Chapter 136: Sure Fire Winners

Last night, much like the night before, I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. It was nearly 6:30am before I actually did fall asleep. I was in bed by 3:30am but for some reason I just couldn’t manage to fall asleep. I wound up getting out of bed and watching makeup tutorials on YouTube for a while and dicking around on Facebook and such, then going back to bed only to do the same after another hour or so passed. Still, I was determined to get up when my alarm went off this morning at 11:30am so I wouldn’t wind up staying up all night tonight, as well. After all, I have to actually go to work tomorrow morning. I have to get up and workout in the morning and return to doing all those things that I have set myself up to do every day, but have neglected recently. I cannot allow myself to fall into these patterns of neglecting the things that are important to me or are supporting my vitality in life, no matter how much they may seem like a nuisance sometimes. After the past week where we didn’t wind up fitting in even one workout, it is probably going to be a bit of a struggle doing it tomorrow. It will be well worth it, though, to get back on the wagon. This is something that is extremely important to me right now in my life and something that I am determined not to give up on. This is a funny thing about the way that I operate in life – it seems like most people have trouble getting motivated and have to fight with themselves to start things, which is not a problem I have ever had, whereas I have no trouble diving into things at all but have to struggle to maintain them. Whether we are discussing romantic relationships, friendships, my various creative projects, jobs or anything else, I have never had a trouble getting started. I think there is something in my head, though, that feels like having the idea and actually doing things is the accomplishment not actually completing things. I am really bad at completing things for some reason – I have always lived a life where there is nothing that I am unable to let go of. I don’t know why it is exactly, but holding onto anything at all in my life has always been a struggle. This is something that I am working on now because there are so many things in my life right now that I am unwilling to let go of – it is a struggle a lot of the time, though. This isn’t the time for a long rant about how messed up in the head I am, though – I am just fine in the head. All it takes is effort and, damn it, I am going to put in as much effort as necessary to live the life that I know I am meant for. This whole paragraph doesn’t even make sense, does it?

Anyway, I did wake up at 11:30am when my alarm went off. I felt as though I hadn’t really slept at all but I disregarded that feeling and went about my usual morning ritual of immediately brushing my teeth and using my Clean & Clear Morning Burst Facial Cleanser. I ate a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and watched a couple of episodes of “The Vampire Diaries.” “The Vampire Diaries” was the CW’s breakout series of the 09-10 season and is a very well-written series about a girl falling in love with a vampire. Yes, I understand the concept is tired but this series is actually really good. As soon as I started watching it I immediately thought, “Wow, this story is everything that ‘Twilight’ should have been.” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the “Twilight” series, as evidenced by my rantings about “New Moon” last night and the fact that I went out and bought the DVD on release date, but I also recognize that there are a lot of holes in the plotlines of each book and the series as a whole. There are a lot of concepts that are extremely far-fetched and aren’t explained very well at all – “The Vampire Diaries” does a much better job of that. Of course, it has it’s limitations due to being an hour-long, weekly drama instead of a film but overall I think it is very well put together and written, as well as having a very interesting, bright young cast. I like it a lot. This is not really surprising when you consider the fact that this series was created and is written by the man behind some of my favorite works in film and television in the late 90s/early 2000s, Kevin Williamson. Kevin Williamson was writer and producer for such films as the “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” series, “The Faculty,” “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” and, most notably, one of my favorite television series of all-time, “Dawson’s Creek.” Though most of his work has been in the genre of horror, I have always felt that “Dawson’s Creek” was kind of his masterpiece. He just managed to find a way to really capture so much of the teenage experience in so much of his work and I have always had a deep respect for that. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend checking out “The Vampire Diaries.”

After catching up on the past couple episodes of “The Vampire Diaries,” I decided to get dressed and do makeup for the day. My Mom and I hadn’t really made any actual plans for the day but I knew that we needed to go out at least long enough to go down to our local Sam Ash Music store to pick up some blank sheet music notebooks for my music lessons, which we did not get the chance to do yesterday. Let me just say, Sam Ash Music is a very large, disorganized place. It was very difficult to navigate in there and it didn’t help that the staff, although mainly consisting of very attractive, young musician type guys, were not helpful at all. I kept approaching people who then told me to approach somebody else and then that person told me to approach somebody else until eventually I found what I was looking for on my own. While I was there, though, I did get to check out some really gorgeous and extremely expensive instruments. They have this wall full of different guitars that were just stunning, in all kinds of different colors and designs and such. It was pretty awe-inspiring and I spotted this silver glitter colored electric guitar that I kind of fell in love with. Unfortunately, I already have a guitar I don’t know how to play so there is no use in checking out others. Once I’ve got the piano down a little better I would like to start taking guitar lessons, as well. After all, piano would certainly be enough to get by on but if I could learn both I would be able to do so much more. No need to get ahead of myself, though. Right now my focus is on the piano and needs to stay there. I was also really excited to find that a notebook of sheet music was only $3. I bought two, just in case. I figure I can use one for notes and such while I am learning to write music and such and save the other for once I actually start trying to write some music of my own. I keep thinking about writing my own music and eventually playing my own shows locally and such, and the whole concept is just such a dream to me right now. It is a dream I will achieve, though. I am already well on my way to it. I have also kind of been thinking a lot about song by other artists that I would like to cover in my local shows and have come up with a lot of different ideas. I’ve already started a list of songs that I would like to learn to play and kind of give my own spin to and am really excited to get to a point where that is something that I am more able to do.

Speaking of lists, this morning I began a list in the Microsoft Word app on my phone of different ideas for people to be featured on my new “Weekly Inspiration” show on YouTube. I have a LOT of different ideas for this show – so many, in fact, that I am having a little trouble figuring out which one to start with. I have broken this list into categories of what type of inspiration these various people provide, including music, fashion, film, writing, activism, etc. and have compiled a pretty varied list so far, which includes big name pop stars, designers, television personalities and such, as well as lesser know people like songwriters, directors, screenwriters, etc. I don’t just want the show to feature people who everybody is already aware of but I want it to also be a way to make people aware of inspirational stories and works of people they may not have known about otherwise. Like I said, though, I am having a little bit of trouble figuring out where to begin because there are so many different options and ideas and focuses I can take. It’s a lot to think about and I’d like to get started working on it sooner than later. I’ll get it sorted out, though. I am really kind of excited about the whole concept and really hope that people will take an interest and possibly take a little something from it all. We’ll see, I suppose. I just can’t decide if I should begin with bigger names and then mix in the lesser-known people moving forward or if I should go with a lesser-known name right off the bat. It seems like it would only make sense to go with a bigger name at first because that would be the easier way to draw attention. I don’t want to wait too long to mix in the smaller names, though, because I don’t want it to seem out of the blue. I don’t know what I’m going to start with yet, but whatever I do decide to do first I can promise it will be something good.

Sometimes I wonder if some of my blogs come across a heaping pile of self-aggrandizing bullshit. I wonder that about this blog I am writing right now, actually. My deduction, though, is that I hope it doesn’t but I’m not overly concerned if it does. I just feel like sometimes I talk about my own ideas and creative works in a way that implies I am TOO confident about my abilities. I guess they come across that way, though, because I am extremely confident about my abilities and if I am dedicating my time and my thoughts to something it is because I am confident that it is going to turn out well. Does it always turn out well? No, definitely not. That doesn’t mean, though, that my abilities are any less than I think they are, it just means that my work on this particular project hasn’t panned out as well as intended. Adam Lambert has a song on his album called “Sure Fire Winners” that I can relate to a lot – it’s basically a song about being confident in yourself and your abilities, and about not giving up on yourself and your dreams. It’s about pushing the envelope and pushing yourself to the brink in order to achieve what you want out of life. This song has been a big inspiration to me lately. I feel like I am one of those “Sure Fire Winners” that he is talking about in the song – I am one of those people who is going to push every limit I come across in order to get to where I want to be in life. Adam Lambert has been my big inspiration for the day, honestly. I spent a little while this afternoon going through the variety of random interviews, appearances and performances of his that I have saved on my DVR to gather a bit of inspiration. I wasn’t necessarily looking to be inspired for any sort of creative project or anything, just looking for a little personal inspiration. Adam is a big personal inspiration for me, as is Gaga, who I also watched quite a bit of today. It was interesting to me, though, thinking about the fact that I have saved all of these interviews and appearances on the DVR, (from both Adam and Gaga,) and gone back and watched them quite a bit when I am feeling in need of some inspiration. Gaga talked in her Oprah interview about the fact that she has a lot of materials and references and such that she keeps on her computer for inspiration – I wasn’t entire sure what these materials or references were exactly, but I wonder if it isn’t something similar. I mean, I wouldn’t think that she has appearances from other artists or anything, but I wonder if it isn’t video and performance footage and stuff from the artists that inspire her. I don’t know but I appreciate the fact that she is providing me with so much inspiration, both personally and creatively, and I hope to be able to do the same for somebody else someday.

One thing I noticed in one of Adam’s interviews that I had obviously heard before but had forgotten or not paid attention to before, is the fact that he talked about how fat he was when he was younger. I found that hugely inspiring because I am on a journey to achieve the same type of weight loss that he did right now. Another favorite artist of mine, Tyson Ritter from the All-American Rejects, has a similar backstory of having been really big and managing to lose the weight and get down to having a really hot body. I find that type of thing hugely inspiring right now because I am really trying to get there, as well. I also watched this show this afternoon, a new series on VH1, called “TRANSform Me.” This show features a group of gorgeous trans-gendered women giving makeovers to people who have lost a good deal of weight but have not gained the confidence to really shine. I found this show extremely inspiring not only because of it’s content but because it is the first show I can remember seeing on a mainstream cable network really highlighting the stories of these trans-gendered women and the transitions they have undergone in their lives, as well as showing them kind of “paying it forward” to people who have undergone similar, (albeit VERY different,) transformations in their own lives. It is kind of silly and over-the-top but it is the first time I have ever seen such a positive, upbeat portrayal of the trans-gendered community on mainstream cable television and I think it is absolutely incredible and momentous that this show is on the air. Now that the gay/lesbian/bisexual communities have gained such visibility and acceptance from the mainstream media it only seems right that the next step is trying to raise awareness and create the same type of visibility and acceptance for the trans-gendered community. Like I said, it is incredible that this show is even on the air and just goes to show that the GLBT movement has made an immense amount of progress in recent years. We’ve still got a long way to go but it is nice to take a step back and see the progress that has been made already.

