Acceptance

I am thirty years old now. I still have a strong desire to write music. What has left me though is the desire to be recognized as a prominent musical genius. Which I will never be and I am willing to accept that. What matters to me most now is the ability to do what I feel I must do. Which is write music. To write music regardless of what people think and instead write music because that's what I was put on this earth to do. I have spent so much time, money, and effort into studying and practicing music. Practicing enough to be musical but not enough to be a virtuoso and I am fine with that. In the recent weeks I have been practicing and sharpening my very dull musical literacy skills. I can continue to write and improve my overall literacy skills while also earning money to pay off my student debts. This is what I am going to do for the next two years of my life. The job that while pull me out of the hole of debt is truck driving. That is of course if everything goes to plan. If those plans fall through, well then I must do what humans do best and adapt. Here is to doing what we ought to be doing while also living.

Changes Changes Changes

For the past year I have been residing in central west Vermont in a small farm town. The town folk or friendly enough and the vistas are breathtaking. The winter I experienced was absolutely brutal and the worst winter I have ever had the pleasure of living through. The spring and summers are full of bugs and heavy with humidity.

I have been living on the family farm of 600 or so acres since I have been out here. I never visited my father's side of the family until I came up here last year with my cousin and a good friend of mine. We were on a cross country road trip. When we stopped in Vermont we stayed with my father and his girlfriend for a week before we hit the road again. During that time I decided it would be cool to live out here for a bit. In doing so I could get to know my father and the rest of family. I could continue my education at the local community college, study music, and experience a new way of life. My father guaranteed I could find work and that I could even work for him during my stay out here. To be honest, my father spouted off a nice long list of promises and not one of those promises has been kept to this day.

However I did find work with a wise retired carpenter building a small lake house on lake Bomoseen. The pay was so good I invested into musical equipment in hopes that I can make progress in that area of my life too since music has been the center piece of my life for fifteen years now. I wanted to get a music career going. I wanted to get paid doing anything music. Whether I would be playing bass or being some guitar lackey for a band. It didn't matter to me, but that didn't work out as I sit here now typing this out.

What happened instead was I met musicians that already had something good going on for them or I found someone who could not dedicate the time to a project. One project in particular I managed to jump in as an upright bass player had no direction. We had huge potential, but nowhere to direct our dedication (I'll past up a sample of one of the first get together we had).

So music did not go the way I had hoped. And to be honest I am scared to go out on my own to perform on a nightly basis. Nor do I have the funds to go out every night to perform. I have student loans to pay off and until I get those paid off it is not wise for me to be playing musician.

I am now looking into ways where I can contribute to society. And I am looking for a job which will provide me with consistent work so I can pay off *all* my debt and break free from that burden. I want to buy land in the Mojave Desert and build an earth based house called an Adobe house. I want the land the house is on to be powered by self-sustaining environmentally safe electricity. I want to start my own business (I don't know what yet) and I want to create a community environment that is focused on spreading knowledge and teaching critical thinking and problem solving without huge egos being involved.

The first step from here is to get that job. I have been heavily looking into Over the Road trucking and I think it is a good choice for me at this point in my life. However it has been difficult for me to get into it. My heavy weed smoking over the past five years of my life has caught up with me in the past month. So I must wait until late June before I can start applying with trucking outfits. There is a new standard of drug testing that can reach back ninety days. It is called hair follicle drug testing and it is surrounded by half truths and myths. After some intense digging I found consistent information that revealed the answers to most of the questions I had asked myself regarding the ability of the test to detect weed. I stopped my drug abuse on Feb 25th of this year. I got tired of it and how it made me feel in everything I would do. It really was a problem. But I have conquered it and I am ready to steam roll forward and really accomplish things that are worth accomplishing.

As a matter of fact, I have a phone call to return.

Lonliness Abounds from my Dream Life

There is fresh blood looking lipstick on the cuff of my left sleeve. The strong scent of perfume that a beautiful ebony woman was wearing. A beautiful ebony woman named "Stormy". Just by the sound and general overall overtone of her name, I shouldn't have to tell you where I was. Yup. The Fritz, on Katalla Ave. Not totally ashamed, but I am totally ashamed.

What prompted me to go there was a slow self pitiful fall into self pity. Open mic night at a small joint in Long Beach. My first open mic night in probably over a month. So give it 6 *maybe* 8 weeks since my last live performance. I had been on a roll for a while until the end of my lease started raising its head. Lots of stuff in the middle had happened which I am not at liberty to talk about right now. Nothing bad happened. Just the end of the lease. And what I am talking about right has to deal with what happened today -3/25/2014 - 3/26/2014. Around 6 pm today I packed up my guitar in preparation to go to the open mic night that Nathan was hosting. As a matter of fact I went out of my way specifically because it was Nathan's last night hosting the open mic. And the reason I went out of my way. . . Nathan is a damn good self promoter. I don't mean to down play him. I wish I wish a shameless self-promoter. For the last 2 weeks I've seen nothing but Nathan promoting his *LAST* open mic night that he will be hosting, slapped all over Facebook. Which. . . He was the featured act. And it was a fantastic time.

