Screech. Dharma Fools, New England, and Writing Update

The first Dresden Dolls album is coursing through my brain at a non-syncopated gait this morning.  I have again crawled from the wreckage of last night, and I'll probably end up working backwards on this missive to the universe.

I have caught my first cold in like three or four years.  Being vegetarian does that...since going meatless back in 2001, really, I've rarely been sick.  It's not a bad one, either; no real symptoms, but that it goes straight for the throat.  Doesn't hurt, but it feels like I fronted a Screamo band.

That's the least of my worries.  Well, good things to start with:  the Dharma Fools returned to the stage last night for the first time in over a year.

http://www.reverbnation.com/thedharmafools?profile_view_source=header_icon_nav

Our new page is there, recent video and some old tracks.  Got a nice "love it" from a musician named Tim Caudill last night...thanks, Tim!

Yeah, last night...slightly new lineup.  Those who know of the history of The Band Formerly Known As Ahltyrra know that the Dharma Fools were to be a side project, and they became the project.

From the original lineup is myself, Dan Shearer and Merryiad.  Jim Hooker has joined us on harp, vocals and djembe; the former he mostly does and Jim brought us a wonderful djembe player named Mari up to Harrisburg for the event.

A fixture in Harrisburg's music scene is the Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center, or HMAC.  Wednesday night's Open Mic Night, hosted by Mike Banks.  He opened up with more of his blazing acoustic guitar pyro action, and an amazing voice that can do Leon Redbone stuff, and then with a more conventional, but exceptional voice.  Great guy, and we appreciate his support.

Well, wouldn't you know?  We had to follow his blazing set!  But we've done it before.  The set list:

Black Ambition (one of mine, an Ahltyrra standby and opener)
Keep on Truckin' (the product of Dan's grooving bass line, Jim's harp and words I quickly brought together)...smoked for not playing it ever.
Dead Flowers (yeah, we had to)

Got an awesome hand, thank you all for doing that!  Some old friends and fans turned up, and a couple of my radio friends turned up as well.  Wonderful time...we still got it.

Dunno what's next, but we'll keep at it.  Hopefully I'll have some new rehearsal or live tracks up on the ReverbNation site.

Good work last night by a lot of artists...Piano & Cocktail Murders (I think that's the right name), Cameron Malloy, Yellow Day, and Octavia all did great...the latter is a blues lady, find her music!!!

Doing some TV work this week for WITF...nice to get a chance to do some behind the scenes work, and I'm not averse to much of anything right about now.

NEXT...Radio-Airwaves is back on the air!

http://radio-airwaves.co.uk/index.html

I return to the air tonight at 11 pm Eastern time, as DJ Riff.  Got a bunch of new tracks to thrown down for you...some odd, some obscure, and some local stuff.

I was in New England last week.  Business and pleasure it all turned out to be.  Spent a few days in Maine with family, which was fun.  Also zoomed up the Midcoast to see my former boss and owner of a couple of interesting little stations.  

Turned out I had a job interview with a start-up AM.  Radio 9 WCME, on 900 AM in Brunswick has been an odd little station with a long past.  The new owner is a radio pro who has been making things happen on his own pace, and I had a nice chat.  Not much there right now, but worth staying in touch with the gentleman.

Also saw my old XM Radio friend Joe in Portland, and ran into another of his regular buddies, a good time.  Very good indeed.

Boston for two days...saw my old friend TJ Welch from Saint Joe's days.  The one year he was there shaped my musical vision in a big way.  He was the host of "Sonic Lobotomy," a punk show that for that one year defined a lot of things for me.

He introduced me to Dead Kennedys.  TJ's band The Welch Boys will support DK's in Cambridge, MA and in NYC and Washington this month.  Great to see him again, and I sold him a Telecaster. 

A wonderful time, I must say.  Spent a couple days at my friend Riz's house, and then it was back down here for the action.

Okay...writing time.

I have not written or edited much lately.  But I'm coming up with ideas again. Right now, I have to get "Parasite Girls" re-read as a book and ready for the self-publishing steps.  