It is now 11:49pm and I really should be getting to bed. After all, I have to get up tomorrow morning and get myself back on the workout wagon. I am kind of excited about it, honestly, as tired as I feel right now. I am also unusually excited to get back to work tomorrow. The only reason for that, really, is because I get a lot of my creative work done there, as well as studying and homework from my piano lessons. I intend to spend the first part of tomorrow working on copying the work done on the spare sheets of music that Viktor gave me in my past two lessons onto the first two pages of my new sheet music notebooks. If I am going to do well at all in either of those things, though, I should get to bed immediately. I am exhausted, as well, so I am looking forward to getting a full night’s sleep. I am ready to get to that full night now, too. Good night.

Chapter 135: Hook Me Up

After spending the past couple days basically skipping the blog for lack of anything to say and lack of energy to sit in front of the computer long enough to write it, I am making my grand return to the full-length, written blog. I would attempt to do a little bit of a catch-up on the past couple days here but the postings from the past two days, in spite of their small sizes, really kind of captured it. They may have been lacking in any major content, but so have the past two days. The past two days were completely consumed of sickness. I watched TV, last night I joined in Nate’s BlogTV chat again and talked about Lady Gaga a lot, as discussed in last night’s video blog. Speaking of Nate’s BlogTV chat and last night’s video blog, these two things kind of inspired me to take on a new project that I am pretty excited about. You see, while in Nate’s BlogTV a guy in there who I have met a time or two in the past told me that I should start my own BlogTV account, as well. I was like, “Whatever, I couldn’t pull off the live broadcast thing,” and pretty much dismissed the idea. I did tell Nate, though, that he should let me come and guest co-host with him. He was very dismissive of the idea, which I was initially offended by, but he also said that he was pretty sure that I could do my own show and get a ton more viewers than he does. I don’t know if that’s true, per se, but it did get me thinking a bit. Like I mentioned above, I don’t know that I could pull off the live broadcast type format and I don’t know that I would really want to work in that way, but I do kind of think that video would be the next logical step for me. As I have discussed a few times in the past here, I had been making plans to create a short film but that concept isn’t really panning out the way I had hoped. Don’t get me wrong, I still intend to make a short film but I don’t intend to make the short film that I had conceptualized initially. I was planning a short film companion to this blog and the record I intend to write around it, which would be a selection of captured moments from the year set to the music I will write based on the blog. That concept is pretty much dead to me now, though. I haven’t captured any moments and, sadly, I don’t foresee capturing any in the future. Why is that? Well, I had initially conceived the year in which this blog is taking place to be one that was eventful and involving a lot of other people. This year, however, has turned into something completely different. I don’t see a lot of other people these days, but life is remaining pretty eventful in ways that I hadn’t imagined before. It is still really early in the year, but I am guessing that the story of this year is one of growth and transition – my growth into and transition from misguided kid to genuine artist. At this point, only one third of the way through the year, that is the way that I see the story taking shape. I could be wrong, though. We’ll see.

After doing last night’s video blog about the many ways that Gaga has inspired me, I started thinking about a lot of different artists and designers and pop stars and celebrities who have been an inspiration to me. I also started thinking about the regular shows you see on YouTube, with people talking shit and making fun of different celebrities and artists and such, and just felt that there is really a lot of negativity on YouTube and the internet, in general. I try my best to be a positive force in all of my social networking, blogging and other activities online. It is my goal to be an inspiration to and positive influence on people, so it only seems logical to turn that into my very own weekly show on YouTube. The concept I came up with is a sort of “Weekly Inspiration” type show, where each week I select a different celebrity or artist of some sort who I feel is a positive force in the world and an inspiration to me. Basically, it is a way to highlight the positive influence and actions that various people take in their lives. Since the world we live in is not one that puts an emphasis on the positive acts that celebrities and artists perform, it seems to me like it would be a good idea to try to put a spotlight on these things and try to put something a little more positive out into the Universe. I figured it would only make sense for inspiration to be the topic of my show because it tends to be the topic of this blog and so much of what I think about and talk about in life – how often have you read this blog and found me going on and on about how this person or that person has inspired me so much? It just makes sense to me. So, I made a small video kind of introducing the concept and opening myself up to feedback from people, which can be viewed here - please check it out and let me know what you think of the idea or if you have any suggestions or recommendations for people who inspire you in one way or another.

By the time I fell asleep last night, which took me a very long time to do, I was pretty much feeling better. I wasn’t entirely back at 100% but I was heaps better than I had been earlier in the day. I woke up this morning at 10:48am to very loud knocking at the door. It was the mailman. I had received notice last week that I had a piece of registered mail that needed to be signed for and after one failed attempt had scheduled my last chance redelivery for today. I specifically slept on the couch last night so I would be right by the door and hear when the mailman knocked and, fortunately, the night of awkward positioning was well worth it! The registered mail was an Ebay item I had purchased about a month ago – a lavender-colored John Galliano t-shirt being shipped from Hong Kong. It took about a month for this item to arrive but now that it is here I definitely think it was worth the wait! The first thing that struck me as I ripped the package open was the John Galliano bag it came in, just like my when I ordered my Calvin Klein messenger bag and it came wrapped in a cellophane bag with the Calvin Klein logo all over it. This was exactly the same but with John Galliano. I only mention this because this is yet another way that I am trying to convince myself that my John Galliano shirt is genuine and not a cheap bootleg. If anybody reading this has reason to think otherwise, please leave me in my ignorant bliss and don’t mention it to me. This shirt is so gorgeous, honestly. I am in love with it. Of course, the second thing that struck me about it was how small it seemed. I touched the fabric, though, and it didn’t feel like your usual t-shirt. I gave it a little tug and realized that it stretched. I tried the shirt on and found that it fit but was skintight. Based on the fabric, I am guessing it is supposed to be that way and that all the sizes run small for that reason. Again, this is me convincing myself that it is still okay to wear even though it fits less like a t-shirt and more like a glove… a latex glove. Honestly, I don’t really care if it isn’t supposed to be that way – I am going to wear it, anyway. It is just too cute to not be put on display.

After a day and a half of being sick and not doing much of anything, I decided to take a long hot shower this afternoon and shave. After the shower and shave, I got dressed and did makeup, which I didn’t do yesterday and kind of missed after only a day of not doing it. My Mom and I had planned to go out and pick up a few things after she got out of work for the day and I figured it’d be best to go ahead and get dressed and ready, even though she had no idea what time she was getting off. She wound up getting off at 4:30pm and we left the house around 5pm. The first thing we did was go to the “Super” Target on University because I had wanted to pick up one of their new Sonia Kashuk makeup brush sets that I had seen online. They had some really cute sets of decent quality brushes for very fair prices, so if you happen to be in the market for makeup brushes I would recommend checking it out. I also wanted to pick up a couple of DVDs today. I have gotten really used to buying DVDs that are Previously Viewed 3 or 4 for $20 from Blockbuster and have felt kind of awkward about paying full price for DVDs for a while now but there were a couple things that I wanted to pick up and didn’t want to wait a month or so for Blockbuster to put in their Previously Viewed bins. As lame as it may be, I had to pick up “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” in the Target Exclusive 3-Disc Deluxe Edition. I had initially planned on buying the Borders Exclusive edition because it comes in special packaging that matches the Borders Exclusive edition of “Twilight,” which is what I have and I wanted them to match, however I realized that was silly when I saw that the Target Exclusive one had a third disc of bonus materials and was $10 less than the Borders one. I figured the extra bonus materials and lower price were worth more than special packaging. This is a silly thing to be discussing, though. I also picked up the movie “Up In The Air,” because I absolutely loved it when I watched it online and have been dying to see it again. It is, by far, one of my favorite films of 2009 and it is a shame that it didn’t receive the recognition it deserved from the Film Academy. It was a very competitive year, though – had it come out in 2008, I’m fairly certain it would have made a pretty broad sweep of the Oscars ceremony. Oh well, though. I do, however, highly recommend that everybody check out this film – it is absolutely brilliant and a huge inspiration. George Clooney’s character in the film, Ryan Bingham, was somebody that I was able to relate to in a huge way and I think a lot of people will be able to see a lot of themselves in him. I don’t know what else to say except that I absolutely recommend watching this film.

While we were down in the plaza on University where the Super Target is I couldn’t resist making a stop in to one of my favorite stores, Ulta. I needed to pick up some brush cleaner and was also looking for some decent quality glitter shadows, as well as continuing on my tireless search for a good pink shadow. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve got good pink shadows. I’ve got a few good pink shadows but they are all lighter shades of pink, like cotton candy type pinks, or darker shades of pink, like mauves and almost-but-not-quite reds. I have been looking for a decent quality hot pink and it seems like it is impossible! I tried looking at the more expensive brands today, like Urban Decay and Too Faced, but they were no better than Maybelline or L’oreal in terms of shades of pink. That search continues still. I did find a really cool glitter crème palette from Nyx Cosmetics, which I have been intending to check out, anyway, because they are the sponsors of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and are the makeup that the queens on that show use. Those drag queens have been a big inspiration to me, in terms of makeup, and every time I watch that show I get really envious of their glitter shadows, so I am pretty excited to give this palette a try. I also found a trio of two shades of purple I didn’t already have and a pink color that is kind of like a hot pink, also from Nyx Cosmetics. It still isn’t what I am looking for, but it is a pretty cool color. I am already dreaming up all kinds of ways to use these shades to create a variety of new looks. I have developed a bit of an addiction to makeup arts recently and am having a lot of fun with the whole process.

