Like vs. Should

Specifically, I'm thinking about "Like vs Should" right now in the context of music.
I feel like I "should" write songs that are longer, more musically complex and emotionally deep.
But is that what I like doing? Is that even what I want to do? I like laughs. That's what I like. And that's probably what other people like to.

So... the choices are:
writing lots and lots of funny songs so that there is always fresh new material
OR
writing long/complicated songs that hold up on re-listening.

(probably I want to do both, right?)

The EP

It could be:

- less frivolous "departure"y stuff - like my "when I was a girl I was stupid" song and my "geek girl" song... with laughs still but also "purpose" and "emotion"(a la mr. darcy)
- upbeat (drums?) more fun light-hearted stuff - more in the vein of "ironically"
- the geek girl experience?

Also we should do a cover show.

Another effing goals post: physical edition

I just got a new app called "LoseIt" which makes me very happy. From what I can tell so far, it's pretty much like the cool Weight Watchers apps that my friends all have that make me jealous.
So - here's the thing. It's easy. I set a goal. And maybe I can achieve this goal?
And if I achieve this goal - I think I should get a tattoo. Because I've wanted a tattoo for a few years, but I've been too ashamed of my body to put something on it permanently.
Yay!
(tattoo idea is: <3 centered above my shoulder blades. alternatively, a Starfleet badge - but.... I don't know where that would go.)

I should be updating this blog more. Life is good. Vegas was fun. Nate is back finishing school.

Recent developments in personal goals

"Personal" goals:

• Write and send letters
• nothing here.
• Try writing fiction
• I had a good idea for a fanfic this morning - how all of the GoT's Stark family can be happy zombies at the end of book 7. :)
• Learn how to cook
• I had a good idea for this: enchilada casserole. They have something like this at the mexican restaurant near our house.
• Throw more parties/events
• We just need to set a date for the Star Trek: TNG murder mystery - and it will totally happen!
• Plan and take travels to: Grand Canyon, Alaska, Prague
• Aubrey and I are TOTALLY going to the Grand Canyon when we go to Vegas next month! Winning!

Life is good: April 4, 2012

For the "life is good" file: today I recorded a video w/Aubrey, volunteered at the radio station, and now I'm eating fresh warm bread, Nate is making me a cocktail and then we're going to watch Star Trek: TNG.

Something to add to the to-do list

I really wish I could paint. I had friends in college who were really good at painting, and they humored me and one even bought me a bunch of paints and they took me painting with them. I am just not good at it. Art is hard.
But I have a really great idea for a series of paintings that would look awesome in my new house.

Goals update

On my other blog at the beginning of this year, I made a list of goals. As I'm about to enter a crazy month and my money is disappearing, so I want to take a tally of how this has gone.


"Professional" goals

• Make an album with my band.
• This is the one that's farthest along. We've been recording the album in most of our spare moments for the last seven weeks, though we have been sidetracked by Song Fu, concerts and a commission project. We're trying to continue having fun, but it's hard.
• The "recording" part is a bummer, certainly. But the good stuff is: album art - for which we hired a local illustrator and a local photographer - is going well! Now we just need to write the liner notes and line stuff up and hope everything is proofed and mastered in time for the CD to be ready at the release show.
• I didn't get the new songs done that I was hoping to have done. Argh.
• Learn how to make a web application & learn enough of a language to do a sample project. Do the same with web design.
• This is... happening. Ish. I'm doing a lot of reading still. There's a PHP book I like. I had been reading a PHP book that was doing a very poor job of appealing to my "learn stuff" senses. In general, learning without structure/classes/help is hard for me. Also, time. 
• Make a documentary (with filmmaker M_ V_- one of my informational interview subjects)
• I'm failing at this one! I'd like to blame the people who haven't called me back, but I can't really. I should call them again.
• Take classes in computer programming.
• I am doing this! Thanks to my Alma Mater and a crazy-awesome professor, I'm in a "learn Java by programming games" class that is both helping me learn how to program Java and getting my head around programming in general. I really like it.
• Train and volunteer in community radio.
• I give myself an "A" here. I have already had my voice on the radio *twice* interviewing people, and I am taking occasional trainings that are awesome. The people at the community radio station are a little scary at first, but I've come to like them a lot and I think they like me too. Which is awesome. I really like radio and I am learning a lot about it.

