Um, holy shit… somewhere in the four hours that i slept, i got a main-page mention on In Passing!
Whore? Yes. Do i mind? Not really…
by krisis
Personal
In related news, Benjy provides his reasons to be nominated for “best programming of a weblog.” And, honestly, i double dare you to find a weblog backend that’s half as impressive as his after reading his entry (other than the obvious choice of KevRock).
Last year Wockerjabby won the Bloggie Award for “Best Kept Secret” blog, which made the Bloggies worthwhile for me. A lot of “popular” sites that i haven’t ever read won for things that they are only somewhat spectacular at doing, but all in all it was a fun time and i feel as though Rabi got recognition that she definitely deserved.
Cut to 2002.
In addition to their weblogs, some people write essays, make games, do photo-journals, or any other number of things. All of these people are eligible for the “best non-weblog content of a weblog site” award. Last year the winner was Zeldman, and of the other nominees was bloggie-creator Nikolai Nolan — who creates a “feature” each month for his log. You can scope out the other nominees from last year here
To this day there are only a very few webloggers i’ve ever heard of who write songs. Former blogger Jack Saturn does, as does Adam from Tweebiscuit. However, not only do i write songs, i demo them for everyone to hear, i play weekly concerts of them live and unedited, i posted audio from my studio cd as it was being mixed, and i put all of that together for my 54 song spectacular ’25/24′ over the summer.
It is my firm belief that there are very few other bloggers out there who have a more personal or interesting piece of “content” on their site, and as readers of mine i would like to ask you to please take a minute to click to here and nominate CrushingKrisis.com in “Best non-weblog content of a weblog site.” My music is something that i put my heart and soul into every week while receiving comparatively little thanx or attention, and so i’d like to try to make it a little more widely known. I don’t want to win, necessarily, i just want to see my songs in the company of undeniably amazing work from people like Nikolai and Zeldman. Voting closes on SUNDAY night, so please make sure to register your pick before then. In fact, tell all of your friends. Start a petition!
Honestly, it’d be an honor just to be nominated. And, meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for other nominations (or, if you want some suggestions for yourself) please comment!
Two years.
Seven hundred and thirty one days, exactly.
Nearly right down to the minute.
It’s hard to say something important or unique about a song that comes up in nearly every conversational context possible. I’ve already described writing the lyrics, talked about the recording process, uploaded take after take of developmental recordings… and here i am two years later at a loss for what i’m supposed to be saying.
All i can say is that i’ve spent one tenth of my life living with “Under My Skin” … not only living with it as a song, but living with having written it and with why i wrote it. Living with the song is sometimes the hardest part; “Under My Skin” is easy to like, even for me, and i feel like it eclipses other songs that i’ve worked much harder on. Living with having written it isn’t so bad: at first it felt like a wall i had built to avoid having to express myself in any other way, but now it stands as an emotional landmark rather than a roadblock.
Living with the reason i wrote it is still strange. In the past I would agonize over it, asking myself “how do you kiss someone and then just let it go?” Now i know exactly how, because i’ve done it. It happens. I guess the real question i have is “After life crystallizes for one perfect moment, how do you go on living imperfectly?” I don’t really know the answer to that one, and i don’t expect to find it out any time soon. Sometimes that one moment i lived is almost like a fantasy in my head that never really happened, and sometimes it’s the only thing i can see. It is still both, and all the shades found in-between
“Under My Skin” became more than what i originally intended it to be when Laurel came into the studio to sing it with me last year. Ever since she willingly added her voice to mine i feel as though i don’t wholly own my words… they aren’t only mine anymore. Laurel’s voice singing them on Relief, and any other time i’ve caught her humming along, suddenly transforms “Under My Skin” from a song in the first person to a shared narrative — with its words and all that they are saying awkwardly shared between us both.
It doesn’t bring the moment back. Life doesn’t suddenly make sense the way television does. But, one moment that seemed so selfish and impossible when it first happened is now just a tiny seed that has sprouted into a flourishing garden of songs, friendships, and memories that will last me a lifetime.
And one very good song.
I don’t know that it’s an idea, so much as simply how my body tends to balance itself out. Left to my own devices during the summer of 2000 i actually split each day in half, sleeping from five to nine in both the morning and evening. This sounds ridiculous, but given a healthy and active list daily schedule it actually suited my needs perfectly and kept me highly energized through my grueling turn as an Orientation Leader.
Of course, there are problems with giving the body exactly what it seems to be asking for. With the exception of my magical two weeks of two-in-one days, my body tends to operate on a clock that is much nearer to 30hour days than 24hour ones, which means if i don’t have a set time to sleep i’ll stay up a handful of hours later every night until finally i’m sleeping the day away because i’m so locked in to my overly long internal clock. Furthermore, my attempts to correct my own sleeping habits tend to make the situation worse; for example, i should have never gone back to sleep this morning rather than do my best to stay awake all day — and here i am blogging about it past 2am.
The solution that has had a larger impact on my days than my quirky sleeping habits (which are endlessly remarked upon in derisive fashion by my roommates) is that i really just don’t waste time anymore. Sure, you could argue that i’m wasting time right now, but i mean something closer to not spending time idly. If i’m on the internet, i’m either writing or catching up on my daily reading … not aimlessly wandering from link to link. If i’m playing guitar i’m either writing or practicing … no idle ad-libbing for hours on end. I tend to break this rule just as much as i follow it, but keeping the idea of maximizing my resources stuck in the back of my head somehow netted me all A’s last semester — something i’ve never accomplished with such a rigorous course load Sure, it involved putting some thing off until the last minute (and stressing my way into the hospital), but somewhere along the way i finally learned to cut down on time-wasting (and unsatisfying) activities like reorganizing my cd collection and rereading my archives when i could be cooking dinner or writing a paper instead..
This semester has an even more ridiculous free-time to work-time ratio than last, and so i’m interested to see how i fare. Also, it would be nice if i could factor actually working into the equation somewhere between sleep and cd reviews, because money is never as evil as they say it is ;)