Chapter 359: The Wind Beneath My Wings

It is Sunday morning, 9:33am, and I am awake. This is QUITE unusual, considering the fact that last night was SUCH A FUCKING MESS! I don't know how to explain that exactly but I kind of mean it in a good way and a bad way at the same time. You see, for anyone who managed to forget after the past several days of this blog, last night was my Halloween party! I spent the bulk of the daytime yesterday just doing random last minute cleaning and spent a long time working on the second version of my costume, which kind of became a big mess throughout the process. The pants ripped and the black shirt that I bought to go over my red fishnet shirt was ruined when I kept cutting a little too much and wound up falling apart completely. So, I wound up deciding to live a little and just wore the fishnet shirt on it's own. For the first portion of the evening feeling kind of self-conscious about this and covering my nipples every time I stopped and thought of it, which wasn't all that often - nowhere near as often as I would have liked, honestly. I also spent a long time working on the makeup for the second version of my costume because I had decided to reimagine it a little bit at the last minute. You see, inspiration kind of struck me on Friday night when Rachel & I were at "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" & I went with this whole new Dr. Frank N. Furter element to the look, which I really enjoyed. I liked the way it came out a lot, although it didn't take long for that to wind up getting smudged & fucked up looking, from what I understand.

So, as the day wore on I found myself falling more and more into the Martha Plimpton "200 Cigarettes" frame of mind, where I was obsessively sitting around being like "OMG NOBODY IS COMING!!!" I had made my mind up beforehand, though, that there were only like 4 people required to show up in order for me to have a good night, & those 4 people were all amongst the earliest arrivals, so I was okay with it. I didn't have a HUGE turnout but I was pretty happy with the people who did turn up, I think. The thing is, there were only 4 people here, aside from myself, until around 9pm and to combat my feelings of paranoia that nobody was going to show up I decided to start drinking the Hunch Punch really early. Hunch Punch, for those who don't know, is basically a big mashup of different liquors and different fruit juices combined to make a big fruity mess. Seriously, the beauty of the Hunch Punch is the fact that you can't really taste the liquor in it at all but there is a LOT of it in there. So, you don't really notice what's happening there until it hits you. I drank a LOT of that stuff before more people started showing up, so by the time they did I was already in one of those places where I didn't entirely understand everything that was going on. What I did understand, though, was the fact that people actually showed up to my party. In fact, a bunch of people I didn't even know showed up. I was okay with it, though, because, like I mentioned before, I didn't have a whole lot of understanding of what was going on around me by this time. It wasn't until my sister arrived, which was actually pretty late, that I realized exactly how fucked up I really was. I don't know what it is exactly but she has a way of making me very aware of myself when I am out of control or just generally being a mess, which was definitely the case last night. So, once she got here I started to realize how much of a mess I was but this was also when I started to realize how much of a mess everybody else was. It's a funny thing, honestly, because amongst most of my friends in the past and such I have always been used to being the drunkest person in the room, so I just kind of assumed that this was the case last night as well, but once I started looking around a little bit more I realized that there were a few other people who were right there with me. I also realized then how much it may have been necessary to be concerned about people. I had told 3 people before the party that they were welcome to crash here if they needed and those were really the only 3 people I felt entirely comfortable having in my house while I was sleeping. So, when I started noticing how fucked up a lot of people were I became slightly concerned. Fortunately for me, I was in a place by this point where I REALLY didn't understand anything that was happening. I don't know how fortunate this was for my best friend & co-host, Rachel. I actually don't know how yesterday evening would have gone had it not been for Rachel. I didn't actually realize until around this time how NOT drunk Rachel was. She kept all her shit together & kept the whole party under control. Seriously, I couldn't possibly feel more grateful for Rachel last night - she was my fucking hero for the evening - the wind beneath my wings & shit. I honestly could not appreciate her part of the whole thing more. She really kept things under control in a way that I could not possibly have done. I couldn't really say enough great things about Rachel last night, or in general. She is my BFF. I do feel really bad, though, that she didn't even get fucked up. She stayed sober, pretty much, the entire night. I just feel bad that she wasn't able to let loose and go nuts like I did. She said it was fine and that she probably would have been that way regardless of whether or not I was as shit-faced as I was. Still, I hate that she had to spend even a portion of her evening wrangling me & keeping me under control, aside from everybody else who was here.

So, the place kind of started clearing out somewhere between 1-2am and, after a minor issue with getting a guy out who made Rachel really uncomfortable, it was down to myself, Rachel & the 2 other people who I told could crash here. We were all kind of fucked up but winding down. We all decided that we were starving & needed food. We were initially going to just cook something here but we had issues with finding something to eat here, so we decided that Rachel was sober enough to drive us to Munchies 420 Cafe to pick up some food from there. So, we all piled into her car, rocked out to some of Rachel & I's favorite party music, like Katy Perry & Ke$ha, and made it to Munchies before I noticed anything had happened. As we were walking into Munchies some people who were standing outside told me to make sure to get on the camera. I wasn't sure what they were talking about exactly until I actually walked inside the building and found myself being filmed by this big ass professional camera. Apparently, the people who run Munchies 420 Cafe are trying to start a reality show and they were filming for it that night. As I had mentioned earlier, my nipples were out and after all the alcohol I drank throughout the evening I was thinking a lot less about them and just letting them hang out. So, if this reality show actually pans out for the owners of Munchies my nipples may actually wind up on the TV somewhere. Maybe they could become a viral video, then they could become a web redemption on Tosh.0, then somehow I could wind up having a bunch of sex with Daniel Tosh, and I would be okay with all of that. Fuck it, they're just nipples. Of course, aside from the nipples, there is also the fact that, apparently, when you put a camera in front of me I don't know how to stop talking. Seriously, this camera guy was on me the entire time we were in there, doing the up & down on my barely covered body and such. It was definitely a mess. The camera guy was cute, though, so I didn't really mind him examining my body in such a way. He could make a movie with me any day. I'm kidding, of course... Kind of.

Anyway, as I said, it was kind of a big mess last night but I had an amazing time & was extremely grateful that I had people around keeping an eye on me and making sure everything was under control. No one did this more than Rachel, but my sister & her girlfriend were also looking out really well while they were here, as well. It is good to be aware of the people you can count on. I mean, I was already aware of this but it was nice to be reminded. It was also nice to be completely shit-faced for the evening and chill with cool people and let my nipples loose. Great times. Goodnight.

Chapter 358: Freaky Friday

So, it is officially one week until the blog ends. Only 7 days left. Of course, as it turns out, this is kind of a terrible weekend to be the last week of the blog because I’ve kind of got a lot going on this weekend. A perfect example of this is the fact that I am writing Friday night’s blog on Saturday morning, and am pretty much guaranteed to write Saturday night’s blog on Sunday morning. I just have stuff happening these nights. It wasn’t initially going to be this way for the Friday night blog but something wonderful popped up completely at random that I had to do, (more on that later.) Let me tell you about yesterday, right from the beginning. Due to the fact that I needed to get up early and be to work early yesterday morning for the Halloween festivities, I had my alarm set for 5:15am, as opposed to my normal 5:45am alarm. Unfortunately, I didn’t wind up waking up until after 6am and was feeling extremely rushed. I did my best to shove away the feeling of being rushed and just went ahead and did everything I needed to do. The biggest part of what I had to do yesterday morning was get the makeup done for my Halloween costume. My Halloween costume kind of wound up going through several different evolutions – initially it was meant to be a little more of a Bondage Devil but that wound up evolving more into a “Party Monster” inspired Club Kid Devil, which is what I wound up doing for work and I really loved the way that it came out. Of course, there are two different versions of this Club Kid Devil costume – I kind of went for more of an innocent look for work, with less skin and incorporating some softer colors, like pink on the cheeks and lips. Today, for my party, I am doing more of the “naughty” version, or the NSFW version, and going much darker with it. I am really excited for tonight’s version of the costume, actually. Right now, though, we are not talking about tonight yet. We are talking about yesterday morning. Fortunately, I managed to get everything done in a timely manner yesterday morning and still managed to be to work by 7:40am. The first thing I had to do when I got there was do makeup for my co-worker who was dressing up as me. It was a much quicker process than I had expected, which was good. I’m not going to lie – this guy looked a hot mess. They say everybody is a hot mess when they first start doing drag, and this was certainly a form of drag… so, that statement seems to be true. Still, it was pretty crazy because this guy wound up looking like a completely different person after dying his hair and shaving the beard that he has always had. Anything for a laugh, I suppose.

Anyway, work was pretty laid back yesterday, much as I expected it would be. We weren’t busy at all, and I really got to spend a large portion of the day just dicking around. I was a little all over the place yesterday – everywhere but on the phone, it seemed. I feel a little bad about that for my co-workers but I was doing valid things most of the time. Well, valid enough, I suppose. I got to get off the phone and hang out in one of the offices for a while doing makeup for my team lead, which I was really excited about. The big secret theme of management’s costumes wound up being an “Old West” type theme, with them all being dressed as Cowboys and Indians and such, and the co-worker I was doing makeup for was a “Saloon Girl,” aka, a prostitute in a fancy dress. It was a really cute costume, though, in pink and black, and the look that I did on her came out beautifully. I was really proud of my work on that. I was a little disheartened, though, by the fact that there one of the other accounts, my sister’s girlfriend’s account, did an angels & devils theme, so there were an insane amount of devils running around our building yesterday. Still, my devil costume was pretty unique, I think. Not to sound conceited or anything but I think mine was hotter shit than the rest of them. Of course, I am kind of conceited, in general, so I WOULD think that. I was also a little disappointed in the fact that most of the costumes came off by 1 or 2pm. Everybody got sick of wearing their costumes sometime in the middle of the day and changed into regular clothes. I didn’t have extra clothes with me so I just stayed in my costume all day. I was okay with that, though, because I love wearing costumes. Overall, the whole Halloween thing at work yesterday was pretty chill. I was glad to get off, though, and get home to let the REAL Halloween weekend begin.

