I will myself with saying, in addition, that my temperament is sanguine, rash, ardent, enthusiastic-and that all my life I have been a devotoed admirer of the women.
::
2018 31 December :: 12.14pm
:: Music: Eric Clapton - Old Love
Happy New Year's Eve!
Greetings and welcome to the ending of the end of the year!
I would love to say 2018 was a momentous and eventful year, whether the events be good or bad, but in truth - not much happened. I rode my bike a lot. Paid someone to paint my house. Hosted the shit outta MCYPAA. Played a fair amount of drums.
Nothing earth-shattering.
Weight loss was probably the one goal I had for the year that failed utterly. Oh well. I tried hard. I'm giving myself a break for a bit.
Moving forward, I'm going to practice being a bit more selective about the things I say yes to. I keep booking myself for all this shit, and just wearing myself out. Expect a lot more music and recording stuff, and a little less AA service. I'm not quitting AA or anything, but I was a busy little beaver this year, and it was a bit too much. Went to a few meetings this weekend that I haven't hit in awhile. It was refreshing to see a lot of new faces in those places, and nice to reconnect with some people I hadn't seen in awhile.
One new thing I'm starting is a podcast!
That's what brought me to woohu today, actually. As I was sitting here thinking "fuck, where the hell am I going to host this thing?" it struck me that I ALREADY HAVE A WEB PAGE (spoiler alert, it's this one). I also remembered that I had a dummy gmail account I made like 10 years ago. Some college friends were going to be making a webseries, and they cast me to play one of the characters. The project never got off the ground, but his google presence lives on, and "Dustin" has 15GB of drive storage just sitting there empty.
So, thanks to the magnanimous Mr. Nash, and our good Mr. Andy, I would also like to welcome you to the new home of the as-yet-unnamed podcast I'm starting. When will there be updates? How will we track metrics and monetize our listenership? What will we do when we run out of storage on Dustin's google drive? These are all questions I will disregard for now and leave for my future self to contend with. SUCK IT, FUTURE ME!!!
I've spent so long thinking about how I've gotten old that I didn't even realize that my parents have also gotten old. In the last year they've had a total of five stays in the hospital and now I dread that this may be the last Christmas I have with both of them.
crossposting generates hits, right? gimme dat viral content!
Tried breathing while I was putting on my shoes last night, and now my back is sore #sothisis32 CHEERS!
Maybe it's morbid to talk about, but at one point, my plan was to be dead by 30. I don't know, it was a nice round number that seemed so unimaginably OLD when I picked it. The concept of "live fast; die young" was quite romantic at the time. I am very grateful that the universe has something better in mind for me, and that I'm able to share my bonus time with you fine folks. It's all gravy from here on out! or icing on the cake...
Okay, those two metaphors sound gross when you mix them. But you get what I'm saying ;)
Waiting for your life to start, then you die? Was your heart beating in the first place?
Two years ago today I made a pretty big career change. Not that my old job was much of a career. It was a summer job I took just for the health insurance benefits so I could fix my back, but I ended up staying 12 years. I really enjoy what I'm doing now, despite still feeling a lot of shame for never finishing college. Years ago I was told that I'd never make anything of myself. Now after spending what has literally been half my life trying to prove otherwise, I'm just really aware of my failures. I don't even know what I was hoping to do specifically. I just wanted some sort of achievement upon which I could hang my hat that would make people go, "That Charlie is alright." I went about it all wrong too. I looked over my old posts on here and it was like I was just trying to amplify whatever parts of my personality I thought made me look cool, or witty, or sexy, or intriguing, or smart. I ended up making caricatures of myself. The struggling musician, the passionate lover, the lovable alcoholic, the political radical, the wounded artist. None of it was really me, just the narcissistic ideas of what I thought I should be. At the same time I'd constantly air my dirty laundry and bad mouth nearly every person in my life at one time or another. It was as if destroying them would lift me up and put me closer to being something special. I still don't know if I've amounted to anything, I probably never will, it's not my place to say. But if I truly had to define myself now at 35, I'd be forced to say, "college dropout, twice failed husband, decent electrician, and father." I like the last one. He's just as weird as I was when I was his age, I just hope he doesn't make as big of a mess of things as I have.
And in my free time I sing hardcore songs as heartfelt acoustic ballads
And what the fuck do I know?
But broken hearts, some unsung songs
I never had it hard it enough
So I drag my feet as much as I can
The product of excuses
Brave only compared to some
I consider myself a lucky kid
But I'm pretty good at fucking up
Young, Angry and White
A victim of the middle class
So much to prove
So much to say
When will I be done screaming?
Never take me seriously
Cause who the fuck am I
Just some awkward kid
From a shitty town
No different than any of you
Quick with exaggeration
Philosopher to some
But a story teller to anyone
Who, is truly listening
I'm inspired by
The fact that I
Still get out of bed
I'm over dramatic
Most of the time
Attention whore,
Known to be ill tempered
I got a way with fucking words
It took some digging through sensationalist headlines to get straight to the source, but I'm glad I did. This is a very well-written account, explicit in its intent, which is not malicious. Some parts of this hit closer to home for me than others, but all of it is far too common a story. We could all stand to be better to each other, and to ourselves. How often we are held captive by our fears.
