Marion…..

I'm wondering if my life is ever going to go the way I need it too as long as I'm living in Marion.

This town is the poorest city in the state, and I kinda feel cheated into living here and like I was stranded here.

I stay now because my rent is cheap, my space is large, and it gives me a place to set up shop for Skyline Sound Studios. Now that I'm technically unemployed, having a large place to park the studio on the cheap, and also rest my head, is a valuable asset. But here's the problem.

I'm 50 miles north of my target market for the studio, which is the Greater Columbus Metropolitan Area. People in Columbus act like driving from Groveport to Dublin is some monumental trek that you must be insane to wanna make. Needless to say, getting people interested in coming to Marion from Columbus has been a challenge.

I've lucked out on a few occasions. There have been artists willing to make the drive. But on the whole, I hear people ask where I'm located, then act appalled and say they are going to the facility that costs twice as much as I do instead. Do they not realize that the gas money they are spending to get to Marion would be far less than doubling their studio bill?

The obvious answer would be to cater to the Marion area. There are bands here, and a couple of competing studios. But the problem for me is the fact that I was raised in a small town very similar to Marion, and I'm terrified of this town. Let me elaborate.

To say that Marion is economically depressed is an understatement. It was declared last year as the poorest city in the state of Ohio. This causes unemployment to increase, which means that in order for me to cater to the Marion bands, I'm going to have to lower my prices to match this market. That will do nothing to get me out of Marion.

The other issue is the fact that economically depressed areas, such as this, typically have high use of hardcore drugs. In Scioto County, it's hillbilly heroin (a.k.a. Oxycontin). I was raised there, and saw some horrific things. If I lived in Scioto County, I'd put my studio gear in storage 3 counties away and tell no one I was a recording engineer for fear of a home invasion by a crack head looking for things to sell so they could get their fix.

Apparently, Marion's big problem is black tar heroin. So you take an economically depressed area with a well known substance abuse problem, and you have a recipe for a robbery. In fact, my car was broken into last spring, and I lost about $120 that I foolishly left in the car. This was right after Sarah moved out, and rent was very difficult to make that month as a result of the robbery. Now my neighbors bitch that I park on the street instead of in my lengthy dark driveway, but on the street under the street light, my car is in full view of my next door neighbors security camera. My asshole neighbor across the street can go fuck himself with something hard and sandpapery.

So not only was I stranded an hour from my target market, but now that I have a limited income (relying on unemployment), it's hard to justify making trips to Columbus to look for clients. And even if I find them, they may scoff at the idea of driving an hour north to work with me, or I'll hear "my friend has an 8 track. We'll just use that". I'm too scared of being robbed to look for clients in Marion. So the solution is to get the hell out of Marion. This would also increase my day job prospects exponentially.

I was still holding on to hope that I could make my Colorado stress relief vacation this summer happen. It may have to be shelved, and me remain angry, for another year, because I can't continue living up here. I mean, I can, but if my unemployment runs dry and I have no studio business or label income, I doubt I could handle working with those sexist racists on the assembly line at Whirlpool again. My stress level was already to the point of causing me physical ills before I got laid off two weeks ago. With news of Olive's tragic accident, I'm still just as stressed. There's no way I could bring myself to take that road again unless there were no other option……..which is often the case in a town like Marion.

It seems like as long as I live here, it's infinitely more difficult to move foreword.

The shitty thing is that in order to make this move and better my situation, I may have to hold off on some other financial commitments, which makes me hesitate yet again. These would be joint bills to my ex. Part of me wants to scream that she put me through hell, and that despite the fact that I showed her it would be easier to pay off certain bills if she were to stay even 6 more months, she moved anyway and made everything harder for both of us. I offered her a compromise, and she left regardless, which I get on some levels. She had to do what she needed to do to better herself, and in order to do that, she had to tighten the financial strings on both of us. Well, she won't be happy if it comes to that (notice I said "if"), but it may come down to me needing to tighten my financial strings in order to get ahead, and resume payments on those debts when I'm again able. I'm not sure if this will be necessary yet, we'll see. But if it's needed, it's needed. That's not a call to action, just a realistic analysis of what may be needed. We'll see if I can avoid that, because obviously I wanna keep my commitments. But I can't let my commitments drive me into the ground either.

