Argh. too much dancing. I was bad and skipped my exercise routine for a week, then I overdid it yesterday to compensate. After a night at Exit where I realized that I was butt-tired, the DJ started playing a really good set and I couldn't get off the floor. Now I'm lucky that I can stay on my feet. PAIN. ow. Well, at least if I'm going to be injured, I injured myself to some decent music. I'm surprised the DJ didn't have the OHGR disc though. :( I suppose I'll have to bring that one in next time.

I'm sitting here, trying to download a track from this polish electro band that someone sent me a link for and I am having no luck whatsoever. This is almost as bad as when seventh harmonic sent me a link and when I downloaded their track I couldn't play it because it was in mono and the rest of my radio show is in stereo. I was not about to re-record my whole show for one song. It's a shame really, I liked them.

Blah. It must be too early for me to think. Just feel weird inside...not sure what to do about it. Eh. I guess I should go elsewhere and figure out precisely where today is headed.

The word for this week is catharsis. Here is me, trying to purge my angst, pain and aggression into a more constructive medium. Yes, that's right, more webstuff. I conquered the elusive personality test making code and made my first of what will soon be many personality tests. My first test was the KMFDM personality test, a fun little thing indeed.

Sent off pictures to Michael of the live Slick Idiot crew. Wonder what he wants with them?

Slowly making friends with yet another musician who is apparently in my town...an electro synthpop kinda thing. I have this thing where I either attract musicians or gravitate towards them I don't know what it is.

Went grocery shopping and have plenty o food now, but also plenty o dishes which I should be washing right now instead of typing away on here. I was good today and did my exercises, but I've been really crabby and have languished a lot this week. I deserve to gain back some of that flab I guess. I hope I get to go dancing this evening at Exit...I could use come cathartic dance time too. Still have lots to work out in my head. :(

Been very antisocial as a result...not much for talking. More for doing. I find that for the most part, talking doesn't help nearly as much as channeling the feelings into projects of sorts. Four years and eight webpages later, you can see that i've had a lot to work out. I have no idea how much web space I'm taking up, but it must be a lot.

I need to kick myself in the butt and continue on with Gothic Survivor and finish my goth choose your own adventure story. Slow going, but determined to get somewhere with them, as many view that as some of my best work.

Ah well...time to go accomplish things.

The zoo is a smelly place. Don't get me wrong, I love the zoo and watching cute fuzzy creatures frolicking about. I even love the uglier creatures like the rhinos and hippos and walruses. But man, the olfactory onslaught of animal aroma. Yeep. And then there those moments when you are watching a cute creature doing excessively cute things, or marveling at a wonderous beast behaving just as it would in nature and suddenly you are reminded that these animals don't give a crap that you are witnessing their various bodily functions. Well, really, they give a very large crap, and that's the problem.

Aside from poop, the zoo was fun. I was being vaguely stalked by a male ostrich for a bit. Many of the animals knew better than to venture out into the heat and sun, so the result was a lot of large floppy kitties, buffalo and camels. My favorite exhibit was probably the jellyfish aquarium, which was lit by blacklight. I wanted that jellyfish tank in my house. Any self respecting raver would have drooled over the trancey display of calming, glowing sea creatures.

After the zoo visit, I realized that despite how some people may think that zoos are cruel to animals by keeping them enclosed and out of their natural habitat, zoo life looks pretty good to me. It would be such a pain to lay around all day in a patch of sun, sleeping, getting well fed, being the center of everyone's attention. No, I'd much rather be an underpaid corporate slave trapped in a cubicle with no view of a window except through the door of someone else's office (but only when it's open) and shuffling papers all day with the only bright spot being a cheap fast food lunch.

I think "Hippo" is a step up from "Office Monkey" any day.

Still cranky though. Work starts next week. Slept like crap. Need groceries. Gots lots to take care of, and no motivation to do so. Maybe I'll throw myself a steak and go gnaw on it in the corner, and roar if anyone stares at me.

What have I accomplished today? Well, I uploaded my random radio show, and even put together the show for afterwards. The show following will be a sort of old-school club set revisited from my days at Outland and Maxwell's in college (the first time around). Just putting the songs together gave me a good feeling. I still remember the smoky smell of the clubs and the feeling of the floor under my feet. I could use the comfort right now as I am still really pissed off and trying very hard not to be destructive (either in thought or deed). I'd love to go dancing about now. No, correction, I NEED to go dancing about now.

Work starts up again next week, and school later this month. I'm feeling spoiled and I don't really want to go back to work. This is the first break I've had in years and I've just been enjoying LIVING...getting up when I'm ready, doing artwork, exercising...making the most of my time and not having to worry about having to be anywhere specific unless I want to.

Even though I've finally relaxed again, I've had a lot on my mind. I'm doing my best not to dwell on the negative things that crop up, as is my usual habit. It's hard when you've learned to worry from a very young age. Probably my biggest issue in the coming months will be getting settled with myself and my artwork, and meshing that with boosting my self esteem. Well, hell that's always an issue I guess. Just now more than ever.... I have people telling me how talented I am...friends, random people who visit my site, and even people like Romell (it always means a lot from him, as I look up to him quite a bit) Yet I have a hard time truly accepting the praise a lot of times. I never really have felt I deserve it. I feel mediocre most of the time...and I feel like because I have nothing to show for my "talent" that I'm really not all that.

