lies your cheater told me

(copied from myspace blog - same content. get used to it!)

what's up octopi, another week has whizzed by? whazzis?

time has done a good job of standing still for me recently. my frame of reference is hosed and so when i look at the date, it feels like a useless jumble of numbers...

i have been superbusy, working on my portfolio was a little longer than i would've expected, but to do such things you've gotta do them right, or just not at all. Of note is the fact that we put out a game last year but i hadn't taken any screen grabs of it when i had the opportunity (well, who know.. lousy excuse!) and that what i'd culled from the internet was slightly better than useless, for the most part. Snapping pics fromthe television is usually a no-no, if at all possible, so i figured i could get the game running on my PC and just rip some screens myself. Sounds easy enough, but when you haven't ripped images from a PC game since, uh, 4 tony hawk games ago (or so) then that might lead you to understand I am a little inexperienced with such things. Inexperienced yes, but more determined anyway, and so a couple of days of fiddling have got me a useable enough solution and I can be happy with that. So, yeah. Long story short, business as usual, and i need not whine about it too much.

lots on my mind (when's there not?) - my health has been a little worse for wear the past few days, combination of ignoring the gym/keeping insane hours (sleeping enough, just out--of-whack), anxiety, shittier diet than usual, and a good load of nonstop drunkeness for a few days there (well, that's to be expected I suppose, "i need my medicine!") I have laid off of that but i guess I needed to get it out of my system, unsurprisingly. Fortunately I did it the smart way (all things being relative) and didn't spend more than a couple of bucks in the process. At least not in my previous fashion, no way..

I feel as if I am coming up for air a little, fading back into reality, after this constant rush of fresh weirdness. Trying ot get my head collected and decide.. what I want... to do with my life. Interestingly, I stumbled up my old journal, which I began keeping exactly 3 years ago (October 20th - TOMORROW!) right when I had the last maaaajorly major shift in my life, well as big as those things go. It was crazy to read, in that not too much time has passed but I have absolutely become a different person with a different perspective in so many ways since writing that stuff. Ironic that I wondered about it at the time, as well - knowing myself, not too surprising but still weird enough to be weird. I only read a couple of entries from when I was still "Fresh" enough to want to stop reading and let the past be left, and it was kinda annoying to firle through as well (again, unsurprisingly) - but I feel there is some things to be learned through it's further perusal. Definitely differently written than how I have handled this more public version of a journal (and yes, that's one of the reasons I am keepingthis public-ish one, now..). Damn, you technology, why do you always have to be so RIGHT? Why couldn't you have been properly reformatted into oblivion for cryin' out loud! Well, you can never escape what you were, or are.. truly...

I'd love to integrate that thing with this someday.. Well, not "love" to, but it would be sensible I guess. Irrelevant, overall, but I can be self-serving for five fucking minutes, thanks very much.

And with that on my mind, again my thoughts turn to my current situation.. what do I do, NOW. What, what, what. I have been keeping quite busy, and on top of things as must be done (a little slack in a couple areas, but as my personality will allow, nothing of any huge consequence.. ahem.. pay those damned bills please..) Still I look at my bank account (a coconut) and whil it's enough to keep me afloat for alittle while, it looks like a big warning for down-the-road, or more appropriately a train off in the distance coming at me full speed ahead. I am angry, I have to face it my plans have been dashed, and while they are by no means destroyed, I was getting comfy with my stability and finally I admit it "back to this shit again..." No, not the being unemployed part, the not knowing what the hell I wanna do!

So, my friend MVG lent me this book about Miles Davis. Not my usual reading material, but then that is why it is interesting to me. I am not too terribly far into it (I will hopefully wrap it up shortly, as I am finding myself looking at more time for reading and stuff coming up quickly) but it's enough to stoke the fires within me. I am still at the part where he is quite young, and coming into his own, but already full of himself - not wrecked all over from drugs and crazy women, fame etc, but getting known in his scene, performing with his heroes, and zig-zagging across the country. Yeah, so he's a good ten years younger than I am now at that point, but of course the roads (and times, and industries, and.. lots of stuff) are definitely different. Still there's that spark that is the same, the passion for something that you just KNOW you gotta do, the love you have (if love is even the right word) - maybe just the feeling of proper belonging to this thing that somehow makes sense to you and your idea of culture and your connection to it, how it feels correct to you. Whatever. Pardon the soup-talk - anyway I get that from him, from a few books I have read. Usually they are rife with anger and venom from pissed off drunks, but this guy is just so psyched to be on his path. Not even terribly happy about it, but wise enough to know he is where he belongs and seeing his gods reduced to mortality in front of him just gives him perspective and respect for the greater picture.

Ha, watch as I get further into the book in a couple days and I take it all back "I was WRONG!!! He got all fucked up and steamrolled by his greed, his humanity, his potential for destruction!!!! Who am I to expect to escape any kind of similar pathetic fate! I succumb now!!!" Err, I am not easily malleable. Or ignorant. Or if I am, then I am ignorant of my own ignorance.. so I win.. yay!

