"just go to the record store and visit your friends"

Music is such a crazy, magical thing. I watched August Rush tonight for the second or third time, and while I admit it's a totally unrealistic and fairly cheesy movie, I still enjoy it. There's a scene when Freddie Highmore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers meet in Washington Square Park and play guitar together, not realizing they are related. Freddie, as August/Evan, tells Louis (Meyers) about the concert he's meant to perform at and that he can't attend because something bad will happen. Louis says to him, "You never quit on your music. No matter what happens. Cuz anytime something bad happens to you, that's the one place you can escape to and just let it go." Though it's been said many times before, and perhaps with a bit more eloquence, Louis has got the right idea.

Music is one of the few things that almost always helps pull me out of a bad mood. Maybe not every single time, but it helps more consistently than anything else does. Music is the ultimate distraction, and probably the healthiest. When you have a heavy heart or a clouded mind, music can clear that up. You focus on the notes and chords and vocals and lyrics, and you forget whatever problems might be plaguing you, at least for the length of a song or album or live set. It offers the easiest escape without even having to leave wherever you are. Music will never let you down the way people can.

I've often wished I knew more about the theory of music - the keys and scales and all the things you're supposed to learn first. I know a handful of chords, and small parts of various songs that I like, and I can hold a tune pretty well, but I'm no musical prodigy. When I see movies like this, or meet people who have a true talent, it always makes me want to play more. People that can create music have such a beautiful thing going for them. Not only are you putting a part of yourself into some song, but you're creating the very escape that people are searching for when they listen to music. Maybe that's why people are so in love with certain bands, because they have so much appreciation for whatever that group's music has been able to help them through.

In the movie Almost Famous, Fairuza Balk's character complains to Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) about the tour's latest groupies and says, "They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." And that's exactly what it is- loving that band or that piece of music because it's the one thing you can turn to when no other answers are in sight. You can always turn to music.

Post Secret

I used to read PostSecret (here) every week to catch the new secrets and save the ones that moved me most. I probably have hundreds of secrets saved on various hard drives. I was always so disappointed if I forgot to check one week and missed out on new postcards. (There are no archives.) I haven't been keeping up with it at all for some time now, and I'd like to say that it's because I don't need it anymore, but I'm not sure that's true.

Frank Warren started PostSecret in 2005, asking strangers to mail their secrets to him in creative ways and letting him choose which ones to post online. Since then, five books full of selected secrets have been published, the first of which I own. I always put them on my Christmas list but books are less common presents in my house for some reason. I've always thought that Frank Warren's project was such a beautiful idea. I've only mailed in one or two of my own, but like many others, I've chosen to distribute mine on my own. On my eighteenth birthday, my best friend and I made a few secrets and took them to music and book stores, hiding them in the shelves near our favorite books and cds. It's a very liberating thing, putting some personal part of your life on paper and out into the world for someone else to find. It can even be therapeutic, if done for the right reasons.

For example, if you submit something to PostSecret just to see your creation online, you'd be better off getting a blog. At this point, Frank Warren probably gets more mail than he can read in a week so the likelihood of your secret showing up online isn't very high. But internet celebrity is not the point of this project. The purpose is to free yourself from whatever might be holding you back, and if that's all you need, leaving a secret for someone else to find is just as effective as mailing one in.

catching up

Once again, it's been far too long since I've written something new. I know why I go so long in between but I also know that if I'm ever going to get better at writing, I have to keep doing it. I just need to write, all the time, about anything at all. I've had a few ideas lately just to get myself started. I should have plenty to write about, since it's been at least a few months since my last little life update, but writing about things I've done always turns out too much like a list and I don't like that.

Just in case anyone is really interested, I'm about to finish up my second year of school. I have three class days left and two days of finals and then it's summer. I've had a ton of dental appointments lately, which has been awful, but I'm almost all done with those. I do have to have my wisdom teeth looked at soon though. I went to Magic Mountain with my brother last week and lost my cell phone, so now I'm using my mom's old phone and you wouldn't believe how inconvenient that is. That's one of things I might like to write about actually - cell phone/technology dependency.

I was talking to a friend the other week and he suggested writing about things that I could research. That's probably a better idea than constantly writing about my own thoughts and feelings, at least for journalism practice, which is exactly what I need. I really need to talk to someone about writing for the paper at my school, but I'm nervous about it too. It's been two years since I wrote anything like that. Eek.

