Though no longer "self-proclaimed" and now actually "bonafide" as an author, let's follow my random life and see just what it is that makes me tick. Together!
Wednesday was the first day of autumn, and like I knew I would I have an incredible longing to be back in Wisconsin. I knew going into this cross-country move that, for the first year of anniversaries at least, I'd have a hard time dealing with the things I was going to be missing. The nostalgia that comes with the change of seasons. The first chances to wear hoodies and sweaters, the colors on the leaves changing, and the crisp morning air on the way to work. That's why fall has always been my favorite; fall meant enjoying the best parts of winter without having the full onslaught of frigid weather and snow.
Right now it is 93 degrees outside and humid.
Is it weird to say that I still don't feel like I live in Austin? I'm more than three weeks out from packing up the car and driving down here but it still hasn't sunken in that I live here and I don't know why that is. All of my things are here... the boxes are unpacked and the beds are made, the living room is fully operational and we've watched more than a handful of movies and the entire season of American Horror Story: Coven. I've been working, gone grocery shopping a few times, and set the trash and recycling out for the garbage men to pick up.
But it's not my home yet.
I know things like that take time of course. Wisconsin probably didn't actually start feeling like home until I was almost finished with high school and that was because I still had a resentment and longing to move back to California, unfounded as it was. But that move had not not my choice, and this was... so here's hoping it won't take seven years to get over it! However, there is still a sadness in me that I can't figure out.
It's a sadness that permeates me in a way that I find hard to believe. I'm happy with Derek. I'm happy to be near family still. But I'm also sad. Why do you think that is?
Maybe it's my lament for the things that are now gone. Maybe it's just being a little homesick. I thought I'd cry most of the way down during my move, but I hardly shed any tears. Saying goodbye to my parents was the absolute hardest part, and I somehow managed to keep a stiff upper lip while doing so. Then the driving started and the cats were all over the place and freaking out, which distracted me just enough to not break down. But even once they were locked away in crates and it was only me and my thoughts and the open road... I couldn't cry. In a way I'm still waiting to cry. I know it's in there, and I know it is going to sideswipe me at some random moment when I least expect it, and maybe that's when I'll finally drop it and move on. I don't know.
Oktoberfest is this weekend back in Wisconsin, something I enjoyed very much over the last several years. I would spend the entire day walking around downtown, meeting with random friends over the course of 9 or so hours and laughing til it hurt, drinking to maintain a pleasant buzz, and taking enough pictures to capture the memories of a great time.
This year I'll be working, struggling to do my absolute best and maintain a positive outlook and spin on things at my current store.
The key might be to just get out and start doing stuff here in the city, something we have not been doing yet. The last year has been spent saving for this move and now that it's out of the way, I still find myself saving as much money as I can out of fear that I am going to run out of it. As a result, Derek and I have only done a couple of things in town here. That's also due large-in-part to how fucking hot it is all the time, but I digress.
There are things to do and see, places to travel to and explore. Museums and theatres and concerts and cities, food and food and food, parks and rivers and lakes and everything outside and inbetween. I just need to get out and do it. I get to share these experiences with Derek which is more than enough... I guess I wish I was able to share them right away with some of my friends back home as well.
It's interesting when you move away from people. You are sort of putting yourself into a forced exile, shuttering away from the friends and family that shaped you into who you are. Willingly or not. Some people my communication increased with, and others it has stopped entirely. I'm unsure as to why that is, which seems to be a common theme in this blog, but there it is. Maybe it's like a break-up period and you need to do things on your own for a while because the hurt is still too fresh. Or maybe it's more of an "out of sight, out of mind" type deal. Whichever.
It makes me feel alone.
The picture at the top of the blog says "We must take adventures in order to know where we truly belong." I'm a firm believer that the answers to life come in the form of time and experience. You live and you learn. This move has taught me that change is always a good thing, but transitions suck balls. The transition is the hardest part, moving from who you were to who you are. Some things will stay the some, bigger things will change, and who will you be when you come out on the other side?
Moving to Texas is still a process for me, it isn't done yet. It won't be done until I am working where I intended to work, doing the things I intended to do, and that's okay for now. No one said it would be easy, but that certainly doesn't mean it has to be hard. It has just been an adjustment.
This is how summer started, with the breaking of a string. The small piece of rope I'd worn for nearly ten years finally bit the big one. I wrote about it once here, and if you want to know the significance of this bracelet I'd recommend reading about it. Regardless of that it was a heartbreaking moment for me. I decided not to put it back on, or to put on a new one, rather. Maybe taking a few months without it while I settled into a weird "limbo" phase of my life would be just what the doctor ordered.
The true end of an era.