My agent, Jeanie Loiacono has left Sullivan-Maxx and is forging ahead on her own.  LLA will be out of Irving, TX and I will likely re-up with her.  Jeanie has been kicking open doors and I feel she can help with the Sweet Dreams Series and get this into the hands it must go to.

It is that big to me, that some kind of help is required.  The SDS is the best thing I've ever written; it must get out there.

Now...not to diminish "Parasite Girls."  It's a good story, and I hope it will be received well.  Better to fail by trying than to not, eh?

My friend Nick Bento once said, "Even if it flops, at least you did it."  Something like that, and he's right.  Gotta go there.

Now...two new ideas have been slowly cooking in my head, and they have to stay there because they are not ready to come out of the oven yet.  I have to edit SDS-4, and do rewrites, because that's not what it should be.

"Time the Healer" needs a go-over...so much to do.

But I'd not have it another way; it's good like this.  Stuff ahead of me gives me incentive.

Okay, off to the mad world I've created for myself.  Peace, out.

5 Weeks Tomorrow

Well, tomorrow is five full weeks w/o the you know whats...and I'm cycling down from another rush of anxiety, depression and agitation.  It is a destructive thing, but once you come out of it, you find you're still hear.


iTunes stuff...after bashing through "Girl Anachronism" by the Dresden Dolls (see previous post for the video), I couldn't bear to hear stuff from my old band, Ahltyrra.  "Doctor Brown" by the Original Fleetwood Mac came up...knockoff of Sweet Home Chicago, pretty much.


Okay...we're hitting on five weeks.  The past several days my lack of focus has led to me causing myself more issues than I had at the beginning, isn't that funny?


I'm generally clumsy when cleaning...I'll make more of a mess than when I started, and have to do that, too.  Mindfulness training does not always work when your mind cycles, and you are trying to get things done, and you just plow into everything.


I'm glad for spellchecker...my fingers don't type well, even with years of training.  I took typing before it was fashionable and necessary, and there were few boys in my typing classes, believe me.


Anyway, my fingers don't always adjust to my laptop here, and then they don't go back to the keyboard on my PC, either here or at work.


Crank these normal things up by about 100 times, and you know what I'm dealing with.


"Warboys," Queen/Paul Rodgers...this has been considered a horrid album, and Queen purists hate it.  I do agree that while Freddie could sing some of those songs, some are not fitting with him.  But Freddie's dead...the other guys have a right to do music, damn it.  I think some of the songs are very good.


I managed to kill my PC; well, it was having its own issues, and I compounded the error by inserting the wrong reclamation disk.  Guess what happened.


I got it back last night, not from the Geek Squad (losers) who left numerous things unplugged from the last time (NO WONDER MY HEADSET MIC DIDN'T WORK, AND I COULD NOT HEAR A FUCKING THING...THANKS, LOSERS!); there's a local chain that for very little money worked it up.


Of course, I tried to plow ahead and re-fix things that I wanted on there, to which nothing occurred right.


Alice is coming tomorrow to fix it up, and get it to run the way it should, so I can do my writing, my on-line stuff, and my new endeavor eventually.


Also have to hope we can save the iTunes.  I'm running off my laptop account, which is not the same, thanks to the Cloud issues.


"Suspicion," by Asia.  Arena rock time, folks!


My iPod has all the music uploaded that had once been on the PC...now, can we transfer it from the unit to the computer w/o losing it all and starting all over again?


The worst can happen...it often does.  But that is a habit I must quit on.


The writing thing is also troubling me...I feel it very hard to trust certain people, where it is concerned.  


To explain:  the first book of the Sweet Dreams Series is being worked by my agent.  There has been some interest, but no deals.  Two publishers are looking at it, but I'm not sure what they think.


Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere came a request for the manga portion.  Two point five years after approaching, they're back...well, I have had to again push my collaborators to provide me something.


I can't go into all that.  Suffice to say, Jen has provided some pencil sketches that look quite interesting.  There'll be more, plus my six-page proposal outlining the grand scheme.


Well, that is almost ready; a little more to add.


They want to see it, now.


A bit of "Karn Evil 9," from a live ELP recording of some 20 years ago.  So we're getting this together...and here comes the paranoia.


