Stepping the same place 12 years later

Our house in Paso Robles, California. 

Evening everyone, check this out.

This is a picture of the house I lived in when I was in the 4th grade and we moved to California because my Grandpa had cancer. This is the one house other house my family ever lived in growing up so I wanted to get a picture of it to help solidify memories of living there. Allow me to ramble a few things that come to mind when I look at this picture.

• The sloped driveway on the left. This was really fun to ride up and down on scooters and skateboards* (which of course I'd just sat on... I wasn't near daring enough to ride down a slope on a skateboard even at that age)
• The window by the door. That is where the computer desk was. Like everywhere else I've lived in my life, the computer room was where I spent a lot of my time. Fourth grade was the year I remember first having access to explore the internet (with a snales pace dial up connection of course) and I'm sure I looked up a lot of.... erm, "questionable" sh*t. Not perverted or anything because I didn't know what that was at the time but you know what I mean.
  I also remember playing the Harry Potter and the Sorcerers stone PC game with it's painfully slow graphics and doing fabric crafts in that room. 
• The short brown fence, behind which is the small backyard my sister and I used to play in sometimes. The yard kind of sucked because there was no swingset or anything but it was made up for by having a neighborhood with a lot of room to ride bikes around. I remember going up and down hills and around cal-de-sacs with neighbor kids for hours, it was a great time. 

I don't miss my childhood because I remember it as a time of a lot of insecurity, confusion and frustration, but then when I think of these times I realize how good of a childhood I really had. 

As you guys know I watch a lot of Intervention and most people that grow up addicts have had a bad childhood, whether it be from losing one of their parents from divorce, their parents suffering from addiction or being abused. I didn't have any of these problems growing up, neither of my parents drank and the worst I had to deal with was my Dad's yelling about household finances (which he would later feel really bad about and have one on one talks with me about why he was angry. It's honestly how I learned about money at an early age). 

That's all for tonight guys. I spent some good time studying today but couldn't find much inspiration on the guitar. I wish Jacob would send me the new tab of the Mozart piece he wants me to learn instead of the crappy one I have currently. I also need to start listening to What It's Like by Everlast to figure out how the chorus goes. I haven't gotten around to that yet. The intro riff  sounds great though. That's a good one to have in my repertoire and it's let me practice chords more. 

peace. 

Enter 2014

Damn you know what I just realized? In 2013 I wrote 199 blog entries, could have had a perfect 200!!

Well that doesn't matter. Today was the supposed day that we were leaving, but I realized how mistaken I was when my Dad walked in this morning, "Hey you know you can take my car to downtown Atascadero and check it out!!" Uh, yeah no thank you I could give honestly give a rats a** about any of the overpriced junk they could try to sell me at those boutiques downtown.

Yesterday was New Years eve so we had a jam packed, interesting day. We started out going to Morro Bay to walk down by the water a bit. As you can see I'm wearing a sparkly shirt and jeans, not my normal beach attire but I'm glad I wore these pants because it was a little chilly. I mean not chilly in comparison to what I've become accustomed to at home at all but I should have brought a sweatshirt. 

I wore this same outfit out that night for a couple New years parties that our aunt brought us too. Her and Adam have a way of knowing about events and things to do. We first went to a party being held in what appeared to be a multipurpose building that might have been a church. There was this 80's metal cover band that was going super loud and lots of biker-y looking adults hanging around. We looked and felt pretty out of place there, but luckily I'd already sipped down 4 rum and cokes that night and it didn't bother me much. 

Anyway we left that party at around 11'. We had a big New years eve dinner at my Grandma's that evening, followed by some drinks at my aunts house, so I only think we stayed at that first party for 30 minutes. We next went over to this barn style building, I think the bar is actually called "The Ranch." 

It's f*cking weird partying and getting drunk around your family, especially when your Mom and aunt (and my aunt's friends, we came in a group so luckily that took some of the awkwardness away from this situation....) are like getting down on the dance floor to live reggae. Even my tipsy mind was like, nooo that's alright, you guys go ahead I'll just sit here, drink more and check the time every so often to see how long until I get out of here.... Though I'm not saying I was mortified by them, or that I didn't have a good time at all. It's just weird when you're in a bar and you've got guys hitting on you all over but you look over and see your Dad standing by the wall. 