It wasn’t long after I got home that I received a phone call from Rachel, who I had already made plans with tonight to go out and do last minute shopping for the party, telling me about a different option for yesterday evening’s festivities. As you may remember if you have been following the blog recently, I did a post a couple of weeks ago all about “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and how much it had inspired me over the years. I also mentioned in that post the fact that I had never been able to get to one of the midnight showings, with all of the audience participation and such, in spite of having made plans to several times in the past. Well, when Rachel called me last night asking if I wanted to go down to the “midnight” showing at the Manatee Players in Bradenton, I immediately said yes. There was a little confusion with buying tickets, which wound up with me having to buy an extra ticket because the website wouldn’t sell me two together but would sell me three together. It was strange. Still, I was really excited about the whole thing – seeing “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” live has always been something I have really wanted to do and I was finally going to. I took off my Halloween costume and did a different, more “Rocky Horror” inspired makeup look using pink and black. When Rachel came over, we did a look on her that was very similar to mine except that we used black and this gorgeous blue from Sugarpill Cosmetics called Afterparty. I was really happy with the way that her makeup turned out, as well. I was slightly concerned, though, about the fact that there were still a few things that I needed to do for the party and we didn’t have a whole lot of time left before the show. So, we came up with a plan that we would forget about a couple of things, (like false eyelashes,) and would make a stop at Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s after the show for the other things. The only thing we didn’t wind up getting done was buying a bottle of Midori for me, which we are going to go do this afternoon before the party, because I am not going to be happy having a party without any Midori Sours. Seeing “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in a theatre was amazing, honestly, and it was awesome to see all of the different costumes and such. It was also really fun getting hit with rice in the wedding scene and water guns during “Over At The Frankenstein Place,” and shouting out Asshole every time Brad introduced himself to somebody and all the rest of it. I really had a lot of fun. Rachel and I have both agreed that we are totally doing this again next year, (although probably up in St. Petersberg or Tampa,) and actually dressing up and stuff. It was a lot of fun. After watching the film last night, I decided that I need to get myself in better shape by Halloween next year so that I can dress up as Dr. Frank N Furter, because he really is the fiercest character in the film and the one that I can relate to the most. So, that is something I need to start working on over the next year.

So, that pretty much concludes any talk about Friday. It is a little weird that this is the last Friday of the blog. Actually, that’s not actually true – next Friday will be the last Friday and the last any day of the blog. It is this silly thought in my head, but there were certain songs that I had kind of hoped to wind up using as blog titles at some point before the blog ended. One of those songs was The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love.” This really would have been my last opportunity to use it but it simply doesn’t ring true at this time, so I can’t just do it for the hell of it. I mean, I could – it’s not like I haven’t used random songs as blog titles in the past, but in general I try to make sure that the blog title actually suits what the blog is talking about. Unfortunately, this Friday, (yesterday,) I was not in love and the song doesn’t really fit in with anything else I have to say about the day. So, instead, I am just going to go with the song “Freaky Friday” by Aqua, which is a favorite of mine and DOES suit what I am talking about here. So, that’s that. Now, I should probably get off of the computer and start preparing stuff for the party tonight. I am having one of those Martha Plimpton in “200 Cigarettes” moments, where I am suddenly freaking out and thinking, “OMG NOBODY’S COMING TO MY PARTY,” or “OMG NOBODY LIKES ME!!!” I’m kidding, kind of. I am really not all that concerned about who is showing up at this point – I know that all of my favorite people will show up and if it’s just my favorite people that show up then I will just be hanging out and getting shit-faced with my favorite people, and that will be good enough. I really don’t think that’s going to be the case, though. I think it is going to be a pretty crazy night and that I will have an epic good time. It is going to be awesome. So, I need to go finish getting my house ready for it all. Have a good day, and I’ll be back probably somewhere around this time tomorrow!

Chapter 357: She's Not Me

Okay, so I am going to keep it really short this evening. There are a few different reasons for this but the main one is the fact that I need to be up extra early tomorrow morning. The reason for this is the fact that I have to do a bit more of an extreme, and considerably more detailed makeup look than I would on any other day, which will take considerably longer than my makeup does most days. I am pretty excited about my Halloween makeup, though. I am doing a different look for work than I am doing for my party on Saturday night, but I am equally excited about them both. I think it is going to come out looking pretty crazy and pretty awesome! I am excited to finally wear this look out after the test runs and concept drawings and such I had done. I also have to prepare a dish for the potluck they are having at work tomorrow. This is a pretty simple step, since what I am making is Green Beans & Salsa. It is a very simple recipe and will only take a few minutes to prepare. Then I have to get to work about 30 minutes early in order to do makeup for one of my co-worker's Halloween costumes. This guy came up with the most brilliant, gorgeous, unique and original concept for a Halloween costume that I have ever heard of - he is dressing up as ME!!! Of course, I was very flattered by the whole thing & thought it was a really fun idea, although this guy is being slightly offensive about the whole thing. Still, I can't have somebody dressing up as me without an authentic makeup look. I am also loaning him a sweatervest of mine, which is one of the signature pieces of my wardrobe. It should be funny, if nothing else. Still, I am not all that excited about the concept of getting up and doing somebody else's makeup that early in the morning. I AM really excited for doing a few other people's makeup a little later in the day, though. You see, our management are really big on their themed Halloween costumes every year & this year is no exception. So, I have been asked to do the makeup for a couple of the management team for their Halloween costumes. This is a really cool thing, I think, and it will be a lot of fun to dick around with doing makeup looks on other people. I am definitely excited for that part. I am figuring that work will wind up being pretty laid back & fun tomorrow - after all, I get to wear a costume! Everything is more fun in a costume! So, I think it should turn out to be a pretty cool day. For now, though, I need to get ready to get to bed. Before I do go to bed, though, I kind of need to organize my train case with the stuff that I need to take to work with me tomorrow, in terms of makeup. It shouldn't take too long, I don't think. I really should have made myself a new batch of brush cleaner because I am probably going to need it. I don't have all THAT many brushes and thus will need to be cleaning them between uses & such. I think what I have should be alright, though. It'll be a bit of a stretch but I'm sure I can pull it off alright. I'd better get to all of that so I can get to bed pretty quick. Goodnight.

Chapter 356: Mouthwash

So, today was a pretty boring day. I don’t really have a ton to report about this day, really. I woke up just after 8am and didn’t really have a ton of energy, so I just got out of bed and sat on the couch for a while in one of those only half-awake states. I knew that I had a big day of cleaning and such ahead of me, so I figured I might as well use that little bit of time in the morning to just relax and not move very much. It was just after 8:30am when I received a text from a friend of mine from work telling me that the co-worker that I had switched shifts with had not shown up yet. My boss/sister had told me when we switched shifts that if one or the other didn’t show up on the days we switched then we would both get “issues.” The way that issues work at the place that shall not be named for security purposes is that you get one issue for missing less than two hours of your shift, and two issues for missing your entire shift or more than two hours of it. You are allowed six issues per calendar month, so it is actually a really lenient system. There are a lot of people who work that system to their advantage in various ways and wind up with 5 issues every month, so they avoid getting written up or anything but still get to screw around a little bit with their schedules. I know that I have a couple of issues currently. I think it is only two but if it is more than two it is three at the most. So, I figured that if I got issues for my co-worker not showing up today I would still be safe from getting written up. Still, I wasn’t entirely sure what I should do, like if perhaps I should have gotten myself dressed and ready and just gone in today in her place. So, I called my sister and acted like I was just calling to make sure that she did come in and acted like I was surprised to hear that she hadn’t. She told me to just stay home and sort it all out tomorrow, so that was what I went with. Fortunately, I heard through the grapevine that the co-worker I had switched with did wind up showing up, she had just overslept or some bullshit like that. So, there was no actual problem and my day off today was still secured. I talked to my Mom for a little bit before she had to go in at 9:30am, which was good, then I just kind of sat around on the couch for a long time. Then I dicked around with my iPod for a while, creating a revised version of the playlist I had created last week to shuffle at my Halloween party. The initial playlist included something like 1,100 songs and this new one had 1,701 songs. I feel like this new one is much more cohesive and, regardless of how the shuffle function decides to mix them up, will flow much better than the previous one. It is a big mish-mash of different styles of music, from hip-hop/R&B, like Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliott and such, to genuine rock, like Foo Fighters, Nirvana and The Pretty Reckless, to dance stuff, like Robyn or Agnes, to even a little bit of country, like Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Dolly Parton. Probably the biggest factor in this playlist is the classic divas, though, like Dolly, Madonna, Barbra, Celine, Cher, Janet, etc., and a few good male divas thrown in, like Prince and George Michael. It is a really good mix this time, I think. This one is much more cohesive than the last one, as well, because it is pretty much 100% upbeat, which is really important for a party. Music, in my opinion, is one of the most important factors of throwing a party. I know that, at any good party that is not officially related to music in any way, music should really just serve as background noise but I know from my own personal experience that the background noise in any environment can really affect your mood and your feelings towards that environment. So, in that sense, while it is just the background noise it really does make a major difference to the entire vibe of any party. I tried really hard to include a little bit of every type of music so that there would be a little something for everybody and made it a point to include more songs that are kind of classics or staples that most people would actually know. There are still a lot of songs on the playlist that I’m sure I will be the only person at the party knowing beforehand. I kind of did that on purpose, though, because I love exposing people to new and different things in terms of music. As I keep saying, I am extremely excited for this party. I just have this feeling that this night is going to be epic!