This was sent to me by Alice:  http://indiereader.com/2012/06/how-amazon-saved-my-life/


Very tempting, to just cut loose, but then I have the contract with my agent, the issues surrounding it, and the possibilities of all that could go wrong.


The mainspring inside me gets tight...real tight.


"Dirty Little Thing," Velvet Revolver.  Yes!  Feels just like that!


I see it all going to shit, even though I know this will not happen.  I've not signed any rights away; no one has taken anything yet.  AND THEY WILL NOT.


Here's the thing that pisses me off about traditional publishers.  They, like record labels and TV execs, look for what fits a market.  But they don't always know.


The author of the above, Jessica Park is right:  WRITERS WRITE FOR THE READERS, NOT FOR A PUBLISHER.


You want another fucking knockoff of Twilight, do you?  Just look at your slushpile; there must be a hundred of them there!  Who cares if one of them sucks balls, the stupid people will buy them.


And they do.


Record labels sign their version of the NEXT BIG THING.  Prepare for the onslaught of Justin Bieber/Carly Rae Jeppsen brats who can't fucking sing, but look cute.


I am not part of that.  My stuff on the surface is not terribly difficult to digest, but if it is marketed toward Young Adult or YA, I am afraid of the Big C.


CENSORSHIP.


"In the Air Tonight," hmmm...despite all claims of the YA world being open minded and shit, they are not.  Swearing, sex, drugs and especially homosexuality is right the fuck out at a lot of 'em.


Well, Book 1 isn't so bad.  Book 2, well...


...I dare not sign an agreement for more than the first book because I know what will happen...or I think will happen.


They will tell me that I have to change characters, change the relationships, the sexual whatever they find or it's not marketable.


SORRY, NO DICE.


My stories are NOT offensive; at least I don't think they are.  I did my best to create the world I wanted to see, with some feet on the earth kind of thing.  The characters are not perfect, because we're not.  They make mistakes, they do and say dumb things, they err.  We all do.


Believe me, these are good stories or I would not be typing like this right now.  I have never felt so confident in my entire life about any fucking thing I have done.  This includes 27 years in radio, many years in theatre, and what I've done musically.  This is fucking it.


I am probably wrong in a lot of my assumptions.  When you feel like this, it takes you down.


Now...all of this having been said...I am finding again a way to as we'd say in Moonsong, 'ground and center.'


"A Change is Gonna Come," Shannon McNally.  Kind of a deep, resonant singer; Bonnie Raitt, and Lou Ann Barton are two voices I think of.  It's good stuff.


Weird how those titles pop up.  Alice's email tonight explained what she saw, and as usual she's brutally honest.  I did face the issue, and I worked through it today, as I have.  I know I have, and I have to keep doing it.


Most of what I fear is not going to occur, probably.  I have to hope that the publisher that wants to see the manga will put that forward.  That would be great; it would be excellent to give the book version of SDS-1 a push.  It would grant credits to Riz for all her help, and get Jen a platform to show the world how talented she is.  All down the road.


Bookwise, I've considered self-publishing.  Vanity Press, they call it; that label has changed, though.


If you pay a company to print copies of your book, that's a VP.  No editing, no promotion, no help but for your writing, and you're saddled with a thousand copies you have to hawk if you want your money back.  


"Angel Eyes," Kenny Burrell...a guitarist I've always admired.  Great stuff.


Vanity publishing is a dangerous thing.  I've seen too many people sitting in bookstores with a table full of badly-produced books, smiling in the vain hope that someone comes to buy their stuff.


They usually leave with the same amount of books they came in with.  Sad, but true.  


What struck me (and I learned this) was that these folks didn't give talks about their works; they didn't read from them, they didn't take questions from a small audience.  How else do you get the point across, and sell what you've got to sell?  You may have a wonderful story; but if you don't present it, what have you got?  Not much.


My friend Don Chase is on Amazon.com with a Kindle deal, of the kind that's talked about above.  He does not get as many sales as Ms. Park, but he has done pretty well for an unknown author with just one title (I think) out.  Don was also very kind with his advice and his time; he helped sound it all out for me.