As for now, I'm too frustrated and distracted to get into that right away. I'm waiting on an email about an interview assignment for one of my communications classes. I emailed someone I know who runs a music review website a few days ago. I sent him a handful of questions that would literally take a few minutes to answer, but he hasn't responded yet. He told me Monday that he'd get to it that night and apologized for the delay, but it's Wednesday evening now and still no email. You can imagine my annoyance. This assignment is due tomorrow and he expressed interest in being my subject, but now I have to worry about getting it done because he hasn't gotten around to answering a few simple questions. Sigh.

Other than that, I believe I have one big group project (a presentation and a group paper) and my finals to get through. My best friend is home for the summer and I've already seen her once. My cousin is having a baby shower next weekend that I'll be attending with my mom. Hopefully I'll be finding a job this summer, and if not, I'll be volunteering.

See what I meant about the list thing? Life updates are silly.

i'm not afraid to watch you change me

I had an idea a few weeks back to write a blog about resolutions and change, and I even started it, but never finished. Go figure.

Mindy White, of the band Lydia, posted something on Tumblr a while back that gave me the idea. She posted a quote from Martin Luther King, which read, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” After the quote she added, "2010. time for turning over a new leaf. actually, more like turning over an entire new tree. it's a year of changes."

For the past few years, since I've really been mature enough to care about bettering myself, the only resolutions I've made have always been about being more outgoing and making more friends. The one thing I'd love to change most about myself is how shy I am. I'm fine with talking to people as long as they initiate conversations, but it's incredibly difficult for me to approach anyone on my own. Whether they're just potential friends or people I'm attracted to, it terrifies me to make the first move for some reason. Or it has until now.

This past New Year's Eve was the first in a while that I gave no thought whatsoever to making a resolution. Personally, I don't think NYE is the only time you should worry about changing for the better, and shouldn't be an excuse to start changing, but that's beside the point. Within the past few months, I've also finally started to reach my breaking point in the sense that I'm tired of being lonely all the time and never making new friends. I've finally started hanging out with some people that live near me, and I've started being a little more outgoing and straightforward with the people I want to be around. I've probably made more friends at school this quarter than I have in my entire time at Cal Poly. Whether they last after my current classes end or not, I like to think that's a pretty damn good start.

In a sense, I guess I'm just proud of myself, but I think my favorite part about all of this is that when I finally stopped "planning" to change, I finally started changing. It's not always about planning everything out to the last detail. Sometimes you just have to go after what you want, even if you're not certain you'll get it. You might surprise yourself.

I woke up really early this morning to a horrible dream. I think it was around four or four thirty, about two hours before I normally wake up on school days right now, and I've been trying not to think about said dream so the details are a bit fuzzy now, seven hours later. It was essentially about my family finally falling apart, but all the details and causes were left unknown to me. In the dream, it seemed so sudden. It was like out of nowhere, my mom was packing up to leave and nobody would tell me why. I felt like a child having something torn away from me with no explanation and it terrified me so much. I was surprised I didn't wake up crying, to be honest. In a way, it was like the worst possible dream I could have.

I often feel that if the morning starts off badly, the rest of the day can't get any better. Today was strange though, because for everything that went wrong, I kept noticing things that were good. I woke up with a horrible dream, but the drive to school was gorgeous because of the weather clearing and the snow on the mountains and things of that nature. I had gas issues on my way out, but I kept hearing songs I loved on the radio in the morning, which rarely happens. It was like something or someone was trying to prove some perfect balance to me.

I don't really consider myself a religious person, but days like today make me wonder. Though, I must admit, I'm still in a pretty poor mood and I don't want to be here at all. Hopefully more random good things will happen before my day is over.

i always kinda sorta wished i was someone else

Rejection is pretty unpleasant, no matter how sound the logic behind it. I haven't specifically avoided crushes or anything, but I really haven't had too many since early high school, and I've been realizing lately how lucky I am for that. My last and only serious relationship was towards the end of my senior year, and since then I've only really liked one person, but I've liked him for years anyway so that's not quite the same. Recently I started hanging out with a boy that I met through a friend and he turned out to be the first person I'd liked that lived near me in a very long time, so you can imagine my excitement.

However, excitement quickly turned to frustration when I got to know him better and found that he was highly cynical and extremely jaded to the point that he literally believes he's never going to love again. This made me wary about telling him that I liked him, something I've never really been able to do before anyway. But I still wanted to tell him, because lately I've noticed that I'm finally at a point in my life where I'm tired of being shy and alone and I just want to tell people what I think or feel, even if they don't reciprocate. This is all that's been on my mind the last few weeks; wanting to tell him and knowing that I'd have the guts to do so, but being unsure about whether I should because I basically knew he wasn't going to reciprocate.