"Personal" goals:

• Write and send letters
• Try writing fiction
• Learn how to cook
• Throw more parties/events
• Plan and take travels to: Grand Canyon, Alaska, Prague

I haven't even started on any of these. Maybe I will "when I move into my new house," I tell myself.

Things I have done that I wasn't planning on:

• Social media consulting (for multiple clients!)
• Freelance writing (I could almost make enough money on this to pay rent! Unreliably!)
• Managed a band T-shirt sale- orders, production, and shipping.
• Plan band shows in California and British Columbia
• Find a new house, apply for and get it, thus creating a lot of work for myself in sorting/packing/moving everything I own.

Alright, this post was relatively useless other than as a way to track my own progress, which is important because yesterday I watched more than three episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

Wanted:

Wanted: Someone to design/run back-end on a new website. It's called "haircut success stories" and features profiles of nerdy guys who cut off their godawful ponytails and discover that they are actually good-looking and they finally get the attention/respect they've been seeking. It may be a tumblr-based site.

Thanks.

Observation while watching Project Runway

Here's something "adults" do that I've never quite caught on to:
Referencing in what year things occurred. For example, in what year a particular album or movie came out. A year a TV show/style was popular.
I don't remember any years except Y2K, and 2001, obviously.
This makes me bad at trivia.
Is this something I will catch on to with time? Or is this way of thinking something I just don't do?
Hmm.

What is "not a race"?

Since it seems like I'm making an effort to make this blog a regularly-updated thing, how about we try for a little introduction?
"Not A Race" - this title - comes from a tale of my childhood. Apparently, when we (myself and my sister, or my dad and I, or something) would be running about from one place to another, and I would begin to fall behind, I would yell "it's not a wace!" in my adorable southern lisp. This is a thing that my family still does. Adorable.
But, like many good book introductions have taught us, this seemingly both simple and uninteresting anecdote has a more complicated and even less interesting translation into the rest of my life.
"Not A Race."
I'm a very competitive person: not in the way where I will try super hard to beat someone else out, but more in the way where I am constantly comparing myself to others (usually women around my age, but also everyone else) to measure my success. When I find myself lacking, I get sad.
This has led me to split myself in a lot of different directions: some people are good at music - I should try music - but then I'm not very good at that, so I should make sure I'm still good at math or something - but I'm not very good at that - so I'll be mediocre at languages as well... and so on.
Not a race.
Sometimes I need to remind myself that I'm happy and satisfied and doing things that make me happy - but what is an easier thing to do is to try to find people of my age or my alma mater and try to figure out how I'm more successful than they are. I think this comparison, or "competitiveness," as I generously like to call it, is probably the thing that makes me the least happy.
This post has taken a somewhat negative turn.

I promise this is a good thing, though. The more I learn about myself, my default ways of examining things and what makes me happy and sad, the better I get.
This "competitiveness" idea was a pretty big breakthrough when it happened. Similar to when I discovered that my parents were fallible, when I figured out my least moral peers were the ones in my sunday school class, and when I learned that the more someone tries to convince you to make the decision they made, the more they're really trying to convince themselves they've made the right choice.

So yes, this blog. Maybe if I slow down and think and track my own life and progress I can be happier in myself, instead of poking around looking at other people's blogs and Facebooks to see how I track. Because it's not a race, you see.

*thunderous applause*

Friend Want-ads

WANTED
Chatty female friend with whom to learn how to knit, while we eat fruits and raw vegetables and watch back-to-back episodes of Mad Men and/or Project Runway All-Stars.

WANTED
Mildly to moderately out-of-shape female to serve as my "work out buddy" in a twice weekly Pilates class.

WANTED
Someone to teach me the basics of PHP and web design during regularly scheduled coffeehouse/bar meetings. Banter desirable.