With the loss of the bracelet I decided to kick off this new phase of my life by cancelling the monthly updates. That was first and foremost, actually; I decided it when I wrote the May update. What I found by doing the monthly updates was that I was essentially assigning myself a chore and it eventually became a chore I just didn't want to do. Whenever I force myself to write one of my books, whatever I write ends up coming out super shitty. The same can be said about the blogs. When you've got nothing to write about, how can you expect people to want to read it?
The answer is you can't.
So I decided to get back to doing the blogs I actually liked writing. The random ones that could be sprung from an idea rather than a detailed daily recap that no one cared about. I started with the biggest event of June, that being the release of Jurassic World.
In my JP t-shirt,
with lady Rex behind me.
Ever since June of 1993 I've been waiting for a truly satisfying sequel to my favorite movie of all time, Jurassic Park. The Lost World was alright but Jurassic Park III was a festering turd. I wrote about my feelings here in regards to this event, and with that blog I felt the "connection" once more to my work. More on that in a bit.
I saw the movie a total of five times. Which isn't that surprising because I think I saw the third one like three times when it had been in theatres. We do what we do! It was a great way to start the summer and a good way to release my anxiety, or at least leave it at the door every time. Derek and I at this point were starting to pack things up for our move to Austin at the end of August and this was a welcome reprieve from the logistics of that.
It was also going to be a busy summer in general after Jurassic World came out. @klreynol was flying back to visit for a few days, I had a surprise trip to Austin right after, then there would be a trip to Chicago, releasing my second book, the launch party, and then several going-away parties to boot. Aaaaand of course moving time, something that loomed on the horizon like a gathering storm. A storm of emotions and realities and everything else one could imagine.
Thanks Facebook!
However before all of that could come to fruition, on June 26th the Supreme Court ruled to legalize same sex marriage across the country. I wrote a blog about that here, but only shared it once because as per usual, I didn't want to shove my gayness down anyone's throat.
That sounds dirtier than I intended.
It was my half-birthday on that day and it was a great way to spend it, knowing that equality had finally been achieved in a fight that had gone on for just way too long. And again, I was writing a blog that got me thinking about my life in a different way. It had me reaching back to the way I used to be and utilizing the knowledge in a way that was both creative and fresh. What was odd was how foreign it felt to me to write something original.
I'd gotten used to writing the sequels to blogs. The "monthly updates", "new resolutions", "# iterations", "random thoughts", yadda yadda. The series of blogs I spent all of 2012 building into "musings of a self-proclaimed author" had become nothing more than a series of continuations and that meant the fun stories were gone. I didn't realize it at the time, it's only now looking back that I am able to assign meaning to any of this, but there you have it.
Milk on the farm and afternoon joy with Barb at Big Blue.
At the end of the month @klreynol flew to Wisconsin to spend a few days with Derek and I. Safe to say we had a blast during her four days in town. The trip started with the celebration of a coworkers pregnancy in the form of a great BBQ gathering at her parents home. It was a perfectly warm summer afternoon, with great drinks and company to bring it in. After that, @klreynol went back to my apartment with me where she met Derek for the first time.
I wasn't nervous about whether they would get along or not, I knew going into it that they would. Some things are just a given. We went to dinner that night and the next day started out by going to "Sunday on the Farm" in Chilton. I'd never been, neither had they, so we took a drive to see what it was all about.
I guess there was free cheese at some point but I must have missed it. I certainly didn't miss the chance to enjoy some chocolate milk! It was free milk and all you could drink! We saw the cows and a cage of kittens (...) and a small variety of other farm animals, but largely it was just a "walk around this farm, don't step in shit, and then leave." We had brats and burgers that were only a $1 and then the obligatory ice-cream sundaes.
The next day we mostly bummed around and then drove out to Waupaca to visit Barb at her home on the island, Big Blue. Saw the chickens, fed them some tadpoles, and then it was back to Appleton where we had a dinner with our friend Brenda at Carmella's. On Tuesday we drove down to Wisconsin Dells and went to Noah's Ark, riding the waterslides all day and then making the long trek home so I could make my specialty dinner (chicken parmesan and mashed potatoes, yum).
Do you see what I mean when I said it was a busy summer?
@klreynol left that Wednesday, I worked two days, and then it was time to hop on a plane and fly my ass down to Texas.
The little video I made for my brother.
Towards the end of May, my brother's girlfriend Anne reached out to me about surprising Josh for his birthday. He had mentioned (casually) that his birthday tends to get overlooked seeing as it is the day after a major holiday (4th of July). I agreed that it is the story of our lives, with my birthday being the day after Christmas. So she wanted to do something special for him. The video sums all that up, so go ahead and watch it if you aren't familiar with the story.