In spite of the fact that it started out as just something random that I was messing around with to pass time, I wound up working on this playlist until well after noon. What this really meant was that I had managed to avoid actually doing anything in terms of the cleaning and such that needed to be done around the house for the entire morning but could still sit there with a feeling of accomplishment. After that I dicked around with something else for a few hours until my Mom came home from work for her lunch break. I sat and talked with her during her lunch break, then after she left I figured it was time to start cleaning. Fortunately for me, I had overestimated the amount of work that actually needed to be done and I managed to whip through it all pretty quickly. It wasn’t all that quick, honestly, but that is only because of the fact that I kept stopping in the middle to do other things. Still, I got pretty much everything I needed to finished in a pretty quick time. I also found that the sickness that I had been feeling over the past few days felt like it was pretty much entirely gone. I still have the cough but the actual feeling of illness is completely gone at this point. Aside from all of the cleaning that I did, I also did a test run of the work version of my Halloween makeup, which I was VERY pleased with! I really loved the way that it turned out. I have kind of determined that I am doing the exact same costume for work on Friday and my party on Saturday, only what I am trying to do with it is represent two different sides – the Friday, safe for work version, is kind of a softer, more innocent looking devil, (if that even makes any sense,) and the Saturday, not safe for work version, is going to be much darker and more sinister looking. The main focus of this, in both cases, is the makeup I am doing with the costume. The actual outfit will have variations, as well, but the main focus is the makeup. I think it is going to come out looking pretty amazing! I am really excited for the whole thing. I am really considerably more excited for Halloween this year than I have been ever before in my life. I think it is going to be a lot of fun. This is the first time that I am actually throwing a party for Halloween, which I am really excited about. It is the first time in a really long time that I am throwing any sort of party, beyond small dinner parties, and I am really excited about it. I am already thinking about the next occasion for which I can throw a party. I am kind of considering doing a Holiday party in December but I suppose it depends on how this one goes. I don’t really have any concerns about how this one will go. The only thing I AM slightly concerned about is the noise in this apartment. I have never seen anybody else throw an actual party here in our building, although I’m sure it has happened at some point. I don’t think there will be any issues, as far as noise or anything. I know that people have spent a lot of time being very loud out in front of the building and haven’t had anybody call the cops on them or anything, like on the fourth of July and such, so I don’t think it will be an issue. I really don’t think there will be any issues with the party, honestly. I will just make sure to keep it under control as much as I can. I am very glad that Rachel is going to be here, as well, because she will be able to help me a lot in terms of keeping things controlled and such. It is going to be a lot of fun. Once again, I am really excited for it.

The only other thing I wanted to mention about today is that Jane Fonda was on Oprah this afternoon. My Mom and I sat down to watch it while we ate dinner this evening and were both really into it. I have never been too familiar with Jane Fonda’s work, honestly, aside from “Monster In Law” and “Georgia Rule,” and didn’t really know much about her as a person, except that she caused a LOT of controversy back in the day with her opinions about the Vietnam War. Also, she did a lot of workout videos in the 80s – in fact, hers are still the biggest selling exercise videos of all-time. Anyway, I didn’t realize exactly what an inspiration this woman truly is – she is 72 years old and doesn’t look a day over 55, and simply has the most positive, upbeat attitude towards life that I could possibly imagine a person having. I picked up a couple of very important things from her talk with Oprah on today’s show. The first of these things was something that she talked about towards the end of the interview – she said that her secret to staying young and the best advice she could give to others is to simply focus more on always trying to be interested as opposed to trying to be interesting. I have always lived my life with an attitude of always trying to gain new experiences and such, in many ways specifically for the purpose of trying to be a more interesting person. It never actually dawned on me that perhaps it IS more important to try to be more interested than interesting. After all, there is so much that each and everyone can stand to learn in this world but if we are too busy trying to be more interesting to others we are going to miss out. Plus, I think people can tell when you are genuinely interested in the things that they have to say and when you really aren’t. It is important to always remain curious and intrigued by the things and people around you. The other thing about this that dawned on me was that I am actually already a really interesting person – that isn’t really something I need to work on further, at least not at this point in my life. What I could use some work on, though, is being interested in the people and things around me and having a sense of curiosity and inquisitiveness about it all. So, that is definitely something I intend to work on moving forward. She also talked a lot about having done a “Life Review,” in which she went back over her entire life, even interviewing people that she knew at different points in her life to get an outside perspective on who she was at the time. She said that it is all about trying to recall the feelings that you felt about the major events of your life and such. It is a very fascinating concept to me and something that I am actually considering doing myself for the Messy Little Raindrops blog. We’ll see, though. In the meantime, it is almost 11:30pm and I am exhausted! Goodnight!

Chapter 355: Fade Away & Radiate

Let me begin tonight’s blog by saying one thing: HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE ONLY 10 DAYS LEFT!!! I still can’t believe that I have actually made it this far. I can’t believe that this blog will be over and done with in just 10 days. I can’t believe that I actually managed to keep it up this entire time. I can’t believe any of it. What I really can’t believe, though, are some of the changes that have been made in the past 355 days that I have been writing this blog. It has really been an eye-opening experience for me in a million different ways. There are things that I am focused on and things that I am feeling right now that I never would have imagined I would be focused on or feeling within a year, or ever. It is kind of insane. One great example of this is the fact that my main focus at this point in time is trying to find love. I never would have imagined that there would ever come a point that this would be my main focus. I always placed love, in the romantic sense, very low on my list of priorities in life. It was something that I thought would always be secondary. I think, in a lot of ways, the reason I felt that way for so long is because I genuinely believed that I would never really find it. I mean, it isn’t something that I have ever cared to admit before but I think that I have walked this world with a LOT of insecurities in terms of finding love. I wouldn’t say that I never felt like I was worthy of it, because that really isn’t the case, but I think I was more concerned that I was simply too complicated of a person to ever find a love that could actually work out. I always believed that I would live my life in a long string of three month long relationships that would never actually pan out because I would always find some way to sabotage them in my head. I don’t know what I thought, honestly, but I don’t think that way anymore. I know that I am capable of loving and being loved in return. I know that it is going to happen for me. I know that it is going to happen for me SOON. I can already feel it and, I can already tell you, it is fucking wonderful. That is definitely an immense difference from where I was at 355 days ago. As I have discussed here a lot recently, I also feel like I am living my life right now as the very best version of myself that I have ever been – for the first time in my life I feel like I am truly living in the present moment and allowing myself to be open and vulnerable and to really make a connection with the people that surround me. That is an issue that I didn’t even entirely realize I had 355 days ago but one that I am so glad to say that I have managed to overcome. Sure, I know that these types of things don’t just go away completely but I feel completely confident in myself and in the fact that I will be able to fight off any urges I may have to retreat back into the world that only exists inside my own head. That is a MAJOR difference from where I was 355 days ago.

There is another major difference that I haven’t discussed here in the blog yet and one that I have been a little hesitant about discussing. As I have always said, I am trying to be as open with all of my feelings and as honest as I possibly can about my life here in this blog. Still, there have always been things that I have felt hesitant about discussing in the blog simply because my mind hasn’t entirely settled on my feelings towards them yet. This has been one of those things up to this point but I finally feel like I have figured out my feelings about the whole thing now and am feeling very confident about it all. This thing is probably the most drastic difference in me that has arisen from this blog and something that I would have sworn on my life would never happen. All of my life, I have always had the same dream – I wanted to become a musician. I wanted to make my living as a musician and be an inspiration to people all over the world. My dream, more than anything else, was to really have an effect on the lives of people around the world – people who are feeling now the ways that I felt when I was younger. I remember many times throughout my life when I have felt completely lost, alone and terrified that things would never get better for me. I also remember that pretty much every one of those times I would always turn to the same place for comfort, understanding and answers to the questions I had about life – MUSIC. My lifelong goal and ultimate dream has always been to pay it forward and provide the same comfort, understanding and answers to others out there in this world. Still, over the past several months I have begun to realize a few things about this dream. First of all, I have really come to recognize the fact that I don’t have to make music in order to be that type of inspiration to others. There are a million different ways to be a comfort and inspiration to others. Secondly, I have come to realize that while I have never lacked the passion or drive to make it as a musician there has always been a key element missing – ability. I have never had, and probably never will have, the ability to make this happen for myself. I write lyrics and have for pretty much my entire life and I have a good ear for melody and such but I simply don’t understand the way that music works, in terms of composition. I have long been one of those people who would miss out on all kinds of different elements of music that other people would notice. I have never been one of those people who could sit and listen to a song and hone in on each different instrument or backing vocal or whatever other elements there are. I have come to realize that, while I may love it, I simply don’t honestly have an ear for music. There are certainly ways around that, like having others write the music for you and such, but I don’t know that I would ever be completely satisfied not being able to have complete control over the stuff that I create. I don’t know that I would ever be completely satisfied not being able to fully create it for myself. Third, and most importantly, I have kind of come to realize over the past few months, that my passion for music has waned a lot. I mean, I wouldn’t say that my passion for music itself has waned. That should be clear just based on how much I will sit here and talk about the music that I hear from other artists and such. I don’t think I will ever be a person who doesn’t turn to music for comfort, understanding or to find the answers to the questions I have in life. It will always be my biggest source of inspiration in life and my first real love. I will also always consider myself to be a songwriter before anything else. I will still write out my emotions in rhyme schemes and with melodies, in the verse-chorus-verse form. However, I have realized that I have kind of lost the passion and drive that I had before to create music for myself. So, what all of this breaks down to is the fact that I have decided to give up on that dream. I really feel like the time has come for me to let it go. Like I said, music will always be the biggest part of my life but I don’t think it is genuinely what I want to do with my life anymore. I have realized that there is something else that I could do with my life that would be just as effective a way to do what the underlying goal of music has always been, and that I actually do have a talent for. This thing is exactly what I am doing here – writing. I don’t know how exactly to move forward with this but I know that I will figure it out and I will manage to achieve my REAL dream – being a source of light and inspiration to people around the world. Needless to say, I don’t suppose I will be moving forward with the concept of trying to write a record based on this blog, although I definitely intend to go back and read over the past year of my life and write some lyrics based on it. I just don’t know that I will ever actually pursue doing anything with them. I think that I have kind of come to realize that all of the lyrics I have been writing all of these years have never actually been for anybody but myself – they are my therapy and the most effective way that I have ever found to really dig deep down inside of myself to answer the questions that I have in life. They are the best way for me to really see a reflection of who I truly am. I don’t think I will ever stop writing lyrics. I simply won’t look at them as a career goal anymore. Instead, I’ll be working on a book, or perhaps becoming a featured writer for a magazine or a website or something along those lines. The possibilities are endless, really.