Fall

SEASONS
I don't go outside very much.
But, here's the thing: in Portland, we don't really have seasons. Sure it's sunnier than usual in like, August. But that's pretty much it.
The picture at the top of this blog is from a fall day in Prague when I was, apparently, dramatically walking across a bunch of leaves. This is reminding me that I really miss fall.
And like I often do, I asked myself "what time of year is it?" - because here in Portland - and, I guess, in this "adult" life where time passes fast and seasons don't signal a change in behavior - I don't keep "what season it is" in my head. It's February, which means I missed fall - I guess because I was working. Fall just means rain in Portland, though. It doesn't mean leaves changing and falling and being crisp on the ground and raked into big piles. It means rain.
I could do more, to be fair - my friends don't do a lot of celebrating of seasons, and I  haven't really had it as a priority either - did I have a halloween costume this year? Oh yes, I made it in a day. And we didn't even have a pumpkin at our house.
This should be a thing I do. I know that celebrating seasons and holidays, and just celebrating in general, would make time seem more important, and possibly make it pass slower, which would be nice.

TODAY
Today I woke up after 11am, worked (and did a lil Twitter reading/procrastinating) until 6:30, and then went to Kinko's, a coffeeshop to sign a lease for our new house, and played a show.
The time I spent at home working was - on and off - pretty productive. I'm making videos daily for a social media management project, planning concerts/tours/convention trips and writing to a few regular deadlines.
Today I realized this: I am a freelance writer. I am doing this. I have an adult life. And sure, I slept in until 11am and I'm up at 1:23 updating my blog, but that just means I'm an adult who isn't particularly good at "work ethic" or "not procrastinating." Still a grown-up, though. That's cool.

(the dichotomy between "real world"/not real world and grown-up/not grown-up is false, but it still seems real.)

Victory is driving all the way home without hearing a commercial

Just got home from a show/party/event thing we did for the band. It's late. I have a couple of extremely poorly structured thoughts I'd like to capture.

PART ONE: MY CAR
Today I signed a lease, along with my three housemates, for a new house in a wonderful location that is close to things.
This upcoming move, combined with other life changes and upcoming possible life opportunities and the fact that my car's headlight is out, has led me in recent days to contemplate life without a car, or at the very least, life without my own car.
This evening, I contemplated how wonderful it is that I have my own car. Truly great.
Take tonight, for instance. It's Mardi Gras, apparently, which means the roads were insane. We were also playing a show at a bar, and frankly it would probably have been a more enjoyable experience with a few drinks in me - but I was driving, so I didn't drink. "Waa waa waa," you might think. Indeed.
BUT. It was a crazy night. Things happened. It had highlights and low times and things wound around and much excitement and so on - and I got to control it. I was able to control my own evening's destiny, because I HAVE A CAR. And it's mine. And I can leave whenever I want to.
This is true most of the time now. Sure, my boyfriend has a car. But he would prefer not to drive it. And sure, I say I would prefer not to drive mine... but I usually end up driving. Which means he has to put up with my choices of where we go and how we get there and when we get to leave. Deciding when to leave is a big one.
Other things I like about having my own car:

• It is a place that is truly mine. It belongs to me. I can leave stuff in it. I can hide things in it. 
• On a similar page, I can drive it anywhere and be alone. I can drive it around and explore, aimlessly, answering to no one. I've done this a lot recently. I've even done this with my boyfriend in the car. He seems ok with it, but it would drive me crazy.
• I get to decide what to listen to on the radio. No loud punk rock music for me. That stuff gives me a headache. 

PART TWO: CREEPY DUDES
Something that happens a lot to my sister and I, particularly at shows we play, is that we get approached and involuntarily caught up in conversations with creepy dudes. I was planning to make a list of things that creepy dudes do that are NOT OKAY, but I just realized that that is just going to make me all angry and worked up before bed. So instead I am changing the name of this topic.
PART TWO: CREEPY DUDES THE PIRATES ARE COOL

