When someone undermines your accomplishments.

Today was alright. Pretty typical Tuesday in a lot of ways.

This morning I got up around 10, wasted an hour or so on facebook while I ate the last of that leftover Chinese food for breakfast, got ready, and read a chapter for my marketing class. Got a 9/10 on the quiz this morning which is always nice. Another step closer to getting two A's this quarter. I've definitely got good prospects for my finance class. I was super proud of myself for getting a 96% on my last test. Or at least I was until this afternoon.

Marketing was let out early and I saw Kevin P. and he asked me what I'd been up too. I told him I'd been kicking ass in my classes so I really wanted a job but nothing had really materialized yet. He told me Young made him a finance tutor so he basically scored a job without really looking for one. I can admire that, you know finance is fucking hard. And of course when I mentioned that I was doing really well in Tenerelli's he's like "Well he's super easy and a terrible finance teacher..." And I'm like, "Well I think he's good, I've learned a lot in there and he doesn't assume that we already know all the material like Becker and Young did. He actually makes us learn the definitions and material before doing the problems..." and he just kept insulting him like 'oh he's a terrible professor' and 'oh he doesn't teach NEARLY the material you need to know and if you were to leave his class and take finance 470 you'd fail."

It was just hard to hear that. Especially after I struggled so much and had to drop it with Young and Becker and finally felt like I was getting it. I told him that he does cover more material than in his previous classes... apparently before the school got on his case about not covering enough chapters he only got to chapter 7 but we're doing chapter 9 and 10 right now... I don't feel like I'm at some kind of disadvantage having a professor that's more understanding and provides more explanation for material that's completely foreign to most of us unless you're an accounting major.

Kevin is in his 5th year at CWU. He's triple majoring.. When I was defending what I'd learned in Tenerelli's class he said "Well just to let you know nobody going on the all expenses paid trip in the Finance club took Tenerelli's class.." and I'm scoffed like "Whatever! I wouldn't want to go anyway!"

I think at this point he realized he'd been kind of insulting. That's the thing about Kevin though. He's super intelligent and even if he's my friend he says things that makes me feel like I'm never doing enough. He's one of the people that back when I was in the height of my depression a couple years back that I'd just say to him out of the blue, "F*ck it I'm stupid and wish I would just die" and he'd flip out like "Why would you say something like that? You're so smart..." Because he'd have no idea he had said things that insulted my heart.

That's all I'm going to say about this... You know regardless of the fact that Tenerelli doesn't make us memorize the formulas like the other finance teachers does not mean he makes this subject easy. I've had to study hours to get the grades I've gotten just like any other class. And I know for a fact I am more confident in that class then people during the midterm that were letting out loud exacerbated sighs and that doing well enough to be at the top of that class should be something to be proud of. I should allow myself to be proud of myself for once but that conversation with Kevin hurt, bad.

I wish I wasn't so hard on myself. I want to feel confident entering the job world. This month it's super important that I do search for the first stepping stone into my actual career to avoid moving home. There's so many big changes that are going to happen soon and I'm trying to prepare myself the best I can for it.

In the meantime to keep myself calm and happy I've just been doing a lot of art and guitar. I'm so ready to upload Phantom of the Opera, the tone sounds fantastic. My Dad, Mom and I went to Goodwill after hitting my favorite Chinese restaurant and Rite Aid and I had a couple great finds. My Dad found me an AWESOME Black Album tabs book and I found a pantera shirt that I love.

I cut out the sleeves, of course. Ha ha. Alright that's enough for today.. goodnight!

peace.

A good guitarist just knows.

Today I decorated this "Gingerbread Dance Club" with my cousin Aiden. 

I love him so much and was super happy to see him. He's 6 now so we can carry on little conversations and he cracks me up because he's clever. 

It's Monday and tomorrow's Christmas eve. I don't really get all fired up over counting down the the days or anything, but now that it's almost here I'm getting excited. I finally finished my shopping today.

This morning I got up around 10:30 am. My Grandma and parents have always gotten up earlier and this morning I overheard my Dad talking to my Grandma about the guitar and how I'm starting to "create my own style with it." He also of course mentioned his awesome guitar-playing, pot smoking cousin Carl that once told my Dad that the key to getting good at guitar is Practice, practice, practice all the time. Lol thank you Dad for sharing this insight. Anyway that complement meant a lot to me... For some reason I'm always much more flattered when I overhear a person talking about me than a complement to my face that my playing is good.

Whenever someone says I'm good I just tend to deny it. Even after all this work I feel like I'm not close to where I want to be. I am so critical of my playing cleanliness, making mistakes, and the fact that I have such a difficult time memorizing things. I don't know any guitarists that have to grab a big binder of tabs to play for their f**king family, a good guitarist just knows. They know how to both improvise AND play songs. They can confidently perform pieces without forgetting sections and having to figure out where that damn measure is located so I can keep playing...