I must have gotten picked up on by 6 separate guys last night, a couple of which were in the reggae band that played there. Ha ha, takes more than good guitar skills to woo me. I danced with a few but this was only after around 12:45 am when I was good and sloshed and knew my family was too drunk to be paying attention to what I was doing. The rest of the time I spent making bullshit conversation with guys that picked up on me, sitting by my sister or wandering around.

That was definitely the most interesting new year I've had in a long time. Moving on to a new year. What are my resolutions this year?

New Years Resolutions 2014

1. Make it a goal to practice 80 minutes a day, every day. This amount of time is not too much to take away from the rest of my life but provides enough practice to be making solid steps toward improvement on the guitar. 

2. Do 100 sit ups and 100 squats per day.  

3. Do hand massages every day to increase playing dexterity.

4. Be more proactive about checking my email.

5. Get a job in Ellensburg.

6. Actively use the law of attraction. Be kind to others and give love in order to receive love. Avoid negative thoughts or being a hater in any form, even if it's just in casual conversation. Accept that people are the way they are and should be accepted as such.

I've made a lot of progress in 2013-- on the guitar, spiritually, mentally and probably physically considering I have barely been sick this year. This year I was pretty poor, this year I'd like to make more money like I did in 2012. 

No word back from Sipic or the business office on the job posting yet. Still crossing my fingers. In two days I will call them. 

peace. 

Let's just be honest here.

Being back in your hometown with family is great for a little while but I'm really happy to be back in my own place in Ellensburg.

The ride here was scary as hell, there was heavy wind and rain the entire drive.. I found myself going 55-60 mph on average which made the drive pretty long. Luckily my brain felt super wired. Having decided to not gone out last night, I feel really rejuvenated when I got up today, even if I did sleep in quite a bit so I wasn't able to make time to practice like I'd planned. I spent most of the time before I left trying to locate and pack all of my stuff.

This weekend I did hang out a lot in my Mom's craft room (where my bedroom was originally located...) because being downstairs is never motivating to me and the living room is too noisy. Anyway I used some of my mom's clay to make this. I love how it turned out, honestly. Clay is an addictive and relaxing but TIME CONSUMING and expensive because as you get more ideas you  need more supplies. 

I'm hoping my mom eventually acquires such an abundance of the FIMO stuff (as my family tends to do, my Dad will end up finding a bag of them at a yardsale or a Goodwill) so I can jack some from her and it wouldn't be noticeable. My mom is on a roll with her projects though, and they look awesome!

Friday night I went to Jack Didley's with Sheridan who I hadn't seen in a pretty long time. The club was having an 18+ night with an open bar if you had ID. Sheridan and I had figured I'd be able to give her a couple swigs of mine when the bar tenders weren't looking but I'd underestimated the security measures preventing this. There was a fence up around the bar with a guy at the entry checking wrist bands. If Sheridan wanted a drink of a beer it'd have to be through a fence hole. She did try to get me to do it though, I was like "Yeah I don't want to get kicked out..." 

The place was slow last night.. so slow that it was around 11:20 pm and it still wasn't packed enough that people were dancing. My friend Jeremy had texted me asking to come out to Joker's because his cousin was DJing and he said it's a lot better but my friend wouldn't have been able to get in because it was 21 and over only. Next time I go back to the tri cities and want to shake my ass I'm going there instead. 

Anyway, regardless of the fact that not many people were around Sheridan did see a couple guys she knew that we ended up leaving with pretty shortly after to go to a party in Richland that she'd been hearing about. We drove back to Richland and this Mexican looking dude in a bandana walked out to our car and told us that the party just got shut down. We were right in this guy Colt's neighborhood so we went to their house. 

Neither of these guys drank or smoked or anything... At this point I had my fair share, having drank 3 coors lights that were on specials and a corona a guy bought me. It ended up being a fun night. Colton's 21, pretty tall and handsome enough, and works construction in Naches which is actually only about 20 minutes away from here. I doubt I'll see or hear from him again. But yeah I guess you can say I did do some partying this weekend as intended. Hanging out with Sheridan was pretty random but fun and I got a chance to see Mikey and Violet's new house. 

Violet made me a homemade McMuffin type sandwich yesterday morning. It was delicious and she's a great host. 

peace. 

