Rock Star Hour

Delete

So, mostly I've been on Facebook more than MySpace or this. I had to switch because my friends did. I kept Myspace for the friends who had not switched, and also for the blog preferred list, which I nearly never used, but now I'm limiting access to this as well.

I am sick of being identifiable. I want to delete both my Facebook and my music account on Myspace. Part of the problem is they are both under my real name, which was a really dumb decision.

There's another one, though, I can't quite put my finger on -- another reason.

Just before my high school reunion, as expected, I got in touch with a lot people. On one hand, it was cool. On another, the reunion is over.

Facebook is different in that everything is broadcast through the newsreel, although Myspace has recently tried to emulate it with the whole "subscriptions" thing.

There's also this "People You May Know" tool, which is less cool than one might think. What happens is, say I'm friends with somebody, but not friends with someone they know. The site knows two people may know each other through one person, so mostly what happens is it keeps asking if you know someone you can't stand, or someone you recognize but don't know, or someone who, say, dated one of your friends, or maybe an ex-boyfriend, and to use a word a friend and I recently coined, it gets all "tangly."

I'm sick of it. I'm so sick of the tanglies. It's not wrong to want to start over. It's not wrong to not want to be fake, or to not like fake people. It's not. It's not wrong to not talk to people you knew 10 years ago, either. It's not wrong to not desire to talk to exes.

I knew that already, but something in me thought it necessary to learn again.

I went to the reunion, and saw some people in person, but besides a handful of them, the majority have gone back to what they were: faces in a background of my life, part of a past I don't really care to revisit.

I'm healed from the embarrassing awkward parts of high school mostly; it no longer has to do with adolescent angst so much as comfort with where I am. I just hate feeling like I have to justify that to myself, but I guess I do.

I feel guilty, like part of me is not a good person somehow, for not feeling like I have to be friends with everybody, and maybe that dates back to the same period, because around high school, I really did want to be friends with everybody. Maybe part of the tanglies is just leftover things like that.

Labels: Facebook, MySpace, Privacy, Relationships, Tanglies

The Uglier Side of Things

The Ugly Side of the Coin. I was thinking about starting another blog and calling it that. Because sometimes I think things and think I should keep them too myself. What if my friends read this and realize how horrible I am? What if old friends who don't give a crap just glance at it once in awhile to confirm what they think they know -- that I'm a horrible human being -- and walk away again thinking themselves smarter or better.

Or that they've escaped something ...

You know what? Everyone has things to escape. Everyone.

One way I could do that would be to start another one of these and throw away the key, but if I was going to do that, I could just write at home.

You know what?

People post these ridiculous bulletins on MySpace. Survey, questionaires, whatever. And I waste many precious minutes of my life as a monkey office drone sufficating under fluorescent lights ... just to fill them out and pass the time ...

One of the things that bothers me about them is that they all ask the same questions.

Now everyone knows the things I tell the truth about, and everyone thinks I tell the truth about the things I lie about. Or maybe it's percentages. And maybe I get the same from them ...

Either way we all know I sleep in the nude, and my favorite color changes every other day, and sometimes, almost most of the time, someone is missing somebody ... and we all know who is single and "taken," whatever that means.

But do we know anything? Do we know anything at all?

What I do know is that just about everyone lies, if not to others, than to themselves. Otherwise whenever the stupid question asks about regrets, people wouldn't say they have none.

And they always do. I have too. All that kindergarten force fed inhumane brainwashed wannabe optimistic dribble that comes out ... People always say things like, "None." Or, "Life's about experience and everything is relevant if you at least learn from it." Or they say something about how everything that what supposed to happen does.

That takes away responsibility for a person's actions. It takes away free will. It takes away from one of life's most common experiences that so many are in denial about.

Tell me you don't have regrets.

You know what? I do. I'm a human being, been on this fricken' earth close to 30 years. Some things that happened weren't my fault. Some things were.