That perfection is what drives me to practice the way that I do. That confidence just isn't there yet... Even playing in front of my family in the living room that I haven't seen in a year in a half I found practically impossible. I was frustrated because I didn't have my nylon string acoustic and had to borrow my Grandma's steal string. I didn't have the Nothing Else Matters tab nor do I have Guitar Pro on this computer so I had to print it in ugly rough tab form from the ultimate-guitar website. The tab that I printed was laid out very confusing so I couldn't find the solo.

Yet everyone said it was good and I'm just screaming to myself in my head, "No! It's not!! I'm so much better than this, I just wish I had my acoustic.. I just wish I had the tab." And it's always been that way. I can sit here and play alone for hours upon hours and move from song to song seemingly effortlessly yet when I get in front of family or people like Jake that are way better than me I just become a disorganized, excuse making mess.

I'm so tired of that... I need to get my shit together and put more effort into memorizing songs and not skipping from song to song. I need to stick with just three songs at a time and make routine progress on them until I complete and memorize them before I stow them away and print new shit. I did sooo much of that my first year and a half of playing (note that I've been playing 1 year, 7 months... Jake only recently really cracked down on me for being ADHD with songs) and it's what's lead me to where I am now and I know the changes I have to make to get there now.

Wow, I was supposed to be writing about having a good day but now here I am crying.

I guess just being able to show my family what I can do after all this work is important to me. Somehow not having copies of two of my recital pieces was a complete b*tch and even if my family was impressed I still felt like sh*t about it. Oh well, guess there's always next year.


Okay let's talk about something other than guitar...

When I say playing for my family I mean my Mom, Grandma, Mandy, Zoe, Zoe's boyfriend, my sister, Adam, Aiden, Adam's neice and my Dad. My Dad and I had just gone Christmas shopping at Ross so I got a change to grab some last minute stuff that makes my amount of money right now a little less obvious. My Dad's been kicking me a lot of cash on this trip because he says he feels "bad for me" because my sister's loaded from working at Roasters. Well that's what I get for going to school full time I guess.

Next quarter I still will be. I'll just be taking that online class and having one class a day so I have zerooooo excuse NOT to get a job. I'd go stir crazy if I didn't. Terry and I are both convinced we are going to do a lot better this quarter than last, but that means I have to stay on top of things better than I did last quarter. Working might help me schedule my day better, who knows.


peace.

My hand hurts like a son of a b*tch.

I've been working on the acoustic solo of Unforgiven on the electric. I think the distortion solo is also very good but I have not tried playing it yet. I hope I can really solidify and chunk through this entire song. I know a good portion of it because I've really cleaned up the intro and chorus. It's the weird verses and solos that I'm having problems with.

There's this one measure that goes....

...that I've been trying to clean up for awhile. It's really hard to do a pull-off and then jump to the next string for me. Again, it'll get better with practice and time. It's definately coming together though and I've got a good bulk of it done. As for Cemetary Gates I've barely gotten started but I want to figure it out a little.

Tomorrow I was invited to jam with Jessika and her friend. This plan has been going on for a couple weeks now because last weekend was mothers day and the previous weekend I was feeling a little bit snuggly. So most of my plans lately, when note with Samantha, have revolved around jamming or sitting with people and watching videos while I discreetly get my picking exercises and junk done.

Honestly, makes me appreciate people like Manuel that play violin... When they sound bad they sound BAD and it's very hard to conceal. It takes so long to get a clean note out of the damn thing, I couldn't have the patience. Luckily I'm not a huge fan of the violin, it feels sort of sharp on my ears. Don't get me wrong, it's a very cool instrument, but it's just not my favorite.

Jimmy just pulled up with my sister. I just realized it's almost 10 and I still have an hour to go. My head feels heavy.

Today, Samantha came over. Well, I picked her up again after work. It was a short visit. Second day in a row visits tend to be short, especially when there's plans with other friends involved. Samantha wanted to spend some time with Leslie. It's cool, no worries I wouldn't be offendid by my friend hanging out with a different friend after me (hahaha that'd be silly, but sometimes I really think Samantha thinks I'm mad at her about the weirdest things).

Shawn and Samantha have been dealing with a lot of drama lately and I'm sort of just following along and witnessing her hardship. I know I shouldn't be writing this because Samantha said Shawn gets more angry when he discovers people are talking about their whereabouts. But it sort of becomes part of my life too when she has to deal with Shawn's fighting and then coming to me about it when she's hurt.

Katharine came over yesterday and introduced me to a fantastic cult classic called Troll 2. It's sort of the kind of movie that attracts the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd. It's painfully bad, completely crazy, made no sense, you just have to watch it! I decided I'd show it at my party. Scar everyone for life before heading out into the world, haha. It's known for being the worst movie in existance. It's so shamelessly bad that you have to see it.

peace.

Biting off way more than I can chew.

This is the solo to Hypnotise by System of a Down. Yes, I'm still playing the guitar. I've gotten a lot better since I started using the tab site that robert showed me, but what sucks is that it's zoomed in super close so you have to scroll through all the lines.

Though this is probably illegal, I prnt scrn'd the tabs onto a paint document so i could read them here.