The rest of the evening was spent driving to Venice to get Chinese food from the drive-through Panda Express they have there, then coming home and watching “New Moon.” My Mom had been pretty anxious to see it because she recently finished reading the entire “Twilight” book series. I really liked “New Moon” much better as a film than as a book. I also really liked the “New Moon” film much better than the “Twilight” film. Don’t get me wrong, I liked “Twilight,” but “New Moon” just seemed so much more cohesive as a film and told the story considerably better than “Twilight” did. Plus, Taylor Lautner was much more heavily featured in this film than Robert Pattinson, and I just find him considerably more appealing. Not only is he considerably more physically attractive but he is considerably more interesting and compelling on-screen and I think he has a much brighter future in film than anybody else in the “Twilight” series, (except possibly Anna Kendrick, but she is barely featured in the “Twilight” films, anyway.) Overall, it was a pretty good day. I spent more money than I should have and had a mini-freak out about it, but my Mom was extremely gracious and figured out a way to work with me on it. I just hate it because it was really a matter of my own stupid actions and thoughtlessness causing trouble for me. It makes me feel really foolish. Fortunately, my Mom is amazing in countless ways and managed to calm me down about it, because I was having a bit of a conniption. We also got some really amazing news on Friday about our apartment. We were concerned that we were going to have to move because our initial deal with the apartment complex was that our rent would go up at the end of the current lease and we couldn’t really afford the hike it was going to take, but we spoke with management and they cut us a deal for another 13-month lease at the same rate, which is amazing of them and really amazing news for us! I guess now we should actually take the time to decorate this place because we never did in the past year of living here. We also got another piece of absolutely amazing news today from my brother, but I am not going to share that here because it is still very new and kind of on the down-low – as soon as I am at liberty to discuss it, though, I surely will because it is amazing and I am really ecstatic for all parties involved. It was actually a really good day, now that I think about it. The best part, though, is that I feel normal again. I hate being sick and I have now been sick twice in the past month. No more – I will not allow myself to get sick like this again! The only means of prevention I have is sheer will power but, fortunately for me, I have that in heaps! I don’t know… I feel really good, looking back on this day. Things are going well for me and it would serve me well to remind myself of that more often. Where does it all go from here? Well, in the words of The Veronicas, “Anywhere is good enough, hook me up!”

Chapter 134: The Fame

Chapter 133: Tymps (The Sick In The Head Song)

Okay, so it is actually Friday morning, but this is the blog for Thursday night. I’m going to keep it brief because I basically feel like shit. That is the reason why I didn’t write last night – as much as I may feel like shit right now, I felt even worse last night. It all started when I woke up yesterday morning. I woke up at 8:30am, a whole hour later than usual. I actually woke up when my alarm went off at 7:30am, but fell back to sleep and woke up twice more in that hour time. I wasn’t sure what was wrong but I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed. When I finally did, I was really rushed to get dressed and ready for work. Obviously, there was no workout time or time for much of anything, really. I did wind up doing the Adam Lambert makeup look I mentioned in Wednesday’s blog, though, and it came out looking really cute with silver, purple and black. Despite looking cute, though, I felt like shit. You know how sometimes you’ll wake up and feel really groggy and achy and just generally funky. Well, I woke up with that feeling yesterday and it never went away all day. I knew this meant trouble, because when I was sick last month that was how it all began, as well. By the time I got home, I felt pretty horrible. As soon as I got in the house, I lied down in my bed and fell asleep, still fully dressed, makeup and all. I woke up shortly before 8pm when my Mom was set to get off and the first thing I noticed when I woke up was a severe pain in my stomach, exactly like what my Mom had described having earlier this week. I stayed in bed for a while until I heard from my Mom, who decided to go to Chick-Fil-A and get some soup in hopes that this would be something easy on my stomach. It was a strange sensation I had in my stomach, though. It was not like normal stomach pains, but like cramping. It was really painful. Then the diarrhea came – I know, not a pleasant topic to discuss and not one I will go into further details on but it was there. When I was lying down I felt kind of okay, but anytime I sat up the pain became really extreme. Eating the soup was a terrible idea, as well, because it basically felt like my stomach caught fire as soon as I did eat it. I can’t remember the last time I was in as much pain as I was last night – it was ridiculous and horrible. I finally managed to fall asleep around 12am, but then woke up at 1:05am, as well as a couple of other times having to go to the bathroom before finally getting up at 6:30am and feeling wide awake. This morning I have felt considerably better than I did last night, but I am still in pain and doing the simplest tasks, like getting up to walk to the bathroom or the kitchen or anything, leave me feeling completely worn out. Even sitting at the computer typing this is proving pretty difficult. I am having trouble focusing on anything. So, I called in sick to work today. It sucks, but I would not be able to function there today. I’m barely able to function here and have spent the morning watching random TV from the past week on the DVR. Like I said, as long as I’m not moving or doing much of anything I feel considerably better than I did yesterday. I still don’t feel good, though. So, the plan for today is basically to lay on the couch and catch up on TV shows and make my best attempt to not move too much. I have a couple of movies on the DVR that could help to pass the time, including “Last Days,” the film based on the life of Kurt Cobain, starring Michael Pitt, as well as “About A Son,” which is more of a documentary on Kurt Cobain. Those should be interesting, I think. I have always connected with Kurt Cobain in a lot of ways and have always felt it was an extreme shame that he left us so early in his life. Who knows what he could have accomplished had he lived longer. Anyway, I am feeling really shitty and need to go lay down again. Hopefully, I will be feeling well enough to write a full-length blog tonight. Also, hopefully I will be feeling well enough to join in on Nate’s BlogTV show tonight. We’ll see, I suppose. For now, though, I need to go lay down.

Chapter 132: Rain On Me

Today was a day just like any other. It had its ups and it had its downs, but it was mainly just kind of boring. I woke up at 7:50am to my Mom still not feeling 100% but feeling much better than she did yesterday. She was up making coffee when I woke up and I took that as a good sign, considering yesterday she didn’t even do that. She barely got out of bed yesterday, except to take me to work and pick me up for my lunch break, which was a nice change from usual. Like I said, she was feeling much better than yesterday but still wasn’t feeling great. She still wasn’t feeling up to working out, so we skipped again this morning. It’s really a shame because I am very dedicated to this whole workout process but it just seems like life keeps getting in the way. I know, though, that every time I get thrown off the wagon it is nothing more than the Universe giving me an opportunity to prove my dedication by picking myself up and getting back on. So, that is my plan for tomorrow. As the day went on, my Mom slowly got to feeling better and better and is pretty well back to normal now and has already discussed working out tomorrow. We briefly discussed the idea of just not doing it again until next week, feeling that this week is pretty much already shot, but we both agreed that only working out two days this week is considerably better than not working out at all this week. I am excited for this, mainly because I have been kind of anxious to try working out to the new Goldfrapp record, which I have been listening to like mad for the past few days. I don’t know, though, I am also thinking of how great it could be to work out to Cheryl Cole’s album, “3 Words,” one of my favorite albums of 2009. It’s all upbeat but not really fast or anything, so I don’t know how that would work out for working out. Perhaps Goldfrapp is the better choice. We’ll see tomorrow morning, I suppose.

I woke up this morning really in the mood to wear my lavender colored Old Navy v-neck tee and maybe some black dress pants or something – then I remember what today is. Fucking St. Patrick’s Day. I have never been a huge fan of St. Patrick’s Day, to be honest, and I really dislike any holiday that restricts your fashion options. I mean, I like the color green and have enough of it, both in terms of clothes and makeup, to work with but I was really in the mood to try out this makeup look I saw on Adam Lambert on his recent trip to Tokyo – it was gold on the lids, with red coming up from the inner corner to the browline, then black blended from the browline out to the side of the eyes, in a cat’s eye sort of look. My descriptive words aren’t quite getting the job done, but you can check out a picture of it here. Of course, I wouldn’t be doing all the random jewels surrounding it because I am just wearing it to work, and I don’t have a bunch of crazy jewels to put around my eyes. I definitely feel like I need to get more really solid glitter shadows. They look awesome and really give your eyes a major pop. I have a lot of glittery shadows, but they are regular shadows with glitter in them and don’t quite have that same effect. Anyway, I was going to try to emulate that look with silver on the lids, purple going up the inner corner and black with silver glitter going out the sides. I think I may wind up trying that look tomorrow, actually… but unfortunately, I was a little too anxious to try it today. So, I did. I did it with green, bronze and brown. When I first tried it I was pretty happy with it, but as the day wore on I came to realize how much of a hot mess it actually looked. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t terrible. It really wasn’t that bad. It’s just that green and brown just aren’t really colors that work for that sort of look. Still, I was pretty proud of my blending skills because the look came together really well aside from the unfortunate color choices. Oh well, lesson learned. I was also thinking this morning, though, that I need to buy a really good brush set and some brush cleanser. I think I like working with brushes much better than those little applicator things, and I have been dealing with the few brushes that I do have a lot lately but they aren’t the best in the world. So, perhaps sometime over this weekend I will take a little trip to Ulta to look for a good, not-too-expensive brush set and some really good glitter shadows. I love taking trips to Ulta!

Work was pretty bland today. I spent the first part of the morning tracing the one piece of blank sheet music paper my hot piano instructor gave me last week and drawing all of the notes that he taught me last week again, to refresh my mind of them all before tonight’s lesson. I also drew another version of the treble clef tiara/headpiece I designed yesterday, because I really like the idea of it. I also wrote another new song today that I was much more proud of than the one I wrote yesterday. I feel like, in a lot of ways, my songwriting muscle has lied stagnant for too long and needs to be worked out some more. Today’s workout of that muscle went really well, though. It was a pretty intense workout for it, honestly, and it kind of took a lot out of me. Fortunately, that is the type of workout that never feels like a chore, no matter how intense it may get. I may actually share that song at some point, but I don’t have it on me at the moment and don’t remember it all off the top of my head. I really loved it, though. As a songwriter, I have found and heard many other songwriters discuss, how there are some songs that just flow from you and you don’t really have any control over the process at all. This was that kind of song – it just kind of happened. It did, however, take a lot out of me in the sense that it made me think a lot about the things that I may have been feeling and thinking, but were remaining hidden in my subconscious. Those are the best kinds of songs to write, I think. The songs that really make you face parts of yourself that you didn’t necessarily want to face are always a genuine experience to write and, as a songwriter, you can’t really ask for much more when it comes to writing.