So we'll see. It's clear that I need to get out of this town to better myself and my prospects. A week ago I'd have been heartbroken over losing my Colorado trip, but now after facing Olive's passing, I'm just focused on rebuilding my life as quickly as humanly possible. If I live to see my 5 year goal, barring unforeseen circumstances, the Rockies will still be there.

So now let's figure out how to make it happen.

I'm Numb.,

I'm numb. I've lost a lot that I used to have, and value, and some of it will never come back. Some of it I've got to fight to get back. Some of it is just gone forever now……and that includes Olive.

So much has been taken from me over the last year that I'm at a breaking point. Every time I take a few steps forward, I get knocked off my feet and forced to start over.

With news of the death of my beloved dog, I'm numb. I cried, got angry, hit things, and started trying to play the blame game. According to the Kübler-Ross model, all of that was the usual order of events when something happens.

First comes Denial. I didn't wanna believe it.

Second came Anger. I came to this one really quick, and tried to blame. This was needless, and senseless, but considering the circumstances it was a step I had to go through. I fought to keep a level head, but I was really angry.

Third comes Bargaining, which I could skip, because there was no use at that point.

Depression was the 4th phase, and I hit that hard. I cried, and cried, and went back to anger, then cried again.

Stage 5 is acceptance. It still doesn't seem real in some ways, but I'm now somewhere between phases 4 and 5, meaning that I'm still really sad, but I'm trying to get to the point of knowing that there's nothing that can be done and trying to move on with my life.

It still doesn't seem real though. I can't imagine it being true.

It makes me angry about everything that's been taken from me over the last 12 months. It makes me wanna say Fuck this life, and make me wanna be as productive as I can be to better my situation. It makes me wanna leave all this bullshit and baggage as far behind me as I possibly can. Too many things have gone wrong in too short a time period for me to wanna live like this anymore.

I know that now and then I say "It's time for me to start kicking ass and changing things", and well, tonight is no different. I'm going to ignore this for now, and go do something useful. I had two sessions at the studio that couldn't happen, so I'm gonna go out and try to drum up some new business. Fuck sitting stagnant on my hands waiting for people to see my Craigslist ads. Fuck waiting for the artists I've worked with till now to bring some attention to me as a producer. Fuck waiting and doing nothing, It's time I got off my ass and changed my life.

It ends now.

Hate

Over the past month, I've been feeling pressure to finish some things that should've been done by now. I've been working hard to get them done, but I've been feeling a sense of pressure from those who are waiting for them. To those people, I'm sorry. I'm working on it, and nearing home plate, but I still feel pressure…..although some of it may all just be my own head blowing it way out of proportion. Still, it makes me feel like people are starting to look at me more negatively. That's never fun.

Then I get in a fight today on Facebook with my brother over fundamental beliefs he holds that touched a personal nerve with me. This got my father and my brothers mother on the defense against me, and made me start questioning whether or not I was overblowing things.

But the biggest thing is regrets for things I did to someone who means the world to me in 2011 while I was going through my emotional torment. I'm looking back at events that played out, looking at how I handled them, and I get disgusted with myself. I almost feel like I'm not worthy to have Laura in my life, and I wonder why she still clung to me. I'm glad she did, and most of the time I feel wonderful, but on the rare occasion when I do allow myself to start feeling regretful feelings of what I did over the summer (rather than block it out so that I can get past the guilt and move on), it's crippling.

It makes me feel like I don't deserve any of what I have. I certainly haven't been a great person over the past year, and I've taken everything for granted at one time or another. I hope that in 2012 I can change that, but this isn't a positive post. Quite frankly, I'm really pissed off at myself. I feel like in some ways I've alienated a lot of people I knew thanks to the emotional shit I've been so public about over the last 11 months since Sarah left, and I kinda feel alone. But in a weird, twisted, fucked up kinda way, I feel like I deserve that. I feel like I don't deserve to have friends, I don't deserve to have awesome projects to work on in the studio, I don't deserve to have Laura in my life…….

I just feel like it should all go away, because I've taken it all for granted and don't deserve any of it.