I don't know if I'll ever get past all that. It's something that only I can turn around, but nonetheless I still seek acceptance from others. I look back on my recent series of drawings and sometimes I am supremely pleased. Other times I think I could have done far better. I know I should keep up with the drawings....and the sewing. Getting in the mood to do creative work takes some work. Once I'm there...I get obsessed with the act of drawings/painting/whatever, and then the drive to keep moving forward sets in. I set aside things like eating, sleeping, chores..etc. just so I can work on stuff. I always wind up with several projects going at once. Perhaps the biggest problem with that is getting myself to finish everything (to my satisfaction).

Blah. I must be upset. it's all artwork with me. Art Art Art. Art art butter pickles art socks art dancing art art ice cream. That's what being in my head is like sometimes. Get me out of here.
Currently listening to SNOG, my favorite cynical, corporate bashing electro industrial band. I used to play the Corporate Slave song constantly at my first office job...quite loudly through the speakers.

11:32. I should get to bed. Rest usually helps with the onset of crabbiness. I've been on the damn electric box for too long today, running away from lots of things.

At least I've gotten the new Slick Idiot Fan site up and running with new artwork and the whole bit. Maybe I need to go put that disc on repeat or something so I don't wind up listening to Stabbing Westward or Nine Inch Nails and pondering the liquor cabinet. Sigh.

Well, labor day has passed already. I wish I could say that my time away was entirely relaxing, but that wouldn't be quite right. There's nothing quite like making stupid mistakes and getting reamed for them as if you had planned to be hurtful in the first place. Oh yes, I take so much time out of my busy life to cause other people problems. Isn't it enough that I've got an entire wedding to plan next year that is not going to cost much more than a cheap used car? And the fact that my fiancee has been angsting about the security of his job for the last 2 months?

The present time is not one of the clearest thought...not that I am one who means to be thoughtless. But when timing is an issue, I always seem to come out on the bad end even when I mean well. But, no one seems to notice my intent and instead I get taken very literally and things are taken too seriously. I'm always guilty of taking things to seriously, but I avoid blowing things out of proportion where possible. Honestly, sometimes I think that it's better to not say anything at all than to fall into the accident of saying something stupid. Then again, either way yer damned. So I guess no matter what I wouldn't have escaped this.

I've put up with this for years. I've had venom aimed at me that wasn't all my fault, I just wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time and I end up regretting a lot of shit later. It's times like this that make me feel like I would have been better off not being where I was. It's that "why bother"...kind of attitude.

What ticks me off, is I don't do this kind of crap to people. I don't go out of my way to be a bad person and yet certain people decide to make me one anyhow. So I'm human. I do stupid things at bad times and no matter how hard I try to do the right thing, it's like it never really matters and then I have grudges against me...blah blah blah. It comes to a point where I don't even want to make the effort anymore if in the end when I least expect it, I get walloped with guilt and anger.

Then, do to my already lacking state of self esteem, I get out my boots and precede to stomp myself even further into the ground so no one else can. I can do it better than all of you. So when the smoke finally clears, people wonder why I trounce on myself so much. That's what I've learned, no thanks to anyone.

While I'm fairly decent at communicating, more so than some other people I know anyway, I am NOT a literal person. There's always something more to what I'm trying to say, and if you're not reading the emotions between the lines and catching the details, then you are misunderstanding me. And that happens a lot with a very select group of people. I feel like you are either on my wavelength, or you aren't and you will probably never be. I've argued with someone who took me too literally that THAT"S how language is supposed to be...literal. Word for word. Whatever. Language is not just simple words. Words are tools. People forget we don't just talk in words, we're far more complex than that. What about body language? Facial expression? those other hidden things that are ever present in our communication?

I will not be faulted for communicating differently than other people. I talk the way I talk, no matter how much I try to adapt. I'm an artist, which makes things all that much worse because I don't think the way other people tend to. I've always been more flighty and out there....and I see things far differently - usually in ways that other people can't. And, while it's often annoying, even to me, I can only do some much about it.

So then, I'm perceived as sometimes stupid or thoughtless, etc etc when I'm not behaving or saying quite what other people expect. And half the time, it's because I'm trying to communicate with someone who is so mundane and on the other end of the comunicative spectrum. I've had this problem my whole life. Put me in a room with a very logical, mundane person who has a tendency to get stuck on words and take things at face value. Here's me, a flighty creative type who has a hard time nailing down what I need to say in the right words, and somehow making clear emotions are other things behind what I'm trying to say so I'm delivering a whole package. This scenario makes for a really big mess and a lot of misunderstanding. It's never been pretty, and it may likely never will be - I have yet to conquer this frustrating kind of confrontation.

I'm apparently mired in one of these lovely self-redefining moments. How fun. I finally get a handle on my drawing skills again and start feeling good about something I've accomplished, then I get my kneecaps shattered by the baseball bat of lack of communication . Now I'm sitting in the mud again, feeling like I've accomplished nothing. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to fight this battle of feeling good about myself at all. As soon as things take a good turn, I get knocked down again. And what is going to come of this? More artwork I imagine. The force that drives me to create it makes me insane and stupid, and then the artwork I seeks to become therapy for all the pain, frustration and anger that I'm left with. So...it's like a parasite in a way.

I didn't ask to be who I am, I just am. It's hard enough when other people don't accept that when I can't even do it myself.