So, today was a good day overall. I slept much better last night than I did on Sunday night, which was much needed. Work was kind of boring, although I did manage to have a lot of really fun conversations with the people around me and such, which helped the day to pass a little more quickly. I got to spend some quality time with friends both at work and after work, because Rachel FINALLY got a new phone and is in touch with the outside world again. She came over this evening and watched “Glee” and “The A List: New York” with me and we discussed various things about my party and life in general. Tomorrow is my day off this week, since I traded days with one of my co-workers in order to be at work on Friday for the Halloween festivities. The plan is to spend the bulk of tomorrow cleaning my bedroom and bathroom, in order to get them all presentable for the party on Saturday. I cannot express exactly how excited I am for this party, by the way. I am feeling extremely ready to wear a costume, hang out with cool people and drink until my face falls off. I am ready to have a pretty epic night. It is only a few days away. It should make for a pretty interesting blog Sunday morning, I think, (because I will definitely not be in the condition to be writing a blog that night.) I did a test run of my makeup look for the party this evening, which came out really well, and plan to do a test run of my makeup for the work version of my costume tomorrow, as well. I am really glad to have this day off in the middle of the week, though. I felt like I could REALLY use it this week, actually. The week has already felt long and it has only actually been two days. It is kind of cool, though, because after tomorrow I am back on Thursday and then Friday is the Halloween stuff, which I will still have to work through but it will be considerably more laid back than an average day in the workplace and I will be in a costume. Costumes make everything better! A friend of mine and I were discussing the fact that Halloween is the only real “costume” holiday that there is and it only comes once a year, and how cool it would be to just periodically throw costume parties throughout the year. If nothing else, it would be a good excuse to wear a costume other times of year. I like this idea and may actually try to follow up on it once everything has been sorted out with moving in with Rachel and such. I am excited to be throwing a party, though, and am already really into the idea of throwing more. I suppose I should see how this one goes first, though. In the meantime, it is nearly 1am and I am really tired. Plus, I have a long day of cleaning ahead of me tomorrow, so I should probably get my rest tonight. Goodnight.

Chapter 354: Cartoon Heroes

I don't know what to say this evening. It's not for a lack of things to talk about, per se, but more based on the fact that I am exhausted & feeling kind of braindead this evening. You see, last night I had a lot of trouble sleeping & didn't wind up actually falling asleep until well into the 3am hour. I am not sure what the issue was exactly but it simply wasn't happening for me. I think it may have been a combination of having a lot going on in my head and also perhaps starting to get a little sick. I was coughing a lot and feeling kind of generally crappy. I don't know how to explain that feeling exactly because it's not exactly a feeling of illness but it's definitely not a feeling of wellness. It's just a feeling of not feeling well. I don't know what it is. I definitely don't think that I am getting sick for real at this point. I don't think this because I am not going to allow it to happen. Halloween is less than a week away and I absolutely do not intend to be sick for Halloween. It's only a few days from now that I have to get myself all dressed up in version one of my costume for the Halloween festivities at work, and then only a day more before I have to get myself all done up for real for my Halloween party. Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention the fact that I WILL be at work on Friday for the whole Halloween thing. I kind of discussed it with one of my co-workers who was already trying to get Friday off but was denied, so I decided to go ahead and switch with her. So, for this week, I am off on Wednesday and will be working Friday. My sister's girlfriend made some really good points about this whole thing, the main one being that Friday will basically just be a whole lot of dicking around for most of the day, and taking a different day off during the week will be a good opportunity to finish off the cleaning and such that I need to have done in time for the party, which will save me the stress of having to rush around and get these things done last minute. Plus, like I said before, I think it will be a good move for me to be on hand the day before the party to serve as a point of contact for people who plan on attending, to give them my number and directions and such. It just makes the most sense to me. Plus, I'm not going to lie, I have really missed having a day off in the middle of the week to kind of break the week up a bit. So, that should work out pretty well for me. I am happy with this decision.

So, today I woke up slightly later than usual and had to rush through the makeup process. Still, I didn't rush enough to create an issue for myself and the look that I was trying to achieve today. I saw this tutorial on YouTube for a Jeffree Star inspired look using a few Sugarpill Cosmetics shadows that I wanted to try doing my own take on. Don't get me wrong, the girl who did this look on YouTube did a really good job with it but I found a few different pieces that I felt could have been done more effectively and a few other spots that I felt could have been improved upon in different ways. In spite of the fact that I rushed through it a bit I did feel like I had improved upon the look a lot with what I did with it. It was basically a solid white lid with this gorgeous smoky effect in the crease and outer corner using pink, purple and black. I don't know how to explain that exactly and didn't even take a picture of it to include here to really illustrate. Oh well, though. Once again, though, I found that even after about 12 hours of wear my Sugarpill eye shadows barely showed any signs of wear. Unfortunately, by the end of the day my face was showing a lot of signs of wear. Like I said, I was really exhausted today and found myself getting really hot throughout the day. I actually think at one point, in the later afternoon, I may have had a fever that broke. I'm not sure, though. Either way, it was kind of a rough day to get through. There were a few fun/funny things that popped up throughout the day today, though, that I kind of got a kick out of. One thing that I have to mention, because I find it really exciting, is the fact that I have been asked to do makeup for a member of management on Friday. You see, it is kind of a long-standing tradition at my work that the members of management on my account make this huge deal out of doing a big group themed Halloween costume. They refuse to tell me what the theme is this year, because they are really into it in that secretive kind of way, but I have been asked to bring in a selection of makeup products in a particular color scheme to create a look to go with the costume for one of the members of management. This is all really silly but I am all psyched out for it. I'm totally treating it like I am Kevyn Aucoin getting his first big break as a makeup artist or something like that. I definitely think it will be a lot of fun, though, and I am excited to experiment on somebody else's face. I am particularly excited by the fact that the person I am doing this for is African-American and has a considerably darker skin tone than I have ever worked with before. So, that should wind up being a lot of fun, I think. Another thing that was kind of funny today was the fact that one of my co-workers has come up with the idea to dress up as me for Halloween, which is kind of hilarious. After all, I think if I were more widely known across the country, I would probably be a really popular Halloween costume. I have a very specific look but one that can be emulated somewhat easily. It is unique but also somewhat easy to recreate. So, I think that is a really fun idea. The only issue I take with the whole thing is that he wants me to come to work early and do the makeup for him. I am already going to be really busy that morning getting myself all put together and I don't know how well I could pull off getting myself put together early enough to also get to work early to throw someone else together. Of course, I don't think this guy would necessarily take all that much time to throw together. I also don't really know whether or not he is actually going to go through with the whole thing. If he does, though, I do think it will be pretty hilarious.

Aside from all of that, I don't really have a lot to say about this day. Like I said, I got VERY little sleep last night and am feeling pretty exhausted at this point. I am feeling pretty ready to just curl up and pass out in bed. I have actually been feeling ready to do that all day long. There were a few little emotional messes going on today, none of which were actually my own, that I had a lot of trouble dealing with because of the fact that I was so exhausted. There were a couple of times where I felt like I needed to be there for friends of mine, emotionally, but I simply couldn't make enough sense of anything to really do it. I felt really bad about that but I also felt really bad in general. I don't know which of those bad feelings should have taken precedence but the sleep-deprived one is what wound up winning out. I definitely don't plan to have another night like last night, though. I am already feeling completely exhausted and I am going to stop resisting that feeling and just give in to it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will wake in the morning feeling refreshed and ready to face a brand new day. We'll see how that goes, though. Goodnight.

Chapter 353: Jealousy

My computer is acting like a real asshole this evening. I am not entirely sure what is wrong with it but I can't seem to get it to function well enough to allow me to write this blog on it... So, I am working from my phone instead this evening. For this reason, and a few others, I am going to keep it short this evening. Another reason to keep it short tonight is the fact that I don't honestly have a whole lot to say tonight. It's been a pretty uneventful day, honestly. The bulk of today was spent cleaning up around the house and watching reruns on TV. Let me just say about the reruns, though, that there are a couple of TV shows that are amongst my very favorites of all-time that I didn't actually realize were in syndication at this point - namely "Ugly Betty," which apparently plays regularly on The TV Guide Network of all places, and "Daria," which has apparently started playing on Logo. I absolutely loved "Daria" growing up and found myself a little more excited than I probably should have been to find a mini-marathon of it on today. It was such a good show, though, and I had way too much fun sitting there watching it for a couple of hours this afternoon. The house is looking much better than it did this morning, too, which is a very positive move forward in preparing for my party. I also spent a little chunk of time this evening making ringtones for my Mom's new phone, (Kelly Clarkson songs,) and then some new ones for my phone, (from the new Cheryl Cole album.) While I was on the computer doing that, I also used that time to set up the first of my two new blogs, which will be starting shortly after this one ends. The one that I set up this evening was the one that will serve as my "personal" blog after this one ends. I finally came up with a title for that blog - Messy Little Raindrops. Clearly, the name came from the new Cheryl Cole album, as that is also the title of the album, but when I thought about it I figured that this would be the most appropriate name possible for the new blog because, as the "About Me" section of the blog says, I am trying to figure out how to navigate life, love & all the messy little raindrops that come along with them. This, I think, is really what the focus of the new blog will be, so it just seemed like the perfect title. I created the general layout of the blog and everything this afternoon but I definitely feel like it could use a few little tweaks here & there before it goes live. Still, I am suddenly feeling really excited for that blog to begin. I kind of want to do more of a Carrie Bradshaw style with that blog, as opposed to the haphazard style that I have spent the past year writing this blog in. I really want that blog to be a real behind the scenes look at somebody really, in a lot of ways, just learning to navigate the world as an adult for the first time. I also want to put much more of an emphasis on relationships in that blog and really examining what makes them work, what makes them fall apart and how to start them and when to end them and everything in between. I am excited for that blog to begin, as well as my new beauty blog, Beauty In The Mirror. I just really want to try writing these both in a very different style than I have written this one - I want them to have much more of a professional, editorial feel than this one ever has. We'll see how that pans out, though.