I got there at 6:30 and saw two comedians waiting to put their name on the list. Then, two comedians. Both great in their own right. One of them is going to live the dream by earning a living off of his telling jokes. He is so good at it. And I have seen him improve leaps and bounds since the first time I have seen him perform months and months ago from the date of this blog. As 7pm crawled closer more people showed up. I was there 4th, but signed up at the 8th spot because I went to the bathroom. On purpose I might add. I didn't want to perform so early. It's a mental thing. I like to feel out the room before I perform. Which is really unnecessary, really. Mainly I am just a chicken shit.

Each act was great tonight. I am very impressed by everyone's performance. I tried my best to socialize and be positive before and after the event. There were a few beautiful women there. That kind of made me a little unsettled. Unsettled because I think I broke the threshold of *not* wanting a relationship at this point. I do want one though . . . The WORST time to break such a threshold.

I am leaving on April 1st to travel across the country for a month or so. The purpose. To play at as many venues as possible to spread my music. To show off Art and I's musical technical abilities and record a concept for an internet show we have. So there are good things . . . As long as we stick to the plan . . . that can come of this trip.

Anyway! After Nathan's show, I went to pay my tab that I am sure was hovering around thirty dollars worth of Fat Tire beers. Donny the owner would only take twenty of my dollars after I handed two twenty dollar bills to him. He's a good guy. To this day he has paid for at least 8 of my beers. Bless his heart. After paying a portion of my tab I went off to mingle around. I can't say I made the best efforts to talk to people. I did talk to a few people though. I complemented a couple of people on their work. One guy specifically, (I can't remember his name now =( ) played a piece that really moved me. After my complement he talked to me as if I had no clue how music works at all. Where I thought there would be common ground between us, there was none, sadly. I was disappointed ultimately. Then, he found a way to weasel out of the conversation we were having to talk to someone else. From there I went inside to grab my guitar and then headed back out front on Fourth Street. In the short time frame that it took for me to grab my guitar I walked outside to a high schoolish click thing happening outside. This. . . is where the self pity started. I was the only one standing by myself. Everyone else were in groups of at least three. Talking, laughing, giggling, reminiscing, and pondering together. For some strange reason I decided to stick around for 10 minutes to think about my loneliness.

I am the one at fault here. I could have barged my way into any grouped and at least listened to what everyone was saying. But I decided not to. Mainly because that is what I am used to. The habit in which I locked myself into. But it still pissed me off at the time. So I left. Angrily. Pissed off that Nathan managed to pull in a full house for his full set, when there were only 5 (Including myself, the host Nathan, and Donny and his Wife) that were there for mine. With a bit of pride I say to myself that, "My music is more involved in the emotion, with the lyrics. But for some reason no one understands." Not that they should. I am just shocked no one does understand. Especially red sweatshirt guy on the piano who had a piece that moved me. Whatever. At this point, on my way to my car, all I had in mind was Jack in the Box. So I left. Stopped at Jack in the box pissed off. While in the drive through I decided the Fritz was the place to unload my frustration. Thus, I went to the Fritz pissed off no one loved me and I was met with women that loved me for the twenties I came prepared with in my pocket.

I finally broke down when Stormy approached my table. She worked the hardest out of all the women that tried to get my twenties. She is beautiful. Milk chocolate black girl with jet black hair, ruby red lipstick. Slender and athletic. She knew she didn't have to work me long before I broke. But I never let her off the hook. I called her out. She said there was chemistry between us. Hahahahah!!!! I tried not to laugh. Instead I said something along the lines of, "The chemistry is there because the twenties are there." I don't know. I didn't say that. But my memory is already fading. It wasn't her talk that got me. It was her physical approach. She was all over me. Even after I called her out for talking to me because she knew she can make twenty dollars in two and a half minutes. Which she responded with, "Three and a minutes baby." I didn't know we splitting fucking hairs.

I broke down and got a dance from her . . . That turned into three. The entire time I was beating myself up more and more. Making the self pity party the party of the year. HAH! And I let her know too. After I asked her how many dances we had she told me three. THREE! I couldn't believe it. She was good and very sneaky. VERY! And it pissed me off even more. Three dances and I only had enough for two in my pocket. And guess what?! Yup. That upset me even more. I had to make a trip to the ATM that charges three dollars per transaction. I became very stern and none responsive after I realized this fact. As Stormy followed me down stairs to the ATM machine. I felt so STUPID that a dancer is babysitting me as I try my best to pull out money with my worn out debit card. I think I entered my pin 4 times. The entire time I was insulting stormy. HAH! Nothing attacking to her character really. She responded by attacking me back. Saying how shitty my attitude is and THATS why I can't find women to have sex with. I quickly snapped that it's not about sex, it's about being in a meaningful relationship. Her reasoning still stood and she waived the third dance. That's how much she couldn't take my "bad" attitude. She gave up twenty dollars. . .