Part of me doesn't want to ever feel like I deserve any of what I have, because I worry that if I start feeling like I deserve it, I'll start feeling entitled to it and start taking it for granted. I don't want to do that. If there's one thing I'm trying to retain as a permanent lesson from the last year, it's humility.

And right now, I feel that the world is relatively stacked against me. I feel it should be that way, and maybe they should all just leave me be, because I'd deserve that.

I dunno if any of that makes any sense.

September

Oh great.

it's September 5th, and it's quite evident that fall has fallen on Ohio.

So what's the big deal? Leaves changing? Cold weather? Holidays?

Well, to be honest, it's a combination of all of those, plus a little history of what happened to me last fall.

Let's attack these things one by one. The cool weather at night is just throwing me back to Colorado summer nights. It's quite obvious that I miss my mountains like crazy, and now this chill in the air just makes it worse. I can almost feel myself driving up 285 up into the stratosphere after dark with the heat on in the car, just looking at the cross lit up on the mountain side as I pass.

Making this one worse is the fact that this weather, and my remembrance of Colorado, is flooding my head with Paramore's Riot album. Earlier this year, that album helped me make sense of a lot of confusion, but before that it was one of my favorite albums while I lived in Colorado. Their song "Decode" from the Twilight soundtrack was what hooked me on the band, and it's in part due to the video for the song. The band is surrounded by beautiful landscapes and conifer trees, and I would watch this video at our house in Conifer Colorado and look out the window, marveling at how the scenery looked similar.



I got into Twilight because Sarah was the head of the YA department at the Evergreen branch of the Jefferson County Public Library System. When the movie came out, she took me to see it, as well as the two sequels that followed. I bought her the movie, and on the DVD was the video to Decode. So in a way, this all ties back to the relationship, and I wouldn't have even BEEN in Colorado to experience that beautiful scenery if it weren't for her. I'm not sad by that right now, that's dead and gone and I've moved on. It's an interesting parallel to what I've lost though, and a great segue into the next part of what's wrong with the weather turning cold.

So here I am listening to Paramore, feeling the cold air on my neck from the open window behind me, and missing my mountains. So I start watching videos I'd posted on youtube that I shot around the time that I moved from Colorado to Ohio. They are as follows:







This got me thinking of the move itself, and giving up my mountains for the promise of cheaper cost of living and hopefully turning the relationship around. Sarah had been hired at a new job, and I was to attend Ohio State to get a business degree. I was going to put my life in order, and we'd be happy together.

But alas it was in October of last year that Sarah first started showing signs that she was looking for a way out. I started sleeping on the EZ chair to give her space, and even moved out for a few weeks until I realized that I couldn't afford to do that and had to move back in shortly after. So for me, this fall is the first time that the weather has matched the time that my life as I knew it began to crumble away. The foundation cracked when I lost my mountains, and when Sarah started to show doubts it was like putting stress on an unstable structure.

This will all lead up to what I predict will be a difficult time for me, and I hate that. I love the holidays, and especially LOVE Halloween. But the last Halloween I went through was very unpleasant. Sarah and I had a tradition of carving pumpkins and watching a horror movie marathon while eating all the candy we bought for the kids who never showed. Last year was shaping up like any other Halloween, we even went to a pumpkin farm off of 40 that we used to go to every year when we lived here before just so we could buy pumpkins to carve. But then she started showing her doubts in the relationship and started asking for her space to figure things out. Those pumpkins sat on the front porch till Thanksgiving and were never carved. I eventually threw them in the garbage, and they had rotten in the frost.

It's not that I long to carve a pumpkin again and watch a horror movie. It's that the holidays in general were a special time for the two of us. We had our traditions. It'll be hard to fathom doing things differently this year, but what choice do I have? It's not that I even want to do those things with her anymore, but the entire holiday season is shaping up to be a huge reminder of what I've lost. From the relationship that I thought would never end, to my holiday traditions, to my ties to members of her family that I considered my own family, and even to my mountains. I've lost all of that in the change of a mind.

So for me, the cold weather coming back, and the talk of Halloween, it's all just a giant flashback to everything that went wrong over the last 18 months. I'm looking forward to making new traditions in life and moving on, but I'm not looking forward to the constant reminders of what I've lost plastered all over everyone's houses in the forms of Halloween and Christmas decorations. I'm looking forward to seeing how I weather this oncoming storm, but I'm not looking forward to the wind and the rain.