Bad end to Round 1. Enter Round 2.

I did pretty horrible on my money and banking test (74%) and am finding it really hard to not feel extremely guilty because I partied this weekend. Had I just stayed home and reviewed the material on either Friday or Saturday night I would have done much better.

I just wanted to find some sort of balance in my life between school and having fun and thought that taking a break on the weekend would actually help me but it's only making me worse. My major is so difficult and the only way I'm going to get through it is to focus solely on myself and my understanding of the material. I've been so sick and worn out this last week it's been a struggle to get anything done....

I'm now nervous as Hell how I did on my public finance test. Today marks the beginning of Round 2-- I'm going to study harder, smoke less, not drink, go to bed on time, spend less time on facebook, take vitamins and eat healthier to get A's on my next tests to raise my overall grades to normal. I do not consider myself a person of "average" intelligence and when I got a score that reflected that it was like a stab in the heart and a slap in the face that I need to change my current habits.

peace.


I'll write more later after I get some work done and have a better idea of how I'm going to do this. I'm planning on writing a new practice sheet, weekly assignment schedule and priorities list today and hopefully get myself back to the confidence level of where I need to be...

Doing things slowly at home

Here's a picture of me from the recital last night.

You try making a cute face when you're focusing that hard, I look a little disgusted, ha ha. Oh well. For a first recital that was fantastic, I barely made any mistakes... The embarrassment I felt from showing up late and falling over the chairs and pissing off the usher for going and getting my guitar too early has passed. Damn so many mistakes I made last night, ha ha. But at least the playing was good!! That's what counts.

I'm getting a big bruise on my wrist....

Katharine's Dad came over and brought his 1985 Rolls Royce.

It looks like the picture above.

Really beautiful, classy car. The interior is genuine black leather with wool floors. He re-did some of the interior wood paneling on the back doors but it looks very near the original wood. He also replaced the speaker system. 

It only has 66,000 miles.

  

Later: 12:12 pm:

Yeah I really haven't done anything today. I've sat around the house watching TV, and I've  got an exam to study for economics tonight. When I get done writing this I am going to start loading up my things, get all packed up then probably put on a drug documentary and begin packing my things.

I mean aside from having to driven a lot the past few days I feel like my batteries have been recharged. It's been kind of nice in some ways to get away from my apartment. I was telling my Mom about the last time me and Kristin had talked (regarding the dishes) and she told me that was over a month ago. 

So yeah, I'll just be kicking it here for awhile, try to get some good study hours in as well as sort of slowly pack up my things in the car. That's how I like to spend my sundays for the most part...

I talked to Jack super briefly last night, like he was out at the bars with "the guys." I'm assuming people he played lacrosse with. Fun fun... I wasn't doing anything particularly interesting and he told me I should go to a bar. I'm like err.... yeah no. Where, the palm? Eeeeww I would never ever step foot into that place. And I definitely didn't feel like driving. . . 

And I don't have any friends in the tri cities that are over 21 really now that Katelynn is gone.Friends that I would want to drink with anyway. You'd be surprised how many of my musician buddies are completely straight edge.

Going to bars is so expensive, and I'm not a huge fan of drinking, so there you go-- I've honestly gone TWICE since I turned 21. 

I haven't talked to Terry all weekend. I'm guessing tomorrow he's going to be kind of a dick to me because that's always how he acts on mondays, then he'll be really friendly for a couple days then act like I don't exist again on Friday. Lol he works in a pattern when it comes to when he flirts with me and it's so predictable it's funny. Basically I think the next time we'll hang out is when we register for classes together. We want to be in the same classes so that we can study together. Period. I really don't think there's anything more than that in our "relationship." It's just a friendship and we're quite competitive and so is he...

In order to keep up with Terry I have to study twice as hard as what I used too, however, which is why I'm going to make sure to get some studying done today at home. The weather is beautiful maybe I will also meditate outside.

peace. 

Lol if college was a pokemon game Terry would be my Rival. 

Wow I have officially compared him to two cartoon characters... Well again thank God he has no real interest in my life and doesn't read my blogs, otherwise that'd be slightly awkward. 

Learning more about the system.

Haven't much felt like writing.

Today I didn't have the best luck. I woke up with no plans and ended the day with no plans, which is never a good day on a Saturday. I did get some studying done and practiced for about an hour. Not great but my hands needed a break today.

