The woman and I desperately needed time away from the city, but we're both terribly broke and there was no way we could afford to do anything beyond simply renting a car and getting half a tank of gas. So we decided to play it safe and head up to my mom's house, which is about an hour north of NYC.
If I do say so myself, it was a great idea. Staying with my mom is like staying at the most generous B&B in the world - she spoils me like crazy, and she loves my girlfriend, too. We ate great food, we got to drive my mom's new car, we got to use 2 relatively decent bicycles...
Speaking of which, I LOVE biking. K and I biked 15-20 miles this weekend, and when you consider that I have done virtually no exercise for the last 25 years, that's saying a lot. The weather was absolutely perfect, and the bike trail was beautiful.
This was the first time in a long time that I've explored my old 'hood (I was giving K the grand tour), and I couldn't get over how different everything is. I got lost more than once, for one thing, and when I was able to discover where I was, I couldn't believe what I saw. There are new luxury homes being built pretty much everywhere you look; there are lots of beautiful forests that just aren't there anymore.
The other thing that struck me is that I never realized (rather, I never fully admitted to myself) how rural my town is. I always thought of it as regular suburbia, but K and I saw waaaaay more farms than I would've liked.
I'm highly caffeinated right now, and it seems that this entry is becoming rather disjointed. So lemme sum up the rest of the weekend:
1. Saw "Curse of the Jade Scorpion". I love Woody Allen movies, and I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this movie was pretty terrible. It's beautifully shot, and the production design is spot-on, but the thing about movies is that they tend to need characters in order for them to work.
2. I'm not a fan of lobster.
3. Read "Big Trouble", and I gotta say, it was better than I thought it'd be. Now that I know it's gonna be a movie, I can say that the movie will probably be great.
4. Had the worst nightmare I've had in about 15 years, and I'm still sorta recovering from it. I'd rather not talk about it, actually, now that I think about it.
5. Mini-golf still rules.
* * * * * * * * * *
Yesterday afternoon, in the hours before we were to catch our NYC-bound bus, I started to feel a little wierd. Even now I can't quite explain it, other than to say it felt like a mild version of the anxiety I felt when I was at La Guardia airport a few weeks ago, preparing to board a plane. K suggested it was just me needing to get back to NYC.
Well, here I am, back in NYC, and that feeling is still sorta there. So I think that my anxiety isn't necessarily NYC-based - I think it was more about what I would be returning to, i.e. I think it's more based on the fact that I'm not anywhere close to doing the things that I ought to be doing. I don't have as many friends as I did a few years ago; my gig schedule is right now solely dependent on how motivated I am; look, right now my life is pretty much like this, unless I have a date with the woman:
1. wake up, see if i have work
2. go to work (if no work, then go to #5)
3. at work, do nothing except answer phones and surf the same 5 websites
4. go home
5. smoke pot, play DC, futz around on guitar, go to sleep
That's not what I wanted to be doing when I envisioned my life at 25. Hell, I had made a deal with myself that if I wasn't well on my way towards financial independence through music by 25, I'd go back to school. Right now, I can't even afford to buy a pair of decent work shoes - I certainly am no closer to getting a MiniDisc player for my 4-track stuff - and I can only afford to take K out to a nice dinner maybe once every 6 weeks.
I've given myself the same motivational speech about 20 times now, and it seems to work for a little while - I'll start writing, I'll play a show - and then I sorta just give up when absolutely nothing happens, and thus the cycle repeats. And that's all I can do, really - gotta keep writing, gotta keep gigging...
...Been thinking about recording an EP - I know 2 people who could help me out with that. But if I'm gonna make an EP, it'll require a lot more thought than just tracking and mixing. And I can't really think about this right now. More later.