The other main thing I wanted to discuss in tonight's blog is the concept of jealousy. Jealousy, in general, is a completely useless, ego-based emotion that I simply don't have time for in my life. It is like Paris Hilton said in that song of hers, "Jealousy," "Nobody wins when you're filled with envy." It is so true. Still, as much as I recognize all of the things I mentioned above to be true, I am still human. Humans, by nature, are inherently weak-willed and not in control of their emotions. I am finding this to be more & more true lately when really examining my own emotional landscape. Jealousy, for all the worthlessness of it, has been one of the more prominent emotions I have been feeling lately in reference to several different situations in my life right now. I hate it but I have yet to figure out how to work through it and keep these feelings in check. I found some inspiration about this whole concept from the strangest place possible this evening. I decided to catch up on some episodes of Oprah that I had missed over the past couple of weeks and happened to watch one featuring the cast of the newest TLC trainwreck of a reality show, "Sister Wives." I had heard of this show and all the scandals surrounding it but, much like "Jon & Kate Plus 8" or that show with the family with 19 children, I really didn't have a lot of interest in ever seeing it. Still, it is an interesting concept. You see, "Sister Wives" follows a family of polygamists, featuring one man, four wives and sixteen children. I have always been intrigued by the concept of polyamorous relationships and have even thought a lot about what it would be like to be in one. It isn't something I ever plan on pursuing or anything but it is also not something that I would be opposed to taking part in should the right opportunit arise. This isn't about me, though. Oprah, in her special Oprah way, got these women, the four wives, to each open up a bit about how jealousy plays in to the relationship, since they are four women sharing one man. What was so interesting and really impressive is the fact that each of these women answered almost exactly the same way. They each acknowledged that they have moments where they feel envious of the other wives but stated that they always manage to work through those feelings. They even discussed the fact that they feel like better or stronger people because of the fact that they are able to work through those feelings so well. I'm not going to lie here, I found this part of the interview extremely inspiring and I kind of vowed to myself then and there that I would do my absolute best to try to do the same moving forward in my life. Like I said, in general, jealousy isn't something that I have a lot of trouble with or a lot of dealings with at all. It just seems that with a few recent events in my life I have found myself not only having moments of feeling jealousy but moments of being overcome with it. This is not a positive or healthy thing for me, or anyone, in life and I am beginning to see how strong it is in me right now & how much it needs to be stopped. So, this is something I will be working on moving forward. You could say that it is just another of my "messy little raindrops."

Anyway, it is 11:20pm and I really need to get to sleep. Tomorrow is back to work and, depending upon how I manage to work out my schedule, could prove to be a very easy or a very long week. I'm pretty sure that I have decided to go ahead and try to switch my schedule around so I am working on Friday. The main reason I decided on this was because if I work on Friday, I will be there to drum up last minute business for my party and be a point of contact to provide people with directions & contact info & such, as needed. So, I think I am going to try to sort that out. We'll see how that all works out, though. In the meantime, I need to get my beauty sleep. Goodnight.

Chapter 352: Raindrops

Okay, so let me go ahead and start right from the beginning of this day. I woke up at 8am this morning, which was really strange for me because I NEVER get up that early on the weekend. In spite of the fact that I was awake, though, I was nowhere near ready to get out of bed. So, I put on the new Taylor Swift record, “Speak Now,” and decided to give it a second listen, after going to bed listening to it last night. Where do I even begin to talk about this record? Well, I guess the best place to start would be to state that I had an extremely biased opinion on this record going into it because of the simple fact that I LOVE Taylor Swift. I am a huge fan of her previous two albums and I find her to be absolutely adorable and a wonderful role model for young people today. I love the fact that her music frequently seems to spread a positive message to the world, and even her love songs and such always seem to have a really positive slant on them in the end. So, like I said, I went into this record already expecting to fall in love with it and, I have to say, I was not disappointed. I am not going to do a full-blown track-by-track review here but there are a few key tracks that I really want to talk about. The first of these songs is the album’s opening track and first single, “Mine.” I heard “Mine” for the first time a couple of months ago and liked it, but I didn’t really pay it too much attention because I was kind of in a Katy Perry haze at the time. Listening to the song now and reading a few different interviews with Taylor discussing songs on the record, I have come to see it in a very different way than I did initially and have fallen in love with it. “Mine” is essentially a “Love Story” style song, chronicling a relationship going through ups and downs, with a chorus of “Do you remember we were sitting there by the water? You put your arm around me for the first time. You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter. You are the best thing that’s ever been mine.” This song tells a much more mature story than any of her previous work has told, even going into discussing a marriage that seems to be breaking down but winds up working out in the end by remembering the things that brought them together in the first place. It is a really good song, either way, but I became much more drawn in to the whole concept of the song after reading a recent interview in which Taylor talks about the fact that she wrote this song about one of those moments where you meet someone or when you are just starting to get involved with somebody and kind of build up this whole story in your head of your entire relationship with this person. That is definitely something that I can relate to a lot. I have had many of those moments in my life and have written many songs based on those concepts myself, so it is kind of cool to see somebody else doing the same thing. Another favorite track of mine on the album is the title track, “Speak Now,” which is another one in a similar vein as “Love Story” or “Mine,” in the sense that it is telling a whole story that has only actually happened in her imagination. This is the story of a girl watching a guy that she is in love with getting ready to marry somebody who isn’t right for him. The song opens with the line, “I am not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white veil occasion but you are not the kind of guy who should be marrying the wrong girl,” and goes on to a chorus that says, “Don’t say yes, Run away now, I’ll meet you when you’re out of the church at the back door, Don’t wait or say a single vow, You need to hear me out, and they said Speak Now.” Aside from the whole marriage element, this is a concept that I found myself immediately drawn into because it is something that I can kind of relate to in a lot of ways right now. I am also really drawn into the whole concept of the “Speak now or forever hold your peace” line because it really gives the sense of urgency, like “you better do this now before it’s too late.” That is another concept that I can relate to right now. Another favorite song of mine on this record is the sixth track, called “Mean.” “Mean” is a song that is particularly close to my heart and a really important message to be spread right now, in light of the recent suicides brought on by kids being bullied and abused by their peers. The chorus of this song says, “Someday I’ll be living in a big old city and all you’re ever going to be is mean, Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me and all you’re ever going to be is mean.” I don’t know when this song was written or whether or not it was inspired by any of the recent bullying cases, involving gay kids or otherwise, but I definitely think it is a very positive song to be releasing right now and I really hope it winds up being released as a single at some point. The last song I am going to talk about here is called “The Story Of Us,” which I think should definitely be a front-runner for second single from this album because it is simply brilliant. This is, by far, the most pop sounding track on the record and sounds like it was specifically designed for Top 40 radio, as opposed to country radio. This is a pretty clear-cut breakup song, from the perspective of a little while after the breakup, talking about having never expected the story of your relationship to wind up the way it has. The chorus says, “Now I’m standing alone in a crowded room and we’re not speaking, & I’m dying to know if it’s killing you like it’s killing me, yeah, I don’t know what to say, it’s just a twist of fate that it all broke down, but the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now.” This song is simply gorgeous, and if you are just going to download a song or two from this record I absolutely recommend downloading this one. The entire album is brilliant, honestly, but my favorite tracks would be all of those mentioned above, as well as “Sparks Fly,” “Back To December,” “Dear John,” “Never Grow Up,” “Enchanted,” “Innocent,” and “Better Than Revenge.” As has been the case with both of her previous albums, I really feel like the first half of the album is much stronger than the second half but, as was also the case with the first two albums, the entire thing is brilliant. I definitely recommend picking up this record when it comes out this coming Tuesday, October 26.

I didn’t really do a whole lot after getting out of bed, beyond dicking around on the Internet and doing a whole lot of nothing important there. The next major event of the day came around noon when I heard a knock at my front door. It was the mailman and he had a package for me. This package was something I actually wasn’t expecting until the beginning of next week – my second order from Sugarpill Cosmetics! After receiving the first shipment from them, the Burning Heart palette, and completely falling in love with it, I simply had to go back and order more. Sugarpill currently only has a collection of 9 pressed eye shadows and 18 loose shadows, which is not that wide of a variety but is very impressive for a startup company like this. With the palette that I received today, I now have all but one of the pressed shadows. The only one I am missing is called Bulletproof, and it is a matte black. I am not in any huge rush to get this one because I already have plenty of matte blacks, although I am really curious about this one based on all of the other pressed shadows I have. They just have a really different feel to them than any other shadows I have used. The pigmentation on every one of these shadows is completely insane and they stay on insanely well. I mean, I wore a look to work earlier this week using the four shades in the Burning Heart palette and was shocked to have made it through my entire 10 hour work day, and a couple more hours after work, with the colors still completely intact and only showing slight signs of fading. I really cannot say enough good things about this brand of cosmetics and am really excited to try even more of their products, even though I am kind of terrified of loose eye shadows. Anyway, the palette I received today is called the Sweetheart palette and includes four more shades of Sugarpill pressed shadows, including a hot pink called Dollipop, a bright medium blue called Afterparty, an insanely gorgeous green called Midori and a matte white called Tako. I was really excited to try out these shadows, especially Dollipop, because I love a good hot pink shadow, and Midori because it is named after and really captures the color of my signature alcoholic beverage. So, I threw together a look using the four shades in this palette, as well as Poison Plum from the Burning Heart palette, and I have to say that I was really proud of my work with these. It was really bright and extremely well blended. I especially loved the fact that I did this cool effect where you only see pink in the inner corner and coming off of the outer corner of the eye. It kind of pulled it all together beautifully. I don’t know how to explain that exactly, so I am going to include a picture.


