moving on up...

i'll no longer be updating this little guy here, as all my new posts will now displayed on my new site:

http://stubbornpixie.artbullies.com

enjoy!

in whatever form it comes

I've been having these bursts of creativity lately. Bursts that that are so quick and fleeting that I can't seem to keep them down to earth long enough to grab them and hold on. I grasp at them; my fingers lightly grazing their essence, but they disappear as soon as I get within reach. It's as if every distraction completely shuts out inspiration, and I can't concentrate on anything for more that five minutes. 

But, I did manage a marathon site redesign yesterday, and http://www.erniecernst.com has a new face with, more importantly, cleaner code. There was a metric shit ton of gobbledygook in the mix, and I saw some shit that was so confusing I'm pretty sure I was hopped up on cough syrup when I wrote it. In any case, I learned a few things and managed to stay focused until it was done. Okay, okay, not "completely" done. By the time I'd been at it for so long that my ass was numb, I started letting some little shit squeak by, and I admit the use of a table or two.  Whatever, it's still better than it was.  Today, I whipped up a new fireflyers site with a little color inspiration by Josh. It's very nice.   So, I'm taking it as a sign that I'm just trying too hard with the writing and the chord-making and the track-mixing at the moment.  Because everything I'm doing is stock (as Lars would say) and mediocre and craptacular and I believe it might have something to do with the fact that I'm forcing it.  So, if  the inspiration comes in the form of layout and code, I'll fucking take it.  

This awesome weather.

The weather has been so incredibly beautiful the last few days. Colors seem brighter and there is a sweet smell when you walk outside. I am full on ready for fall. Work has been insane. This is the busy season, and I really need some time to relax before the fruity shit starts to hit the fan. I wanted to go down and check on my folks this weekend, but I'm so exhausted I'm going to postpone and feel guilty about it. I just want to sleep. I'm too tired for conversations and chores and bills and errands. I'm even too tired for WoW. That's serious tiredness. Next weekend will make up for all the stress and worries. Next weekend, maxin' and relaxin' are the only rules.

note to self: remember to breathe

even though it's monday, it's not all bad. i had a good weekend. i got to see my folks and i got to hang out with friends. i even managed to relax a little. which is a rare and beautiful thing. stress levels in me and around me always seem to run extremely fucking high. it's always something. some drama, some inconvenience, too little sleep, too many cramps, worries about money, stupid relationship arguments about nothing, stupid relationship arguments about everything, stressing about my folks, feeling guilty for... fuck, everything i don't manage to get done, feeling jealous about stupid shit, just... on and on and blah blah blah. ALL the fucking time. it's a wonder any of us manage to fucking make it to our thirtieth birthdays. how have i not had a heart attack? how do i manage to recover from all the fucking breakdowns? reboot after a mental shutdown? re-surface from the depths of a major depressive episode? i don't really fucking know, to be honest. love? friends? fleeting moments of clarity? yes. yes. and yes. okay, so - the trick is, to remember this when the shit starts going down the tubes again. which, it will; it's inevitable - and i don't mean that in a pessimistic way; i mean it in a "fact of life" way. it would be pessimistic if i was convinced there was no cure for it anymore. i still believe in the cure. love. friends. laughing. setting aside large chunks of precious time to do nothing but daydream and ponder the miniscule wonders of the world. it's all gonna be okay. i just have to remember to breathe. that's all. so simple.

noise

i got an email from double b today. he's asking for books to put in bookcases for sound diffusion in his studio. i realized, in a matter of minutes how attached i am to all my books. books that i will most likely never read again. some i never finished, some i never even started. but i didn't want to give any of them up. weird. i ended up donating a coldfusion mx manual that i'm fairly certain i can be without and not lose sleep over. meanwhile, i'm starting to remember why i love music. more listening, less trying to create something out of thin air. there are so many songs that stir up something in me that's inexplicable, and i've ignored them for a long time. shut them out and refused to hear them. noise is good. i forget that sometimes. on another note, work is really starting to get in the way of my slacking. weak.