The workday came and went fairly quickly and everything ran smoothly, and when I got out at 6pm my sister was waiting there to take me to my lesson. I told her today that I would give her some cash on Friday when we get paid for gas, and she was like, “You should,” in one of those half-serious, half-joking tones. It only seems right to give her gas money considering she is going considerably out of her way, to Bradenton even, to take me to these lessons. It is really more than she has to do and I really do appreciate it, and the best way to show your appreciation is monetarily! I am only joking, of course, but there is definitely some merit to that concept. When I arrived at the Allegro Academy this evening, I had to wait a few minutes for Viktor to finish with the student he has before me, an adorable little African-American girl. He came out with her again and made sure that the girl at the front desk watched her before taking me into his studio for the lesson. The thing that I love most about these lessons so far is that Viktor and I vibe very well together and we have spent the entirety of both of these lessons so far laughing while still learning things. Last week’s lesson was all about learning the notes on the Treble or G Clef, which was pretty simple. This week, on the other hand, was focused on learning the Bass or the F Clef, which is kind of more complicated, because it goes in the opposite direction – where the G Clef begins under the bottom row of the sheet music, the F Clef begins about 4 rows up and works it’s way down. This part is less natural, as well, because it is all dealing with the left hand instead of the right hand, which is more difficult to work with on the piano itself. I don’t think I’ll have any problem learning it, though. I also learned about sharps and flats today, as well, which was pretty interesting. I already kind of knew the basic concept of the sharps and flats, but learning more of the technical side of them and how to apply it was really enlightening. It was a really fun lesson and I enjoyed it a lot. It really does seem like Viktor enjoys our lessons a lot, as well, if for no other reason than that he can be more “adult” than in his normal lessons. Of course, when I say adult I mean swear words and sexual innuendos, both of which were pretty prevalent in today’s lesson. They are very unusual lessons that I am taking here and they are nothing at all like I had expected. They are a lot of fun, though, and I am really happy with them the way that they are. I enjoy them a lot. Another bit of evidence that he enjoys the lessons with me, as well, is the fact that today’s lesson wound up running about 15 minutes longer than it was supposed to and I didn’t even have to pay extra.

The extra 15 minutes was helpful, as well, because it took away from the time that I had to wait afterwards. I left the Allegro Academy at around 7:20pm and initially intended to walk down to the 7-11 on the next block to get a coffee or something, but it seemed really crowded and I was feeling insecure about what a hot mess my makeup was today, so I didn’t go there. Instead, I sat down on a bus bench and played Solitaire on my iPod to pass the time – it did a pretty good job of it, too. In general, like last week, I would have totally spent that entire time dicking around on the internet on my phone, but my phone has been having this problem lately where it doesn’t hold it’s charge very well and winds up with only 2 bars remaining by the end of the workday. This was the case today, as well, but it was worse than usual. By the time I took my first break, at 11:30am, it was already down to only 3 bars and by the time I left work it was down to only 1, so I knew there was no playing with that this evening. I text messaged my Mom and told her to call me when she left work. Last week, she did that and we just talked on the phone while she drove to get me. I left my phone alone for the rest of the time I was waiting to make sure it held it’s charge. This morning it was drizzling and rainy outside, but weather.com said it was going to be 75 degrees today, so I decided not to take a jacket with me today because I figured the rain would clear up and it would be warm. My Mom questioned this, but I said it would be fine. I was right, too, and the temperature outside was kind of perfect all day. One thing I didn’t take into consideration, though, was the fact that I would be spending something like an hour outside when the sun was going down. It was cold out, but it wasn’t anything unmanageable… at least, not at first. By the time 8pm rolled around and it was actually getting dark outside I was freezing on my little open-air bus bench. My Mom called as I was sitting there and my phone managed to stay alive long enough for us to talk while she drove. As we were talking, and I was still sitting on the bus bench, I suddenly felt something hit me from above. What could it be? Raindrops, of course. I immediately jumped up off of the bench and started looking for somewhere to take cover, but there really wasn’t a single place to do that. So, I just stood there in the rain. It wasn’t a heavy rain at all, but it was already cold out and getting wet wasn’t helping the matter at all. When my Mom finally got there, I was pretty frozen. It didn’t take long to warm up, though, once I got in the car. I felt like a mess, though. Not only did my makeup look a mess at this point, but so did the rest of me, and what’s worse is that my feelings now matched my look. We got dinner from Gyros & Seafood and headed home to watch “American Idol.” It was really kind of a boring end to a boring day, to be honest. It was at least relaxing at that point. Now, however, it is 12:45am and I have to be up in less than 7 hours. It is time for bed. Here’s hoping I don’t get rained on tomorrow. Good night.

Chapter 131: I’m Gonna Make It Better

Today was another really boring day. It really can get hard every now and then to write this blog every day because there are days that I’ll go through and not really think they are all that uninteresting until the time comes to sit down and write shit down and suddenly I realize that absolutely nothing of note took place. I mean, it’s never entirely true but it kind of feels like the day as a whole was really not interesting at all. I hate days like that because they really feel kind of wasted. I really hate the feeling that any day of my life has been a waste. It kind of reminds me of a song from Jessica Simpson, called “Still Beautiful.” This song has long been a bit of an anthem of mine – the chorus really sums it up best when it says, “They won’t all be sunny days, life’s going to bring down some rain, but after it’s over I’ll be so much stronger for the pain, so even when I’m sad I’ll know every day I have is still beautiful.” It’s a beautiful concept and one that I remind myself of frequently. The issue is that, unlike this song is describing, it wasn’t a sunny day but it didn’t rain, either. It was just a kind of overcast, gray sort of day and I really do think that is worse. I almost feel like I’d rather be going through some sort of “rain” than going through some sort of nothingness. It just gets on my nerves.

I woke up this morning at around 7:40am to a call from my Mom, who was on the other side of the house in her bedroom. Apparently, she had woken up around 4:30am experiencing some severe stomach pains. My personal theory was that her body was reacting badly to our dinner from Whole Foods last night because it is so unused to eating things that are organic and not processed or anything. She mentioned, though, that one of her co-workers had missed two days last week with the same sort of stomach issues. Since she was feeling so badly, we decided not to work out. She didn’t even get out of bed to make coffee or anything and it became clear pretty quickly that she would be calling in sick to work today. I felt really bad for her, but at the same time I also felt a little bit of resentment at the money that would be lost because of this. Then I felt guilty for feeling that way. Fortunately, my Mom’s account works differently than mine does and she will be able to more than make up for the lost time with overtime on the weekend. It really shouldn’t be a problem at all, although it does suck that she will have to work more on the weekend instead of going out driving or going to brunch or whatever. It’s probably better that way, anyway, because that will prevent me from going out and spending a bunch of money. After all, I have to save a part of this paycheck to along with a part of my next paycheck to pre-pay for my piano lessons next month. The Allegro Academy has you pre-pay on your first lesson each month for the rest of that months lessons. I am already covered for March, but I already need to be thinking about next month’s lessons. Paying for the full month out of one paycheck is definitely plausible but saving a portion of it beforehand would be preferable. I am really excited for my lesson tomorrow night, too. Aside from getting to see my gorgeous instructor, Viktor, I am just excited to get in there and learn more. I have a good little handful of questions I want to ask based on the books that he sent home with me last week.

In the time where I normally would have been working out I sat around and dicked around online. One thing I came across while on there was my daily Twittascope, a horoscope service through Twitter, which read, “You have been swimming in the waters of your own emotions, but now you may be pulled up onto dry land. It's time to act on your feelings, rather than just experiencing them.” That stood out to me a lot because I definitely know that I have been swimming in the waters of my own emotions but I haven’t been entirely sure of what those emotions are exactly or how to act on them. I have been feeling very alone lately. I have feeling the need to break out of my emotional shell a bit and make a connection. I know how to act on those feelings but I haven’t been sure where exactly to direct those actions. There is this guy at work that I have always had a certain interest in and I have never been entirely certain as to why. I wouldn’t say it is a romantic interest by any means… okay, well maybe it is a slight romantic interest but I know that isn’t going to happen, (he’s straight, to the best of my knowledge, and has a girlfriend,) and I am still interested. He is hot and he is very quiet, but when he does actually talk to me he is really funny and interesting. There has just always been something about him that I have felt drawn to and I often find myself wanting to make conversation with him or make some sort of connection. Every time I see the opportunity to talk to him, though, I always stop myself. I’m not sure what it is exactly. I think I may be concerned that he will think I am trying to flirt with him if I talk to him too much, or maybe I am afraid that he won’t have any interest in talking to me – we are very different people, after all. I don’t know how or when it happened to me but I seem to have lost one of my favorite parts of myself – I used to be able to connect with anybody. It used to be the most natural thing in the world to me. I used to constantly be making new friends and meeting new people, and somehow I seem to have misplaced that part of myself. I think it may have to do with the fact that I have started putting a lot more thought into the people that I associate with. I used to be one of those people who recycled friends like fashion, (“six months, six months, six months,” as Karl Lagerfeld would put it,) and I am trying really hard to change that about myself. I think the issue is that in trying to hang on to the friends I already have I’ve wound up kind of closing myself off to new ones. The funniest part of that is that in closing myself off to new ones, I think I kind of closed myself off to the old ones, as well. What does that mean? Well, it means I am alone, which is exactly what I had set out not to be. Life is complicated.

