You only have until 10:00PM Eastern Standard Time to nominate me for A Bloggie for “Best Non-Weblog Content.” And, after you’re done, feel free to listen to the double-Trio i’ve posted for your Non-Blog-Content pleasure ;)
by krisis
bloggish
Here’s where i’m scheduled to say something profound.
This week was already shaping up as a busy one on Monday night, and so i made myself a neat little list of things to blog about. That way i’d have at least one thing to write about every night, and i could compose in my head over the course of the day. The list for the days that have passed read: Journalism Essay, Under My Skin, Bloggies. Electronically penciled in for Friday was one word: “Selina.”
A year ago today was the first night of that fateful week where i saw her every night, and we counted it as the start of our relationship. I didn’t even hint at it on here until a few days later, and uncharacteristically didn’t mention it outrightly for over a week. Tonight i’m in a similar place… i spent my allotted AM blog-time last night just staring into a white box, and then grudgingly heading off to sleep. I had something to say, but no way to say it. This morning evoked a similar reaction.
At the beginning, everything was magical and perfect… there i was with this beautiful girl who was smart and talented, and actually seemed to find me attractive. But, from the start there were tiny nibbling doubts that i ignored, just assuming that they were the natural followup to the initial butterflies in my stomach. Too many things have muddied my hindsight in the year that has intervened for me to objectively say what went right and wrong, but i do know that we both served as an important piece of each other’s lives. And that it wasn’t really meant to be.
I always say that i never regret anything… that i’d never take anything back. It remains true here; just because Selina and i ended on a bad note doesn’t mean i would take back the entire experience. What’s sad is that my life has been relatively empty of tangible romantic entanglements since then, and so i couldn’t help but become all the more embittered about the entire situation — especially when hardly anyone i know seems to be very fond of my ex. Suddenly, this week, i find myself having funny little conversations with her, and wicked jokes under the din of a cappella rehearsals. Despite all the emotional and lyrical fists that i have balled up and thrown since then, i finally seem to be able to see through it back to the person who intrigued me so much to begin with.
So, maybe we’ll wind up friends in the end… at least a little bit. All of my life a year always seemed to be such a large quantity of time… it always seemed to make such a big difference in how life worked. Some things don’t change; I might not ever miss Selina. I miss butterflies, though, and she is forever inexorably connected to them because she taught me how to get past them to something a little more real.
Happy Anniversary.
Blogging is not a daily column. I don’t even have to post everyday, as one of my readers just reminded me as i lamented my headache-induced writer’s block. I don’t have to post every day because i’m only posting for me… i’m putting up the effort, and the editing, and the $30 a month that keeps my website functional as my bank account gets inexorably smaller and smaller.
Are you starting to see where those other posts were headed? I am tired… tired of having to learn all of the foundations that lay beneath the successful artifice of art, and having to be responsible for them all on my own. I am tired of spending endless hours programming my site and weeks in the studio just for a paltry 100 copies of my demo and a thousand readers a week. I am tired just at the thought of having to create a new layout or having to mix down another demo. I don’t want to do it. I just want to play, and to write, and to have an amount of attention paid to me that has some relation to the effort that i put into my work and the quality that emerges. Even double the readers, or five times the listeners, probably wouldn’t be enough for me … because even after my in front of the scenes work is paid adequate attention i’m still stuck behind the scenes like the Wizard behind the damned curtain, sweating away as he produces such a spectacular show.
I don’t think this means anything… i’m obviously not quitting or going away. I’m just so tired… tired of having to spend a year on music courses so i could have a key to the studio that i hate, and tired of earning A’s in programming just so i can properly sort out the PHP i program the site with. Tired of having to beg to be a mere assistant stage manager when we all know i’d rather be in front of any curtain, anywhere. I just… i don’t know how i’m supposed to be heard at all, otherwise. Maybe you could call it paying my dues, or maybe it’s just my own particular burden (and not such a bad one, at that), but the charm is wearing off … what was once exciting is now my dread of quarter inch to eighth inch cable adapters, and my absolute dread of photoshop, and my remorse over spending half of my education learning how to make what i want to do work, instead of doing what i want to do.
Conclusion? Who knows… either one step closer to sending out demos, or one closer to subway busking. Two steps forward, two steps back, same old me.
The trend in weblogs for ringing in the New Year seems to be a dead split between resolutions that might not be upheld and a litany of excellent things about 2001 that never came to light through the actual process of blogging. So, in the spirit of my general disagreeance and spitefulness this past weekend, here are the reasons why my year sucked (in roughly chronological order):
My grandmother dies; i proceed to get so sick that i miss the funeral (never to be forgiven by family). (!) I have to drop a class for the first time. (!) The weekend of my dress rehearsals for Good Woman of Setzuan i am diagnosed with Pneumonia and Bronchitis. I have to argue not to be admitted to the hospital so i can start going to rehearsals again. Upon my return I forget an entire verse of my big song on opening night (at this point being generally attributed to my medication, which i will neither confirm nor deny). (!) My first girlfriend wound up being somewhat of a psycho/bitch; horrible breakup ensues. (!) I managed not to fail anything despite all of the above circumstances, but garner my first C (in Recording Class) (!) I have no spring vacation; i immediately started work at Admissions after classes ended. (!) I am totally miserable in my apartment; i don’t speak much to my roommate. (!) I miserably quit blogging for an entire week when my archives disappear. (!) I do not leave the city once during the entire summer. (!) I spend the majority of the summer wondering where i’ll be living in September. (!) I sign up to attend the Philadelphia Folk Fest and then have to back out because of work and moving into my new apartment. (!) I step in to give the counselor-of-the-day presentation one Tuesday in September, because the counselor in question was to horror-stricken to speak. (!) I enter a rather depressive haze and let details about it slip to my mother, who becomes physically ill at the thought of my mental instability. (!) I am admitted to the hospital for four days only to be told absolutely nothing is wrong with me. (!) I endlessly deliberate over a first date with someone who lives across the country from me and who i like very much — only to be romantically rebuffed. (!) I spend the entire last weekend of the year in the most dire of blah moods. (!)
So, that’s my year. At a glance, 2001 looks as though it might have been my worst year ever pound for pound. However, lest we all despair for my miserable year, click the end of each phrase for the happy ending that i might not have hinted at while blogging. And, in case i haven’t mentioned it, Happy New Year.
Sometimes i go back a week or two into the archives to see what i’ve been talking about, and i’m surprised by it. How does that work?