Day 2, or rain on a sunny day.

Got up and went to work, then when it was about time to head home, I remembered I still needed to capture a picture today. The universe gave me a break. Just as I was getting home, a cloud burst letting loose all the tiny droplets of rain it was carrying. This was the result.

Challenge: Day 1

Just Yesterday a good friend of mine calls me up and issues a challenge: take a picture everyday for the next 30 days and post it. No this doesn't mean that I can take any random picture and call it good, it has to have some artistic merit to it. The place of posting was left to my discretion, so naturally I choose to post it here.

So here goes with my first pic.

Now starting on the fourth of July kind of made today's pic very easy to decide, but hard to pull off. Seriously, have you ever tried to capture a picture of fireworks. It's not easy.

I can remember many a grand fourth of July nights, but only a few times has the whole of the day been a deep rooted memory. Most of my life I would watch fireworks at a ce

rtain local with the group changing every year from one group of friends to another, and sometimes with family. Some I spent watching from a nice square of grass and a blanket with others standing and walking through crowds.

Two separate years stick out in my mind. Both were during runs of theatre productions. In the first one, our little group had managed to get a spot in the parade to promote our show. Despite differences in the two co-directors we were able to pull a float together and gather our crew to walk the streets. We had candy to throw, and swords to swing. But what I remember the most is the time afterwards, after the morning parade had finished. We gathered at a one of the cast member's houses and ate food. I remember the joys of just being. A group of friends just having fun.

The second memory was also during a summer run play production. This one is probably where I've bonded the most with any cast, more than likely due to the fact that we were all living in the middle of nowhere with no one else to hang out with for the four summer months. On this fourth we had an early showing and we were hoping to rush the hour and a half to the sacred place of watching of fireworks. The whole group had ended up going, but we never met up due to separate cars. Our car had four. Traveling as fast as we could we still missed the first ten minutes of fireworks. I remember mostly these three companions and what we did. Two of which were the ones I spent the majority of my time up in the woods. Thats all I have to say about that.

Happy Birthday America. Each year holds another memory on this wonderful remembrance of what we as a nation stand for.

Also I know it is a one pic a day challenge, but I may from time to time have more than one, and I may or may not have writings to go with them. We'll see how it goes.

Good Grief

My birthday is coming up next week. I'm not really looking forward to it. I'm not really sure when it happened, but sometime in the past few years I've not been all that excited for my own birth recognition date. It could stem from a few past bad experiences, a longstanding bout with loneliness or even a grim reminder that I'm getting older and don't have much of anything to show for it. Or maybe I just don't want to age.

I've had some notoriously bad experiences with birthdays. In college I had gone out on my birthday to see a play production. Knowing the group that put it on, they invited me and my roommate to stay for a gathering of talking and light food consumption. Upon returning home, I was well informed that I had missed a great party at my place: my own surprise party. Yep, my roommates had thrown a party and had forgotten to invite the guest of honor. I was even out with a roommate that had full knowledge of said party, but had neglected to prod me home in time for the festivities. The very next year, the same roommates don't even remember when my birthday came around. Granted the closer the day comes, the less I talk about it. But I was rehearsing with a roommate when a random guy came up and asked us to take a survey asking us when our birthdays were. Mine just happened to be on that very day.

I mean really I thought I'd be further with life, with things than I currently am now. It's sad that we even try to measure out our lives with what kind of job we have, what things we possess, or even how our family situation is. Can we really measure life? Each and everyone lives so drastically different that we really don't have anything to adequately compare to. So why do we even try to do so?

The only thing that matters is how one feels about their life and how they are living it. This could be simplified even further to ask, 'How happy am I?' One can only be measured against one's self, and should never attempt to be measured against someone else.

But How happy am I? I'm not very happy. Maybe I'm just not looking to the great things that I have, not counting the individuals. Instead I find myself weighing the bad things, or the worries in my life. Lately I've focused on the monetary problems that I face, or the work problems, and focusing on those is not a guide to happiness. I also thing greatly on not having someone in my life with whom to share my worries and sorrows, my joys and delights.

I know it is silly to get depressed by these things, especially on a day which should be a celebration, a day to really enjoy the great gift of life. And it shouldn't used as a reminder of things that you thought you would have by this point. It needs to be a celebration of who one is and the greatness it is just to be.

