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A good summer

September 13, 2011 – 6:33 pm

My line throughout the year has been that I had kind of a crappy summer. There were big, sweeping changes in my life that made me think this and to a point I was right to think this. Of course, not every big change in your life is a bad one and sometimes the things that feel the worst are actually some of the best things for you. I didn’t like that I got fired from my last job and I didn’t like that I didn’t get unemployment, but in the end that was the best thing to happen to me for my future. A dead end job isn’t where I belong. Now that fall is here I’ve been thinking a lot about my summer, a summer that I thought I “wasted”, and I realize now that it was actually a pretty damn good one.

Here’s what I did:

  • Saw Martin Lawrence. That was in May, does that count? He so crazy!
  • Went to Ring of Honor. It was okay.
  • Took my girlfriend to SummerFest for the first time and saw Jason Mraz. The show was “meh”, but the day we had was awesome.
  • Went to CHIKARA in Chicago with my dad and nephew. The most fun I’ve ever had at a wrestling show in my life.
  • Met Colt Cabana and Mike Quackenbush at that show. Didn’t take my picture with them or anything because be for real, but it was cool meeting them and just saying what’s up since I spend about two hours with them every week. (Art of Wrestling/Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe podcasts.)
  • Went to WWE’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view, the greatest WWE pay-per-view of all-time and watched CM Punk walk out with the title in one a crazy moment in front of an INSANE crowd. (Since this show I’ve not been able to keep myself interested in wrestling. It’s like I reached the apex of my fandom and there is no point of continuing.)
  • Saw almost every movie I wanted to see this summer (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Tree of Life and Bridesmaids being the ones I wanted to see but missed). Saw Harry Potter 7p2 surrounded by people dressed up at midnight. Another good time.
    (SUMMER MOVIE RANKINGS: Thor, Super 8, Captain America, HP7p2)
  • Took Nolan fishing for the first time. Took Nolan camping for the first time. Went on bike rides with Nolan. Took Nolan swimming for the 10,000th time.
  • Reconnected with some old friends and realized that I’d been being stupid keeping myself locked up all the time.
  • Met some new friends who made me realize how awesome I can be to hang out with when I want to be.
  • Two Brewers games. Not an ideal number of games for a guy like me, but you have to make some sacrifices when you don’t have a lot of money. Really enjoyed the two games I did go to.
  • Went and saw Pearl Jam both nights of their 20th anniversary show which is something I wanted to do since the day the concert was announced and I’m glad I got to do it.
  • Also saw The Strokes at the show which was awesome because they are one of my favorite bands. Julian Casablancas acted like kind of a douche between songs, but they were still good.
  • Ran a restaurant. Working a 70 hour week is not exactly what I’d call fun, but it was a good experience.
  • Got a new iPhone. Got a new laptop.
  • Started eating right and losing weight. Feeling good about myself.

Maybe I didn’t do everything I wanted to do and maybe everything didn’t go how I planned, but I do some fun stuff and I had some good times. It wasn’t a great summer, but it was a good summer and sometimes that’s enough.

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A quick thought on moving…

September 6, 2011 – 8:13 pm

I’ve been thinking a lot about moving lately. I’ve even volunteered to be someone’s roommate in Milwaukee should a few breaks go our way and we get this nice house at a good price. I’ve been planning on it, actually. There were things keeping me here and those things aren’t here anymore and the logic goes that I should go too and yet I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t the right thing to do. Not right now. Moving for the sake of moving is not a good reason to move. At least, it’s not the reason I am looking for to move.

And then there is this:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

That’s from a Robert Frost poem and I read it in this book I read recently and how those words changed the author’s life. About how he always tried to heed those words whenever making a major life decision and it’s how I want to live my life. I don’t bend to popular opinion and I don’t always do what everyone thinks is right for me. I make decisions based off of what I think is right. So, what’s the play here? Do I stay or do I go? What is the road less traveled?

I know that right now there is less reason than ever for me to stay here and somehow, that makes staying here feel right. At least for today.

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Everything is going to change and that is okay with me

August 30, 2011 – 2:58 pm

A lot of things have changed in my life and a lot more are about to change even more. Goals, jobs, living situations, relationships, it’s all going to be different from here on out. I’ve sensed it for a long time and now it’s here. It is a scary feeling, leaving things behind, but it is something that needs to be done at this point in my life and despite the scary feelings I am excited. I am happy how everything turned out.

I could tell you a story about two people who lived together in a space they didn’t want to be in, but stayed in it because they wanted to be together and ended up unhappy for it. I know that story very well and I have told that story way too many times before, but that’s not the story I want to tell anymore. It’s not my story anymore and I am just not interested in it anymore. I am interested in the story of getting better every day of your life and becoming the person that everyone thinks you can be and the person that you want to be. The people who fill in the supporting roles in that story are important to it, but they aren’t the story. The characters can change because the story is me.

