So it’s been a pretty crazy year for me.
One year ago I was living in North Carolina with my folks. I’d been in NC for 15 years, and had long since decided to leave. No offense to my many wonderful friends there, each of whom I love to some degree and for some reason, but it was never my place, I never wanted to be there, and I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I’d long since decided that I wanted to move back to Kalamazoo and put my roots down there, but had no idea how I was going to make that happen – vague notions of expanding my web design business into a multi-state concern or something.
Then I decided to take up an offer from some folks I thought were friends, pack up all my stuff (and we’re not really talking about a KISS-sized convoy of conspicuous consumption here), and head to California. “You guys know it could be months before I get on my feet, right?” says I and them says “No problemo, amigo, mi casa su casa.” and a girl I’d been talking to who lived near them said “c’mon down and take me you sexy hunk of man” and so off I go and six weeks later I’m living in a Wal-mart parking lot trying to keep the crackheads away from my stuff while having nightmares of becoming one of them, and of course the maiden fair has gone MIA.
A few panicked phone calls and some generous and beautiful help from friends and family ensue, and suddenly I’m back in Kalamazoo, much sooner than I expected to be. Old connections start being remade, old friends return, new friends are made, and I spend a few months settling in and seeing around how things are around here now - “here” being both Kalamazoo, and inside my own head.
I lost two people – my ex-brother-in-law and my mom – who had immeasurable influence and impact on my life, and I’m nowhere near close to fully dealing with either loss.
Those folks reading who have been reading for a while, who have known me over the last eight, ten years, have probably noticed that my creative content has shifted from a focus on politics, social issues, and entertainment to being mostly self-related. Stories about my thoughts and feelings and what I’m experiencing and so forth, what I’m thinking as I grow through this series of upheavals in my life.
That’s going to change soon. I’ve been slowly going through this blog for the last couple of weeks, recategorizing and re-tagging everything. That process is not yet complete. As it continues, I’ve also decided that I’m going to start culling out some old posts that are mostly just me bitching about my life or whatever, and try to shift things here back to focusing more on my actual creative output rather than this constant meta-textual navel-gazing. I’ll save them, but mark them as “unpublished.”
Things will be shifting gears elsewhere as well. I’ve formally notified my boss that I’m actively trying to not drive a taxi any longer than I absolutely have to. It’s not that the job sucks, I meet all kinds of great people, but the money’s not steady enough for me and the hours are exactly when I need them NOT to be so I can do all the other things I should be doing. It’s not “two weeks notice,” but it’s a head-up that it’s gonna be coming ASAP.
As time and circumstances and inspiration permit, I’ll be cutting more videos, as well as getting back to work on Asylum Lake and the rest of my musical career, and all of the other things I’ve talked about here over the last few months. My more personal musings will likely shift elsewhere – to Facebook notes, maybe, or maybe I’ll just quietly continue posting them here, but not tagging them for ‘above the fold’ display on the front page, I haven’t decided yet.
I wanted to take a second and say thank you, again, to all the family, friends, and fans who have been following my rather insane trail over the last twelve months (or the last hrmrhrmphrhm years). Knowing that you guys dig what I do is what keeps me doing it, and I’m sorry I’ve not been doing much of it lately. Life continues to happen while I’m busy making other plans, and I really appreciate you all hanging in there with me. I’m getting my feet under me, slowly, and picking up traction little by little. The next couple of years have been my whole life in the making, and for once I’m going to be deliberate and calculating and careful about how I do things, rather than getting a big rush about something and going all nuts about it only to burn out a week later and move on to something else. It may seem like I’m not making much progress, but step by slow and careful step I am finally coming in to my own for the first time in my life. I am confident and happy more days than not; I know who I am and what I want, even if I still have trouble finding the words to express it.
But I’m also making a deliberate choice to live a public life, and that means there needs to be a pulling back of some of the more personal and banal things I write about here. Not because I’m ashamed of anything I’ve written or am worried about people knowing too much about me, but because I honestly don’t think people who know me give a rip about that kind of stuff and I don’t want to bore them with it.
So that’s where things are with me. My endless gratitude is extended to those of you who continue to watch this train wreck. As time permits over the next few weeks, I’ll be finishing the redesign and tightening things up here, in preparation to use the site as more of a platform to publish and publicize whatever I happen to be doing at any given time.
Meanwhile, it’s back off to the taxi races. Take care.