Hindsight Is Always...

Tonight's fortune cookie contained inside it my attitude for 2020: "If you want it... take it."

2019, while not without its highlights and fun moments, was a hard year. Losing my father in early February took a lot out of me, for a long time. Seeing Amanda Palmer in April (and learning more about her struggles and sorrows), and Aimee Mann in July, and Tessa Violet in August, and Tegan and Sara in September helped bring me back a bit. (The pic I got with Tessa when meeting her before the show seems to have convinced my aunt that we were dating or something...) Having a number of my closest friends join me at the New York Renaissance Faire on my birthday helped a lot, too. Oh, and discovering the official Twitter account of the Garden State.

Tony Robbins' "Unleash the Power Within" event in Miami in November impacted me more than I'd expected. The firewalk (yes, I am a firewalker now) and the other things I did and lost and gained there have changed me- well, really, they've helped me to change me. It's an ongoing process, but I feel better overall than I did two months ago.

And that's where "If you want it... take it" fits so well. Not in a Trumpian "They let you do it. You can do anything" sorta way, but in a "You can be/have/achieve whatever you set your mind to" sorta way. No, not adamantium claws. I wrote 50,000 words toward my (first?) novel, Just the One of Us, in November for NaNoWriMo. I still have some more to write, and then a hell of a lot of editing to do, but it felt pretty good to get that much writing done. I finally replaced my seven-year old 15" MacBook Pro with a brand-spankin'-new 16" MBP just before Thanksgiving. After a few fits and starts earlier in the year, I began playing guitar regularly again in December, and I've got a few new ideas (plus one or two old ones for which I found some scribbled tablature) for songs.

And so, 2020, take note: if I want it, I'm going to do my damnedest to take it. Thursday night, I'm flying back to Brazil for two weeks. When I come back, I'll start running again, and get back to the guitar (thought about bringing one with me, but nah). There's a lot of troubling stuff going on, in this country, and in Brazil, and in the world at large, but I'm trying to focus on changing the things I can rather than railing (too much) against the things I can't. Time to seize the day, find joy in the now again, and take it. Happy New Year!

...And A New One Just Begun

Happy 2016, everyone! Hope you enjoyed your New Year's Eve, whether you stayed home and crashed before midnight or went out and didn't get to bed 'til after the sun had come up. I was closer to the latter, having caught They Might Be Giants playing two sets (and two encores) at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. This was my third time seeing them, and they're still so funny and full of energy and simply an amazing live experience. Pictures from the show, and from everything else I've seen and done in 2015, are of course in chronological order in the Gallery... of Death!

TMBG!

No resolutions for me, thanks... I'm driving. 2016 will be the year I finally get a second album done and released. If it turns out to be my last, I think I'll be OK, more than OK, with that. I'll continue to write and record songs as the fancy strikes, but in the future I'll probably just put out the occasional single or EP rather than being overwhelmed by the concept of an album. For now, though, I'll Live is moving along nicely and still earmarked for a springtime release.

I've gotten some feedback on one of the songs (from strangers... because my friends don't seem to listen, or at least to share their thoughts). It's somewhat humorous that the elements some people like are the same ones that others don't, but I get it; art is subjective, and music is art, and not everyone is going to enjoy the same things. My music is, well, my music. It's not intended to sound like Top 40, and so it's never going to make it on most (maybe any) radio stations. I'm influenced, I think, by the Beatles and David Bowie and Talking Heads and Nine Inch Nails and other musicians to varying degrees, but I don't sound like any of them, except possibly for this little bit here or that riff there. I'm no more interested in being a tribute act than I am in writing huge pop hits, and to me music is more than one sound.

So, more music, more running, more fun, more focus on the future, and less dwelling on the past. That's the plan for 2016. I wish you happiness, good health, and good fortune for the New Year... even if you don't wish it for me. Especially if you don't wish it for me. And hey, maybe 2016 will be the year some of you start interacting with me here and giving me some feedback. It could happen... Heh.

Another Year Over...

...and a new one just begun.  2013 started out as one of the best years of my life, and ended up as one of the worst.  Still, what doesn't kill you only makes you hurt like hell stronger, right?  I suppose my expectations for 2014 have been lowered substantially, and maybe that's a good thing.

This holiday season has been a depressing one despite "Doctor Who" and birthday get-togethers and turducken (I didn't decorate at all, which I think is a first), and while I was sorely tempted to stay home and sulk on New Year's Eve, I opted to go see Gogol Bordello at Terminal 5 instead.  I tried not to witness an arrest on Secaucus Junction's track 2 platform while on my way to New York (probably drugs, but I don't know and didn't want to); I was largely unimpressed with the amount of beardage at the venue (why do today's kids feel the need to look like early 20th-century Midwestern farmers?); and I was rather unsympathetic to the teenager who asked me to buy a Budweiser for him, though at least he was gracious enough to accept my polite refusal.  And he didn't have a beard, though it was probably not for lack of trying.