I think I may actually try to do my very first makeup tutorial video for this look. I am not sure yet – I am very apprehensive about delving into the world of making tutorial videos because the lighting in my house is kind of terrible for it. Still, it is something that I intend to sort out because I feel like the new beauty blog I am starting would be kind of incomplete without including instructional videos or tutorials. So, that is something that I will be working on moving forward.

I spent a good portion of this afternoon lying in my bed listening to the other major leak of yesterday, Cheryl Cole’s new record “Messy Little Raindrops.” This was kind of the one I was more excited for, of the two, so I had already listened to it a couple of times last night. The main reason I had listened to it a couple of times already last night was not because I was so blown away by it that I had to hear it again right away. In fact, it was kind of the opposite. I went into this record expecting to fall instantly in love with it, as well, because I definitely had that reaction to Cheryl’s first record, “3 Words.” This album, however, did not have that instantaneous feeling that “3 Words” did. It’s not to say that I didn’t like it upon first listen but I was kind of confused by it upon first listen. Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I was confused by it so much as I was just kind of surprised at how much I wasn’t drawn into it immediately. After listening to it a second time, I liked it quite a bit more. It wasn’t until I was lying in bed listening to it this afternoon, though, that it really hit me. I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention the first couple of times or if it is just one of those records that don’t hit you immediately. Either way, it was on my third listen to this record that it really finally struck me – this record is fucking GORGEOUS! One thing that needs to be mentioned right off the bat about this record is that it is being released almost exactly one year after the release of “3 Words.” That is a very brief period in which to have recorded and released a whole new record. Add to this the fact that this was an extremely tumultuous year for Cheryl, during which she divorced her husband after a huge cheating scandal and had a bout with Malaria, which actually nearly killed her. Knowing these facts, it makes a lot of sense that this record is incredibly moody. It is much more moody than “3 Words” ever dreamed of being. When I say that this record is moody, I mean that in sonic terms, (it covers a pretty wide musical landscape,) and lyrical terms, (it also covers a very wide range of emotions in it’s lyrics.) All of that being said, and a few listens in, I cannot recommend this record enough. It is absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite things about this record, too, is that it includes three ballads. The last album only had one. I also really love the sound of this record, which leans much more towards actual dance music than the urban-influenced pop vibe that “3 Words” had. Both sounds work out beautifully for Cheryl but I have to say that I find the dance style much more suited to her all around. The first song that has to be mentioned here is the album’s first single, “Promise This.” This is the opening track to the album and does a really great job of setting the pace for the rest of the record. The song opens with a sample of a classic French children’s tune, “Alouette uette uette, Alouette uette uette, Alouette uette uette, deployer l’aile,” which is insanely catchy and kind of a brilliant move to through into a pop song. The song itself is much more dance than anything Cheryl has done before and the lyrics immediately seem much more personal than anything from her last record. This song is basically about the fear of watching a relationship breakdown and come to an end, with a gorgeous chorus that says, “Promise this, if I die before I wake, Promise this, take the time to say your grace, On your knees you’ll pray for me, Promise this, be the last to kiss my lips.” It is gorgeous and as soon as I heard this song a couple of months ago I knew that the album was going to be something completely different than the last one. The next song I want to mention is probably my favorite on the record, the very last track, called “Waiting.” “Waiting” is my favorite track on this record, I think. In terms of the sound of the song, it is kind of insane in the best possible way – it is a clear dance song, with a very pop slant to it. It has one of those very ethereal sounds to it – I don’t know how to explain it exactly but it kind of feels like floating. The most important part of the sound of this song, though, that really kind of takes the song to a completely different level is the sample included in the pre-chorus bridge section – over a dance beat and these large, sweeping synth sounds, you can hear that classic, iconic piano riff from Vanessa Carlton’s song “A Thousand Miles.” It was completely unexpected but like I said, it really takes the song to a completely different level. It is absolutely gorgeous. It is not just the sound of this song that makes it my favorite, though. The lyrics on this song are beautiful and kind of break my heart every time I hear it, in spite of the joyous sound of the song. The song is basically about the frustration one can feel when they are holding out hope for the person they love to finally get their shit together and do right. The chorus says, “Waiting around all of the time, waiting around all of the time for you to get it right, Waiting around all of the time, waiting around all of the time for you and something to believe in, In another world, in another life I’d still belong to you, In another time you’d still be mine, I’d still belong to you.” This is a concept that I can relate to in many different ways. In fact, once again in spite of the joyous sound of the music on this song, it actually made me cry the first time I listened to it, but this may just be a result of my heightened emotional state right now, (which I will go into a bit more in a minute.) This entire album is absolutely brilliant and I highly recommend checking it out but there is only one more song that I want to discuss here because it is exceptionally close to my heart at this time. This would be the seventh track on the album, called “Raindrops.” This song is actually describing trying to rebuild a relationship that has fallen apart. Actually, I don’t know if it is so much about trying to rebuild a relationship as it is about trying to move on from one – it’s not entirely clear. The lyrics use a beautiful metaphor, saying “You were the tree, I was the apple, I fell to the ground and turned brown, Hate was the wind but love was the secret that blew us to where we are now.” The song goes on to a chorus that says, “Now love can’t grow without tiny little raindrops, tiny little, tiny little, messy little raindrops.” This chorus immediately struck me, more than anything else on this record, because it is such a universal truth that hadn’t necessarily dawned on me before. You see, as anybody who has been paying attention knows, love is what I am looking for right now. Love is the goal that I am working towards right now and what I feel most strongly about in my life right now. I have found myself recently feeling kind of discouraged after a few different dealings with boys that have just not come into fruition for one reason or another. Hearing this song really kind of put things into perspective for me a little bit – Perhaps all of these things, all of these disappointments recently, have simply been my “messy little raindrops.” It is true that love doesn’t really come without a little bit of a struggle, a little bit of pain and a little bit of a mess. That is all that is happening right now. I am just experiencing some “messy little raindrops,” and I have absolute faith that love will grow from these experiences. I don’t know how exactly or in what form it will come but I know that it will come. Aside from the three tracks I discussed above, my favorite tracks on this record would be “Live Tonight,” which was produced by Will.I.Am and has kind of an “I Gotta Feeling” vibe to it, the album’s second single, “The Flood,” “Hummingbird,” “Better To Lie,” which features a guy with a gorgeous voice named August Rigo, and “Happy Tears,” which is just a wonderful, inspiring song about moving on from heartbreak. I cannot say enough good things about this record and HIGHLY recommend checking it out.

Aside from that, I spent the evening driving out to Venice with my Mom for our long-standing weekend tradition of driving all the way to Venice to get Panda Express from a drive-through, even though we could just as easily go get it from the food court in the mall. It is something random that we both really enjoy. On the way out to Venice, the emotional mess that I mentioned earlier kind of reared its ugly head. There are a few different things going on in my life right now that have kind of left me in a highly emotional state right now. One of those things kind of came bursting out of me in the car yesterday listening to one of my favorite songs, “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn and finding myself on the verge of tears listening to the lyrics. This song really kind of killed me yesterday. The chorus of this song says, “I’m in the corner watching you kiss her, I’m right over here, why can’t you see me? I’m giving it my all but I’m not the guy you’re taking home, I keep dancing on my own.” It is basically just a big description of watching the person you love with somebody else. I just sat there yesterday in the car on the way to Venice finding myself relating to this whole concept entirely too much and it caused me to have a little bit of a breakdown. I don’t want to talk too much about it but it has definitely left me in a very emotional state over the past little while and it sucks. There is this other situation that kind of arose from that situation on Friday, as well. Well, not exactly – the two situations are completely unrelated but the emotional state I was in from one kind of led me to think about the other. You see, I have talked in this blog quite a bit, (although not in quite a while,) about the fact that I have always been one of those people who will have a group of friends for a little while and then, for one reason or another, will just kind of drift away from them and suddenly find that these people aren’t my friends at all anymore and I am suddenly in the midst of a whole new group of friends. The reason I talked about this so much more at the middle point of the blog is because I had a group of friends at the time that I really loved and appreciated and did not want to let go of. I talked a lot about how I really didn’t want that to happen with these friends. I was sitting here on Friday afternoon and found myself suddenly noticing that, without realizing it, the whole thing had pretty much happened – I was no longer in much contact with that old group of friends and I have found myself in the midst of a new group of friends. It was weird because this was the first time that had ever really dawned on me. It made me really sad to come to this realization. So, I decided to reach out to one of these people, the one I was always the closest with, my friend Whitney. I mean, I was close with all of these people but one has kind of turned out to be a lost cause, in a lot of ways, and the rest I have kind of maintained a friendship with that simply isn’t as close as it once was. Whitney, on the other hand, used to be one of my best friends. We used to talk a LOT and tell each other anything and everything. It made me really sad to sit and realize that I have no clue what is going on in her life at this point and that she probably has no clue what is going on in mine. So, I reached out to her on Friday evening and said that we needed to talk but it just didn’t pan out, then we were supposed to talk Saturday but I just never heard from her throughout the day. This made me really sad, too, and coupled with my heightened emotions based on the other thing, I was left feeling kind of a mess. Fortunately, a little later on last night, I finally did talk to her and we kind of came to the realization that our friendship is still intact but that it needs to be nurtured a bit more. So, hopefully that will pan out properly. It was just really good to talk to her for a while and I was really glad to catch up. The whole conversation just really improved the emotional state that I was in immensely. Sure, there are still things that are not going how I want them to but, like I concluded above, those things are nothing but raindrops - nothing but messy little raindrops. Love is going to grow – I can feel it.