Whatever though. I will continue forward and learn from my mistakes . . . And take the advice from Stormy. Hahahah! I laugh every time. I told her my name is John and every time she would call me John I had to hold in a burst of laughter. She knew it too. That's why she kept saying John. She wasn't dumb. She was beautiful. I asked her at one point why she dances, and the answer of course was, "For the money baby." I wasn't surprised at all. But she is what I needed. Not physically, but her reactions to my being an asshole is what I needed. Every reaction to mine. . . I needed it.

Blog Time with Whiskey by My Side

Well. Here I sit again. I don't have too much to write about really. I have diluted whiskey by my side as I ponder the last couple of days.

Actually! Last night I contacted a girl =) Not based off of relationship wants or needs. Especially since I am running the celibate road now. No. I contacted her because I really was hoping she would be interested in starting a musical project with me. But, much like many occurrences in my life, I waited too long. Or she just wants nothing to do with me. Interestingly enough, she is the women that essentially said I am "weird". Whatever though. Apparently she has some new contract with a new band project. She wouldn't tell me the name. She said something along the lines of the contract she is in with the new project doesn't allow her to go telling people. Sounds like she's doing good... Having to be told who she can and cannot tell and what she can and cannot say. Hopefully she is doing it for her family or some sort of message instead of for the fame. She has great potential to change people's lives with her skill as opposed to her looks and charisma.

To continue on though. She ended up ignoring me after a question I asked regarding if she would still be interested in seeing a full set when I do one. I can't blame her though. As far as she is concerned, I'm not getting anything done at all with my music. But I am.

I worked a great deal on recording a song today that I wrote some time ago. I recorded the the guitar (twice), vocals, and added pitiful drum samples from reason 5. The song is coming along quite well and I must say for one take vocals I have to give myself some credit. I generally hate my own vocals. It's been a big mental battle to just accept them for what they are. And, I also made a large stride on that battle field today.

Performing live is still my goal. I have a message I want to spread and I want to do it live with the power behind it. Currently I am hashing out four songs. Writing basic as can be drums and bass. My cousin is going to write his own guitar parts. Then, after that, I am going to contact a drummer, bassist, another soloist, and start rehearsing. Before I know it, we will all be touring spreading a message of love, asking questions, and being active in what's going on in the world around us.

Here's to LOVE! *Raise my whiskey glass* See you all later

Sex shouldn't be the way it is thought of.

Today has been a very unproductive and uneventful day. I spent the entire day at a friends house moping around watching other people play video games via streaming web-sites. Where have the days gone that call for my participation? Actually, today offered plenty of opportunities to participate with life and I met these opportunities with the decision to hide. As I hid I reflected on the day prior. I analyzed every action of mine, not from my point of view but from the point of view of the strangers that sat in front of me.

I seem to be shy and awkward in new social situations with people that are strangers to me. I'm not really sure why. I can blame a thousand different things for my social awkwardness. But the ones that hark at me the most seem to be that I don't have any common ground with most people I meet. . . in Orange County anyway. Unfortunately because of that, I tend to close myself off from the world. I don't have an established image that offers consistent cultural "normal" behavior to others. At least, that's how I feel and observe my own social awkwardness. And, because I feel my behavior isn't what strangers expect I have a bad habit of painting my own demise. Or a different way of putting it is that, "I make up in my own head of how others view me and the central focal point of this point of view that I make up, are based purely on cultural meme's.", and not necessarily the good ones. I haven't the slightest clue where to begin to clear this up, except at one place.

I have noticed that each social situation where the awkwardness sets in is when women are present. I feel as though that I am viewed as a "weirdo" and that my "weirdness" is interpreted as some sort of sexual connotation. Why does this come to mind? I have been called weird in the past by women. The sexual connotation part is something that comes to my mind because I am confronted with sex everyday. EVERYONE is! Television, commercials, billboards, bus side advertisements, radio, music, movies. EVERYTHING has sexual thoughts knocking on my forehead door. And when the day comes that I meet strangers that happen to be beautiful women. . . What does my mind base every movement off of? Look, this is complicated. . . Very Complicated. I am not stripping these strangers down in my head. If I was, then this would be pretty simple. I would vary much be nothing but a sexual pervert. Instead what happens is miss-communication. Every communication medium is left open to interpretation. So when the lady to my right is constantly fidgeting around with her hair, laughing abrasively at the words coming from my mouth, and constantly looking at me, I can't help but wonder a few things: Is she; a) mocking me b)interested in me c)actually likes my lame sense of humor d)or more awkward than me? And why do all these questions about someone's personality have to revolve around sex?