::
2016 5 November :: 12.49am
:: Mood: whoa, dude...
:: Music: the wallflowers
since last we met
yo. i'm still here.
I suppose a lot has happened in 2016 up to this point, and I should probably catch you up.
I didn't wind up getting that house. I did wind up getting out of my parents' basement. I was very fortunate to find an awesome roommate on craigslist. She owns her own home, and I rent the back bedroom. The price is right. We have fun. We eat food and watch tv and shit. I got super lucky to find this place, and appreciate that I get to live here. I didn't realize how much it bothered me living at dad's until I got out and felt this immense weight lifted off of my chest. That's not to say it's always sunshine and rainbows and shit here... but it's a lot better. I'm much more relaxed. More comfortable being myself. It took a few months being here to allow myself to ease into it. It's a good fit, for right now. It won't be forever, but it's nice to not be in a hurry to go anywhere. And she's not in a hurry to get me out of here, which is also nice.
I'm still single. Cold and alone, forever probably maybe. I still vascillate rapidly between deeply longing to be in a relationship and realizing that bachelorhood and freedom is actually pretty fucking rad. I mostly just want something warm to cuddle with. Maybe I should get a dog. I did do the 20-10-5 thing.
*spends half an hour looking for it*
... and now I can't remember what I did with it. I may have thrown it out. the big takeaway I can recall from it is that I'm shallower than I'd like to believe. I wanted to think that a sense of humor or intellectual stimulation would be the most important - and they were important, they definitely made the list of 20 (it was actually really hard to think of 20 things without being redundant) - but if you boil it down ... i have to be attracted to the person physically. have to. don't much care if anyone else thinks they're hot, but I damn well better think so. Otherwise there's no point to the rest of it. I wanted to think that I'm above all that physical superficiality, but apparently i'm not.
i have a "new" (year-old) lunchbag. it is gigantic and awesome. kathy got it for me. after all that bitching i did about her, she buys the best gifts. and i am an asshole. but the zipper works great
I still don't eat very healthy or exercise much. however i recently quit smoking tobacco. it's only been 11 days, so it's still a little premature to call it quits for good, officially, but this is the longest stretch of time i've gone without nicotine in my bloodstream in 10 years. it's kind of a big deal.
also, i bought myself a drum set:
I've been banging on that thing quite a bit lately.
like - all the freaking time. which is awesome.
i also built a drum. it's purdy:
It's at dad's house. I gave it to him because i wasn't crazy about how it sounded, and he didn't have a wood snare. he likes it, so i'm glad it worked out and found a good home. i probably would've warmed up to it over time. it didn't sound bad ... just not how i expected/hoped.
prior to that, i built a bookshelf and a nightstand for my bedroom. they turned out well. oak plywood is fucking expensive as balls. but it looks nice, and is rock solid. glued and screwed together. sanded and polyurethaned. should last a good long while. not perfect, but suitable for my needs.
I did wind up getting that 'promotion' at work. so now i have my own office, a company phone, and a slight (very slight) pay increase. it's a lot more responsibility - i'm running quality control for our entire plant - but it's not terrible all the time. i show up, do stuff, go home, and at the end of the week they deposit money in my bank account. it's a thing.
the basement audio lab has been put on hiatus for the time being. the other guys got busy with life and work and stuff and were unable to commit the time and energy they felt was necessary to continue the project. i can respect that they didn't want to half-ass it. and if things slow down, we'll pick it back up again.
in the meantime, i'm starting on a new project with different people. we will see what happens, but at least i'm still playing. there wasn't even that much down time, and i didn't have to go out looking for something, it came to me. so hopefully that's an indication that i'm supposed to be doing it. we don't have anything online yet.
Here's where the basement audio lab left off, if you'd like to hear what things sounded like right before we hit pause:
they want to do all original stuff, so gigging is a possibility in the as yet very distant future. it takes a long time to produce enough original material to fill 4 sets. but the upshot is, i get to make up all my parts from scratch. which is awesome.
honestly it just feels good to play again. especially with solid musicians who have been doing it for awhile.
so it's a total bummer that i can't play right now because of my knee. the recovery is going to be long. but hopefully the payoff is worth it. 30 years ago they would have handed me a cane and said, "enjoy this for the rest of your life," so i guess i shouldn't complain.
in other news, it was exactly one year ago from this very moment that i took my last drink of alcohol. i'm celebrating tomorrow, from the couch. i'll be going to the speaker at calvary tomorrow night, but i think i might wait until home group on tuesday to get my chip. i don't know, we'll see.
on the one hand, it's hard to believe it's been a year already. on the other, it feels like a year is a long fucking time, and a lot has certainly changed - mostly for the better. i guess the pit i was in wasn't exactly difficult to improve upon. geographically, however, tahoe is far superior to grand rapids. the city is convenient. i still really miss the mountains, though. they spoke to my soul in a way that i never would have imagined, and now that they're gone, i can sense that something is missing.
oh well. god has a plan, and it's probably smart of him to not let me in on all the details, lest i get ahead of myself and spoil it for everyone. i'm good at that. so, i just ask him to keep feeding it to me in chunks small enough that i'm not as likely to choke on them.
