Personal

I would just like to take a moment to compare my current life to my life during the first year of NaBloPoMo, 2006.

I know I do my big “look at how grown up I am” retrospective every year for CK’s anniversary, but 2006 vs. 2011 makes for an especially interesting comparison. Not only because it’s a shorter amount of time, but because I took the opportunity of the 2006 event to come out as a “secret rock star” who was beginning to take music more seriously (as if I ever took it less seriously).

Let’s compare and contrast.

November 2006

In November 2006 I had just started a new job, and I was the junior-most person in the department. I didn’t have to stay late too much and took lunch breaks. My round-trip commute was 72 minutes by SEPTA or on foot.

I went to one open mic a month.  I was not in band, and I had just quit my acappella group.  I did not have rehearsals. I had a repertoire of 10 or 20 solid originals out of the 200 songs I had written, and was working on a slew of good songs that year. I was starting to write songs in a upbeat style I described as a “Justin Timberlake meets Fallout Boy.”

My home office and recording studio were crammed together into my teeny 2nd bedroom (also my dressing room), which was barely big enough for a twin-sized bed. I mainly played two guitars – a brand-new Breedlove acoustic and my red Epiphone electric.

I had been dating E for four-and-a-half years. I was an incorrigible night owl. There was no Twitter. I hadn’t written anything longer than a blog post for fun since high school.

I didn’t spend money on anything in specific, though I had just gone to Bonnaroo and went out drinking a lot. I was just starting to save for an engagement ring.

November 2011

In November 2011 I work in the same area, now as one of the more senior members of my department. Sometimes I have to stay late just to get some quiet time, and I hardly ever take lunch breaks. My round-trip commute is anywhere from 80 to 100 minutes.

I rehearse about six hours a week with my pair of rock bands. I have played at least one show each month of this year, but not a single time as a solo artist. I had to give up open mics because they aren’t very rewarding. I have a repertoire of close to 40 songs with Arcati Crisis, and another 20+ with Filmstar, and another 20-30 solo. I’ve been too busy working through a backlog of my own new songs from last year to do much writing, but generally am working on a mix of acoustic dance songs and ballads.

My home office twice the size of the old multi-purposes room, and is dedicated just to writing and reference. My separate home studio is about as big as an entire floor of our old house. I mainly play the same two guitars plus a baritone, but I’ve also added a trio of basses and a pedal board full of effects.

E and I have been married almost three years. I hate staying up past midnight. I’ve been copy-editing the first 200 pages of my novel for the past eleven months, and I’m presently writing the second half.

I have developed a serious collected comic book addiction in addition to keeping up our band equipment. I haven’t been on a vacation since our honeymoon.  I have mostly given up drinking in bars. I’m just getting back to some semblance of savings after buying a house and all of my bass gear.

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I guess my point is not only, “whoa, dude, you really did some growing up,” but to put the idea of blogging daily and recording songs into perspective.

In 2006, what the hell else did I have to do with my life but blog every damn day? Seriously, I had exactly nothing going on. I got home every day by 6pm and went to sleep at 2am. That’s eight hours to dream up a meagre 500 words and record a three minute song.

In 2011 there are weeks where my life is scheduled down to the minute, and blogging is only on the schedule every second Sunday. It happens in found moments, largely on the El (ugh).  I spend so much time rehearsing music and writing communications plans at work that the idea of vomiting up another 500 words for a blog post can seem like it might be physically painful – let alone the requisite 1666 daily words for my novel.

I needed 2006 to get to 2011. I couldn’t have jumped right into the present day me. It took blogging daily and recording 30 songs in a single month to remind me of what I was living for. Things only got more interesting from there.

What about you? What was your life like five years ago today? What’s the biggest difference? Would you-of-2006 be happy to see what you’re up to in 2011?

I don’t like Halloween.

There. I’ve confessed it.

I thought I had escaped the costumed oppression when I graduated college, but my friends are more rabid about it now than ever – even the ones without babies.

Yesterday I gawked as E hustled to welcome an oncoming fleet of tiny trick-or-treaters to our doorstep and bowl of premium candy. She carved pumpkins, donned her masquerade mask, and pulled massive bags of candy from their strategic hiding spots that prevented me from consuming them.

(You see if you can resist a bag of Heath bars and Take Fives for an entire week if it’s in plain sight.)

Lest you assume my grinchy-ness is a recent, being-a-yuppy-related development, allow me to reveal that I only went trick-or-treating a handful of times as a child. Once I was Gem, because she was truly outrageous and the only rock’n’rock role model for children at the time, even if she was a girl. A few years later I was a pirate (yes, a male pirate, but only on the condition that my Aunt Susan would dress up as Like a Virgin era Madonna).

I think it’s clear where my priorities were, even at age seven: pop culture over tradition; rock over holidays.

I have never spent too much time considering my anti-holiday vendetta. Have I always been so resistant to the cult of the mainstream that I can’t even celebrate the same day they do? Are holidays too consumer and not enough DIY for me? Is this the symptom of a only child of divorced parents, who could never have the holidays he saw on television? Am I simply a contrary bastard?

It’s not like I don’t like to celebrate. I can party, whether that’s a dance-party or a food-coma kind of party. I just don’t want to party the same tired way everyone has been partying for twenty or a hundred years already.

Instead,  think to celebrate a thing I need it to be imbued with personal meaning. I don’t dispute that some people get major meaning from the 4th of July, or Thanksgiving, but the standard-issue holidays never ring true for me. They already have too many other meanings ascribed to them.

I’d prefer to make holidays my own. I’ve done it for Thanksgiving and ::shudder: Christmas. I simply haven’t found a way to compete with the masquerade massacre of Halloween.

That’s okay – I celebrate November 1st instead.

No, not All Saints’ Day. November 1st is the kickoff of my favorite month of the year, thanks to National Blog Posting Month – where the entire universe of blogs endeavors to post every day.

Even if I don’t post daily, I’m sure to undertake some insane project while my friends and colleagues are busy recovering from their candy comas to travel to see family and work on their holiday shopping. In 2006 I recorded thirty songs in thirty days! Last year I wrote a book! This year I’m mixing two EPs and writing another book. And blogging, hopefully daily, while playing at least one show with each of my bands.

November 1st might be All Saints’s Day to some, but to me it’s “The Starting Line.” I’ve been dreaming up some big project all year, and November 1st is the day that I begin to make it a reality.

That’s way cooler than one night of playing dress up.

Whether you like the “real” holidays or not, I’m sure you’ve got a few of your own. A massive party to usher in the harvest? An annual drunken viewing of the Golden Globes? What’s your DIY holiday?