Allie told me she wanted to come with me grocery shopping today when I told her what I had planned. Not particularly exciting. She told me she'd let me know when she was done at the gym and we'd go. Well around 6:00 she got back and took a shower and didn't feel like going. Ha ha I'm not surprised, who the hell would want to walk around a grocery store in circles with me when they just worked out for two hours? I was flattered that she wanted to go in the first place, so I used it as an excuse to sit around and watch documentaries about drugs all day.

That sort of creeped me out. I learned about some really scary drugs in Russia and Columbia. Heroin, meth, crack cocaine, painkillers, broken families... All things I'm going to avoid thinking about for the next few days. Drugs create such a horrible reality for people and destroy everything. I made a promiss to myself early on that those types of drugs are completely out of the question. I would never, ever try any of them. I am fortunate enough that I don't have any need to escape reality. I look at the horrible circumstances these poor people involved with drug using families go through and I can see how they turn to drugs themselves. It's a horrible cycle in the predominantly lower castes of society but alcoholism and drug use certainly destroys middle and upper class people's lives too.

I don't know. I live my life with thought, caution and discipline to keep myself safe. I would never think to use a substance that could potentially jeopardize my wellbeing. Loving your life and yourself means using restraint and discipline to become the best person you can be. Now I'm not saying people should work 24/7 to be better than everyone around them but work their best to fulfill whatever it is they feel a need to do in life. Nobody aspires to be a junky. It's sad to say not everyone starts life with a realistic goal and end up falling into the wrong crowd of people.

I'm so lucky to have the parents that I did. So many of these poor people on Intervention had such awful upbringing. You cannot be a meth head and raise a child, there's just no way. Even if a parent cares about the children the constant pursuit of drugs doesn't leave much room for the love, attention and care their child needs. These children often get molested because of the inattentiveness of parents or end up using drugs themselves at ages as young as 12. Babies in drug addicted communities born addicted to crack or opiates. It's disgusting and sad.

But yeah I'm going to work out and go to bed. It's getting late. I really hope I get the opportunity to see a friend tomorrow because I felt really lonely today. I did call Katelynn today which was nice! I had a lot to talk about and just went on and on.

I really shouldn't complain because I've had a good last couple of days though. This was taken at a party that Allie invited me to come too. I've met Allie's roommates as well as her some of her close friends at CWU now. This picture might be taken of me and Allie but for most of the party I was standing around drinking my hard apple cider with those 3 rednecks standing behind us. Nah, they weren't bad rednecks, they were actually pretty funny and interesting to talk too.

I can remember one of them's name was Taylor and I was talking to him for longer than the others. I wasn't particularly interested in any of the guys there. I just like to drink my beer and get into conversations, get to know people, and watch the interesting bullshit unfold around me as people get more drunk. 

The few minutes that I did walk away from these guys I stood over by the sink and briefly talked to Allie's roommate's.... I want to say boyfriend, though it's not facebook official so I do not know if they just party together or what. It seems like that's kind of what college "relationships" are like. Nobody actually wants to tie down with anyone unless they find someone absolutely perfect because they want to keep their options open in case they DO find that person. So instead of actually dating people just find their favorite person to hook up, drink and party with. I get it now. 

And I guess some people just hook up with someone new every week at parties. That to me is kind of gross.  Last night there was one girl who was completely out of control. She was so wasted and actually grabbed the tall guy standing directly behind me's crotch. It was so bad, one of the guys paid this girl $5 to do it. After she did she kept following him around the room trying to grind on him. Note that she was kind of big, with skin tight clothes and f**ked up makeup. Just a complete trainwreck. 

It makes me sad to imagine how people get this way. So hopeless that they have to make themselves completely wasted to feel comfortable in their own skin. That's what it comes down too. Ugh, here I go talking about substance abuse again. I feel bad for poor Abe, he texts me today and we're making light conversation about the party and then all of a sudden I go into talking about how drugs are so terrible and blah dee blah.

Anyway Allie's roommate cut between this guy and I, and kept on eyeballing me all night. I mean I can understand why. She doesn't know me, I could be a complete bitch who likes to ruin things for people. There's a lot of girls that would take advantage of a situation if they're given the chance to snatch a guy from someone else. I just don't feel right about that. I just like meeting and talking to people; I was not interested in her boyfriend what so ever. But feeling as though I had intimidated someone made me feel a little empowered. It's become very effortless for me to talk to strangers, which will benefit me immensely in my professional life.

peace. 