I could do this, with other books I've written.  I will think about it; not yet.  The time is not yet right.


I need to be patient.


"Hold On Baby," old track from JJ Cale.  Another real good one.


I must see how the manga publisher takes it.  I feel good about it.


The others that are interested in book form; I will hold on, and see.


My contract with the agent runs into early 2013.  I don't regret working with her; she's worked hard and I've had her back when others have questioned her skills, experience, even her competence and motives.


She has my back, I have hers.  Fair is fair.


We'll see...more time is needed to think, and get the ideas in shape.


Tomorrow it could all be different.


Sometimes I feel like this:

This is the last segment of "Stephen Fry:  the Secret Life of a Manic Depressive."  It is an award-winning documentary on Bipolar Disorder; I am not bipolar, but I urge you to go to the beginning of this on Youtube and watch it.


It will explain so much.


The young woman in the image arrives at about the six-minute mark.  Some of what she deals with I feel deeply.  In fact, Stephen's own battle is well-chronicled here; and that of other public figures, and some not well known.


This video has helped me a lot; it has given a face to the terrible bouts of depression and what seems like madness.


I've written about this in my story Parasite Girls, and it pops up here and there throughout my writings.  The clip catches Stephen in one of his up moods, and you see what others deal with.  The girl above has it bad; not as bad as some, but I know the feelings all too well.


It is painful to watch at times, but one must.  


Nearly lost this blog a while back.  "We the People" by Guitar Shorty is on...


So yeah...here is where we are now.  I again must pull back and not let these things tear me apart.  Without the Zoloft, I am at times wracked by the stress and the insane feelings that should not matter but do.  This is war.


I am optimistic that the manga publisher will like what will be proposed.  I aim to have all the parts tomorrow night to send away to the agent and the publisher.


We shall see.  Meanwhile, for now I must wait on the other.  But I can lay groundwork for the other things I'm doing.


And trying to stop and look back, and forward too w/o expecting myself to perform miracles.  


###


Other things...job hunting in the radio biz is never fun, especially of late.  It's a dying industry it seems, but we are survivors.  I have a bit of work Friday, a bit next week, and after that, who knows?


I have no specific prospects at this point; again, wait and see.


And try not to go too crazy with worry, or with sudden boundless optimism that takes away my better judgement.


This is how it is.


###


I end on sad notes...my friend Aimee Johnston is hospitalized after being hit by a car outside her home.  She has suffered terrible injuries, and faces a long road of recovery.


Then even worse:  my old high school class and bandmate, Brian St. Cyr was found dead on Sunday.  We don't know for sure yet what happened; I suspect health issues, but I do not know.


I wish only good for them, and their spirits.

Heading into Week 4...and Other Observations

Someone needs to tell me what colors work best on here...I've been warned that RED is not a good color.  Bad on the eyes.  Is this one okay?


Well, it is now almost four weeks since I stopped the meds, give or take a day or two.  I have to tell you, and I don't think I've made this plain enough...withdrawal from this is KIND OF LIKE THIS:

This is the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer's old band.  "Girl Anachronism" pretty much sums up what it feels like.


It's that fucked up.


Anyway, the last day or two I'm finally starting to feel a better sense of control.  I'm not freaking out as much, not ready to erupt (my favorite word), and not feeling like I want to destroy things.


iTunes just went from something by Kronos Quartet to "Perpetual Motion," by Anthrax.  Interesting segue.  But my life has been that the last 20-some days.


Finally starting to clear up a little.  I spent much of yesterday afternoon-evening dragging my cheap Office Max desk/table combo out from the wall, and re-arranging it.  I did this for a nook-like space in the Vibe Room, but also to compromise with the cats.  They can still leap madly into the air, land on my table and bounce up to my old desk at the windows so they can watch Bird TV...without destroying too many things.


Still too soon to know if this is going to work...I was very close to quitting and just going back on the meds.  I resisted because I had to get rid of what's in me.  And I came out the other side; like most of us do.


Psych!


I have before me notes on my writings, on my regular tasks, my workout schedule, and my work.  You know, the one that makes money...whatever that once was.