Anyway, this evening after the work day had ended I was stuck there for about a half an hour waiting for my sister, who has to stay until the last agent is off the phone, and the guy I was talking about above and another girl who was waiting around for somebody else to get off. This guy, the girl who was waiting and I all wound up sitting around for half an hour just talking about all kinds of different stuff. It was probably the most I have ever talked to this guy, in spite of having hung out in groups with him socially and such, and it was really nice. It was just fun and I barely noticed how long we had been sitting there. So, perhaps I did fulfill my Twittascope. Of course, this was after an earlier attempt that did not pan out at all. There is a guy who I have talked about a few times in this blog who I kind of harbor a minor crush on and who was making it a point to talk to me at work and such for a while. We haven’t spoken to one another at all in a while, though, and I don’t like that. I have wanted to approach him or something for a while now, but haven’t really had an opportunity or a reason. Today he was wearing this shirt that was in a really cool, offbeat color that was very out of character for him and when I saw him outside on break I wanted to go over and tell him how much I liked his shirt and how well this offbeat color worked for him. He was with one of his co-workers but a co-worker who I kind of know, as well, and would be able to approach in front of. Still, for one reason or another, I just sat and watched and never said anything to either of them. It was really silly of me, honestly, but instead I just sat off to the side all by myself. That just makes me feel really pathetic and lame. Why do I tell stories like this on here? I guess because it is something that has stuck out in my mind. Please, anyone who may be reading, try to refrain from thinking me completely pathetic and closing the window now. Thanks.

That Twittascope also inspired me to write a song today – that line about swimming in the waters of my own emotions was just too good to not do SOMETHING with. It was a pretty decent song, if I do say so myself. It was definitely not one of my better songs, but decent. It’s funny, though, because I haven’t been writing many songs for a while now. It feels kind of strange to me because for years I have always said that I am a songwriter before I am anything else in my life; before I am 26, before I am from California, before I am a homosexual, before I am Jason Michalchek or even Jason Davis. Before I am anything else in my life, I am a songwriter. Having added so many new things that I am recently, (artist, photographer, fashion person, etc.,) I have kind of been concerned as to what that means for me as a songwriter. Honestly, I don’t feel that any of those things have really contributed to my lack in songwriting recently, though. I think that is more about the fact that I feel like I have reached a bit of an impasse as a songwriter. I kind of feel like I have gotten as good as I can get as a lyricist, which has been the extent of my songwriting experience at this point. Well, I wouldn’t say that I have gotten as good as I can get, but I have reached a point where that part doesn’t really require any practice or anything at this point – I have worked that muscle extremely thoroughly for the past 13 years of my life. I feel like I have reached a point where writing lyrics is simply not satisfying to me any longer without being able to write music to go with them. I am at the point where it is either learn to write music and grow as a musician, or wind up giving it up out of sheer frustration. Since I refuse to give up that, what I consider to be the most important part of myself, I have no choice but to grow and learn how to write music. Thank God, then, that I have started music lessons. It is extremely important to me to make progress with this and get to a point where I can write music to go along with my lyrics. I am kind of banking the life I have always dreamed of and the life I know I am meant to lead on these lessons, in a lot of ways. That is a very heavy weight to place on this whole thing, I know, but I am already aware that if it doesn’t work out there are always other options. I think it will work out, though. I had a dream about this whole thing I am talking about the other night. It was a pretty simple dream, about Viktor, my gorgeous piano instructor, telling me that he doesn’t want to work with me anymore because he feels like I am more of an artist, in the sense of drawing and such, than a musician. I know exactly what that dream was about, though – it was a reflection of my own insecurities about that exact thing. I spend all day at work drawing and working creatively in that way and haven’t devoted much time to music in recent months. I do feel like I am getting considerably better with the visual arts, and would be interested in taking some sort of art classes in the future, but again I don’t think that really is affecting the amount of time I devote to music. I just feel like I have become extremely frustrated with music because I have already progressed as much as I am able to on my own. These lessons could not have come at a better time. I am a musician, more than anything else. These other arts are things that I am really enjoying and definitely want to pursue further, but music is the real goal. Music is, after all, the source of all of the others for me. It is at the core of every single part of me and I will do whatever it takes to make it happen for me, even if it means sacrificing any other form of art I am practicing currently. I don’t think it will come to that, though.

It is after midnight now and my Mom just told me a little while ago that she is finally feeling better, so I think she will be okay to go to work tomorrow. I don’t know if she will be feeling up to working out in the morning, but I am glad she is feeling better, either way. One last thing I want to mention before I go is that the new record from She & Him leaked today. She & Him is the musical collaboration between M. Ward and one of my absolute favorite actresses, Zooey Deschanel. Their debut album, “Volume One” was completely brilliant and one of my favorite records of 2008 and I have been very anxious to hear their new record, “Volume Two.” Well, this album wound up leaking today and I have to say, it is every bit as good as the first record. Upon first listen, this one wasn’t quite as immediate as the previous one, but it is definitely a brilliant record. I just love the classic, early 60s sound that they have and Zooey Deschanel is even more talented as a songwriter than she is as an actress, in my opinion. This album continues on with that same early 60s sound and has some really gorgeous tracks. My personal favorites would be the first single from the album, “In The Sun,” as well as “Thieves,” “Don’t Look Back,” “Lingering Still,” “Home,” “Sing” and the albums finale, “If You Can’t Sleep.” Like I said, it is another really gorgeous album much like the first one. My favorite track on the album, of them all, is probably “I’m Gonna Make It Better,” which is basically a song about how we repeat patterns in our lives and how things come full circle for us all, and trying to stop these patterns before they repeat and make your life better – a topic I can definitely relate to at this junction. As I said, though, this is a really gorgeous album and I highly recommend it to everybody. It’s fun, offbeat and spunky but still has a clearly defined message and statement to make. I love that in music. In fact, since it is 12:15am now, I think I am going to go to bed and put this record on again as the soundtrack to me sleep. Good night.

Chapter 130: Who We Are

Today was a pretty boring day. I spent much of the day at work drawing mermaids and trying to make some sense out of one of the books my gorgeous piano instructor, Viktor, sent home with me. It really is a shame that this book, clearly intended for children who are learning piano, seemed so complicated to me. Of course, I have to remind myself that it is stuff that I haven’t been taught yet so I can’t really be expected to understand it yet… but it still does bother me a bit. Aside from that, it was a really blasé day. I woke up on time at 7:30am, I didn’t work out because I decided I’d rather skip Monday instead of Wednesday this week so I could workout with my Mom. I ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast and had a pretty decadent dinner from Whole Foods that was going to be like $30 but thanks to the VISA gift card I won from work last week and my Mom wanting to split, it didn’t cost me a thing. It was delicious. I may elaborate on that a bit later but for now I have a specific topic on my mind. Like I said, it was a pretty boring day, details-wise, but there has been something on my mind all day.

As I mentioned last night, tonight was the premiere of Jessica Simpson’s new reality show, “The Price Of Beauty.” I’ve been really excited to see this show after seeing Jessica’s recent appearances on Oprah and, just today, “The View.” I feel really strongly about what she is doing – putting together this whole show to give the youth of America examples of how beauty has so many different faces across the world, and that the only beauty that truly matters is the beauty inside of us all. This is a message that has always been very near and dear to my heart and I feel extremely grateful to and proud of Jessica for doing this whole thing. I think it is truly astonishing that this girl, who is best known for not knowing the difference between chicken and fish, has decided to use this huge platform she has gotten to try to make a real statement to the world. It may seem silly, but just the thought of it all is nearly bringing a tear to my eye as I type this. I just feel really strongly about this whole thing and have become very emotional hearing her speak of the whole experience in appearances and such to promote the show. You can tell that the entire experience has changed her in such a deep way and she is doing something great to try to share it with the world. There are not enough shows like this on television, and not enough people doing things like this in the world. It is truly inspirational to me, particularly considering that what she is doing with this show is something that I have always dreamed of doing with my own life. No, I have never particularly dreamed of traveling across the world to examine the concepts of beauty in different cultures but I have always dreamed of doing some sort of documentary series on a topic that means a lot to me and that has the power to positively impact the lives and minds of people around the world.

In thinking about the whole concept of the show, I have really been giving a lot of thought to my life and my personal concepts of beauty. I have always been a person who strives to see the beauty in everybody I come in contact with, and I like to think I’ve done a pretty good job of it. What I have had more trouble with in my life has been trying to see the beauty in myself. It’s no secret to anybody who knows me, or even to anybody who has read this blog, that I am a really confident person. I have a pretty staggering amount of faith in my self, my beliefs, my talents and my abilities. I have never really lacked confidence in who I am as a person or what I am capable of achieving in this life. The one area of my life that I have lacked confidence in, though, is my appearance. It’s not that I don’t feel like I have an appeal or am unaware of my strengths, appearance-wise, but all of my life I have always felt as though I have talents, abilities and personality in order to make up for my physical appearance. I have said many times throughout my life that I make up for what I lack in looks in a plethora of other arenas. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I have ever felt like I was ugly or anything like that, but I have certainly felt like I was unattractive. Even in my romantic relationships, I have always felt like I was “dating up,” because I have more often than not dated guys who are socially lacking but very attractive. In most of my relationships I have felt as though my boyfriend was the lure for others to talk to us and I was the reason they stuck around. It is a fact of life that we gravitate towards people we find physically appealing, in one way or another, even if we have no intentions of pursuing a sexual relationship with them. It is simply human nature. As Jewel said, though, “what we call human nature in actuality is human habit.” That’s a discussion for a different day, though. In any sense, I have always felt like I needed to date somebody who I felt was considerably more attractive but considerably less interesting than I am. I think this may explain a lot about why most of my relationships haven’t worked out.

In my younger years, I even went through a series of eating disorders and extreme measures to try to lose weight or distract from my weight or whatever else I could do to get people to look at me instead of my physical appearance. It’s funny, too, because I think a lot of people would be surprised that I am even writing this blog. I don’t behave like somebody who is insecure about their looks. I don’t give off an air of insecurity or anything. I am just like everybody else, though, in the sense that I feel the same insecurities as anybody else does. I just hide them well. More than that, though, I think I stave them off pretty well. I have gotten really good at fighting off my negative feelings about my appearance through affirmations and counteracting those thoughts with more positive thoughts. Still, that type of thing never truly goes away and I still have plenty of moments where I feel fat and disgusting and like nobody will ever love me. It’s a part of life, I suppose. What I know, though, is that no matter what my physical appearance may be there is somebody out there who will love me for everything that I am, both internally and externally. That person is out there – I am sure of it. I will find them eventually. In the meantime, I am working really hard to love and accept every part of my physicality, as well as to mold it all into something I can be genuinely proud of.