Getting Harder With Time

I hate when people tell me that I need to learn to be happy where I am. I've heard it from an ex girlfriend and from a friend, and I know that other people may have thought it when they've heard me complain about missing Colorado. It's almost like these people just don't get it in any way shape or form. The more time passes that I'm away form Colorado, the HARDER it gets for me. It's not getting any easier, and it's starting to become sort of an obsession of mine. All I look at online now are pictures of the Rockies. I watch videos that I shot in Colorado, and get lost in them, and when I turn around and find myself in Marion, I lost it just now when that happened.

I don't care if anyone thinks I sound like a whiny pussy fawning over some fucking mountains. I'm secure enough in myself to admit things to myself and others. I'm in love with those mountains, and losing them was one of the hardest things I've had to cope with in my adult life.

I need to get back. The sooner the better. I love everyone in my life in Ohio, but they can't know what I'm feeling.

twitter........

I did something stupid. I started looking back at my twitter posts from before I left Colorado, just to see what I had been talking about. The shitty thing is that I remembered exactly what life was like for me there, and how happy I was. This made me kinda angry and resentful to Sarah, not for leaving me, but for leaving me in Ohio rather than Colorado.

There's not really any feelings left toward the relationship, that's been dead for a while now. It's going on 10 months now since she told me she needed space, and since then that crumbled and died. But the scars of what I left behind are still fresh, and I miss the rockies so much it's like an ache.

So here I sit, up later than I should be, looking at tweets about installing a raindirk console, or packing up for a mobile session with Alpha Omega in Westminster, or bitching about the 3 inches of snow in early May, and wishing like hell that I could just get that all back. I feel like I got a real raw deal, and am relatively pissed about it.

I'll be fine in the morning, but I just needed to vent.

Good night.

Anger......sort of

I just wish I knew.

I was getting ready for bed, but my acid reflux was acting up and I was out of Prilosec. All I wanted was a glass of milk to help soothe the burning in my chest, but I was out of that as well. So I decided to drive to Walmart to buy some of each. Trying to be frugle thanks to my financial situation that this year has put me in, that was all I intended to buy, but after I grab the prilosec I decide to walk around wal-mart for a few and just kill some time.

I see the clearance section. This is where I ran into trouble, and got sad and angry. You see, the clearance section was something that Sarah would spend 10 minutes in at times just browsing, and I couldn't pull her from it! Let me be clear, I no longer miss our relationship. I've had two since then. But the problem is that Sarah just moved out of the house 6 months ago and we were together just under 12 years, meaning that there's going to be a lot of things that come up that I'm going to have to sift through.

So what was I angry and sad about? Well, for starters, I was angry at all that I've lost this year. I was angry at all the changes that were forced upon me that I've had to just deal with, and I never had a say in the circumstances surrounding the changes. Another thing I grew angry at was the loss of a lifestyle. I was no longer able to justify spending $3 in the clearance section on something cool or even needed, because money was so tight that I'm now picking up pennies that I find on the ground!

This all just took me back, yet again, to when times were happy for me. I remembered midnight trips to Walmart in Evergreen Colorado, which is probably the nicest looking Walmart in the country. I remember one night when a cloud bank was hovering over the parking lot (the store was at about 8,000 feet above sea level in the Rockies), and you could see white owls swooping down through the clouds and coming into view of the parking lot lights. Times were happy, and my surroundings seemed magical. This made me sad again that I'd lost that happiness and love for where I lived, and angry for the same reasons.

Now that the anger that had surfaced has subsided, I'm left with the sadness. But this all begs one important question. If I'm over the relationship, how long will it take for me to get over losing everything else I loved? How long will I be angry at the hand life dealt me? How long will I be held down trying to get back up because of it? How long will I have to wait before my mind stops triggering these things?

How long will all this take? I just wish I knew.

This is unrelated, but I like to listen to this when i'm down.

I like my quiet time alone.....

I like my quiet time alone, but it's these lonely nights I dread.

Find more Day Nine songs at Myspace Music

That's the chorus to the song "Hiding" from my old band Day Nine (http://myspace.com/day9). I wrote it after a death in the family, and I was having to come to grips with that death.