A great philosophizer said that happiness was finding a pencil; or anything or anyone that is loved by you is what brings happiness. You keep looking Charlie Brown, you'll find what you are looking for soon enough.

Night before

I have an audition tomorrow. And so here I am at 2:30 am wasting time when I really should be sleeping. This seems to be the way I do things of late. I put things off until the last minute when there is nothing to do but to scramble to get everything finished on time. I seem to do this every time I have an audition. I don't seem to take the proper time to prepare a decent piece, causing me to fumble upon my words and ultimately look like a fool in front of those whom I wish would cast me. All the while my brain is debating if I should even go to the audition or just stay home in my little cozy hole and sleep away the shame of not making an appearance.

I just wonder where I picked up this habit. Why do I put it off. I'm sure I could do great in the show, but I haven't had the discipline to create a worthy character for these new directors. I know what you are thinking, why don't I just use a standby piece from one of the shows I've auditioned for in the past. Well Ideally that is what I do, but even then I would need to refresh it. No, this time I wanted to go with something new, something that fit better to the style of show that I'm trying out for. So I went out and searched for something new; finally finding it two days before the audition, leaving only one day to create it. Did I spend the whole day working on it? No. only within the last few hours have I worked upon it. And even then I have mostly just been listening to it. What I should have done is found the piece two weeks ago and then spend my time first finding someone to accompany me while I sing so I learn the piano part, and second spend every free moment from then until now practicing the part, making it the best I could do. No wonder I haven't made it into a show where they actually pay.

I guess I'm off to bed.

dftjike

I figured out the reason I haven't written anything of late. I don't know how to finish. I have started multiple blogs in the past, but each one sounds dull or drab or just uninteresting. I think I've lost my mojo or some junk like that. Well anyway....

darkend glass

I really hate this feeling. It's 3 AM again, and here I am writing another blog about how I feel. Sounds crazy, but it seems I only write when things aren't going so well, or I have worries. Maybe this is a way of either venting my frustrations or in some strange way a help to calm my worries. Either way I'm going to rant, and hopefully it helps; if not well then sorry.

Its usually at the end of a play, or right in between two plays that I start to feel this way. I think that it is because I actually have free time to sit and think about my troubles and thus comes the worries. I've had a good year for plays so far, I've been Avram in Fiddler, Linus in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, a Dreamer in Secret Garden, and soon to be Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream. So nothing I can complain about there. But really I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I use to know. It all made sense at one time. I still like doing the shows, don't get me wrong, I'm just not sure what I'm pursuing.

I'm unfulfilled. Unhappy. Not sure where I'm going, or even how I'm going to get there. I got some great advice from one of my old theatre professors last time I was visiting Campus. He told me not to wait for the lights to be green to go after what I want. Its sound advice. I just don't know which direction I'm going. Light color makes no difference if you're standing still.


Fiances are really weighing me down. I keep getting deeper and deeper into dept. I even have two jobs now, but that isn't helping as much as it should. When I can't even work 30 hrs between two jobs something is wrong with those jobs. Its not like I don't have the time to work, I do, I can put in a full 40 + hr work week, it's just that I'm not being used well enough. In a little over a month I'll have to move again; my friends are coming back and they will want the have their apartment again. So I'll have to find a new place. Not sure how I'll pay for that, I have yet to pay for the months I've been living here already. I just simply don't have the money.

I don't know where to turn or what to do. I'm drifting again...

Finally Doing It

It's finally happening! I'm finally moving out. Here I sit writing this, my last blog to ever be completed in this residence, I can almost hear the angelic choirs singing a melodious tune. To say I've been waiting for this day for a while would be an understatement. I've been dreaming of this day since the day I moved in. For some reason I seem to have put my dreams aside and dredge through the days.

Now is the time to look to my dreams. Now is the time for action. Now. Now I shall live somewhere else. Where am I going you ask? I'm taking care of an apartment of some friends of mine while they are away at Mack's Inn for the summer.

The only downside to this move is that the apartment doesn't have internet. I guess I'll just have to make due somehow. All I know is things are going to be great!

Well really I need to finish up this blog so that I can pack up my computer and get everything into my new place.