Tonight
I’ve fallen in love with you
for the night.
Looking into your drunken eyes
for tonight.
Behind my own obstructed eyes
for the night.
I could be with you forever
for tonight.
Embracing you eternally
for the night.
Loving you for who you are
for tonight.
We are as one entity
for the night.
I know you better than any
for tonight.
Only because you’re buying my drinks
for the night.
What am I doing
So I have been doing a lot of thinking lately and wondering what the hell I want to do with my life. Yet I still have no answers. At the beginning of this year I started my own website, it is dedicated to the music journalism work that I like doing. Now I am starting to sort of regret it. It has been a real eye opener for me. I am starting to not enjoy it one bit. But if I don’t want to do that then what do I want.
I have been looking for internships and this is why this has been bugging me. I’m not sure what kind of internship to apply to now. I was initially going to go for music magazines, or magazines that have a music section I could write for. But now it seems like if I do that I will be just as tortured as any other job. The whole point of school and everything I do was to get into a area that I love. If I feel tortured every time I think about writing an album review how will I get through it for the rest of my life.
I also have started working as the music editor for a local student run magazine. This work seems so much more satisfying. I like being able to reach out to public relations and such to get albums for others to review. I also enjoy the editing process so much more than the writing process. Unfortunately, I know no matter where I end up in magazines I will one have to start at the bottom and two will still have to write certain things myself.
So this leaves me with several questions. Do I continue with working in music journalism? Do I pursue my other interest? If so what?
Lifes little lesson for Monday
Yesterday, I was really in a funky mood. I woke up later than I wanted to, so I stayed in bed being lazy. Just felt like lying around. It didn’t help that I hadn’t really gotten anything done in a couple days. I basically wasted my time, by hanging out, and my money . Not that I didn’t enjoy it or feel like I needed it but I just couldn’t get myself back into a working state of mind. So after I finally got up, sitting in front of my computer I just couldn’t think of one thing I wanted to do. Then I get a text to go hang out with a friend. I did want to go hang out because it’s not like I was being productive. But then I thought about the money issue and if I did go anywhere then I would be upset the next day because again I had gotten nothing done and I would be completely broke.
So as I sat there contemplating what to do I went through my choices.
1. I could get right back into the bed and wait for the day to be over and just start all over tomorrow hoping it would be a better day.
2. I could go hang out and spend the last of my money. I could also hope that hanging out would put me in a better mood and that at least I would have had some fun before I tried starting over again tomorrow.
Or I could do the smartest thing. Just try to work through it and force myself to do something, anything. I thought for a minute and pulled out the easiest thing I could possible do. Take out a journal and just write about how I felt. I just sat and wrote out the whole ordeal, it came out real easily once I began. About half way through it I was already feeling better. I’m not sure how long I wrote but it was about two pages. I stopped to eat and do a couple of other things in between but kept going back. (I tend to always multi-task once I get motivated) But by the time I wrote the last paragraph I felt totally better. I did still get back into bed but with different intentions.
I was just going to do a little mini restart of the day. Instead of getting in the bed and staying there until the next morning I was going to take a little mini nap and get up later to get some stuff done at night. I did get in bed but never up taking the nap. Eventually, I got some work done later in the night after watching a little television.
Whether or not I did get anything done though was besides the point. Writing my way out of my funky mood made me remember why I began writing in the first place. The writing experience has always been very cathartic for me. It was the easiest and most natural outlet for me to channel my energy into. Over the years I’ve lost my enthusiasm for writing. Well actually the better way to put it is I lost the momentum I once used to have. At some points life’s distractions took over. At other times it just started to feel too much like an obligation. With attempting to turn my passion and something that I did purely for fun into a legitimate career I had to write things I didn’t always enjoy, so it became forced. But while I was writing the journal entry it just all flowed out of me, it wasn’t forced and the more I wrote the better I felt. I just realized this is a sign that I’ve got to work out a new routine. I have to do more of that natural, fun writing so I don’t get that burn out from just churning out work.
I have to find a balance so that I don’t forget again that I actually do enjoy writing.
Hello 2011
So as I’ve said before I don’t do new year’s resolutions, but I do like to at least make a nice list of goals I would like to accomplish for the year. Unfortunately, last year I started one but never finished and to make it even better I can’t even find it. This year I am not only going to make sure I get the list done. I’m posting online for to ensure a certain level of accountability and I will know exactly where to find it at the end of the year.
Goals for 2011
- Write everyday.
- Get my website up and running.
- Attend networking events.
- Organize my picture files.
- Edit poetry collection.
- Experiment with photo-editing everyday.
- Read at least 5 books on writing.
- Post something new online once a week.
- Update the website once a week.