I feel that right now very strongly considering all that I'm still dealing with after this separation between Sarah and I.

I left the laundromat, it was growing dark and had almost reached total night, but the sky still clung to some dark blue hints of light. The window in the car was down, and I could feel the springtime humidity of Ohio on my skin. Linger from The Cranberries came on the radio. This deadly combination sent a wave of memories roaring back. Spring time in Ohio is one of my favorites, but not only is this my first spring in 3 years (Colorado technically has spring, but at 9,000 feet you can't really compare it to Ohio), it's also my first spring being single in 12 years. I had an urge to sit outside and just enjoy the weather, and I was happy about that until I realized that I would be doing that alone.....which sent me into a downward spiral.

I'm ok now, but this is just further evidence of how I'm still trying to come to terms with things. I feel that this blog can be a public record of my struggle, and if it helps someone else going through the same thing to realize that they aren't alone in these feelings, then I'm happy. But my goal here isn't to help people, it's to heal myself.

So here I sit wishing yet again that I didn't have to spend every evening all alone. But this space doesn't have to be occupied by a lover, it could be a friend. I just have no one to be with in this town. When all of your friends are 50 miles away, who can you talk to?

Other than facebook, I only have this blog.

So evidently.....

Did you ever just feel like you should write something? Did you ever just feel like you should find a way to be productive with the downtime you've been given, that otherwise would just be used up staring? Did you ever get aggrivated at having to do tasks that allowed for minimum productivity, but they simply had to be done?

I'm at the laundromat.

I had laundry machines back in February, but alas those were taken in my pseudo-divorce. They went with her, along with the bed, the dog, and most of the furniture.

Not that I'm writing to bitch about how I have nothing (even though I'm 30 and living in an empty house with very little other than the bare necessities and my studio equipment). That might be a later post for sure, but for now I'm bitching at how limited my productivity can be when I'm doing laundry a mile from home. It's frustrating. I used to be able to put my laundry in a machine in my basement and not worry about having to sit there until it was done. That would allow me to go do other things with my time. But right now, even though I have mixing projects to finish, I have to be sitting in this laundromat because in this po-dunk town of Marion the laundromats close at 9. So here I am last minute, wishing I was home finishing mixes for clients, writing this blog on my iPhone and listening to White Zombie.

I guess in a good way it gives me time to focus toward this blog. I mean, when else would I have focused time into it? In a way I was waiting til I had something to say, and I didn't have something to say til I got here. So for you, the blog readers (.....is anyone out there.....), this downtime is a fortunate occurance for you. You get one more glimpse into my life.

So let's talk about things. I've had some emotional moments stemming from the pseudo divorce over the last few days. I'm still fucked up evidently, and I need to work that shit out. No one else needs to be undertaken by my baggage. In a way it's good that I realize this now before I bury those issues deep and they manifest themselves in some explosive fucked up manner that embarrasses me or alientates everyone I know. This is a healing process, I don't need to rush things. I have all the time in the world.

So I've got some decisions about how I'm ready to proceed in certain areas to make. I don't wanna come out the bad guy, and in order for me to do that I fear that I have to make a tough choice. It's sad, but necessary.

I suppose we'll see how things go.

Companionship.

It's been a few years since I've dusted off the old blog. Let's see how this thing works.

So this post is about companionship. It's something I've had in spades for 12 years. It's something that now seems to be hard to attain, for obvious reasons. That's what happens when a 12 year marriage crumbles, and you're trying to pick up the pieces. Ok, so Sarah and I were never officially married, but when you spend nearly every day with someone for 12 years, I don't give a damn if we signed a piece of paper or not……we were married. It's been a tough divorce for me emotionally, but quite frankly in a lot of ways I'm very glad that we didn't have to go through an actual divorce. That's a huge expense and hassle that I would not want to have to go through.

All that aside, a lot of positives have happened for me since this divorce. I've picked back up music, and have made a hell of a lot of friends that I now interact with regularly. I never had that before, but at the same time, I was happy just being a house hermit with my companion. That's something that I'm still lacking, and still feeling the need to fulfill.