suck it, mercury

the world is so complicated that it's incredibly naive to even make a statement like that. but, there it is. i did it. "the world is complicated." there's such a constant state of flux between awesome and horrifying that it's a wonder any of us can make it through every day without losing our shit. there has been a lot of down time for me lately. zoning out. thinking about nothing. thinking about everything and doing absolutely nothing about it. not much to show for any of it. a few scraps of paper here and there with mindless crap scribbled on them. a chord, few notes, put the guitar down. more nothing. then a rush of everything that i've ever worried about in my life fills up my brain for a few minutes. just enough to force my body to shut down again so that i don't implode. then, more nothing. i'm listless and restless to the point that concentrating on anything for more than a few seconds starts to send me into hyperventilation mode. not all the time, i mean, obviously, i'm able to function and all. but my mind... it's like it's just taking a vacation. like, "oh hey. you aren't going to start thinking again are you? yeah, fuck that - i'm out. click." and it's gone. i guess it wouldn't be so bad if i didn't have a metric shit-ton of guilt waiting when my mind returns. i mean, if i could just enjoy the zoning out - fuck, that would be neat. but as soon as i snap back into reality, all i can think about is how much precious time i've wasted just sitting, doing nothing special. whatever sort of planetary alignment has been kicking it the last six months can go fuck itself. seriously. let's get venus and saturn to bust out with some happy disco butterfly vibes. mars can bring the smores. mercury can stay the fuck home and watch reruns of barney miller for all i care. that's right, mercury, you little piece of shit. you're not invited to the butterfly disco party because you're a downer. so there.

*DISCLAIMER: i don't know shit about planetary alignments or what have you. i just like to blame mercury for shit because i have anger displacement issues.*

playing secretary

i've had little time to write lately, since i do most of my posting while i'm at work, and i've been working my ass off. the last few weeks have been the tough weeks to get through when your job is usually a cakewalk. it's not that i mind working when i'm actually on the clock. it's good to feel productive and helps you to appreciate the times when you can just fuck off even more. not to toot my on horn (toot!) but i'm pretty much kicking ass and taking names getting everything ready for launch day hell this friday. again, like i said, it's good to feel productive. it's nice to know that you're good at your job. it's only slightly depressing that i'm good at something i'm not passionate about. i mean, fuck. it's a dumb corporate job, you know? it's numbers and meetings and procedures and processes and questions and issues and spreadsheets and - the gayest term ever invented - "action items." and i'm good at these things. i don't know why. maybe it's because when i was a kid, i used to sit in my mom's office and play secretary. i thought it was neat. i thought office supplies were neat. give me a pad of sticky notes and some paper clips and i could entertain myself for a good half an hour. don't get me wrong, i also played rock star while singing tina turner into my hairbrush, and this one kid who lived down the street convinced me to play doctor a couple of times... back then, i did think that working at a desk would be fun. and through the years, i've always seemed to be employed at some sort of "office-y" type work environment. for many years, it was an office during the day, and bartending at night. then there were the carefree years when i first moved to austin when all i did was bartend and fucking rock out. those were the days. those were also the days when i turned myself into a self-destructive lush, though, so... you know - you figure it out. i love bartending. i really do. it's fun as shit, you work your ass off, and you can make a shit ton of money. on a good night. then, there could be a whole week where tips suck and you can't pay the rent. and also, you're still a whore-y lush. so, yeah, eventually i had to make the choice to go back to playing secretary. although, i seemed to maintain my whore-y lushiness for a while even back in good old corporate america, but that's a different post altogether. anyway, i'm just trying to find a reason to be okay with the decisions that i've made for myself. i guess we're all trying to do that, really, when you think about it. make a choice, be okay with it, or make a fucking change. it's okay that i'm good at my job. anything i do, i like to do well. what is hard is realizing, at the end of a long day being good at your job, that you have spent all your energy on it. which means there is little left for expressing yourself creatively, or sometimes, even thinking about anything else. these are the trade offs for being able to pay the bills. at least i'm able to buy groceries this week. and groceries are gooood. and i still love sticky notes.

scrambled brains, yum.

i'm still recovering from an awesome weekend. i've wanted nothing more than to sleep the last few days, and my brain still feels a bit scrambled. but it's a good kind of scrambled, if that's possible. i started working on a short story. it may be crap, but writing is writing is writing, no? my concentration is for shit, and i've been staring out the window a lot. it kinda feels nice to just zone out, though. i think people misconstrue lazy gazing as unproductive, when sometimes that's really the best way to get the brain matter working creatively. daydreaming is always good in my book. the neighbors next door are moving out. they're really cool kids and they had a bunch of stuff they didn't feel like moving so we got ourselves a nice grill and an aquarium out of the deal. although, i hesitate to fill the aquarium up with fish for fear we might contemplate eating them when times get hard again... kidding. i'm not much of a seafood fan unless it has claws or an exoskeleton.

