of work involved in transforming one’s self, though, and I really don’t know that I could pull it off. Even more, I don’t know that I care enough about the whole concept of it to put in all the effort involved. It’s not really something I am passionate about or anything but something I find extremely inspiring and intriguing. I don’t know that I will ever actually try it. On the other hand, though, I honestly feel like I kind of do my own personal version of drag everyday and I DO feel very passionate about the version that I do, so maybe that’s close enough for me. The other song I wrote was called “Coming Down,” and it was basically about those people who spend their whole lives chasing one high or another, and not even really a drug high, and how they spend their whole lives coming down. This can apply to drugs, to alcohol, to shopping, to sex, to thrill seeking, to all kinds of different things. I am not entirely sure what inspired this one but it came to me pretty suddenly and I just had to write it down. It seems like I know a good few people who live their lives that way. I feel like, in some ways, I live my life in that way, too. I am constantly chasing creative highs. I am eternally searching for my next great idea. I think sometimes that can be just as much of a drug as any substance I could abuse in life. Liz Phair has a song that says, “Sometimes a dream is what makes you a slave.” I definitely think that is true and I try to remember that as often as possible because I don’t want that to be what happens to me. I don’t want to allow my dreams to turn me into a slave. I don’t want to spend my whole life coming down. As I’ve said a million times, though, the Universe is working in my favor – it will not allow for that to happen.

Aside from that, I drank a lot of water today. I have decided to try to drink more water moving forward because, as I learned from some girl on YouTube, water flushes the toxins from your skin. These toxins, when not flushed out, tend to build up in your pores and cause skin issues. I have been doing really well with my skin care routine and have seen major improvements. This is the simplest addition to that routine that can really make such a world of difference. I know it sounds really silly to say but I never knew that water could have that type of beauty benefits. I know it is healthier than most drinks but I didn’t know that it could make you LOOK better, as well. If somebody had broken it down for me in that way in the past, I would likely have started drinking water much sooner. Another thing I decided to try today that I learned from a girl on YouTube, (in fact, I believe it was the same girl,) was replacing my usual eye makeup remover with simple Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I already had the Olive Oil in the bathroom from cleaning my makeup brushes over the weekend but it had never dawned on me that it could have the same cleaning effect on my face. It was much less irritating to my eyes than my eye makeup remover is and pulled the makeup off much quicker and more effectively. I just did my normal face washing and moisturizing afterwards and it felt much better than my usual makeup remover. It really seems like my skin got much cleaner with the Olive Oil than with makeup remover, as well. I liked it a lot and will likely make it my daily makeup removal routine. I really love the fact that I have not only developed a regular routine of wearing makeup but that I am taking active steps to preserve and maintain the health of my skin and such so I can look better naturally, with or without makeup.

When I came home this evening, I was feeling pretty exhausted. I sat down to the computer and kind of put off doing my other two daily musical tasks – my singing video and my piano practice. Eventually, I did get up and do my singing video. I had initially planned on trying to pull out a male song, perhaps from the 70s or 80s. After how good it felt to sing the Journey song at the 80s party, I thought there genuinely might be something to doing that style of vocal. It went much better than any of my videos from last week, so I thought that could be a good sign that I need to start working with lower, male vocals. Today I had initially decided that my video should be a baby step towards that, by singing “Speechless” by Lady Gaga. It’s a much lower vocal than much of what I normally do and falls right into my range without being too low, because I have issues reaching my lower register. I’m not sure what the reasoning was exactly, except that I downloaded Celine Dion’s “Taking Chances World Tour” live album over the weekend, but at the last minute I decided to make my video doing the song “Taking Chances.” It is one of my favorite songs of all time and I have always felt pretty good singing along to it and such. It didn’t go all that well, though, and only served to prove that I should go with my initial instincts. So, I am thinking that tomorrow I may do my video singing “Speechless,” or maybe even a song I have toyed around with singing for a long time but never actually have, “More Than Words” by Extreme. I am curious to see if either of those, both in the lower register, will go better than any of these extra high, girl songs that I normally sing. We’ll see. I did not wind up doing my 15 minutes of piano today and, considering it 12:30am now, I don’t think I will. I do have a little extra time to practice this week, though, because I finally spoke with Viktor today and managed to reschedule this week’s lesson for Friday at 7pm. I talked to my sister about it and she said that it would be fine. I’m really excited for my piano lesson this week because I feel like I have made some decent progress this week. I just need to keep up my practice momentum in order to continue that progress. I will make sure to practice extra tomorrow to make up for today.

For now, though, it is very late and I really should be getting to bed. I have kind of unconsciously decided to make this a bit of a theme week on the blog. Not really a theme week, because the actual posts are not following any real theme, but the titles are following a theme and my settings as I am writing the blog are, as well. Last night I was listening to the 70s disc on my 1.39GB Streisand compilation and titled the blog after a song on that disc. Tonight, I am listening to the 60s disc and have titled the blog after a song on that one. I will likely do the 80s tomorrow and the 90s the next day and the 2000s to follow that up. It is really just me wanting to listen to all of these and use the time that I am writing the blog to do it. I have really fallen in love with Barbra over these past couple of days. Her voice is just gorgeous and her music is beautiful. She is just such an amazing talent and I adore her. I am even plotting out a Streisand inspired makeup look for one day this week. I just adore her. This evening she even brought out a special moment for my Mom and I. I was sitting in my room, writing this blog, and listening to the 60s disc. The song “People” played and my phone went off with a text message. It was from my Mom in the other room saying that she used to listen to that song and sing her heart out back when she was a teenager. I thought this was the most adorable thing I ever heard, so I text messaged her back saying so and saying that I have fallen in love with Barbra. My Mom wrote back saying that she always loved her, too, and that her Mom was a really big fan of hers. I am not a person with a great sense of history, personal or otherwise, and have always kind of felt like I don’t have any genuine use for the past. Still, knowing that my Mom and her Mom listened to this same music back when she was a kid made the music feel that much more special for me. It is a beautiful thing. Enough about the past, though, let’s talk about the future. My immediate future consists of nothing but hitting the sack immediately. It is 12:42am and I really need to get to bed. We are going to work out tomorrow morning, so I’d better get my rest tonight. Goodnight.