It's not that current situations aren't good enough for me, I've got people who care about me and want to spend time with me. I have companions in life. But I don't have a companion to share that life with, not in the way that I want it. I've been living on my own all alone since February, and I'm stranded in Marion Ohio an hour from ANY of my friends. I work in Dublin, my studio contacts are all in Columbus and the surrounding areas, and I have absolutely no friends in the Marion area. I sleep here and go to school here, and that's it. So the loneliness kills me at times. But that's a natural result of the current situation. The saddest thing is that even though I want to move to Columbus, right now it's not fiscally feasible, nor is it a practical business move for Skyline Sound Studios yet. Sure, being closer to my target market would increase my prospects, but the rent and cost of living are higher there. I would be giving up a lot of what I have now if I relocated. It's not as if I never go to Columbus, I'm there all the damn time! But almost nobody comes to Marion to see me. It's like pulling teeth to get someone to come here to see me, yet I'm always invited to functions in Columbus and I go without complaint of the distance! It's a minor annoyance, I realize that I'm a rare breed who likes to drive whereas others I know hate getting behind the wheel for extended periods. So I deal with it. But all of it adds to my feelings of seclusion, since at night my only companions are Facebook, youtube, netflix, and a whining cat.

So yeah, I'm lonely. I'm not trying to bitch about it, but I feel that I have things to get off my chest. So if you've read this far, thank you for reading.

What I'm really missing is the ability to have someone in my life on a consistent basis. Even when Sarah was in the picture, and I was still isolated, I didn't mind it at all. I had my companion here to spend time with me. Even when she was ignoring me in the end of our "marriage" and trying to get into her own space without me in her life, I still had her in the house! It didn't feel like an empty skeleton.

I realize that all of this is just part of the adjustment process. I'm going to be adjusting for a while I expect. I mean, let's look at this objectively. I was "married" from the time I was 18 to the time I was 30! I've NEVER been on my own in my life! Now that I'm completely on my own, it's a lot to absorb and deal through. I'm figuring out how to do things without relying on the other person to take care of it, which is something that should've been done years ago! I'm like a fat, old, bald, divorced 20 year old! LOL! But considering that I'm still trying to work through these things and adjust to life without Sarah, I feel that this format will be a good way of me getting those things worked through.

So how bad is my Sarah dependency 3 months after complete separation?

I see previews for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and think that I can't watch that movie without her! The same applies for the last installment of the Twilight saga or the Harry Potter films! Every one of those movie sagas were started with her in the theater with me, and it's unthinkable that she'll be watching them all continue or conclude with her new boyfriend and not me! I know that I can find other people to watch them with, but no one would appreciate them with me like Sarah did.

I think about the 4th of July, which was our anniversary. Even though we weren't married, that's the date we hooked up and I asked her if she'd go out with me! Every 4th of July since 1999 was spent with her, and even though some of them grew stagnant, it was a constant for me. This year, though I'm not currently dreading the holiday itself, it will be really weird to think of spending it just like any other day when I know it's not. I've gotta get out of town and make new memories for that date, or else I know I'm gonna have a rough go that day! I did the same thing around holidays with my family! Before my father and I re-connected a couple of years ago, I'd have the urge to get in touch with him on holidays simply because my family was so fractured that I had no one to spend Christmas with other than Sarah's family one year! I felt the need to make a connection with my father because it was a holiday and I was feeling extra sentimental, causing me to have a tough time that day. I didn't pick up the phone, which I'm glad for because I wasn't ready for that. The re-connection between my father and I took some time, but that's another blog post. The point is that I don't wanna panic, and do something stupid on the 4th of July this year because I'm feeling sentimental and depressed at the things I've lost. So I'm planning a trip to Colorado for the week around the 4th, and may even stop in Albuquerque to see some friends on the 4th itself! It's time to make a new tradition after all! I don't even wanna think about how I'll handle the holidays this year, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

The point is that I know I'm still adjusting to things. There's not a quick fix for it. I still feel the need to have companionship in my life on a daily basis at home, and that's because it's what I've always known. I miss Sarah at times, and it's hard not doing the things we used to do, but those days are gone. Now is about me, and learning to be without a companion, no matter how much I may wish I had one. I'll be fine. I'm saddened that I can't have that right now, but glad for the things I do have. I'll just have to keep working on myself one day at a time I suppose.

Thanks for reading.