After that little excursion of watching the bats at sunset (in which they did not come out while there was still light) we went to dinner at a little cafe type thing and then went home to sleep. The next day was arguably the funnest because we went tubing down the river in San Marcos for the 4th. It was a bit of a nightmare getting on the river though. We waited in traffic for more than an hour trying to get in just to park, and then we stood out in a field of rocks for another 45 minutes with the scorching sun murdering us.
The sunscreen I had put on my face (Anne can attest, she'd done the same) kept running in my eyes and burning them like you wouldn't believe.
We were also surrounded by hundreds of college-age jocks and their girlfriends, hootin' and hollerin' and slamming beers and anything else in arms reach. It was like being in hell. Or at least my own personal hell. It was almost too much to take by the time we got on the bus that would drive us to the water. Everyone but Josh and I got on the first bus, so he and I waited for the second and then when we got on, I had to sit in this weird sort of crouched position the duration of the drive and that was AGONY on my knees.
My river wounds.
By the time we got into the water it was the best feeling I had experienced in a very long time. The water was spring-fed and practically glowing blue. It was moving a bit fast but that was alright...ish. Until we hit the rapids. Now I'm going to go ahead and say that I am not a fan of tubing down the river and actually staying in the tube. I like to swim around and be in the water and all that jazz. A few wounds are a given. However, when we got to the rapids I was unable to get back in the raft fast enough and got FUCKING ANNIHILATED on the rocks. Look at my feet! It's been two months and the gash on my right leg is still there (obviously healed over but still clearly visible) and you can't see the chunk I took out of my knee. I could go on.
That night we all went downtown to watch the Austin fireworks from a bridge that runs over the Colorado river. The show was kinda "meh" but it was neat to be downtown with the insane amount of people and to see how Austin celebrates the 4th (always one of my favorite holidays).
For Josh's birthday on the 5th we had a little gathering at Anne's home,with her family and a couple of friends to ring in the occasion. We played some fun games courtesy of Josh's friend Andrew and eventually the day wound to a close. Anne got locked out of her house and I had an early flight home, so it was a stressful evening but one that rounded out a pretty great trip (c:
At Ravinia in Chicago with Derek and @jillybean
Mid July saw Derek and I driving down to Chicago to visit my lady love @jillybean. Ravinia is just north of the city and hosts these really fun "event" nights (check the place out here). It's a beautiful park that is meticulously maintained and you can bring in basically whatever food and drink you want to enjoy during the show. This one in particular was "Danny Elfman's Music from the Movies of Tim Burton," performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The basic rundown is that they had arranged 13 suites of music from 13 Tim Burton and Danny Elfman collaborations, put to a combination of both concept drawings of the movies and then actual clips as well. It was fucking freezing that night, as evidenced by the blanket and the people wearing jackets that we neglected to bring. For mid July it was annoying. But we absolutely had a wonderful time with @jillybean and ate to our hearts content that evening.
The next day we headed home and stopped at Ikea (my first visit since I was a kid). All I have to say is 1.) wow, and 2.) I know where I'll be shopping frequently in Austin.
EAA with this guy.
Another first for me was towards the end of July when Derek and I went to EAA in Oshkosh. EAA is a crazy event up here, it's world famous, and I know people have a good time but I've just never gotten the nerve to go. Someone likened it to "a comic convention but for airplane enthusiasts." Someone else compared it to typical Wisconsin festivals, except no one is drunk and there really isn't any white trash walking around. The people at EAA come from all over the world, most flying their own planes in, and they want to see what the latest and greatest technology is as well as the old planes that are still around. And they can afford the steep ticket price to get in (we lucked out with free tickets, natch).
Derek was in his element and it was nice to see because we are usually doing stuff I want to do. He has a knowledge and adoration for planes and things that fly in general that it just amazes me. He can rattle off information down to the most minute detail at the drop of a hat and I think that's very impressive about him. I knew he could do it with cars and assumed the same held true in this regard, but still... I was impressed.
Now let's address the big elephant in the room. My hair ::tosses hair, realizes it's gone::
Fuckin' animal on the floor there.
I suppose the big event on August 14th, aside from the book launch (below), was the cutting of the hair. It was heartbreaking, yes, and I miss it very much. I'm also kind of relieved it's gone and I'll tell you why.
I chose to start growing my hair out in July of 2013. I'd just gotten out of my relationship with Scout and was having a really hard time bouncing back. I was also seven months out of the Golden Year and couldn't rally myself to a point of having a purpose. So I gave myself a dumb goal and decided to grow my hair out. I had one last cut before I went to Austin to visit my brother, and from then on it was just trims and getting it colored.
After a year I was going strong. I knew a lot of people didn't like it but I wasn't growing it out for them, I was growing it out for me. I had my good days and my bad days with it. I had fights with humidity. By the time November rolled around I was able to get most of it pulled back in a bun and after that, I typically wore it in a bun every day. It helped when I met Derek that he liked my hair. I am habitually the kind of person that becomes hyper aware in new relationships and if a person says one too many times that they'd like me with short hair, I'll do it.