As I mentioned before, I do still have plenty of moments where I am not proud of my physical appearance and there are a lot of things that I do to distract from it or try to dress it up. My affinity for wearing designer clothing is one example. My makeup would be another. These are two of the things in my life that I spend the most money and time working on. Of course, neither of these things are solely about trying to take distract people’s eyes from my weight or my thinning hair or whatever else I dislike about my physical appearance. That leads me to a different portion of this topic that I wanted to discuss. On the premiere episode of Jessica Simpson’s “The Price Of Beauty,” Jessica, Ken and Caycee traveled to Thailand to discover some of the things that Thai women do to make themselves feel beautiful, and they visited a tiny village where the women wear golden rings from early childhood in order to elongate their necks and lower their shoulders. The women in this village were very beautiful in their own ways – none of them wore makeup or had fashionable hairstyles or clothes, but their every day clothing looked like they were ready for some sort of celebration. Their clothes were basically rags, but they were full of bright colors and intricate jeweled details. They were really beautiful and seeing this women speak about what all of these things represent to them and how beautiful they feel wearing these gold rings around their necks, it truly was inspiring. It kind of reminded me of my makeup in a lot of ways. I don’t know that many people look at me and think, “Wow, that guy is beautiful,” but when I see myself in the mirror with different makeup looks I have come up with, that is how I feel. It isn’t really about whether or not other people see it or agree, it is about me feeling as if I am beautiful. The same goes for my designer clothes. It isn’t really about making anybody else feel anything really, but about how it makes me feel. These golden rings around these women’s necks, stretching them to longer than they should be naturally, may appear odd or unusual to the rest of the world, but the women wearing them feel like they are really something special and beautiful. That is inspiring.

Of course, this show did not just feature positive concepts of beauty – in Bangkok, Jessica and the crew discovered that skin bleaching is a very popular thing to do. The Thai people consider fair skin a sign of wealth and beauty – the logic is that people with a tan have been out working in the sun. They met with a woman, a former bar singer, who had been so obsessed with having fair skin that she used enough skin bleaching products to basically burn off the skin on her face and leave her extremely discolored. She quit singing because she was so embarrassed by her appearance and couldn’t bear to go outside anymore. She was married when she began doing this, but after her husband saw what had happened to her face he left her. This poor woman basically became a hermit because she was so ashamed of her physical appearance… and for what reason? Because she was so obsessed with trying to be the concept of beauty in her culture. It was really a heartbreaking story and took me back to a lot of different places in my life. I did a lot of crazy things in attempts to lose weight and become the concept of beauty in my culture. I experimented with drugs known to cause weight loss, I vomited up everything I consumed and even, as recently as 2006, completely starved myself in attempts to lose the extra weight that I have carried for pretty much my entire life. What did any of these things really do for me in the end? I still carry the excess weight but now I carry a much heavier excess weight emotionally.

What reason was there for any of this? What did I gain from any of it? The only answer I can come up with is perspective. I gained perspective, and the knowledge that what is truly beautiful about me is what is on the inside; the only beauty that truly matters. Do I still wish to lose weight? Yes, but now I know better than to try any of those unhealthy and self-destructive ways to do it. I have been down those roads and they have only led to feelings much worse than having a few silly insecurities about my appearance. I have even learned to look at myself and every now and then see something special and even just a little bit beautiful. I have learned to appreciate the gifts that I have been given, both internally and externally, and I have learned which beauty is really of value and which is not. It is a pretty powerful thing, and a thing that it really seems like Jessica Simpson may have learned, as well, along this journey. The show was really a beautiful experience – it had it’s share of wacky, fun moments and really touching, enlightening moments, but mainly it really shed a light on what it means to be truly beautiful. I am really excited to see more, and urge anybody who may read this blog to check the show out and give it a chance. No matter what your opinion is of Jessica Simpson, it really is worth taking a look at – it very well may change your perspective on what beauty really is in this world. Thank you for listening, and goodnight.

Chapter 129: Bump In The Road

You know how yesterday I talked about how I didn’t leave the house but still had a really productive and creative day? Well, today I didn’t leave the house, either, but it definitely wasn’t a productive or a creative day. I fell asleep on the couch again last night. Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, it was after 7am when I did finally manage to fall asleep. I tried going to sleep in my bed first, but after laying there for a couple of hours, I got up and went into the living room. I’m not really sure exactly what sleeping on the couch the past two nights is all about, but tonight is the time to get back to my regular routine. After all, I have to get up at my regular time tomorrow and get myself up and ready for work slightly earlier than usual, since I have to take a cab. My Mom is still out of town and is coming back in time for work tomorrow, but she is going in to work at her regular time of 11:30am, instead of her overtime hours that she has been doing every day for the past few months. This means that I have to take a cab to work. One plus side to not leaving the house all weekend is that I didn’t wind up spending any money all weekend, either, and am coming out of the weekend with plenty of money to get through the week, even with my $30 registration fee at the Allegro Academy this week. I should be able to manage that and get through the week without touching the money in my bank account. The only thing I can think of that I need to spend money on is a sheet music notebook for my music class. I don’t know that I will be able to pick one up in time for this week’s lesson, though, unfortunately. This isn’t due to a lack of money but more due to a lack of time. I need to find out the hours of my local Sam Ash music store – hopefully they are open until 9pm so I can have my Mom run me down there after work tomorrow or Tuesday. We’ll see, though.

I woke up just before 12:30pm this afternoon, which is later than I had hoped for. Honestly, it would have been exactly the time I had hoped to wake up had it not been for stupid Daylight Savings Time. That has served as nothing more than an annoyance for me, and I spent all day long feeling like it shouldn’t be the time it was. I decided that my breakfast of pizza rolls and Spaghetti-O’s was so good yesterday that I would go ahead and do it again today. I did switch it up a little bit by having actual leftover pizza instead of pizza rolls. The only reason I did that, though, was because we were out of pizza rolls. I sat on the couch and watched the two new episodes of Oprah from this week, including her big Oscar “after party,” featuring the winners in the four major acting categories, Best Actress Sandra Bullock, Best Supporting Actress Mo’nique, Best Actor Jeff Daniels and Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz. It was a really great episode featuring fairly in-depth interviews with each of these winners, as well as Nate Berkus backstage interviews with the stars at the Oscars and Carson Kressley discussing the best Oscar fashions. I loved Nate Berkus’ backstage interviews – I just find him extremely appealing and am very excited to see more of him come fall when he debuts his own daytime show. I am really excited to see how that goes for him – I think it will do well because, as I mentioned before, he is a very appealing and interesting guy. I like him a lot. My favorite part of Oprah’s Oscar special, though, was her giving Geoffrey Fletcher, screenwriter of “Precious,” a second chance at his acceptance speech. Geoffrey Fletcher is the “other” history-maker at this year’s Oscars as the very first African-American to win the Oscar for screenwriting, (the big talk one, of course, being Katheryn Bigelow being the first woman to win Best Director.) It is really an amazing accomplishment for Geoffrey Fletcher and he was understandably overcome during his speech on the show, so Oprah gave him a chance to do what he would have wanted to do in the moment and he was amazing – so eloquent and gracious. He also spoke very touchingly about what a joy and privilege it is for a screenwriter to see his dialogue be brought to life by such a brilliant cast. I thought he was pretty brilliant and definitely deserving of the Oscar he got – “Precious” really is a complete triumph. Yes, I completely championed “Up In The Air” and stand by that, but “Precious” was also an incredible film and so deserving of all the accolades it has received. I also found Christoph Waltz very adorable, sexy and fascinating in his interview with Oprah – he seemed kind of uncomfortable with the whole thing and in awe of the company he was on that stage with, particularly Jeff Bridges. It was really nice seeing these four Oscar winners sharing the stage, interacting and expressing their mutual respect for one another. I liked it a lot. I also watched an episode Oprah did about Lisa Kudrow’s new reality show, “Who Do You Think You Are,” which follows various celebrities as they trace their genealogical roots. It’s a really cool idea for a show and I am very excited to see what they dig up for some of my favorite stars who are going to be featured, like Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick and, one of my favorite actresses of all-time, Sarah Jessica Parker. Genealogy is not something that I have ever really had much of an interest in, honestly. It seems like a lot of people really believe that it gives them some sort of added insight into the person that they are and I can respect that concept, but I disagree. The history of anybody who may have been related to me is of no significance to who I am as a person. The only history that really affects the person that I am is my own history. Other information is certainly interesting to know, but doesn’t really have any true effect on who I am. This is just my opinion, though, and I do find it fascinating to see how these histories affect others. Should be an interesting show, I think. It was certainly an interesting episode of Oprah. The new reality show that I am really excited for, though, is “Jessica Simpson’s The Price Of Beauty.” This show also got it’s own dedicated episode of Oprah recently, as well, last week. I have always been a pretty big fan of Jessica Simpson. In spite of anything else she has done, she is an extremely gifted vocalist and it makes me sad that people don’t recognize that and even try to lump her into that category of pretty girls who can’t really sing, like Britney Spears. Jessica Simpson has a gorgeous voice and an extreme talent with it, but it has kind of wound up being overshadowed by her image. It’s really a shame. I also have a lot of respect for her because she has always seemed to make it a point to try to effect positive changes in this world, no matter how dumb she may seem, and this new reality show she is doing is no different. Essentially, she and two of her closest friends, Ken Paves and Caycee Cobb, are traveling all across the world to see the ideals of beauty and the extremes people will go to in order to achieve them on different continents and in different cultures. I think it is a brilliant concept and watching her discuss it on Oprah was really impressive and inspiring. This show premieres tomorrow night on VH1 at 10pm and should be a fascinating journey. I am really excited to watch that.