groceries from the great beyond

my grandma sent me some much needed love from the great beyond yesterday in the way of a check that came in from the oil stock that she left to me in her will. it came in the nick of time, as these things tend to do, as i was angrily walking down to the mailbox for a moment of fresh air and "calm-the-fuck-down"-edness that had to occur in order for josh and i to not kill each other at that very moment. he'd had a really rough morning, running on gas fumes to get downtown to mow some lawns and pick up a check from a client that meant enough gas money to get home. halfway through the first lawn, the POS weed-eater decided to eat shit and stop working altogether. which meant, he couldn't finish the lawns, so... no check. somehow, he managed to make it back to the house without running out of gas. needless to say, when he got home, there was much cursing and ranting about how fucking unfair life is sometimes, especially when you're already to the point of losing your shit completely. i had been asleep for all of about 2 hours and since my sleepy time is oh-so-precious to me, i was a bit pissy at being woken up so soon. but, i understood how he felt, because i, too, understand the not so fair ways of the universe. probably one of my very favorite phrases happens to be, "but it's just not fucking fair!" i've always thought that was a libra thing, but i think it's more of a universally human feeling. in any case, we were both upset at the fact that yet again, life seemed to be shitting on us, just for fucking trying to survive. i tried to give him the old "hey - everything's gonna be okay. you just have to calm down." bullshit. (which absolutely NEVER fucking works on me because if i'm wound up enough for you to tell me i need to calm down, then those very words are likely to send me into a frenzy of dish-throwing, yelling, and as many variations of the word "fuck" that i'm able to spit out while still crying and hurling things at the wall.) it did not work on him, either, and i knew it immediately by the fire burning in his eyes. i threw up my hands and walked out of the house, stormed to the mailbox, muttering under my breath, and there - lo and behold, was the saving grace we needed: "pay to the order of" right there in my hands. when i got back in the house, i handed the check to josh and told him to get his sweet ass up and come to the grocery store with me, because, by god, we were gonna get more than just milk and eggs today!

it's kind of sad to me that all it takes is a fucking dollar bill to make things okay again sometimes. money is so goddamn evil and yet, you absolutely have to have it to survive. i'm sure there are some really high-minded, highly intelligent, deeply spiritual people who could immediately call bullshit on this statement, and they may be right to some degree. but i'm talking about surviving in "this" reality. "this" world. "this" america. actually, it's not kind of sad. it's really sad. how did we get this way, as a people? how did the world come to be inhabited by a bunch of greedy fucking bastards? i don't know, and honestly, i'm really tired of trying to reason it out.

but, in that small little sum of cash, came the salvation that two people on the brink of chaos and destruction needed to get through another day. it's amazing how much some broccoli, corn, frozen burritos, and hamburger meat can cheer a gal up. and getting to the end of the list and be able to splurge on that $1.07 box of brownies...? priceless. i should be in a goddamn mastercard commercial. except, they've taken my mastercard away because i stopped paying the bill...

this sounded like a rant. i guess it was. but it's a rant with a happy ending. i have everything i need. a wonderful, passionate, loving boyfriend. two dogs who are happy to have had real dog food for dinner and not "nasty canned food that the people in the house refuse to eat." frozen pizza. and the promise of a full day's rest tomorrow. life is sweet. and there is absolutely no sarcasm in that sentence.

come on down!

josh got some scratch from a client today. we had nine dollars and fifty cents left over from putting some gas in the car and depositing a twenty in the bank to avoid another overdraft fee. of course the first thing i did was buy a pack of cheap ass cigarettes because i really like to smoke. then, on to the rehearsal space where we attempted to record our practice. things did not go as planned, but i think we're going to give it another shot in the next week or so. on the way home, dollar bills burning a hole in my pocket, we went to the grocery store and you would have thought we'd just won the goddamned showcase showdown on the price is right. we were very excited to get milk, eggs, bread, butter, and - as a bonus - some lunchmeat. we came home and immediately hooked ourselves up with quite possibly the most delicious pot of mac and cheese ever fucking made. seriously, it was damn good. i think we were both just extremely happy to not be ingesting beans and rice again. the house was hotter than a two dollar pistol when we got home, so i caved and turned the a/c back on for a few hours because even the dogs looked sweaty. but, despite my terrible stomach ache early in the day - i can only assume it was my meanness that caused it - a few moments where i wanted to jump out of the car and run screaming down the street because i can only go a few hours these days without completely flipping out, and only getting a few, non-restful hours of sleepy time, it was a pretty freakin' good day.