So, for now, it is Sunday afternoon and I really need to get started on my day – I need to do some cleaning around this house and do some laundry and various things like that. I also need to watch “Cabaret,” as I have had the DVD from Netflix for the past couple of weeks and have yet to watch it. I don’t know what it is exactly but I just haven’t been in a mood for watching movies for the past little while. I need to get back to watching more movies with my free time – after all, I am paying for the Netflix service, I should probably use it as more than just a little Streisand machine. Perhaps I will do a bit of that today. Who knows? What I know now is that I am hungry. I’m going to go find something to eat and get stated on all the shit that I need to do today. Have a good day!

Chapter 351: Yeah Yeah

Okay, so it has only been about 4 hours since I posted yesterday’s blog and there isn’t a whole lot that has happened in that time. There are a couple of random things that are pretty noteworthy that popped up during those hours, though. The first, and most important, is that I found out during that time that the ban has been lifted on gay and lesbian couples adopting in the state of Florida. That is HUGE and I couldn’t be happier to hear this news. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any intentions of adopting a child at any point but it is a great feeling to see a step forward on the road to equality, particularly in light of the recent setbacks we have faced on that road, like the vote to NOT repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Of course, there is also the “It Gets Better” project and all the attention that has been paid to anti-gay bullying and abuse that is taking place across this country, which is a very positive thing, as well, although I definitely don’t think it is worth the cost of the lives of the six, possibly seven, kids who brought the whole thing on. All I am saying here is that it seems like there is some progress being made at the moment, which is a very positive thing. Even our current President, Barack Obama, and the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, made video statements for “It Gets Better,” which is a lot more than any past administrations have done to show their support for the GLBTQ community. So, that all makes me feel really good about the direction we are heading in… all while still realizing that we’ve got a LONG way to go still. The other two things that happened this evening were the leaks of two of my most anticipated records of the fall, “Speak Now” by Taylor Swift and “Messy Little Raindrops” by the most beautiful girl in the world, Cheryl Cole. Also, today saw the leak of the debut from last year’s “X Factor” winner, Joe McElderry, which I am less excited about than I am curious about. I haven’t actually had a chance to listen to any of these records yet, (I am actually in the midst of listening to Cheryl Cole’s record for the first time right now,) so I won’t be doing reviews of them in tonight’s blog. I will most likely post full-length reviews of all three of these records tomorrow night, though.

Also in the last four hours, I made dinner for my Mom and we sat down and watched a bootleg of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” that I borrowed from one of my co-workers. Neither of us had seen it while it was still in theatres and my Mom really didn’t want to wait until the DVD comes out in December. So, we watched it this evening and, I must say, neither one of us were impressed with it. It really felt like they were trying to turn this one into a genre film – it kind of attempted to straddle the line between horror and action. This would have been fine, I suppose, if the first two films in the series had followed that same sort of formula. Neither of them did, though, so it just seemed kind of awkward. I also felt like some of the sequencing, in comparison to the book, didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was just odd the way they shuffled some things around. Don’t get me wrong, there were certain things that I absolutely understood, like pulling the Quileutes Council Meeting scene from “New Moon” to place in this film instead, because it just made more sense thematically. However, there were little things that made other things make considerably less sense. For example, in the book “Eclipse,” Bella’s graduation didn’t happen until the very end of the book, but in the movie they had it happen very early on. This wouldn’t matter much, except for the fact that one of the key scenes in this story was completely thrown off by changing the timing of this. For those of you who are familiar with these books and films, there is a pivotal scene in the books in which Edward and Bella are camped out in this strange field area preparing for this big crazy battle that has to take place. Jacob is there, as well, waiting outside of their tent. It is very cold outside and Bella is freezing, so because of the fact that Jacob’s werewolf body holds so much heat they ask Jacob to come in and get into the sleeping bag with Bella in order to warm her up, yada yada yada. That made perfect sense in the book because this scene was supposed to be taking place in the middle of winter. However, since they changed the placement of the graduation, which always happens in May or June, the timing of this scene was moved to the middle of summer. I know that weather is different in that northern portion of the West Coast but I also know that it is not drastic enough of a difference that it would be snowing and at such cold temperatures as the film portrays in the middle of July. So, that minor change was enough to make the most important scenes of the movie not make any sense to me. I don’t know… maybe I am just being overly critical of it. I just was not impressed at all, and found myself spending the entire movie pointing out mistakes or cracking jokes like, “Oh, I must have missed the scene when Bella bought herself a curling iron,” because her hair was suddenly curled for the last portion of the film. Also, a few of the characters suddenly had accents that they didn’t have in the first two films. I don’t know. I just felt like the whole thing was kind of dumb.

So, since I have rambled on about fucking “Twilight” movies now, I am going to go ahead and end this. I don’t have anything important to say this evening. At least, I don’t have anything important to say that I actually want to say right now. There are a few emotional matters that I really could discuss at this point but I just don’t feel like drudging up my emotions right now. It is just strange how things kind of pop up in your mind at different points in time – like the Universe is sending you signals that something needs to happen. I guess the reason these things happen is because the Universe actually IS sending you signals that something needs to happen. In any sense, none of it actually happened today so there is no need to discuss it right now. Oh shit. I just remembered that tonight was supposed to be a themed blog. It’s okay, though, it was a really dumb theme, anyway. You see, I spent most of today putting together a playlist of music to shuffle at my party and I was going to make tonight’s blog post a big discussion of the ideal party music. See, I told you it was a dumb theme – a REALLY dumb theme, actually. I’m glad that I decided not to go ahead with that because that would be one hot mess of a blog for this evening. It’s not to say that this is any better, but it’s something. So, I am going to go ahead and end this here. Goodnight.

Chapter 350: The Beat Goes On

Okay, so it is 4:52pm on Friday and, once again, I am sitting down to write the blog for Thursday night. Fuck it. I’ve only got 14 days left of this, anyway. That means that exactly two weeks from today I will be sitting here writing the final chapter of this story… The very last post here. Wow. That is a lot to think about. I still can’t believe that I have managed to actually complete the year. I know it hasn’t exactly changed the world or anything but I do feel like this has been quite an accomplishment for me. I mean, I can’t think of any other time in my life where I have set such a long-term goal for myself and actually achieved it, so this is a big step. I am really excited about this whole thing coming to an end, actually. I mean, I am kind of sad about it but I am also really excited because I know that the end of this blog also means the beginning of a couple of really cool new projects. Aside from that, though, the end of this blog also means that I am no longer tied down to a strict schedule of writing every day. Not to say that writing every day has been a bad thing, or that I have stuck to that schedule all that well over the past few months, but I do think it will be nice to have a little more freedom, in terms of time, to get really creative with the things that I do. I am going to miss this whole thing, though. I was actually talking to my Mom last night about the ending of this blog. As I have mentioned here a time or two, I was really hoping to end the blog by being at the start of a healthy long-term relationship. I was hoping for that to be the connection that I managed to make with the outside world to finish off this story of my transition from living inside my own head to living and functioning in the outside world. Unfortunately, my time is running out very quickly and I can’t help but begin to doubt that it is going to happen in time to make the happy ending to this story that I wanted. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a single doubt that this is going to happen for me, and soon, but I do doubt that it will happen in time for the ending of this blog. As my mother and I were discussing, and as I have kind of discussed here in the blog, I think this story has already found it’s happy ending, anyway. What I mean by this is that I have already managed to make a connection to the outside world – not a love connection but a connection, anyway. Over the past few months I have blossomed in ways that I hadn’t really imagined would happen – I have put myself out there, I have been open with my feelings and I have made a connection with many different people. I have stopped being so internalized and feel like I have managed to let myself shine in ways that I never had before. I mean, I have always let myself shine but I also always kept a certain amount of my shine hidden away from the world. I have always felt like there were so many parts of my personality and who I am as a person that nobody had ever seen, and I can honestly say that I don’t feel like that is the case, anymore. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely still parts that are hidden but, in general, I am about a million times more open than I ever have been before. I honestly feel like right now, in this moment, I am the very best version of myself that I have ever been and I couldn’t possibly feel more grateful for that. So, in that sense, this story is over. However, there are still two weeks left of this blog and who knows what could happen in that time? I am definitely keeping my fingers crossed for something great. Perhaps at my Halloween party?