These questions are always running through my head in new social situations with women involved. The overwhelming pervasive public display of sex always has me confused. Because of this, I am planning a trouble-shooting experiment to see how much of this pervasive thought of sex is. I am going to run the celibate road for as long as it is necessary to find out how programmed I am into thinking about sex in every communication medium with the opposite sex. I want to see how influenced I am by the outside cultural influences of our society that I am in.

Here are my rules; No dirty jokes, no talking about how beautiful the opposite sex is, no movies or television shows with sexual connotation, no listening to music that talks about relationships or sex, no participating in ANYTHING that has any sexual connotation at all. I feel this may be extreme. But, I want to wipe that circuitry out of my frontal lobe. I want to disconnect from the curse of stereotypical male ideology of "Men think about sex every 5 seconds.". That saying has been around since I was in middle school, so if I have been hearing this for over a decade how else am I supposed to think? If I tell you not to think about an elephant, chances are you will. Because the word elephant represents that animal, you have no choice but to think of an elephant. Otherwise that word has no meaning. Thus is the mainstay to our cultural awareness of sex. Too many words can represent a phallic, sexual intercourse, breasts, vagina, and etc... It's time to take control of the language that we use everyday and start using the words more appropriately. This is my focus. Every word out of my mouth needs to mean what those words were intended for. Nothing is worse than when I hear the dreaded phrase after a statement of mine, "That's what she said!". No, why do my words, along with my thoughts get altered by the pervasive thought of sex from outside? This must stop.

Sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence should not be a pillar for a society. Love for one another and for everything in the universe should be. Everything else, is just a lie.

Serious life goals

Hi Everyone,


I think we all wonder what would be best for us and I don’t think that it would be too far fetched to say that the ratio of what’s “best for us (t:o) caring for others” varies for some of us. Unfortunately there are people out there including my self that think allot about what decisions would be best for the future. I think about it more so than other peoples wants but maybe not so much their needs. So I end up tipping to the right side of the scale under pressures of situations that risk hurting someones feelings or risk effecting someones life negatively through a decision that would steer me in a positive direction and create a more challenging decision for a friend or family member.

Sometimes it's hard to stay on track with goals and when I hit that point I begin to think about everything that happens on a day to day basis to see what needs to change. And sometimes, I hold out on change because that decision to alter that area of my life will have some sort of adverse effect on friends and family. And you know what? I fear being the person who makes a decision that can alter any persons life in a negative fashion.

I know that, in those instances I am headed farther away from what I want to accomplish in life. An example would be like standing at a fork in a road and to the left is the road to new opportunities and big dreams and to the right is the road of monotony and the downward slope that swirls through to the end of time and before you know it, life is taken away and there is no going back to change it. Maybe after all is said and done and after we leave this planet or become one with it again (however you wanna look at it) we won't remember anything. Maybe that's all the more reason to take advantage of what you have.

A trick I try to implement is to keep a clear head, think about what my goals are and surround myself with people who are like minded and good hearted. I feel pretty safe in saying that not everyone is self motivating. People such as my self need the positive energy/atmosphere from other people with the same serious mindset to keep chugging along the hard road to my goal.

“How much time will this take away from the time I could be working hard on my goals in life?”

I used to think this was a selfish question because it focuses solely on benefiting me. And to be honest I don’t like to put myself before others. I almost always find myself uncomfortable doing something I did not want to do because I was too afraid to hurt the feelings of the person who invited me along or I just didn't have the heart (or man hood however you want to look at it) to tell them I have more important things to do and implement time management skills.

I didn't accomplish anything I wanted on those days. The only task accomplished was shooting the shit with a new back drop (or even worse, the same back drop) and that ends up turning the day into another blur… No break through, nothing new learned just another day lost to the endless ranting of bullshit.

What it comes down to is an unhealthy mind set, a mindset of uncertainty and a feeling of being lost and hopeless. All symptoms of unhealthy or bad decisions that have been made.

So, I will leave myself and you the reader with this.

From here on out it’s time to start looking out for my own and in doing so I will find a way to do it by:

1) Continuing not to take advantage of others

2) Continuing not to walk on or stab others in the back (Metaphor people not literal)

And

2) Continuing to be tactful in telling others I have higher priorities in my life that mean allot more to me than heading out to BS and drink alcohol.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. I have knots to untie before I can accelerate forward and it starts with one knot at a time. And forming a blog is a tool for me, a tool to use as a means to hold myself accountable. And I feel for every additional person who reads my blog I will be held at an even higher standard of accountability. Hopefully others who have experienced this or who are experiencing these feelings and running into these walls can be helped or least know that they are not alone. Here is to looking at the glass half full no matter how the cup got filled or emptied.

If that makes any sense…