I also managed to fuck up my desktop.  Alice is coming down tomorrow to see if it can be saved; if not, she has a refurbished laptop for me.  Bless the Woman.


Had a lovely Sunday evening...oh God!


"A Love Song (from a Different Point of View)" by Jimmy Buffett.  You get to figure that one out.


But yes, we had a nice evening meal, out by her new fire circle.  Really well done, and a good time.  We both have been helping each other out, though our relationship is done.


The other aspects of it are good, quite good.  Same old; we're better as friends, but I am okay with that.  She is finding what she needs to, as I do.  Together we'd never do it; apart, we can and we are able to compare our notes.  All good.


I have other things I need to deal with...still trying to clean up around here, making space, creating better space.  Very slow process, this will be, as my limited ability gives to me.


She found for me a very unique book called "The Bit Ching."  It's written by Russell Slocum and a second PA author, and is a take on the I Ching.  It is helpful in so many ways, and incredibly useful.  Take it in bits, really; they even have a chart to use.


"It's My Own Fault," Johnny Winter...something from "The Progressive Blues Experiment."  Nice...


Oh, I can go off on fucking iTunes, and Apple in general!  I think I will.


Heard of "The Cloud?"  Well, understand that Apple thinks you know as much as they do about everything; and we don't.


Cloud supposedly stored some 18,000 of my songs from my now comatose PC.  The iMatch thingie was supposed to match up these songs, plus the however many I had on my MacBook.


It did, and it didn't...half the songs didn't match, and had to be uploaded by manual pushing of the button.  Many didn't load after that, because the files were corrupted.


I finally had enough when it started wiping away tracks and play counts, and fuck knows what else!  


Apple does not really want to talk to you, you know.  After a lot of flips and twists, I managed to find someone to talk to; nice young lady, and very cool.  She could feel the heat coming down the line, but I was polite.  She asked a very interesting question...wait for it...


"What is your Mac OS X whateveritis?"  You know, 10.5, 10.6, Lion, Snow Leopard, Crouching Tiger, Honking Blue Wildebeest, etc.?


I tell her 10.5.8, or something like that.  I think that's what it is...I get this...ahhhhhhh...down the line.


WTF is that? I wonder.


"Your Mac cannot handle iMatch.  It needs to be at least Lion or whatever..."


NOW THEY FUCKING TELL ME.


OK...well, I cancelled out of the fucking thing, and to Apple's credit, I've gotten my refund.  Very nice.


Oh...Fuck!  All that stress for fucking nothing.


And to top it all off, I did something to kill my PC, or kill what was on it.


Thank Heavens for backups...jump drives, external hard drives and all those other lovely things.


If not, my life's work would have been lost and I'd have shot myself.


My writings are safe, thankfully.  


I am skipping "Hair of Spun Gold" by Janis Ian.  I just do not want to hear it.


"Ugly Beauty," by Thelonius Monk is next.  Better.


But well, I did lose a few things, but nothing that I don't have someplace else or can't get back.  It could have been worse; much worse.


Phooooo...now let's see.


I've taken advantage of some time by getting my debts paid off.  I had resisted the urge to dip into my savings, but things now dictate I must do this.  It is a load off my back; used to be I could just pay as I went, and this was a game to see if I could handle the pressure and stress of the debt destroyer again.


Not yet, I guess.  Whatever.


I have to admit, when it comes to my writings, it's very hard to return to them.  I must also confess a little envy when I hear of friends who have published or friends of friends who have.  


Is my stuff not that good?


Is it incomprehensible but to those few who've read it?


Or are they all just bullshitting me, in order to not upset me?


No...I know what I've got is good, and I have more to do.  Must also be patient, and yet not too lazy, either.


I don't know if you've ever seen this, but if not:

This is the trailer for "Deep Water," a film about the first nonstop round the world solo yachting race.  It mostly deals with the mad story of Donald Crowhurst, who looked ready to win one of the two prizes, when suddenly...he disappeared.


This is a great film.  The people who raced, those who were involved, all of it.  The yachtsman and legendary sailor Bernard Moitessier was one of those involved, and he quit the race to sail again round the world, making it 1.5 times before landing in Tahiti.