Anyway, so the point is.. I have gone on about this sort of a little here and there in conversation with my friends, family, relationship-partners, etc. lately... But yeah, I am attached to Hollywood very closely and importantly, but i can hear the dinner bell ringing a little more strongly and it's maybe not coming from the fuckin' valley anymore. Or the West Side. Or thereabouts. New York, New York, New York.. It is scary and I love it.. we Angelenos have a disdain for it (rivalry) and we Bostonians have a disdain for it (hatred, fear) but I RON have a magnetic draw to it. It's a china shop and I am a bull. I feel the same way about Hollywood, but NYC has layers, man. It's got the old world, and the new world, and it's just.. it's this alien thing. Where LA is a vacation, NYC is getting back to real life. Of course the seasons suck. Yeah the rent is.. abominable. The work industry for what I do is.. uhm... questionable. But I have to say, there's an aesthetic of that city and it's vibe and it's culture, it's character, it screams out to me like a horny demon in the night, and it grows like a cancer within me. Okay so now I am being darkly (and shittily) poetic but that's what bloggin's for. Anyway the point is if I have to go somewhere, and there's a good enough lead-in to get there, then I am all ears.. even if it is the end of me now...

Europe, as well, is of interest to me, great interest. I have to research this shit. I know in spite of all I say, there's a time and a place for joes like me. I look at my portfolio, my resume, and where I am now and what I have built up, and the pirate ship isn't sinking so badly after all, I can still make out a bunch of reasons (talking career-wise) to stay put where I am.. ride the wave.. But I am 31. I am going to have to make like I am ten years younger, as I always say I am/feel, for real, if I wanna have the mental prowess to pull up and go on with this madness somewhere else. So I will say again, I am putting my feelers out there, and if something good enough feels back, then I will have some heady decisions to make.

I look around my apartment, it's sparsely decorated, but it is me. It's my stuff. I am an American, we like our stuff. Some more than others, but y'know. if I leave I am likely gonna box most of it up for storage somewhere or just sell it/trash it. Again, reminded of those journals I found earlier, the time I wrote that was when I went through a similar experience.. boxing up old shit and then realizing how little it mattered, these "things" I had accumulated nad just starting nearly from scratch. I had some clothes, a bed mattress pad, a tiny TV, a stereo, a car, a PC, some CDs, that was about it. All the other little knickknacks I'd accumulated/brought with me from "the old world" got tossed asunder (or ass-under). In some ways, some aspects of my personality, my loves, my expectations as well.

Yesterday I had to go into the valley for the first time since I'd been let go, specifically to the neighborhood where I'd moved shortly after getting to LA to begin with all those years ago. Sherman Oaks ain't bad, but it's just so long-gone-gone, gone-gone-gone from me. Going back and seeing how close it was, and knowing i am going through the usual cycle again just embittered me, do I wanna really go through another Sherman Oaks elsewhere? It did piss me off, instead of nostalgia I was just reminded of the predicaments I was in when my life was there in that town, and how far away and pointless that all now feels.. regardless of the truth. All these thoughts and feelings exhaust me when faced with the prospect of doing it all again, from scratch - how many times? If I do it again now, I am DEFINITELY setting myself up to do it again-again, X number of years from now. If I split to NYC, how long till I get tired of that scene and "beat it" and want to move onto the next level? See, this all starts to sound like gibberish, but then I look at some people who I know in my life who have done exactly this stuff I speak of.. to different levels of satisfaction. I am not satisfiable it seems(and probably hope never to be..?)

Something else I must bring up, while I am on this little tear here.. I look at where I've got to now, in so many regards of mylife, and I can sum it up this way, and be assured of how I feel. I rememeber the suburbs where I grew up, and how small that felt when I went to College and then moved to the Big City (Boston). I remember how small Boston and the little surrounding towns felt after I moved out here and spent a little time getting acquainted. Then I traveled a little.. somewhat faintly, but enough to feel "what is a special place" in the world and what's not so special, or rather, what's the same everywhere.. and I look at where I am now, like right up the street from me.. 5 minutes up the street in a few different directions.. And Hollywood definitely feels very very special to me, having thought of all of that. The stupid little liquor stores, gas stations, delicatessens, auto parts places, drive-thru fast food joints and parking garages and ethnic food restaurants. Yeah, it's the same shit as everywhere else, but it's definitely adhered to a part of my soul and mind in a way. A way that is hard to resist, such that the thought of leaving is like considering cutting off my whole left hand. "Oh, I can come back" but that's different.. when you branch off, everything changes, everybody does, if it's some sizable amount of time.

So, this is the sort of back-and-forth my head is going through right now. I take it as it comes, I am just putting my best foot forward and throwing myself out there to see what opportunities try to call me back. Then I will take it from there and settle further into my latest madness. The End.