I regret not taking my multivitamin this morning. I regret not flossing more often. See, little things ...

Then there are bigger ones.

I started trying a couple years ago to really say what I meant and to mean it when I said it.

I'm going to try again.

And I'm going to start again by trying to be honest on this blog, even about the ugly things deep within my being. The very things that make me human.

I'm going to do that. I make no promises. I will protect no one. Wait and see.

Labels: Depression, MySpace

She'll hang the baskets on the wall ...

I know I haven't been posting much.

When I'm not just plain not feeling like it, I'm busy.

Making changes again.

Sorta like jumping out of airplane. I've never done that. But I've never done this either.

I'm doing a lot of new things.

Looking for a job. I quit Slicks. I'm looking for a nine-to-fiver. I've got a resume, and I've got teeth. I'm getting better at this. It's definitely stressful. But I'm doing something right because I've had four interviews in the week that I've been on the job market. That's pretty rad.

I'm not bragging. Yesterday I wrote on my MySpace blog that I'm a scared little rabbit, actually.

But I'm trying to learn how to sell myself. I'm trying to be more assertive. To be a go-getter. I think that's who I am, or who I could be, when I'm not wavering.

I started out, and still am, looking for any sort of entry-level job. But what I really want to do is marketing, so I'm pushing for that.

I'm taking this semester off from school because I have been financially irresponsible. I could beat myself up about that, or I could just shrug it off. I'm somewhere in the middle.

But I'm graduating in like a year. Two, three semesters tops. I'm so almost done. It feels good. So I think when I go back in the fall, if not the summer, either way the next academic year will be my last for awhile.

And I love to dream. I still do it all the time. About being a rock star, or falling in love, or taking off and going to Japan.

Even marrying Clark Kent. I think I've fallen in love with Superman.

And when I'm not doing all this shit, I'm listening to Cake. Fucken A, they're awesome. So I'll leave you with this song, which I think about sums up why I don't really mind being single:

"She'll Hang the Baskets"

She'll hang the baskets on the walls --
Don't you know I've seen it all before?
She'll hang the baskets on the walls.
But I've seen it all before,
Heard the slamming of the door --
Come summer, come fall,
Come winter, there'll be baskets on the floor.

He'll go to buy her turtle wax,
But in his mind he won't be coming back.
She'll hang the baskets on the walls,
But I've seen it all before,
Heard the slamming of the door --
Come summer, come fall,
Come winter, there'll be baskets on the floor ...

But I've seen it all before,
Heard the slamming of the door --
Come summer, come fall,
Come winter, there'll be baskets on the floor.
She'll hang the baskets on the wall,
She'll hang the baskets on the wall.

Labels: Cake, MySpace, Superman, Work

I gotta shake it off.

Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake it off ... I just downloaded that ringtone. AND WHAT?!

I just posted this MySpace bulletin that asked you to describe your love life in one word, and I used painstaking, but I'm not sure if that's right. But it seemed to fit the pain in my chest that comes and goes. Man, I did love me some Aaron.

I'm piecing things back together though. I feel really ridiculous for still feeling so ... not me, after some time has passed. But I'm getting there, and since it's almost like I spent a month in someone else's body, or somewhere else, I think I'm coming back OK.

I worked 12 hours yesterday. Five at my morning job and seven at night. I went to school today. Am still here. One more class today. I'm a hoss.

It is starting to wear on me a little. I've been trying to get out more, but I'm really poor. The second job was supposed to be for me. Just something to do. The thing that would get me that so-wanted mountain bike, or maybe a digital camera or an ipod. You know -- toys! Instead, business has plummeted so much at the bar that all my extra hours are barely picking up the slack.

So now it's like I work all the time, and go to school. And I'm poor and lonely, because I don't get out much other than work. My friends have been really great about visiting me on the job though. Fortunately.

My birthday is tomorrow. 25. Maybe that's where the nervous feeling in my stomach is coming from.