Crowhurst's story is more compelling...amazing, fascinating, and scary.  


You should be able to buy this cheap, or rent it.  Well worth it.


I took away a lot, and especially the quotes by Moitessier.  These were chronicled in his book, "The Long Way."


I feel compelled to watch it again tonight or tomorrow.  Maybe I need to.


"Your Wildest Dreams," Moody Blues Live at Red Rocks...isn't that a sign?


It ain't over yet...to quote Bernard, "I know where I am going, I feel it deeply..."


If there was more to tell you, I can't remember it.  Not important, I guess.

Girding One's Loins...Such Interesting Mental Pictures

That does make for a very interesting one, doesn't it?


The definition of that term is, "to summon up one's inner resources in preparation for action."  As it says here:


http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gird+loins

I remember Harris in "Major League" saying that in a prayer before the beginning of the season; before that, Mark Twain wrote that Tom Sawyer did so, before preparing to study Bible verses.  


Yes, I'm attempting to summon my resources to get back to work in a manner of speaking.  I suppose the timing is not good, which is why I'm having my difficulties with it.


Add to that, I'm still adjusting to my upped druggage.  I was feeling really mellow...stoned, actually for the first three days of the increased amount of the Big Z.  My energy level has slowly returned, and I am not quite as plotless in my mind.


"TNT," Ladell McLin version...imagine AC/DC being played by a guy that looks like Prince and sounds & plays guitar a bit like Hendrix.  Interesting.  Other iTunes as the situation permits...


My writings of late have fallen off, mostly to deal with editing.  New ideas in the head, but one is starting to come to the fore and I have to get to it.  Did not get a lot of response when it came to my offering of "Take Another Road" on here, and I'm a little disappointed.  Oh well...


...my now ex-girlfriend (and it's official) Alice is going to apply her skills at graphic design and web-making to a site for moi later this month, so we'll roll with it from there.  Meanwhile, we each have things to get down on.  We're good; great friends, and know we understand one another damned well.  It's almost scary, but a very good thing.


For me, yes...the new book idea is coming, has been for several months, and I've several pages of sketches, storylines and characters.  It will be intriguing and different, yet also familiar, I hope.


"Jack-A-Lynn," by Jethro Tull.  Lovely...


Now anyway, I've done yet another edit of "Parasite Girls."  It's getting better; has potential as a film script, too.  Drama, I think...yes, mostly that, with a little action and excitement, but a study of the human being inside each of us, a little mad, a little not so, and whatever.  That's done.


As for the "Sweet Dreams Series," we're now forging ahead with a new tactic.  My intrepid agent will now attack the Mainstream Fiction market.  We were going YA with it, but it seems that the idea has been lost on some.


Honestly, this appeals to all, to more, to beyond just what that demographic reads.  Adults and kids of all ages have given me the thumbs up (but for one fellow, heehee, and he knows who he is, but it's cool he was honest with me and I love him for that).  It will go...dammit!


The manga side will soon be analyzed yet again and hopefully some action can be taken soon on that.


Now it is true that the SDS series after Book 3 needs some tweaking; I'll get to that over time, but it will be a larger project than I envisioned.  Need more time for that.  Much more.


"Bleed American," Jimmy Eat World; "I'm not crazy 'cause I take the right pills every day."  Heh.


Healthwise, I'm in good shape.  Better health, but I do worry a little about feeling smacked out at times.  Focus better, but there's a trade-off.


Must get ready to raise some hell with this new one...I think this will be a very hard topic for me, because it goes again back to parts of my life that were depressing, and I mean very depressing.  It's that part of my life that needs addressing.  I've addressed all manner of horrors in my writings, other's experiences told to me, plus my own.  And I have just gotten started there.


Fun, eh?  Oh yeah...


"Have to Drive..." -- from the recently purchased "Who Killed Amanda Palmer?" CD.  Figures...the Dresden Dolls (and the wonderfully dark-humored Ms. Palmer) are involved in the new work...oh yes, useful for the main character.