After my mini-marathon of Oprah, I decided to try to do something slightly productive with my day. Last weekend I did a good deal of Spring Cleaning in my bedroom and bathroom, but today I decided to do a different type of Spring Cleaning – I cleaned my computer. There were a LOT of superfluous files, particularly music and videos that had been hanging around on the computer for far too long now. I spent a couple of hours working on that this afternoon, and my computer now seems to be running much quicker and more smoothly since I finished. I have been thinking a lot about it and I think that, once I am in a more financially stable position, I would like to get a new computer. Not just any computer, though – I want to get a Mac. I am thinking that I may look into getting on through Aaron’s, the rent-to-own company that we got this computer through 5 or 6 years ago. I just kind of fell in love with my friend Devin’s Mac computer and feel like Apple is the way of the future – their products just seem considerably more interesting and reliable than Microsoft and Windows. I have also been thinking a lot lately about possibly upgrading my phone. Actually, what I am thinking of doing is actually downgrading it slightly for something that is a little more functional and has a certain status to it – a Blackberry. Sprint doesn’t offer the touchscreen Blackberry Storm, though, so it would be kind of a downgrade going from a touchscreen to a regular QWERTY PDA, but I have been looking into the functionality of the Blackberry lately and feel like it would really be right up my alley. We’ll see what happens with that, though – it will still be a while before I am eligible for upgrade. I have plenty of time to consider my options, as far as phones go.

I did do a load of laundry today, which was also fairly productive but really didn’t take any time at all. Laundry is really, in my opinion, the easiest chore there is, so long as you stay on top of it. You really just have to throw it in and leave it alone until it finishes. While I was doing laundry and watching some other stuff that had been sitting on the DVR for a while, I decided that perhaps I should go ahead and clear out some space on there, as well. Since there is so much new stuff being added to it so frequently lately, with the return of old shows and a lot of new shows starting, I figured it would be a good idea to clear stuff out before stuff that I actually want to keep on there gets deleted due to lack of storage. I have typically kept all the episodes of my favorite shows on there for later re-viewing, but it is actually pretty rare that I go back and re-watch anything, so I figured it was silly to leave them all there taking up storage space, so I deleted a bunch of past episodes of shows and managed to take the DVR from 14% space remaining to 53%. That seemed like a pretty good accomplishment, even though it really took very little time or effort. By the time I finished with laundry and clearing out space on the DVR, I realized it was already about 7:45pm and I had yet to take a shower or eat dinner, so I went ahead and hopped in the shower and took a nice, long, relaxing shower and felt really great coming out of it. I made myself a quick, easy dinner of leftover Arby’s sandwiches and decided to catch up on the past few weeks of “Desperate Housewives,” which have been REALLY good. I really love that show, although this season has been kind of odd. I mentioned back in December when all the shows were leaving for Winter Break how odd and just generally “off” all of my favorite shows had been this season. Fortunately, a few of them seem to be returning much better than when they left – particularly “Desperate Housewives,” and “Gossip Girl.” I was only going to watch one episode in order to be writing this blog and getting ready for bed by 9pm, but I wound up watching all three of the episodes on there, which is why I am still writing at 11:59pm. In fact, it is about to be midnight and I should probably get to sleep. I am feeling pretty ready for bed, actually.

Before I do go to bed, I did want to mention one last thing – iamamiwhoami. For those unfamiliar with this sensation, it is a viral campaign going on for a new release from some musician, but nobody knows who it is. There has been a lot of speculation about who exactly it is that is being promoted with these videos. My personal favorite theory and my hope is that it is Christina Aguilera, who is releasing a new album sometime in the not-too-distant future that is supposed to have a really experimental, electronic sound to it that would really kind of suit the style of music featured in these videos. I don’t know if it is her, though, but she seems to be a popular theory. Another popular theory is that it is Lykke Li, who I was never overly familiar with and downloaded an album from tonight to see what it was like based on all the talk that the music in these videos is similar to hers. I don’t know who it is, but a lot of people are ruling Christina Aguilera after the most recent video premiered tonight, (you can view the new video here,) which kind of shows the face of the artist. The face and body is covered in plastic, saran-wrap type material and you really can’t see much of the face, except the eyes and teeth. The eyes do seem reminiscent of Christina’s but I can’t really tell if it’s her or not. What I do know is that I am anxious to find out who it actually is, because the music in these videos sounds amazing. It is really a fascinating way to promote a new record for whoever it is and I am anxious to see exactly who is behind this whole phenomenon. We’ll see soon enough, I suppose. For now, though, I need to go to bed. Good night.

Chapter 128: A & E

Today was a decent day. It had its share of disappointments but it had its share of positives, as well. I definitely feel like it was a very productive/creative day, which is always a plus. It’s also a bit of a surprise, considering the way the day started. It didn’t start in a bad way, by any means. I fell asleep on the couch watching an episode of “The View” around 4am last night, and woke up this morning around 10am. I knew as soon as I woke that I just hadn’t gotten enough sleep, so I came into my bedroom and went back to sleep in my bed until around 2:30pm. I woke up in a bit of a haze and felt very lazy. I was probably up for a half-hour before I actually brushed my teeth and washed my face. I just didn’t really feel like doing anything. Plus, to make matters worse, yesterday when I was leaving work I started to feel a headache coming on and it was still there when I went to sleep last night, as well as when I woke up this morning/afternoon. It’s pretty unusual that I get headaches in the first place, let alone one that lasts so long. I’ve been getting them pretty frequently these past couple weeks, which I think has to do with the illness I had. I believe it was a sinus thing, and these have been sinus headaches. I am back to feeling pretty much completely normal again, even having lost the cough for the most part, and I am hoping this headache issue goes away next. I figured in the time I had before I had to get ready for the Lady Gaga Flash Mob I would try to catch up on some TV from the past week, because I haven’t watched any of it. I have been having trouble keeping up because a couple of new shows have started recording, (like NBC’s brilliant new show, “Parenthood,” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,”) as well as a few of the old shows I watch returning, (aka, the entire CW schedule, including “Gossip Girl,” “90210” and “Melrose Place.”) Because of this, I have a DVR full of stuff that I haven’t watched. So, I figured I’d devote a little bit of time to that today. Since I woke up so late in the day, it seemed appropriate to have a mid-day type breakfast so I made myself some of those Pizza Roll things and a bowl of Spaghetti-O’s and sat down to an episode of “The View.”

I watched all of the episodes of “The View” from the past week, and found that I hadn’t really missed out on much. It wasn’t that interesting of a week on “The View,” but at least Whoopi Goldberg was back. She was out all last week, and it was still interesting but not near as good without her. Now, I know what you must be thinking – “That’s at least 4 hours in front of the TV.” It is not, though. When it comes to the topical discussion shows, like “The View” or “Chelsea Lately,” I have a tendency to skim through them. Not really skim, per se, but if I don’t have an interest in the guests or the segments they are doing that day, I will just watch the Hot Topics section and then move on. The guests on “The View” this week weren’t all that interesting, so I was able to watch the whole week in a span of about 90 minutes-2 hours. I also watched this week’s episode of “Gossip Girl.” It’s funny because I normally would never leave “Gossip Girl” sitting on the DVR for that long, but I think it was kind of “out of sight, out of mind” for me over the break, so now that it’s back I was still in that frame of mind about it. Now that I’ve actually watched the episode, though, that frame of mind is long gone. This third season of “Gossip Girl” has been very up and down, but they managed to hit on some really interesting ups in this week’s episode and have me pretty excited for next week’s episode. I also watched this week’s “Melrose Place,” which was the last episode for Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Colin Egglesfield. It’s kind of a shame the way that whole thing went down, because they were fired pretty suddenly and at random, which they have both talked about pretty extensively in interviews and such, and I’m not sure how the show is going to go without them. Ashlee Simpson’s character, Violet, was one of the most interesting parts of the show and they really didn’t tie up her big ball of craziness at all. After having her become an obsessive stalker, revealing that she had been sleeping with her brother before moving to LA and never actually tying up the matter of whether or not she killed her mother, or if that was actually her mother, they really had a million different directions they could have taken her character and it seems like they really wasted her talent on that show. I’m sure me talking about TV shows is terribly fascinating, but I’m going to go ahead and stop it now to move on to other topics before this entire post becomes one giant TV review. Sorry.

So, after a few hours of TV watching and as it was getting a bit later in the day I decided to text Rachel to find out what the plan for the Gaga Flash Mob was this evening. She messaged me back saying that she didn’t think she was going to be able to do it. Apparently her mother needed her to watch her baby sister this evening and was pulling one of those major guilt trips, and she already owed her mother. I can certainly understand that type of situation. I text messaged her back and said it was fine. My headache still hadn’t gone away and I was just feeling kind of a mess this afternoon. As excited as I was about the whole thing, I had already had a strange feeling like something was going to happen to prevent me from taking part, anyway. After my music lessons wound up costing me more than expected, I have found myself running kind of low on funds and was already pretty much needing to cancel on the plans for sushi afterwards, which kind of brought me down on the whole thing already. Plus, I had noticed Rachel’s status updates on Facebook and such hadn’t been very positive and it seemed like she had been having some troubles these past few days. I just had this feeling that she wouldn’t wind up being in a mood to go, anyway. I hadn’t foreseen the whole situation with her mom, but I just had this feeling it wasn’t going to happen. So, when I found out that it wasn’t, I wasn’t overly disappointed or anything. I told Whitney about this a little while later, since she and Nate were planning on coming. I told her that we should still hang out tonight and she didn’t really respond. After a while without a response, I text messaged her again and got a little attitude about her lack of response. Then I felt really bad about having attitude afterwards. I just have this feeling lately about her, Nate and all of my friends that I am just not important enough for them to make time for or make an effort to contact or whatever. I am probably just being over-sensitive, really, but every now and then I allow it to get a little under my skin. As I learned from the book, “How To Make Someone Love You Forever In 90 Minutes Or Less,” I am a Promoter and my key feeling is the feeling of Importance. Unfortunately, this is a feeling that I am severely lacking in my life lately. Don’t get me wrong, I am filled with self-importance, but that is very different from feeling important to the people in my life. Right now, I just don’t feel important to the people in my life, and it sucks. I understand that everybody has their own things going on, but it seems like people would at least want to check in on the people who are their good friends. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. This is really more of a rant, though, and I am going to stop it before it actually gets to that ranting point.