Quarter of a century. I tried to deny I've been thinking about it. I haven't really, until this month, when it seemed so hard to make ends meet even though I feel like I'm busting my ass. College is supposed to be that ass-busting buffer, er something. But I'm learning that when I get out I'll have to be careful, because it seems to matter less and less.

My mother busted her ass to get her degree. So did my sister. So did many of my friends. Where are all the great jobs in the universe with benefits and retirement and shit. Up Bush's ass. Ahah. Actually, I didn't mean for this to be any sort of commentary at all. I was just going to say they're up somebody's ass, and Bush came to mind.

Ah.

I do have a beautiful apartment. And I have been reading again. It feels good to read. I hadn't much in awhile. I read quite a bit of the Bible. I even went to church the last couple weekends.

I just wanted to make my mind up again. Because I haven't much experience in churches, and hadn't really read the Bible as an adult, making my own decisions and interpretations.

I still think it's interesting, but ... I don't know.

Did I write about church? I don't think I did. The first time I went again, two weekends ago, it was a really positive experience. I walked in myself, carrying my Bible, sang some hymns, read along to the lesson in the program. There were a lot of nice people there. It was a United Methodist Church, and the pastor was a woman and the congregation was a "reconciliation" one, meaning they accept anyone who wants to come in and worship.

I told some of our friends about it, including Jeff. So last Sunday four of us went together: me, Jeff, Brian, and Claire. They just wanted to check it out. We thought we could go and then talk about it afterwards. But then the service was almost two hours and most everything was littered with interjections about all the different things you could donate to the church that would in turn help the Katrina victims.

I don't know. The big verses that came up in lessons the last two weeks were from Romans. The ones about loving what is good and hating what is not. And seeking goodness, and the new commandment to love one another, that would serve the rest of them as the bottom line. Love a friend enough that you would die for them. Treat your neighbor like your brother basically.

And that's nice, in theory. I guess that's one of the reasons I went. Because what's the worst thing that could happen. Granted, when I told Aaron I was going to church he said he felt like if he walked in one he would burst into flames, but besides that, hah.

It just doesn't seem like anything bad could come of it. Just listening.

On the other hand, it isn't so easy to love right now. I'm still heartbroken, and I just lost my best friend. I'm realizing more and more that neither were the end-all, be-all. They can't be. That would make for a depressing life. But it's just hard.

And I also thought about how many churches there are in the world, and couldn't even fathom how many there were, and how many were gathering to hear what the Bible says is God's message. One that the New Testament claims is love, and feeling like the world outside of church is so loveless.

I almost felt like I was being not Tyler Durtan, but the other guy in fight club. Before he goes completely crazy and goes to all those meetings for like, testicular cancer. And he's a stranger there just like maybe I'm a stranger inside "God's house."

Also, in reading, and unpacking all my worldly things that have been in storage for so long, now home in my new apartment, I've found lots of old diaries and journals.

And man, I love life. And how everyone has a story. A story full of love and lust and family and friends and loss and nonsense and epiphanies and denials and stumblings and mistakes and learning and patterns in all their randomness.

And not just the stories, but the details. Like how the peanut butter is on a shelf in my house because I put it there. And how I can decide what speed to dial on my window unit. And guitars and shoes and music. Things. Worldly goods. And how my living room has a green "accent wall" because I picked out the paint. And downloading ringtones on my phone. Ah.

I guess I've been thinking about this anyway. Stefan even wrote about it. Buddhists giving up things to find "enlightenment." Christians giving up the world for heaven. Since it is written that man and the world are inherently sinful. It says to be righteous you have to deny yourself and take up your cross. Deny the world, and you're old way of life.

I guess before I got so screwed up recently, or even someway during the process, I started to believe life is good. And the world. And love, though it comes and leaves as it pleases. And I'm not giving up one bit of it. Amen.

Labels: birthdays, Buddhism, Church, College, MySpace