Now, this may seem rather off-topic, but it's not:


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pgQzRATYBjA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Watch this, but zoom ahead to about the 1:55 mark...Jim Jeffries will tell you of a text message, and then ask a question of himself.


He will tell you the answer.


I think much alike in this respect, for good or ill.


Because of what goes on up in my mind, I can create some pretty neat things...and some odd ones.


Ah well..."Blowfish" by Steve Vai is on...


I better get to this while I'm still conscious...a couple days off before back to the work thing.  Let's see what comes of it all...

Bloodletting

I'll bet that got your attention, didn't it?  ;-)


Well, I am not sure how much of this I should even blog about, but we are all rather public individuals now, aren't we?  I also write this to let my friends know everything's cool, and not to worry about me.


Alice let me go yesterday...you can say dropped me, dumped me, broke up with me, whatever.  That's not really the case.  She has let me go because she has seen enough of me to know that I am not the right person in her life at this time, for that.


Not so much anything I've done, for we are good friends, and that does not change.  But she is the first person to either have the insight (or the balls) to say what needed to be said to me.


No one, save one unnamed person a long fucking time ago has ever really told me what I needed to know.  It is not that I'm a bad, terrible, awful person, no.  I just have "things" that need to be dealt with.


I have been well aware for nearly two years that things in my life have to change, but I have not approached them very well, not because of fear, but because I didn't even know how to begin.


Some of these are personal matters, and even I am not going to put them out here, though I may explain them later.


The feeling I have had for nearly two years is that I have become fed up with a lot of circumstances, and I am the one that must change them.  I'm not getting anywhere.  My growth has stopped.


This is not good; I know for example that the mindfulness that I have tried to live my life by is like a camera shutter:  it clicks on and off.  I don't even know it's happening.


Alice has seen between the clicks.  She also has been where I am now; she knows she can't stop what's happening to me, I have to.  


So anyway...we had this very long talk yesterday, and I know how much it hurt Alice to do it, but she had to, for her own sake. She did give me some of the tools to at least figure out where I'm going.


I'm sure...right now, someone reading this is thinking, "OMG, who is this woman that's fucking with his head?"  


That is not happening.  I'm making the decisions.  There is no guarantee that Alice and I will ever be anything more than friends, and I'm not eyeing any prize, either.  I'm eyeing what I have to do.


So yeah...on my way home, having zero sleep because I was at work at 3 am before all this...what do I do?  When you go through these things, you have all kinds of interesting and strange shit running through your brain.  All the fun emotions:  anger, depression, sadness, fear, relief even.


Well, I have strange ways of dealing with things, and I suppose I allowed my brain to take a break from it by just, as Alice said, "being good to myself" a little.


I went shopping.  Haha!  Funny, isn't it?  Actually, I did need to get some new clothes for work anyway, so that served a purpose.  I'm not a terribly frivolous person (though anyone who has seen my CD and guitar collections would say otherwise).  There was other errands to run, so I detached my brain a little from the furor to get shit done.


I also cleaned...cleaning is a good way to burn a lot of excess energy, and I needed to do it (again, if you've been to my house, you'd say that too).


The Dresden Dolls "Yes, Virginia" CD is quite a lovely soundtrack, at 11.  Go listen on Youtube if you don't know them. You will either be amused or deeply offended.


Also dug out a ton of shit in my house that needed to go...always good to clean things out.  


So that being said, there are a lot of other things I need to do.  It doesn't mean stop anything I enjoy doing or any of that...I just need to get my head together, and get rid of some things.


So yes...stuff needs to change, and it's me, mostly.  None of this is the end of my life, but I also need to move forward.  Not my writing, not my music, not anything outside of me.  It's just me.


If you don't see me or hear from me, it's not that I'm being anti-social or telling you all off, hardly that.  Just doing what I have to.


This is not your classic, "OMG, she left me and I feel like shit and I'm going to kill the bitch and I'm going to drink myself into oblivion and I'm gonna die..............whaaaaaaaa..."


FUCK NO.


I hate that shit.  That's in the movies.


Stop living like your life is one, for fuck's sake.  


Anyway...time to move on...thanks for reading, hahaha...