Starting Over

Two years in Las Vegas now. I've grown but at what expense? I joined a band that I never thought I would do again because it seemed like the place to put my passion into and worthy of it. I just wrapped too much passion into and got involved with the main songwriter. Fail. Really because I acted out of low self-esteem and which only just served to hurt my own voice.

Months of alcohol and escape turning into two years but here I am again revisiting it to start anew because, surprise, it didn't work out. I know I'm overly pessimistic: stemming from my immaturity and lack of self-control. I've felt paralyzed but I feel a new strength now. Something in which still to explore. But now it's a different calling. And I have the ability to move forward in it unlike before where I really was unable to emotionally and physically.

I think my biggest hurdle is spiritually though. I feel a deep sense of being out touch with myself. I'm finishing an arrangement of a song now when I felt on the precipice of my musical awakening in Nashville. But I'm pushing myself to have a voice in it and actually sing it. So that's going to be a challenge. It's in my upper range where I'm the weakest. It's going to be some work and experimentation but I want to see it through and give it a shot  that I will take time with to develop. So maybe in a couple months, cause the backing tracks are basically done. It's a very pretty, hopeful arrangement, and maybe my last Overclocked Remix.

I have little desire to do any more arrangements. I plan to work on developing my own tracks and to see about collaborating those ideas with others. It'll be a couple years of woodshedding before I'm ready for a public display.

My new goals are to be held accountable and to try to keep updates and be publicly social as I grow in this time. It's a lot of new things at once but I want to push and grow. So for anyone who watches I hope I can come through. Maybe I'll find support through others or maybe I'll only find it from myself but this avenue I think is sobering which is why I'm going to use it no matter the result. So stay tuned. Let's just not update this blog in two years from now again. Haha.

An explanation and feeling of farewell to Nashville.

I heard a metaphor for people feeling a lack of will to want to go on living. Simple and helps to frame a perspective beyond their weakness and selfishness they can’t escape. An concept of your life as a temple lifted up by different pillars. Sometimes people put too much into one, as a relationship or career, and when it crumbles, which nothing lasts, then they have no support to hold themselves up. 

I have qualities about myself that are double-edged. They can create much positivity or much the opposite. And they often do it in a dramatic effect. I’ve always been this way. So I go to the extreme and throw myself all the way in and then I can remove myself just as quickly. This is taking its toll on me. At my age, I don’t have a pillar that really stands. 

I’ve always felt indifferent from others. Always an outsider, always an outlier, always a loner. It’s my fantasy. Music became something I could grow into that allowed me to create something on my own away from the chaos that existed outside. I would fall into a community and make many acquaintances but generally never become close enough to any to continue friendships. Time after time, having people come into my life, to just inevitably have that community fizzle out. That’s life and nothing special, but its happening in quicker succession and I feel less and less eager to experience the process. Any attempt to connect is just nonconstructive nostalgia. 

It’s past. People have moved on. They’ve changed. You’ve changed. You can only say phrases like “how are you” to get non-answers these days. People don’t have the time beyond their small bubble. 

My attempts at close relationships are shaped almost solely on fantasy. They had no foundation from the beginning in their shaping and I consider them to not even be relationships. I would say at the age of 31 I have never had a girlfriend and my one close but distant friend I’ve kept up with over the years is based fundamentally around our connection with our music.

The talents I’ve focused on towards my affinity with music have led me to a strange place in a strange career landscape. I’m at odds with the majority of the industry, music’s artistic impact in this day, and my ability to be a part of it. My biggest pillar, I don’t feel the desire or passion to pursue or create. I can explore for my personal benefit but with my almost nonexistent backlog of original work, I find generally just frustration, seeing it being just pointless. At this point, and I think rightfully strong-willed and stubborn, I don’t feel an option to explore other job sets with my abilities, so I can't walk away from it.

But my worldview is shit. I don’t see this society lasting. I see it all crumbling away around me. The world just being years away from a clean sweep of billions of people dying as it hits the tipping point of chaos. Everyone knows there more to it. The why’s. I’m so disenchanted from being able to live a common life. Music seems like an outlet for my pain but it also seems like a waste and a setup for failure. Putting everything into a track, just like a pillar, to just have it be seen as less value than a cup of coffee. Why should I do that to myself? I have no channels to relay these vibes. It’s just a dark tunnel full of chatter from this view. 

The only pillar that has any strength is my family in Vegas and what funds I was left from them. I think Nashville could be the best place in the country for my ideals, but with no support, I can’t muster the strength to find out. I’m going to head back to where I started and work on creating some sort of life away from whatever this is that exists here. Living alone, hating myself, and trying to escape from reality are what I’m going to try to get away from. 

These notes are just my closure and for anyone that is curious. Feeling like you’ve fallen into complete obscurity is a sad fantasy that is pretty unbearable. Writing your deepest thoughts to strangers is egotistical. But even if I want to get away from my idea of what this point of my life is, I have to face it and realize I’m not alone in this.

Hopefully I can start moving forward and not back. I’m sorry for my actions in the past and my inability to connect with them then and now. I’ll always be how I am but if I can just build something and find a place for myself, I think I can get back to those better qualities of that double-edged sword and stop cutting myself down.