First, a brief explanation: there is a pirate crew in our town. They show up at bars and sing, sometimes they are hired to do this, to make places fun: they also have a pirate ship/stage thing, and they perform at festivals and parties and stuff, being all pirate-like, because this makes pretty much any event a lot more surreal/awesome. Run-on sentence. We are friends with the pirates, because one time they showed up at a show we were playing and were like "we respect your nerdy music" and we were like "we respect that you're dressed as pirates." That's how friendship happens, folks.
When we go places with the pirates, there is often a lot of alcohol, there is frequently a good deal of standing outside, and we sometimes run into creepy dudes. They approach us and they do not leave us alone.
Thankfully, the pirates have PLANNED for this.
Story One: The first time I realized this was when we were at the Space Room, where the pirates go to get really really drunk sometimes, and a couple of fellers were there, totally wasted, with another of their friends who was a fan of our band and less wasted and sorta shy.
The wasted dudes decided that they were going to make the fan guy's night by making us talk to him. They got really fixated on this idea. It was a stupid idea. We just wanted to dance, and they just sat there staring at us and trying to get us to approach their friend... blablabla and so on.
So the pirates are observant, and at one point they asked us what was happening and if we wanted the dudes to go away. And I said yes, not having any idea what this would entail.
Two things happened. One: I think they got one of the guys kicked out of the bar for being a drunk idiot and, among other things, almost following me into the bathroom.
Two: In an epic movie-like music sequence, The Awesome Pirate, as he will be called - did a sweet dance all around me. It was hilarious and weird. I think the intent was to show that I was "taken" and wanted to be left alone. The intent was also to show off that he is an amazing dancer, which he totally is. I don't know if this was an effective strategy, because getting a guy kicked out of a bar tends to have a pretty big effect on how much he's able to hit on people who are in a bar... but it was kickass. I love the pirates.
Story Two: This is a short one, but tonight, at the show/party/event thing, unfortunate stuff was going down with a persistent creepy guy, and the pirates did this:

• Approached us and asked if we needed help getting the guy away.
• Walked us to our cars to protect us.
• Showed us the secret signal they have devised that means "please help me with the situation I am in."

And that, my friends, is why the pirates are awesome. 

2012: The move

HELLO AGAIN, INTERNET
I just finished leafing through my old Prague blog and in it found a few posts that reminded me how glad I am that I kept a journal during that time. I had forgotten, for instance, how supportive my friends were through comments on that site - some of these people are friends I rarely talk to anymore. I had also forgotten some of the specific stories - especially the terrifying day I had to travel from Germany to Prague, my myself, on a train - with no currency or sure way to get from the train station to my hostel. What a crazy day.
So I thought I might ought to come back to the world of personal blogging. It's a world I left when I thought no one wants to read about the mundane details of my everyday life, and people will judge you for sharing so much online. But I didn't care about that when I was in Prague, or when I was on LiveJournal as a high schooler, or when I was (ugh) sharing my poetry online for anyone to see. And when I didn't care, and I didn't think to care, I was writing. I was analyzing my thoughts and putting them into words, and I was sharing those words. And it didn't matter if anyone read them - but sometimes people did. And those people were good friends.
And thus I have returned. And I'm returning right back to the last place I had a personal blog, because it's here, so I'm not creating a new thing just to abandon it - also because this blog's older posts have a nice combination of "my creative writing" - which I don't do anymore, and "my trying to learn how to be an interesting blogger" - which was cute.

BLATHER TIME: MOVING
Right now I'm sitting in my "office," which is actually a bedroom I've stolen from my roommate who doesn't live here anymore. It's going to be my "office" only for a few more weeks - my housemates and I are planning a move across the river to the East side of Portland. It's going to be a great location and a wonderful house. Our current house is HUGE - but most of that is wasted space - extra bedrooms, a big finished basement that we haven't really furnished, etc. The new house is smaller, but has a bigger kitchen, a bigger bedroom for me (yay) and a bigger living/common area. About this we are very excited.
Before we can move, we need to pack. Before we can pack, I need to get rid of like... all of my stuff. I have a lot of stuff. I have everything I brought to college, and everything I've acquired since then. Because this house has so much darn storage space, I haven't gotten rid of anything since I moved out of the dorms two years ago. I've barely even thrown anything away, really. So this should be fun.
I'm in a good place for throwing things away, because I just watched this video. In that video, Alex Day, who you don't need to know who he is, whatever, explains that he owns fewer than 100 things. Of course, that's extreme. Plus he's a boy, and he's British, so he's weird. But the message that I got out of it was that you really don't need to own things, because things take up space, and you don't really use them. I was particularly struck by one moment where he showed off all of the clothes he owns - about 5 t-shirts and two pairs of pants. Because, you know you have only a few articles of clothing that you really like wearing, he explains -  "I thought, I'll just always wear my favorite [clothes] and not own any of the others."
Not a new sentiment necessarily, but when it's said in such a nice british accent it's hard to not hear it in a new way.

This post doesn't have much of a dramatic arc or anything - but I'm going to stop writing now and go sort my clothes. Bye!