Chinese New Year

I feel an overwhelming sense of happiness and contentment today. Yesterday was such a grand day and even if today's starting out kind of slow because I have to get a little work done today feels like a fine day to be alive.

Yesterday was the Chinese New Years Eve! My friend Wei invited me to come help with making jiaozi and celebrate with the other Chinese graduate students. I was so flattered to be invited. I actually showed up at the multi-purpose room a half an hour before he did so it was slightly awkward initially. They were very friendly and forthcoming though, I felt very welcome to enjoy the experience. 

New Years is a huge holiday in China. Wei told me that in Chinese mythology at the end of the year an evil energy (or a demon, I can't remember) resides in the world and on New Year fireworks are launched in the air and loud drums are banged on to scare away that bad energy and begin with a fresh start. Wei also told me about the city of Beijing where you can see the Forbidden city, the Ming dynasty's tomb and eat traditional Chinese food at the restaurants. I've decided that if I were to go to China, I'd want to tour Beijing. I have no interest in Shanghai because it's just a huge city and I feel that would be overwhelming. 

I mean I know being in China in general would be a paranormal experience for me. It would take a lot of courage for me to go into another country, but I definitely intend to do so someday. 

Wei also showed me some very sweet videos and pictures of his family back home. He has a wife and a three year old daughter, she's so cute! 

Last night was also fun because I went to a party at Bruce's house. Met quite a few chill people, drank some hard apple cidar, had a wonderful time. I did get pretty drunk though surprisingly enough didn't get sick today. I suck at Kings Cup. Honestly I suck at all drinking games. 

lol, lovely. Yeah it was a great day overall-- even got some studying in and played my guitar for two hours, and I feel great

peace. 

My first bar experience.

Was actually a pretty good time...

Having been 21 for the past few months I almost dreaded going to bars. It's a whole new social experience, I guess you could say I was just nervous for it and didn't feel particularly ready. That and there was never a good driving situation in place if Katelynn and I both wanted to drink.

We did drink quite a bit. I went to her apartment after guitar lessons at 6:30 or so. We pre-gamed by drinking a little rum before we left. I think I had about 1 and 1/4 shot of rum and diet coke and Katelynn had two. We hung out for a bit. Katelynn and Al were playing call of duty while I was twiddling around on my mom's phone trying to locate Brendan's number on facebook mobile.



We went to the Uptown first at like 9:15. It was pretty slow. I told Katelynn I was going to drink rum all night to try and not get too bad of a hangover. The first rum and coke that I ordered had barely any coke, full of ice and the alcohol itself tasted like Whiskey. We drank it anyway. I had a feeling I'd see someone I know there, including Josh K., his sister, sister's boyfriend (or husband, who knows) and a couple other guys. We had a quick chat. Katelynn wanted to go to Rays to do kareoke and hang out with Clint so we left the Uptown.

Rays looks almost exactly the same as what I remembered from those few local band concerts that I saw there when I was 16. The place looks like it needs a facelift, but the dark and dinginess of it almost makes it more rock-and-roll. I did order some pretty good drinks there. The son of the owner called one of his drinks "Sam's Asshole" which is extremely vulgar for how unbelievably delicious this drink is.

He made me two of those, only charged me half price for one of them and the first one was free. I was very flattered. I think I went into the bars last night with $14 cash which I spent on drinks and tips. I told Katelynn at the beginning of the night that I wanted to make sure with my first bar experience that I try a white russian.

White Russians are made with Kahlua, Vodka and creme. 

Made famous by "The Dude" who drank them throughout the Big Lebowski.

It was a $7 drink, that was the most I'd spent all night. I shared it with Katelynn and Clint. I probably got about a half a shot from it, by this time I was pretty intoxicated, a little nauseous, and ready to go back. It was about 12:30 by this point. Most of the night was spent listening to people sing Kareoke. Katelynn and Clint did that a couple times and it was fun to watch and dance around a little bit... from my chair of course. You'd have to get me completely hammered before I'll actually get up and dance or sing Kareoke. I've never been that drunk but that's what I assume. I can never decide what song I'd sing in those, too.