Last night he had a party that started, for him, early in the day and ended with him being very intoxicated and kissing me, which I obviously wasn't going to protest. We kissed quite a few times, but I'm not one to sleep with someone just because I can, so it went no further than that. I was also still pretty sure he was only acting that way because he was drunk, so I didn't want to get too ahead of myself. Talking to him this morning turned out to be more awkward than I'd hoped for or expected so later in the day I decided "to hell with it" and just texted him asking if he was interested at all or everything happened had just been an effect of the alcohol.

Essentially he told me that he would rather stay friends because he knows himself and believes that it would or could be good for a while, but then it would just go downhill and he didn't want to end up not being friends later on. Personally I thought this just sounded like an excuse not to take a chance but I guess I can't do anything to change his mind, so there's no point in making a fuss over it. I was disappointed and frustrated, of course, but I've had all day to stew over it and I'd rather just wait it out and see what happens, if anything, or just keep hanging out and chatting.

At least I can say I'm proud of myself for being straightforward and open and honest about the way I feel, because waiting around for other people to do the same is a pain in the ass. So even if it didn't get me anywhere with him necessarily, it was progress for me all the same.

Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face
The kind you'd find on someone that could save
If they don't put me away
It’ll be a miracle

Do you believe you're missing out?
That everything good is happening somewhere else
But with nobody in your bed
The night is hard to get through

And I will die all alone
And when I arrive I won’t know anyone

Well, Jesus Christ, I’m alone again
So what did you do those three days you were dead?
Because this problem's gonna last
More than the weekend

Well, Jesus Christ I’m not scared to die
I’m a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot
Do I float through the ceiling

Do I divide and fall apart
Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark
This ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?

There's something I want to say to someone, but I'm not sure I'll get the response I'd like and I'm afraid that if I don't, things will just be awkward. It's not vitally important for this something to be known, but I kind of feel like it would just be better to be open about it anyway. Because it's there, in my head, and I feel like it needs to be out in the air.

Maybe I'll say it tomorrow.

there's more to living than being alive

I want to write a long, articulate blog about the great conversation I had tonight because it made me think and wonder and I'll probably be up a while continuing to do both of those, but I have school in the morning and I need to be up in a little over five hours so I should probably try to get all the sleep I can.

To remind myself not to forget: Why are we here? Why do we do the things we do? What's the point? If we're all going to die anyway and eventually no one will remember you or the things you did, what's the point? What makes life worth living?

i'm a goddamn piece of work.

We talked today, for the first time in quite a while. I’ve decided not to tell him that I miss him, because if I mess with his head anymore or even chance the possibility of hurting him again, I will hate myself so much. But I did apologize, again, for everything I’d ever put him through. So he called and asked if I was okay. Ha.

We talked a while about random things and then he had to go. Said he’d call me back. Didn’t. Probably better that way. I don’t like not talking to him but I’m terrified that if we keep it up, we’ll just end up the same way we did twice before and I’ll hurt him again just like I did twice before. The repetition is pretty pathetic. It’s so cyclical. I’d love to believe that we can just be friends without falling into the same cycle, but I wouldn’t bet on me.

I drove to LAX tonight to pick up my brother. I hadn’t been since I went to pick HIM up, last year in May. I sat in my car with the engine off, just gripping the wheel and trying not to sob. I miss everything we had so much, up until the part where it wasn’t enough anymore. I was so fucking happy up until he had to leave again. That night at the airport was the single most heartbreaking night of my life thus far. That night is why I hate being at airports now. They overwhelm me.

When I pulled in to park, there was a couple standing by the car opposite me, making out. I wondered who had returned from being away and what the rest of their night would hold, and then I hated them. I envied them and I couldn’t look away. I felt disgusted at myself. Envy is such an ugly trait.

I talked to someone about some of this today. I wish I’d saved the conversation, because some of what he said really helped. I know it’s only been a year and a half, so to think that I’ll never get over it seems dramatic, but I do worry that I’ll never stop missing what we had. Especially because it didn’t end as an effect of some conflict. It only ended because I couldn’t handle not knowing how things would turn out. I couldn’t handle the uncertainty, so I broke his heart.

And now I can’t stop thinking about how something someone else said came completely true. Because he wasn’t the first. A girl I knew said she pitied me once because I was missing out on something by having my first love focused on someone far away. It’s almost funny how right she was, just about the wrong person.

I wish I could turn off my brain sometimes.