Can’t wait to see at the end of the year how many of these I was able to stick to or accomplish.
Keeping entertained while unemployed
I’ve pretty much been employed since the minute I got my working papers at fourteen years old. Except for a couple of months I was out of work after I moved back to the city, the longest I’ve gone without a job has been three weeks. As I write this I haven’t been working since May, in addition I also finished up my semester right after that. So for the past couple of months I’ve pretty much had nothing to do. I will admit I haven’t been looking that hard, because I am getting unemployment and I know I’ll be starting school again soon.
All this extra time on my hands has been driving me insane. Part of the reason I always worked was I needed to keep busy. So I’ve had a million little projects that I’ve been working on. In case you’re ever wondering how to pass some time if you have plenty of it here are a couple of my recommendations.
- Organizing your CD collection and/or uploading them all to your computer.
- Rearranging furniture.
- Saving all clips as pdf files, printing and creating a list of them, or updating your resume. In general preparing yourself for a job in your desired field, whatever that may include for you.
- Cleaning out your refrigerator.
- Get back into shape (with no real income I’ve become a fan of walking through Prospect Park for an hour or so).
- Take care of your health, if you don’t have it yet get medicaid, go get the physical you’ve been putting off.
- Catch up with old friends. Who knows it may lead to finding out about a job opening.
There are some also some other things you could do to keep busy that I don’t recommend, they will probably just keep you unemployed longer.
- Drink in the middle of the day.
- Pace around the house, unless it’s part of your workout routine. (I wouldn’t recommend it though, that’s the kind of thing that makes you start feeling a little cabin fever.)
- Spend all your time in bed. This could easily lead to feeling unproductive and useless, that’s when depression starts sinking in.
- Catch up with old friends. It could be a bad thing too, either you realize why you don’t talk to them anymore the hard way, or you occupy too much time hanging out instead of focusing on getting a new job.
At the end of the day the best thing to do is find anyway to keep busy while also being productive. If not, you could easily find yourself in a rut that will not lead you back to being employed. In my experience, the longer you stay out of work the harder it is to get back out there. Unless you have the luxury of not working and enjoy doing nothing, I suggest you find something right away and be flexible. Everything may not seem perfect but at least give it a chance, you never know it may become perfect.
Life’s pretty hard
If you look at the past posts, you’ll notice I have not been the best at posting blogs frequently. For example the worst I think has been the past six months. I can’t seem to find the time to get everything done. I started school again and that was a large distraction but at the same time I also just slacked off.
Its truthfully because life is hard. You don’t always get to do what you want. We all have a plan for how we want or think things will go but that may not happen. Life takes you on some detours and you have to kind of just go with it and hope that it takes you somewhere good in the end. I have been on many of these little detours and even some not so little ones. I’ve learned that sometimes you have to change the plan. It helps a lot to be a it flexible or else you may end up just stuck.
I recently did let myself get stuck, but I’m getting things back on track and tweaking my plans. In keeping with this change, there may be some changes to this blog. I’m not sure yet where I will head but I one thing is for sure. I will be posting a lot more often. Only god can know what those post will be at this point but they will go up. I just hope somebody will enjoy reading them as much as I will hopefully enjoy writing them.
New Year
I have been a little opposed to writing a New Year post, but in the end felt I had to at least acknowledge it. I’m not big on the New Year’s resolution idea or believe that the change of year should be associated with a change in a person. It doesn’t help either that the majority of people that make resolutions do not keep them anyway. So I conclude that there is not much use for this. I do however, set aside some time to list the goals that I would like to achieve and what tasks need to be accomplished.
I’ve read many articles and tips on the best way to go about these, here are the ones I remember (and maybe revised to apply to me) and try to follow:
- Write down your goals and put it somewhere visible. Seeing it will keep it in your mind and then you are more likely to accomplish it.
- Set clear goals. Don’t use general broad language like I will write this year or I will get in shape. Identify a number of hours a week you want to either workout or write.
- Don’t go overboard. You’re more likely to accomplish your goals if you keep them realistic, if your a writer you’re not going to write and publish a book in a year. And no matter how badly you want to get into shape, it’s not likely you will work out everyday.
- Go back and reassess your goals later in the year. Maybe you overestimated how much you could get done, or maybe you’ve already accomplished your goal. Then revise it and set a new goal for the year or keep it in mind for next years goals.
- Don’t get discouraged. You may not accomplish your goals, but you’ve started on your way to it just by writing them down and hopefully working towards it at least a little.
It gets easier to do this year after year. First of all it becomes habit and second after a while you can better estimate what it is you can get done. If you don’t accomplish a goal, you can look back and see if maybe it was a little too ambitious or maybe you just didn’t work as hard as you could. Now you know how to improve your chances the next year.