You know what I realized? Now that I'm 21 Radcon will be a blast this year, hahaha. I do plan to dress up for it. 

peace.

Second time partying here, God ANOTHER J name, really?

I had quite an interesting night. I guess you could say it was my second time partying since I've arrived here. That's okay, I deserved it after the long week I had.

Yeah, after everyone had had about 4-5 beers (not me, I think I only drank one... I "babysat" my beer as they kept telling me again and again) Bradley took his clothes off. I have to make quick snapshots of my memories here. Bradley's like, "Don't post that on facebook!" But from what I've learned about him so far he probably wouldn't care either way. He'd texted me last night when I was studying accounting I believe around 3 or 4. I ended up not coming over until about 7:30 after I had dinner. 

I can't remember names very well. They two girls on the right and left were pretty nice. The guy in the middle is Jared, who's obviously cute, haha I'm not going to lie and say I don't find him really attractive. He's like 6'2, really nice bone structure too. Skyler came over and before this picture was taken we'd all been smoking hookah outside.

It was noticeably cold last night.. Like I'd say around 30 degrees, if not colder. Jared was wearing this thin ass windbreaker jacket with a thin t-shirt and he was really reluctant to ask Bradley for a jacket. Bradley of course has like 20 jackets or something. 

Anyway, we all smoked, drank some, hung out, etc etc... Jared was pretty obviously attracted to me so we ended up hitting it off. He's a pretty sweet guy, I'm sure I'm going to see more of him around. I don't know how much he'd been drinking when I'd shown up so our conversations last night were a little slow. I'd like to spend more time with him sober to get a chance to better understand him. 

I didn't tell him much about myself aside from the guitar thing. I rarely talk about my home life with people, like it seems really irrelevant now. I like that, it should be. 

I don't know what to say about Jared right now, he's very laid back. He reminds me a little of Josh F. in some ways.. He always seemed extremely interested in what I was saying. When we sat at the hookah table outside a bald guy walked toward our table and sat down. He was really wasted and had an obnoxious voice but hey, whatever. The more the merrier. Jared has a twin brother and a couple of his girl friends came with. One of the girls reminded me a lot of Lindy, really shy and playing with her hair a lot. 

Jared seemed kind of interested in her too while she was around, which gave me the impression that he was probably single. I don't usually ask people that straight out. That girl ended up leaving.

You know what cracks me up? This guy's name is Jared. ANOTHER J name. Come to think of it, all of the guys that I've liked have had J names except Connor and Chad. Guys that I've liked with "J" Names: Jed C., Jay W., Jason T., Jack O., Jared J., Josh F., James R... in no particular order. I was never actually in a relationship with any of them except for James R. which was short lived until Jack cut in. Those are pretty much all of the guys I've liked in the last two or three years, all of which liked me back at one point or another. 

..which is sort of a confidence boost that I haven't actually been rejected. Granted things just don't work out for one reason or another but whatever, I'm not worried about it anymore. 

So today I pretty much just played guitar all day and nothing else. My brain has felt fried and tired from last night so I haven't been able to push myself to study anything. I feel a little guilty about that because I really should have gotten something done today. Tomorrow I will FOR. SURE. Seriously. I have to start studying that stupid Chapter 12 again... Avoidable costs are so confusing, I need to at least try to redo the homework tomorrow and get started on the new homework for next Wednesday. We were supposedly going to get these new textbooks but what the Hell is the point at the last two weeks of the quarter? 

Alrighty I gotta get going, expecting a call from my mom this evening so that'll be nice.

peace.

Gimme a big glass of wine.

Sorry for not writing lately. I guess you could say I've been going through a LOT of anxiety. Reason being, I guess you could say Wellbutrin took it's lovely anxiety tole and makes me want to barf all the time. I cut Wellbutrin, for the last time. Never taking that shit again. Secondly, I've been working A TON, had two eight hour shifts this weekend... it's been rather miserable. I just need to relax and try to enjoy my damn life. My stomach just turns and churns, which makes it scary to even go to bed. I've been drinking sleep aids for that, and tonight I think I might drink a glass of wine.

Yeah, wine sounds really good. Maybe mix it with some juice or something so it doesn't taste like poison.

night