Guilty as charged.
But he always commented on how much he liked it, and at one point when I casually mentioned cutting it off, he urged me not to. That's a keeper right there! At the end of July I decided I wanted to color my hair brown in lieu of moving to Texas because I didn't want to worry about keeping up with the blond it had been and wanted it colored closer to my natural tone.
Long story short, it didn't work out. And after three attempts by a friend to fix it, it still wasn't working out. My hair was suffering as a consequence and after a "come to Jesus" talk with my stylist, I decided to cut it off. Lifting the color after so many treatments was going to destroy my hair and I was going to end up hating it even more. So we chopped it.
I admit the first cut was difficult to watch but then it was a relief to see the rest go. Yes it was two years of work to grow it out but it was also two years I spent after moving out on my own to test the waters of life. When I moved out in 2013 I did so with the curiosity of "can I do this on my own? If I can, can I also move away in a couple years?" Clearly that time is now. So I go forward after cutting off two years of memories, shedding the past as I embark on a new adventure. I'll let the color grow out and rediscover my natural color (I have no idea what that even is anymore (I'm not kidding either)). Already I can see that my hair is much MUCH wavier than it had been two years ago. Not complaining... not happy about it either.
Maybe in a few months I'll start the process all over again, albeit with no faux colors this time. Let's find out how many grey hairs I have, together!
With my mom and dad celebrating the event (c:
The other big event on August 14th was that I held the release/launch party for my second novel, "The Onyxus Chronicles: Episode II." I wrote about publishing for a second time here, though it was largely the same experience as the first time around.
I'd be lying if I said it went better than the first book.
I think the hard part I had of coming out with the sequel was getting people to care. Sure, my family and friends did, but not all of them even bought it. The excitement of "SEAN PUBLISHED A BOOK!" had magically dropped away and I think people just reacted to this mostly with an "oh, neat," kind of mentality. And it's not that I can blame them, it just kind of sucked. The attendance was much lower for this party than for the first book, and sales through Amazon have been much softer as well. I am of course thankful to the people that did come, and also to those that bought a copy. INCREDIBLY thankful to those that read the book already and loved it.
You make me want to keep writing more than you'll ever know.
I will say I had a very successful marketing campaign for a free copy of the first book in digital form, and that went over resoundingly well. Celebrate your victories! I haven't really had a fire lit under my ass to get moving on the final edit of Episode III, but I know it's coming soon. Once all of this hoo-ha with the move is done I will have the headspace to work on it a little bit more. Until then I can sleep soundly knowing that I publishing two books in two years and that ain't bad by a 29 year old guy.
So if you haven't bought it yet and intended to, prove me wrong and buy it now. Come on, don't be a shit. Just do it.
And I suppose that's where I leave you? Always here and gone in a flash... summer, that is. A few blissful months in Wisconsin where you hope for low humidity, awesome storms, and a few days on the rivers and lakes before the wind gets colder and the leaves start falling off the trees before you're ready. There's never much of a lead up to summer here, at least not for the last few years. It's winter, and then it's spring for a couple days, and then it's hot. This summer in particular it was hot. The last week has been interesting and it's been kind of chilly.
Maybe it was the state's way of sending me off with a glimpse of the fall that I am going to miss so much?
In the end, I guess the rope snapping on my bracelet at the start of summer signified the end of my life here in Wisconsin. Or my adult life, as it were. I put it on when I had just turned 19, a few months shy of holding down my first full-time job at Express, and wore it ever since. Relationships, babies, moving back and forth, new jobs, old loves, new loves, new cars, sad goodbyes, bitter hellos... that's what it boils down to.
SO, as I always have ended this (and why stop now), what else happened this summer? I started saying goodbye. Drove by the old houses, drove by friends houses, called a lot of people I hadn't in a long time and did it all in three months. Let go of control of a few events, took control of some others. Continued falling more and more in love with Derek. Spent two months neatly packing my life away, finally updated the cats with their shots, and consolidated my debt. Rode on a jetski for the first time in years, kayaked for the first time in years, and became a little more accepting of things I didn't think I could. Learned to appreciate people for who they are at the core. Learned to write people off that didn't earn that appreciation. Had a job, got a new job, lost a new job, still hoping for a great result and I'll let you know. I enjoyed a final three months in Wisconsin after 18 great years and I did it solely because I want to remember this great state at its best.
We don't have much time on this earth and what little time we do have, we need to make it count. It's time for me to spread my wings and move on to something bigger, maybe better, and I plan on taking you all with me. For now I leave you with the theme song to 26 Golden Things and subsequently the best year of my life. It was the first thing you heard in what became a great story... I don't see why history can't repeat itself here. I'll see you in Texas.
