AAAAH!!! Hmmm…where to begin.

Now I’m lost. I had so much to say and now…I think I’ve lost a lot of what I wanted to say…ugh. Ok, I’ll just start at…uh, examining the past year. No, wait. Here’s what this blog should really be titled:

Almost A Good Day

Not necessarily a bad day, or a down day, it’s been a…unfocused day. A…ugh. I did get a few things, what I needed to get done today. And a few mental decisions as well. But at the end of the day, I started to feel…unbalanced. I couldn’t stay in the studio and work. I didn’t do my mile. I need structure!! I need someone to tell me what to do! I need a job!!! I do freelance live sound, but something structured, something 9-5ish would be nice. I need a studio job. I neeeeeed a studio job. I’ve decided, I’m going to pursue sound design. I’m going to go back to school, probably SCAD, and get my master’s (probably an M.F.A.) in Sound Design. After that, I’ll get a job in a studio somewhere, work 9-5ish (later is fine), and work with other people that I can actually work with and be fulfilled and be happy. But it is so hard to work on my own. To work alone. It’s hard to stay focused. Very hard. I don’t know how this medication is supposed to be affecting me, but I don’t feel like it is. Or at least, not in the way I need it to be. I need…something that will help me settle down, be calm, and have a more focused and sure mind. Something that will help me stay in one spot…

I’ve said before that I’d rather die than spend a lifetime in retail. Crazily enough, I was happier when I was working at Guitar Center. That was an…interesting job. I started out really shy and unable to talk to people. You work almost solely on commission at GC, so you have to talk to people, but not just that, you have to SELL them (convince them to buy something they might not otherwise buy) to make any sort of money. You can deal with anywhere from 1 – 10 people every hour, you run around grabbing things for customers, running up and down ladders, running to the back and bringing out heavy speakers and keyboards, plus you get to play whatever you want (well, almost. You’re favorite music for the most part, anyway) on the wall of speakers in the back :). The downside – cleaning, putting giant price tags on EVERYTHING, dealing with time-wasting customers and inept coworkers, and dealing with inept and abusive managers. That was the worst part. The managers. Awful. Just awful. I got good at it, I was one of the best salesmen in my department, I was at the top of the ranker for my department most of the time, and still, nothing but grief from the management. So, screw ’em all. It was never going to be a permanent thing for me anyway, my plan was to work there for 12 to 18 months, save up enough money to where I can live on my own for the better part of a year, and look for a job / refine my skills on my own in the video game and post-production industry. Well, I quit on time, I’ll say that much. And I saved a decent amount of money, not enough though. The structure and constant call to a new task was very nice. Now, I work with no one, and…I’ve lost any sort of direction. And I mean all direction. As in, what the hell was I doing before!? What the hell am I doing now!? Now…I watch tv, play video games, and try to focus. And that’s it. Oh yeah, and have slight freak-outs…and try to focus. Repeat. My sense of self is…amorphous, at the moment. Sort of. Not really, but completely. So what the hell am I doing?

Part of the difficulty is the intense relationship and equally intense (emotionally, for me) breakup from earlier this year. Part of it is whatever mental condition I have – I suspect ADD. Part of it is not having the damn test results yet so I can know what I have and deal with it in a constructive way. Another part of it may be the medication…it’s difficult to tell though. Aaaaaaaaaand…I keep…bad things keep happening to me. Not really bad things, but bad enough for me to decide that the past isn’t worth keeping, along with the people that it’s connected to.

I’ve lost two friends this year. Two old, dear friends. They changed though, so I don’t really feel like I lost them. I lost bad versions of them. They got married, ate each other, digested each other, and crapped out shitty versions of each other. I lost both of them to neglect – their neglect of me. Friendships are not one-sided. They both ended up screwing me over – one physically, one financially, both metaphorically. It goes against my nature to abandon friends, to allow friendships to decay and die, but…I can’t do it on my own. If a friend makes me feel like they don’t value me, how can I support a relationship with them? How can I support them at all? I can only extend myself so far before it causes me more pain than a friendship is worth. Before the friendship begins to damage me instead of elevating me. Part of who I am, is that I have to believe that the future is brighter than my life right now. If I am tied to people that have become nothing but a reminder of failure and disappointment…if they make me think that things will not get better, that I am unable to improve, that my life and the people in it will never get any better than what they are now…I simply cannot have that. So I cannot have them in my life. Not now. Not until they improve. Or at least apologize, and show me an effort to reclaim what we once had. I don’t believe they will though. I love them both, and will always, and there is always room for forgiveness, but I cannot support them if they are not willing to support me. One of my flaws is that I can only give as good as I get. Speaking of which…

God I wish I had a role model. Ok, that’s not enough for now. More later.