I decided to try my hand at the whole t-shirt painting thing again this afternoon, and it went considerably better than last time. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe, my sister gave me a really good tip on painting on fabric – she said to try drawing the design on cardboard first, then going over it in Sharpie or something dark, then kind of tracing it through the fabric. I decided to give this a shot, and it didn’t work out exactly as planned. Unfortunately, the fabric was thick enough that I couldn’t really see it well enough to trace it. I was able to see it enough to have the basic idea of where each word started and ended and was able to wing it well enough to do the same idea I tried last time and have the text not come out lopsided. Of course, I didn’t actually do the same text as last time, but the same idea of cursive handwriting and glitter. This time, in honor of the Gaga Flash Mob, (this was before I knew we weren’t going,) I did the line from the song “Bad Romance,” where she says, “Walk, walk, fashion, baby…” I did the words Walk, Walk and Baby in metallic silver and the word Fashion in pink, and covered the whole thing with a spritz of glitter, which gave it a really cool sparkle. Like I said, this came out much better than last time. It still isn’t something that could pass off for something actually purchased, but it’s a good second attempt. I’m thinking the next thing I try will be an actual drawing on the shirt with my fabric marker and then painting to fill in the colors. I’m really excited by the whole idea and may try it out tomorrow even. We’ll see how that goes.

The new Goldfrapp record, “Head First” leaked today and while I downloaded it, I decided to listen to some of the older Goldfrapp records. While listening to the album before this new one, “Seventh Tree,” I heard what is probably my favorite song of theirs, “A&E” and felt extremely inspired by it. I know that here in America, we see A&E and think of the television network or what the network stands for, Arts & Entertainment, but over in Europe A&E generally stands for Accident & Emergency. Basically, it is what we know as the ER. This song by Goldfrapp is referencing that. The lyrics, in the literal sense, are basically about being so disappointed by an absentee lover that you go out and do something crazy, and wind up in the A&E. The first chorus of the song says, “I was feeling lonely, feeling blue, feeling like I needed you, like I’m waking up surrounded by me, A&E.” The part that really stuck out to me today was the line, “like I’m waking up surrounded by me.” That line to me is a line about feeling completely alone, so alone that you are surrounded with nothing but yourself. To me, it expresses the feeling of being on an island; like you are the only thing in your world. It is a really powerful statement to me, and one that I can certainly relate to. This spoke to me in a very profound way this evening, and I decided that it was time to break out the camera and try my hand at another photoset. First, I went into the bathroom and experimented with makeup a little bit until I came up with a look that I felt really expressed the concept I was going for. I went a little more over the top than I would on an average day and did silver streaks across my cheeks and really overstated silver and purple combinations around my eyes. It was pretty unusual looking and probably would have looked better had I had some sort of foundation to work with, as well. As it was, though, I really liked the look I came up with. I spent a good little while working on the photoset and experimenting with lighting effects, even making a reflector with cardboard and tin foil, and I felt really proud of what I came up with. It’s still nothing overly professional looking and it is just images of myself, but I really liked the way it turned out. I really think I could do some cooler things as a photographer if I could get some people to model for me, or get somebody else to shoot me with me directing them. I just don’t know who to get to model for me – I have some good-looking friends and such, but it isn’t necessarily about the people being good-looking. It’s about finding people who are the right fit for the concepts I have in mind. This is definitely something I want to look into doing more of, though. I am also thinking of maybe trying to work on some of the photos I have already taken of myself in some sort of photo-editing program. It’s times like this that I really miss having Photoshop, because I look at some of the photos I’ve taken and know that I could do some brilliant things with them in Photoshop. Sadly, it is much more difficult than I thought to find a bootlegged version of Photoshop out there and I can’t really afford the $400 or however much the legit version costs. I’m not sure what I’ll use, but I definitely want to look further into photo-editing software to do some more interesting effects on my photos. I also want to look further into finding people to model for me, although I don’t even know where to begin with that. In any sense, you can check out the photoset on my Flickr account.

As I mentioned before, the new Goldfrapp record leaked today. The album is called “Head First,” and I’ve got to say, I am pretty impressed with it. Goldfrapp has long been on my radar and I have had their last two albums on my iPod for ages but I have never been a huge fan of theirs. The album that was kind of their breakthrough, “Supernature,” has a lot of really strong songs on it, like “Ooh La La,” and “Ride A White Horse,” as well as my favorite, “Lovely To C U,” but has always seemed a little too focused on electronics and synthesizers and general production. It was a good album to listen to and a lot of fun, but was really lacking in great lyrics. The follow-up to that album, “Seventh Tree,” was really stripped down, by comparison, and definitely solved the lyrical issues. I really liked that album much more, but this one kind of had the opposite problem to “Supernature” – it had really strong lyrical concepts and such, but most of it lacked the catchiness and unique melodic and production to really make many of the songs stick with you, aside from a few major exceptions, like the aforementioned “A&E.” I was especially impressed with “Head First” because it really is like a combination of the two previous records – it is the one that finally got it right on both fronts. As far as the sound of this record goes, it is really like a combination of the previous two, as well – it is electronic and very experimental, like “Supernature,” but also keeps with the more rootsy and ethereal vibe of “Seventh Tree.” It is clearly very influenced by 80s music, like Hall & Oates and even some Depeche Mode and The Cure type stuff, but the lyrics tend much more towards the positive than the previous records. The album’s first track, and first single, is a song called “Rocket,” which has a very strong Hall & Oates style influence, and a very spunky, upbeat lyric – “I’ve got a rocket, you’re gonna be on it.” When I initially heard this song a while back it immediately put a smile on my face. It is one of those songs that just kind of make you feel happy. It’s a really fun track. This record has a lot of those, actually. There are only 9 tracks on the album, and they are all really great songs. The entire album is pretty brilliant, so there’s really not a need to name personal favorite tracks, although I will call out two that I particularly love. First of all, the title track of the album, “Head First,” which has a much lighter, more airy sound than much of the rest of the album, and a very catchy chorus of simply, “My whole world and I, my whole world and I, my whole world and I, head first in love.” It is more of a mid-tempo track, but still quite upbeat and just has a really fun, happy sound to it. My favorite track, though, is the second song on the album, called “Believer.” It has a very fun, upbeat pop sound to it and a very positive set of lyrics. The chorus says, “Rushing like the sea, you’ve come back to me and I’m a believer, I’m a believer, I’m a believer in you now.” It is really a beautiful sentiment, basically stating that you have found your trust in and have developed faith in somebody. Like I said, the entire album has this sort of positive, fun vibe to it and I definitely think will make for a great workout soundtrack. I really love this record and highly recommend it to everyone.

I completely forgot until I noticed the time a little bit ago that tonight is Daylight Savings Time. I also didn’t realize that it was the Daylight Savings Time where time skips ahead an hour instead of going back an hour. I like the one where you get an extra hour more, especially considering that this one means that it is now 5:29am instead of 4:29am. Either way, I really should have been in bed a while ago. I actually sat down to start writing this blog a few hours ago, but I allowed myself to get distracted a bit. When I say I allowed myself to get distracted I don’t mean that I was looking at something else here on the computer and got delayed on writing, I mean that I got up and went into the living room and put in a DVD and watched my very favorite movie of all-time, “Shortbus.” It wasn’t so much that I got distracted as it was that I actively stopped what I was doing with the intentions of doing something else. Silly, I know. Still, I was kind of glad I did it. As I mentioned, “Shortbus” is my favorite film of all-time. For those who don’t know, “Shortbus” is the second film from John Cameron-Mitchell, and the follow-up to his absolutely brilliant rock/drag odyssey, “Hedwig & The Angry Inch.” “Shortbus” is the story of a group of people experiencing some form of sexual dysfunction in their lives in Manhattan, and the sex club where they all hang out, called Shortbus. The film’s schtick, or the schtick that was attached to the film, is that there is no simulated sex in the movie – every sex scene that takes place in the film is 100% real. Those sex scenes are pretty abundant, as well, considering much of the film takes place in a sex club, complete with random orgies and people fucking, (gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian – you name it,) in front of groups of people. It is really a fascinating film and one that I highly recommend that everyone see. It can be uncomfortable at points for some people, as I learned when I made it a “movie night” selection with a group of friends a couple years ago, but it really is an amazing piece of work and a film that is relatable and really has an important story to tell. I feel like some of the best stories are the ones that are the least comfortable to see or hear. One of the stories, in particular, that really spoke to me is about a gay man who is in a very loving, committed relationship, but just can’t seem to be happy with his life, so he talks his boyfriend into having a threesome, which leads into a polyamorous relationship, in attempts to replace himself. It is really just a completely fascinating film and, like I said, I really feel like it is something everybody should see. They should just make sure their children aren’t in the room, and that they are prepared to see some pretty graphic sexual situations. If you can keep an open mind about it, you will be completely blown away.

Anyway, since it is nearly 6am now and I need to try to get up at a halfway decent time tomorrow, I should probably get to bed. I just can’t let myself sleep until 2:30pm again tomorrow – otherwise I will have trouble going to sleep tomorrow night and may wind up having trouble getting up Monday morning, and I really can’t afford to oversleep Monday morning. I am not looking forward to Monday morning, honestly. I am keeping my fingers crossed, though, for a week that passes much quicker than the past one did. As far as Sunday goes, I don’t really have any plans for it – I need to do a load of laundry. Since I did so much laundry last week, the only laundry that really needs to be done this weekend is the stuff that I wore throughout this past week. I am going to try my best to do laundry every weekend, so I don’t wind up having to do as much as I did last weekend in the future. I am already pretty sure that it won’t last forever and I’ll wind up letting it go a couple weeks again in the future, but I can at least try to keep it from happening anytime soon. Aside from that, I may try working on doing an actual drawing or design on a t-shirt tomorrow and will likely end up catching up on even more TV from the past week. I don’t really know, and I kind of like the idea of that. It’s a good feeling to just have a day that is pretty much entirely open, where I can do pretty much anything that comes to mind. Whether it winds up being just lying around all day watching TV, or doing some sort of cool creative work like I did today, I am looking forward to whatever tomorrow may bring. I guess the best way to get closer to it is to go to bed now. Good night.