The opening band, Man Man, were a lot better than I was expecting, and they certainly got the crowd going.  Gogol Bordello, however, were on fire.  They had the whole place dancing and jumping around, and they sounded incredible.  And I got twerked on.  Twice.  Well, OK, the first girl definitely knew what she was doing, even if alcohol may have played a part, and I couldn't back away as I was leaning against a column.  The two friends about twenty minutes later were probably just getting carried away with dancing and didn't know or care that they were grinding against someone, and it would've been rude of me to ask them to stop...

At least they were only dancing.  A few minutes after that, what I'd thought was a frenzied burst of dancing a few feet away turned out to be two girls fighting, and it took a few people to pull them apart.  The band and the crowd counted down the last few seconds 'til midnight, and then we were showered with confetti (which I'm still finding).

Happy New Year!

I left before the encore began, in hopes of not getting home too late... and saw two more angry girls on the train; one slapped the other one's boyfriend before storming away.  Ah, nothing like the holidays and alcohol to bring out the best in everyone.  Anyway, I was home before 2:30 AM, and would've been home at least twenty minutes sooner, but New Jersey Transit decided to hold the westbound Main Line train for every single train that was coming in from New York, on the off chance that someone might want it.  Thanks, NJT.

I'm not doing the "resolutions" thing.  There are goals I want to accomplish this year, and things I want to change about myself, but I don't think it's realistic to set them in stone on the first day of an arbitrary calendar, nor do I have a final list in my head.  NaNoWriMo was another bust for me last November, but I did start a novel... just like I did last year.  I want to write them both this year, or at least make some serious progress, so I can make a serious attempt this November.  I want to get more music done; I've been writing and playing, and I've got new ideas (in addition to old ones that haven't been fleshed out yet), but I need to record more.  I want to get back to organizing and uploading my collection of photos to the Gallery... of Death!  In June, I'm going to do the Spartan Race with my colleagues Jenn and Vaida (we're the Eh Team), but that means that I need to stay focused on running and eating better than I have been these past two months.  I'd like to run at least one 5K before then, too, just to make sure that I'm on the right track (so to speak); Jenn might accompany me as well.

I want to be happy again, but that's not really a goal in and of itself.  I need to take happy where I can find it, and hope that I find more and more.  As a Chinese cookie reminded me on New Year's Eve, "Every person is the architect of his or her own fortune."  Someone else may have taken away a reason for my happiness, but that doesn't mean that I can never be happy again.

"I don't think my time is quite yet complete,
     So I'll follow the rhythm, and speed up the beat."

Happy New Year, and Hello, 2012!

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve!  Laura and I had a fun time at a small get-together at Jon and Karin's last night, and finally got to meet baby Lydia.

December started with a stinging hurt: less than a week after bringing the chinchillas to Lyndhurst, we woke one Saturday morning to find Prissy had passed away.  She'd seemed seriously ill earlier in the week, but had apparently rebounded the following morning, and then slowly declined again.  Laura and I were both incredibly saddened by the loss, and buried Priscilla in one of the town's parks.  Fortunately, Meguilla is doing fine, and we've been showering our chinchild with love.

I got to take Laura out for Sunday brunch in New York, and we saw some of the Christmasy sights before taking in Cyndi Lauper's Home for the Holidays concert, which was a real blast.  We picked out a real Christmas tree, over five feet tall, perfect for the apartment; not only did we use some of her decorations and some of mine (and I got some mistletoe, one of my best purchases of the year), we made one of our own!  Using Sculpey polymer clay, we each fashioned a little penguin, then put them together on a base of 'snow' and attached a loop for hanging.  We had a lot of fun making the ornament and plan to create a new one every year.  :-)

Laura accompanied me to Microwize's holiday party and Christmas dinner at my parents', too, where she met most of my colleagues and the rest of my New Jersey-based relatives, respectively.  We still need to figure out when we're seeing her mom again, but it should be soon.

Resolutions?  Well, I was resolutely planning not to have any this year...  But I do intend to be healthier this year, which includes going for a physical, something I haven't done since... well, the Bush administration.  No, not Dubya, his dad.  I'm also going to do something perhaps even more shocking; today I started the South Beach diet with Laura.  I don't know that I'll stick with it long-term, or that I need to, but I 'd like to at least get through phase one with her, and hopefully spend some time on phase two as well.  No, I'm not particularly overweight (151.4 lbs. as per this morning's weigh-in), but I'm also not as fit as I could be.  Helping with that goal is the Up by Jawbone that Laura got me for Christmas; it's equal parts health-conscious and geeky, an electronic wristband that monitors my sleep and my walking and other things and makes it a little easier to get a better picture of how active I am, how certain foods affect me, etc.

Other than that, I plan on getting more serious about my music.  I'd really like to get my second album completed this year, and I can do it if I put the time into it.  There are songs I need to write and ideas I need to explore.  2012 will be the year that happens.

I hope this year will be one of joy and peace and prosperity for everyone.  Joy in the New Year!