(Is this coming across emotional? Because I don’t mean it to be. I have done the emotions thing and I am done with it. This is about positivity and new experiences. This is about saying goodbye to the life that I knew. It’s a happy time. It’s time to walk on through.)

I haven’t weighed myself in a few days so I can’t give the update on the quest for 180, but I imagine I’ve dropped a few more. Just been eating so right lately. Grilled chicken or salmon with veggies, every meal. No bread, no butter, no potatoes, no sugar. Smaller portions and salads with oil and vinegar (which is awful, btw). I am doing my best to not care about taste or feeling full and just eating what I need to eat. I definitely miss garlic bread. Drinking lots of water and no sugar drinks. I’ve drank a few beers (a few too many actually), but every time I’ve done so I’ve skipped dinner. I think that is the right thing to do, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll just switch to vodka full-time when I go out. (And I probably shouldn’t be doing shots, but hey it’s a work in progress.) Not being able to work out as much as I’d like to though. Just hindu squats whenever I get the chance. Once I get my job situation better figured out, as in only having one, I think I’ll be able to actually get to the gym. I hope so at least. That said, I can definitely feel a difference in my life now that I have adopted eating better/positive thinking/exercise and it’s only going to get better.

I’m off for now. Going to only my second Brewers game of the year tonight and I couldn’t be more excited. WORLD SERIES.

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One Eighty and the year of not Vince

August 22, 2011 – 11:51 pm

Last summer was a time when everything went right for me. I started dating my girlfriend, I had an amazing time with my friends, I threw the Pants Party, we won a trip to Mexico and a bunch of other fun stuff. It was a really great summer and I will always cherish it. As time went by and the summer turned to fall things stayed good but not as great and then in the winter things started to change like they always do.

Last year was supposed to be the year that it all ended. The year I was supposed to move and stop working as a server and everything would be different and better and awesome. Then I got caught up with being in love and I didn’t do that. I don’t regret it, but that’s what happened. So I stayed at Popeyes and I stayed in Lake Geneva and I didn’t do some things I wanted to do because I was so happy I didn’t want anything to change.

Working as a server in a resort town in the winter is hell. You don’t make any money, but your bills are all more because you’re home all the time and you’re cranking the heat. You can’t do anything because you don’t have any money and it’s so cold you don’t want to. There are a lot of great things about winter, for example sleeping next to someone is so much better in the winter and the holidays are fun, but most of it sucks. I didn’t really like this winter. My bad times at work just amplified how much I didn’t want to do this anymore. My roommate stopped paying his bills which necessitated a move and then when the seasons changed I decided to tell my boss “fuck you” and got myself fired. (I regret this now less than ever.) It took me a couple months to figure it out after that, both because I didn’t really have a plan and it was hard to find a job, and it was a hard time for me. No job. No money. Living at my girlfriend’s mom’s house. Some friends stopped calling. My laptop died. It felt like the world was against me. It felt like the Year of Not Vince, like some karmic retribution for how happy I’d been the summer before. I was like Buffy after she came back from Heaven and it felt like the worst time of my life.  (In retrospect it probably wasn’t and I should have spent more time appreciating what I did have going for me and less time depressed about what I didn’t, but that’s easy to say now.) I let it get to me and I stopped being me which led to me ending up single.

It’s been a bad year, but it’s over now. I realize now that it was the worst year because I let it be. Like I said before, I stopped being me. I got depressed and I wouldn’t let anyone get me out of it. I pushed away anyone who tried. I hid from the world. I wasn’t making things happen. I stopped feeling like I was in control of my own life and that’s not me. I’m Harvey Dent. I make my own luck.

It’s only been a couple weeks of adopting this mindset and already things are starting to look up for me. I got some potentially capital-g Great news about my website business, I might be doing a children’s book with an artist I met just for kicks, getting some job interviews, basically managing a restaurant for now, figured out a strategy for some website ideas that have been bugging me for a couple months, getting back in a writing groove,  and I FINALLY have a screenplay idea that I believe in. It’s all going to be fine. Things are going to work out and I am going to be better than ever. The key phrase being “going to”, but it will happen. Sometimes you just need to believe in yourself. No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.

Also, there is this thing down here which I will try and keep updated on the site (I plan to write more) to track my progress.

7 down. 27 to go. THE QUEST FOR 180.

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Random photos from my time as a comic book scanner

May 9, 2011 – 12:12 am

Last week I worked a temp job for a memorabilia company scanning comic book covers for an auction. It was easy, it allowed me to listen to podcasts all day, it paid well enough and it was easy. I loved it.

I probably scanned about 400 or 500 comic books a day for 6 days.  There were lots of old school Superman comics where every cover had shock headlines (“Supergirl kicks Superman out of his house!”), weird 60s ones with boobs and lots of TV adaptations. At first I was like “oh cool look at this,” but the more I did the more I just kind of scanned them without even glancing at them. Still, there were some that grabbed me that I wanted to remember for whatever reason and I took pictures of them with my iphone. These are those pictures. read more »

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