I have these strange ideals in my head about parties that rarely ever turn out to be true. I don’t know what it is exactly but I just always imagine when you throw a party something magical has to happen or some major event or something like that. Like, you’re supposed to fall in love or have some exceptionally crazy shit go down that you will remember for the rest of your life. I have this same concept of summer, as I discussed in this blog several times over the course of this past summer, and it also rarely ever turns out to be true. I was discussing this recently with a friend of mine, who was saying she had the same ideals about summertime, and we determined that it was likely a product of watching too many teen movies growing up. It is true that, while discussing my Halloween party, my head is filled with all of these ideas from the movie “Can’t Hardly Wait,” about getting locked in the bathroom with somebody and realizing that we were meant to be together or confessing my feelings to somebody and having them mistakenly think that I was just trying to get into their pants, only to find my special letter to them later and then having them come chasing after me at the train station the next morning. I don’t have anybody to confess my feelings to and I haven’t written a special letter to them or anything, and I am not due to get on a train or anything the next morning… but you get my drift. I don’t think that anything all that monumental is going to go down at my party, aside from having a pretty epic evening of fun and inebriation. Still, I am really excited for the epic fun and inebriation that this shall bring. Speaking of Halloween, at my work they are doing Halloween festivities on the Friday before, October 29. Friday is my day off every week, so I was already planning on not taking part in any of their Halloween festivities. However, since I have kind of brought this to a couple of people’s attention, mainly my sister, I have kind of been encouraged to try to switch days off with somebody for next week in order to be there that day. I am not sure if I am going to do that yet or not but I might. It kind of sucks because when I was initially thinking I was going to be there that day I was planning on doing two separate costumes, one for work and one for my party, but now I only have the one and it seems kind of lame to wear the same costume to both. Of course, I mentioned this to one of my friends who then was like, “Oh, it’s going to be lame if I wear the same costume to work and to your party?” I didn’t know how to explain that away exactly because it would sound bad if I said, “Well, I hold myself to much higher standards.” That isn’t actually true, anyway… but, again, you get my drift. So, I suppose it all depends on whether or not the other person at my job wants to trade days off next week. I don’t care too much either way about that at this point, honestly.

So, this blog is supposed to be talking about Thursday. Thursday started off pretty shitty, honestly. I mean, it wasn’t shitty but work was absolute hell. It was just the longest, most boring day possible. Well, maybe not possible, but it was extremely long and boring. I was pretty excited, though, that my team lead had an assload of work to do at the last minute and let me stand up and watch the floor for her while she did her work. So, I basically got to spend the last hour of the day standing around talking to my friend since none of the agents there actually seemed to have any questions, or very few questions. So, that was fun. After work, I had a few friends over and got a little tipsy. I broke open my special treat to myself for the party – a bottle of Midori and some sour mix – and it is all gone now. So, that is a little money that I will have to spend from the paycheck before the party. It will be worth it, though, because I fucking love my Midori Sours. They were delicious last night. I had a lot of fun last night, actually. It was a perfect way to end this week, which was really not very much fun at all, and start off the weekend. After my party shopping earlier this week, I wound up really broke so I can’t really afford to go out and do anything this weekend, so it was nice to have a little bit of the “night out” effect at home for free. As far as the rest of the weekend goes I don’t really have a lot of plans. Today, so far, hasn’t been all that eventful. In fact, today has pretty well been focused on one thing. I will save the details of that thing, though, for tonight’s blog – let me just warn you, we have another theme post coming this evening. As far as the rest of the weekend, though, I know that Rachel is coming to hang out tomorrow evening. We have resigned ourselves to just spending this Saturday night hanging out at my house due to a lack of funds for a night out to TOTIs or anything. Then Sunday will probably just be spent trying to work on cleaning up this house, since there will be a good deal of people in it next weekend and I won’t really have a ton of time to do it next week. So, that is pretty much my weekend at this point.

One last thing to mention before I end this, is the fact that I received a shipment from Stila yesterday that I was really excited about! I was especially excited about it because I had completely forgotten that I had ordered anything from them. So, I opened up the package not actually knowing what was in it. It was kind of like Christmas or my birthday or something. This package included a three eye shadow palette, which was part of their Happy Hour Friday last week, that included three “earth” themed shades, all varying types of matte brown, which are pretty gorgeous. It also included the fourth in Stila’s set of five “travel palettes,” each including four eye shadows and one convertible lip and cheek color. This one is called “Make An Impression In Moscow,” and it is the Russian themed palette. The eye shadows in this palette are gorgeous, but I was most excited about the convertible color in this palette, Lily, which is a very soft pinkish brown color that I have already tried out and found looks absolutely gorgeous on the lips. I am kind of obsessed with it right now and think that it will be PERFECT for winter looks. As anybody who has been paying attention to this blog should know, I LOVE my Stila Cosmetics. I am kind of obsessing over Sugarpill Cosmetics at this point, as well, but I haven’t quite gone over the deep end with them yet as I have with Stila. So, needless to say, I was very happy with my Stila package yesterday. I am also very excited for a package that should be coming in the next few days from Sugarpill. As anybody who has talked to me for more than five minutes knows, I LOVE makeup, and I really can’t wait to get started on my beauty blog. In the meantime, though, I’ve got two weeks left with this one, and I plan to enjoy them. I’ll be posting again in just a few hours, most likely. Have a good evening until then!

Chapter 349: Everything I Want To Be

Today was declared “Spirit Day” across the nation, in memory of the recent rash of suicides amongst gay youth. It was a day to honor the memory of all of those GLBTQ teenagers who have recently been driven to suicide after being bullied, harassed and abused by their peers and the people in their lives. In reality, though, I think it was really a day to take a stand against bullying of any kind, for any reason. For obvious reasons, the GLBTQ aspect is the nearest to my heart but I also understand that there are kids out there being bullied and harassed for a number of reasons – their religious background, race, general appearance, social status, disabilities or maybe even mistakes they may have made in the past. I can honestly say that, at one time or another, I have faced pressures and harassment for a lot of those things myself. It definitely goes much deeper than just kids being bullied for being gay. This really isn’t an issue of being bullied for any of these actual reasons – it is an issue of kids having a lack of understanding and tolerance for people who are different than they are. It is fascinating and horrifying and extremely troublesome to see the way that violence is discussed amongst the younger generation of today. As I have discussed a little bit here, over the past few months I have befriended a few kids who are nearly a decade younger than I am and I found myself really surprised at the attitudes I have seen towards these types of issues – not just with the ones I have befriended but with a lot of the younger people I have come across. It seems that the teenagers of today have much more of an automatic instinct towards violence than they did when I was a teenager. It’s not to say that they are all violent creatures, constantly lashing out and attacking others, but it seems like their minds have much more of a tendency to go in that sort of direction than they did back in my day. It seems to me that, perhaps, all those warnings that people were making back in the 90s about violence on television desensitizing children may not have been as much hooey as it seemed at the time. At the same time, though, I can’t actually speak of this with all that much authority. I am not around that many teens nowadays, (I would be considered kind of creepy if I were,) so I am only basing this on my observations of the ones I do wind up around. All I do know is that this whole thing is a problem. Aside from the suicides of gay teens, there have been countless other cases over the past year of kids committing suicide after facing bullying from their peers. It is a terrible shame and such a waste of life – lives that could have and should have wound up being much longer and surely would have gotten much better. Yes, “It Gets Better.”

Now, more than ever, the “It Gets Better” project seems like such an important thing to exist in this world and I could not possibly feel more grateful for the fact that I was able to take some small part in it. The “It Gets Better” project, for those who don’t know, is a campaign that was started by Dan Savage, openly gay writer of the site Savage Love, with a pretty simple, yet extremely powerful, concept. Have you ever heard one of these types of news stories about a kid committing suicide and thought to yourself, “If only I could have just sat down and talk with them for five minutes…” Essentially, “It Gets Better” is our way of doing that – sitting down and talking to these kids who are in such dark places in their lives and can’t possibly imagine anything every improving for them, and telling them that it DOES get better. My video for this project was based around a very simple concept, as well – it was all about the concept of “going through hell” and how on the other side of hell there is heaven. It was all about how no matter how low they may be right now, perhaps at the lowest lows they could possibly imagine, if they manage to stick it out and stick around for the lives that they will eventually have they will reach heights they never imagined either. The experience I have had in my life has definitely reflected that – I really do feel like, at different times in my life, I have seen the lowest of lows and the highest of heights. I really wanted to make a video for this project because the more I thought about it the more I realized that I truly am a living example of what the project really is all about. As I discussed in my video, which got a lot more personal than I had initially intended, I attempted to commit suicide in my teen years a few times. For me, it was never really a matter of bullying or harassment but it was definitely a matter of feeling like things couldn’t ever possibly improve for me. I understand that feeling of loneliness and being completely hopeless. I know that feeling. Thank God none of my suicide attempts ever actually worked out because as I grew up and took much more of a look at the world, I have found myself experiencing feelings I NEVER imagined I could – none more powerful, though, than the simple feeling of realizing that I was okay. There has been nothing more liberating or gratifying for me in my life than simply coming to the realization that there is nothing wrong with me and that everything I could ever possibly need out of life is already inside of me. I don’t know how to explain that exactly but it is simply the feeling that, no matter what could possibly happen to me in my life, I am complete and the only thing that can ever take that away from me is myself and my ego. It is the simplest concept in the world but one that many people struggle with throughout their entire lives. Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with it often – I don’t think there will ever be a time when I don’t. It is just so important to recognize the power and the beauty and the magic that you hold inside and simply put your faith in the fact that you are already fully equipped to handle anything and everything that may come into your life. That, as far as I am concerned, is the highest of heights that anybody can possibly reach and I am so grateful that I have managed to reach that point at such an early age.

Still, there are millions of children, teens and adults out there who have yet to come to this realization. Today was for each one of them. Today was the day for each and every one of us to take a stand against the type of bullying that teens are experiencing nowadays. In honor of “Spirit Day,” people across the country were asked to wear the color purple. So, I wore a purple heather v-neck from Old Navy and did a really cute makeup look inspired by Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl.” I was a little disappointed with the purple turnout at my job today but in the end it wound up being a really positive thing because there were enough people in purple to get conversations started. I know that I was stopped and asked by quite a few people what the deal was with everybody wearing purple, which allowed me to explain the story behin “Spirit Day” to them and make them aware of the issue. After all, if people are not aware of the problem they are not likely to gather to try to find a solution. I honestly feel like I may have opened a few eyes about the whole thing today, which I am extremely proud of and grateful for the opportunity to do. Overall, it was a pretty great day and I was really proud to have taken part in the whole thing. For now, though, it is 11:38pm and I should really be getting to bed. Goodnight.