It has been a busy little while. Work is busy and fulfilling while maddening and crazy. Family life is getting ramped up to insane with school starting for us again. It’s just been crazy. Since the last time I posted I threw a birthday shindig for myself with Revolt .45, Micah Schnabel, and Austin Lucas on the bill, worked over 100 hours in the two weeks following moving our entire datacenter from one location to another, spent some time laid up in bed, and generally didn’t have time to sit down and collect my thoughts. Right now I am up way too late as my brother fixes my air conditioner, which turned out to be no small feat, which is the first step in remodeling our broken home. I have vowed to stop spending money like a sailor fresh in port and start buckling down, fixing my credit rating, fixing up the house, and generally making life better. There’s a lot to be done. I had tried and failed to simplify my life and that’s back on the table as well but I think it won’t start with physical things as much as it will relationships and focus.
I think Tim Barry says it best at the beginning of this song:
I guess it’s time for some end of summer house cleaning. I have a lot to sort out over the next little while and I may or may not reason it out here. I have some sitting down and talking with some folks to do before I make any final decisions but those are necessary steps. I doubt anyone in my life will be surprised by anything that comes of this. I am too old for a lot of things these days…
I did take almost all of July off of Facebook and now that I am back on I don’t spend even half the time on there that I used to and it feels pretty good. I never did write as much here as I wanted to but that’s how it fell in to place. I also still write for 9B and Comical Musings but not nearly often enough. I have rolled back my own expectations and realized I am not a journalist but rather an opinionator, if you will, and as such I only feel compelled to write when I have strong feelings about something. So my writing isn’t as prolific as I’d like but maybe that’s due to the subject matter and not me. I don’t know but I am not going to fret about it.
I think I am about done for tonight. I am spent but in a good way. It’s time to lay my head on a pillow and slip off in to nothing.
Watch, at least, Tim’s intro in the video above before reading further…
So I have been an observer to some drama as of late. Yes it is drama on FB but it is people going off about things that happened in real life that had real consequences and not petty crap. I have known the people involved, and I won’t be mentioning any names here, for better than two decades. In this incident I didn’t take sides. Hell I didn’t even comment until it was all over. In the end I unfriended one of the people involved for reasons totally unrelated to the drama. In fact the drama isn’t even related to this post other than to suggest that some of the people involved examine their relationships through the lens of how complicated other people make their lives. Let me expound.
The person I unfriended hadn’t made a positive or even neutral comment on FB in over a year. Every single thing they said was complaining about how their life sucked and then explaining how it was someone else’s fault. I didn’t bother commenting on the posts or trying to point out how things like being behind on your electric bill and getting your lights shut off was not likely the fault of the company providing you electricity. I have known them for years after all and wanted, at the very least, not to be mean. Even without responding to the drama this person created for themselves their posts still showed up in my stream and no matter what when someone is negative all the time it brings down those around them. I thought about it long and hard and while I don’t hate this person, as Tim suggests in the video above, they did add complexity to my life. They added drama even if it was through observation only. You can’t know someone that long and not react in some manner to their words and suffering even if it is self-inflicted. Further thought on the matter makes me think this person has issues that I cannot ever help them with. The need to always be a victim is one that is draining for everyone around the person with that need. I won’t speculate as to the cause of the problems but I know that I have my own issues to work on and I can’t help this person with theirs. In further thinking on it I realized this person has been like this for most of the time I have known them and when we were hanging out in real life it was very draining.
If we were hanging out in real life today I would have to cut off those ties but since it was FB I could just unfriend them. I know that may sound harsh but I am a grown-ass-man and don’t need the teenage drama this person exudes. I do honestly hope they get the help they need and come out the other side a better person but when a person won’t take responsibility for their own failings and the situations they cause then I can’t have them around me. I spent enough of my life doing exactly that and I have no time for someone so self-centered that they can’t admit their own mistakes. Sure I still complain from time to time and even do a little of that over on FB but the difference is I know that 99% of the time the reason something in my life is fucked up is because I fucked it up or allowed it to get fucked up.
Once someone begins to take responsibility for their own life then they are usually worth helping. I will no longer bother trying to help anyone whose first reaction to any problem is to figure out how it’s not their fault. In fact those people who would rather cry about their problems than actually work on fixing them will get told, just like the video above: “Speed on before you get peed on!”
I don’t feel that this little piece is technically “mean” but some will likely deride it as such. This is about self-preservation and making sure that I have enough emotional stamina to help people who want help and deal with my own shit. If I am forced to constantly deal with other people’s shit and they ain’t working on it then I don’t have the energy left to deal with fixing my own shit. It’s really that simple.
Back in December Suburban Home Records put out a mixtape. When you ordered it, paying only shipping and handling, you got five copies of the damn thing! Virgil’s idea was for you to give them out to your friends and it was a great idea. Well the gang over there has just released Volume 2 of the mixtape series with the same deal. I went with Priority Mail and spent $5.01 to get five copies of the CD. Not only does Suburban Home put out great music they are really promoting their artists. You can stream most of their released on the site so you aren’t buy site unseen, so to speak, and they give away music to get their artists noticed. Couple all that with cool stuff like shot glasses, coozies, and maybe even oven mitts (who knows, maybe Virgil will like the idea) and you have what think is the coolest label around.
So with the released of the second installment in their mixtape series SBHR has asked us blogger type folks to help get the word out about the mixtapes, offer the first one for download, and pretty much pimp this all we can. Since they give us so much, even on top of my Suburban Home For Life membership, I thought it would be cool to offer the Raisin’ Hell and Livin’ Cheap (Volume 1) for you all to listen to and download. So here it is, without further ado…
Enjoy…and go order the second volume right now. You won’t regret it. And while you are there make sure to shell out the jack and get Tim Barry‘s new release 28th and Stonewall.
15
Oct
That bastard is making us wait until next year for this album but at least we got this:
Thing of the Past from kitchentablelegs on Vimeo.
This is one of the tracks off his new album and has only caused me to be totally annoyed that I can’t have it now.
15
Oct
You may have heard me rant about how much I like Tim Barry or listened to Please Consider Where I’ve Been – An Intro To Tim Barry but if you don’t own Live At Munford Elementary then you should be flogged, drawn and quartered and maybe flogged again. I offer the following as proof:
The first track is his version of “Shoulda Oughta” for the kids at Munford Elementary and the second is the album version. So use these links, from Tim’s site and get the album:
