everything is fine

I am so tired and I have a headache my head is going to explode I'm going to forget something tomorrow I just know it I'm already forgetting something I haven't even started packing yet there's still so much left to do God shit fuck I have to wake up early and finish taking care of all this stuff why can't going to the beach be something that's also relaxing in theory. Tomorrow: the ocean. Tonight: head explodey.

A good friend of mine sold me his old mountain bike. Now I have a bike! Things are looking up for our plucky hero. Speaking of plucky heroes, my hand is unbelievably tired. I am never going to do something like this in one sitting again. Somebody please, tell me I don't have to draw another comic until Monday.

Sometimes--a lot of times--I forget what day it is and then I look at my calendar and it's Tuesday and I still haven't touched my lab report. Not so good. I'm still trying to improve my art. It's a slow going process, but with more studying and more practice, it'll pay off. I can already see some improvement! I did this for the Texan: Just kidding.

I really want to go to the aquarium now. Also, I want a boat when I go to the ocean so I can mess around in a boat.

I stood and watched as she flipped through the pages lazily. Pages of doodles with class notes inserted sparingly between them. All dwarfed by the blank pages. Notebooks full of these pages. She mentioned something about sketches and it was at that moment that it dawned on me. I am a cartoonist without a sketchbook . I mean, sure, I doodle and sketch things in my actual notebooks or on random pieces of paper in my room but I've never had a notebook--a sketchbook--to put all of them in exclusively. And so I got one. Well, I already had one, but it was empty. I thumbed through the pages to make sure. I gathered my drawing utensils and cleared away some clutter from my desk. My drawing desk which has apparently been repurposed as a "dump all of your shit on top of it in haphazardly constructed piles so that you can't use it or find anything on it" desk. I flipped open to the first page and put my pencil to the paper. And suddenly I didn't have anything to d...

A friend of mine asked me if it would be weird to attend her wedding in four or five years. I didn't have to think very long to respond. In fact, as soon as I saw the word wedding I started to panic a little. Growing up is such a scary prospect. And I know I've talked about it already--it just bothers me that much. And I know there's nothing to be done about it except go along with it as best you can. We are all growing up and some people just aren't very good at coping with it. Four or five years is not a very long time. High school was a blur that, in hindsight, felt more like a month than four years. I've been playing clarinet for over eight years, but that doesn't seem so long. So four or five years is going to be here tomorrow, and I will still not be ready for it. Weddings are just weird. It's strange when it's composed of people you don't know, it's strange when it's people you do know, and it's insane when it's peopl...

Planning for big things is hard. There are always little details you forget or little details that people don't tell you until the last minute. Or details that people nag you about. Or details people rub in your face until you plan around them the way they want. Or they just don't tell you at all and get mad later. Or they tell you and make you mad and don't realize it. If there's one thing I've learned when it comes to making big plans with big groups of people it's that in the planning stage, everybody will get angsty. There will be some infighting, some resentment, and some group tension. Then, as the trip progresses, the tempers go down into a resigned bitterness that simmers until the end of the trip when it explodes in a tempest of passive-aggressive acts that leave everybody drained and angry. Which is, of course, my favorite part of the whole thing.

In all honesty, I am not much of a party person. I'll go, but I have a hard time being sociable. I'm the guy who stands off to the side and nurses his drink. Or I'm the guy sitting in the chair looking around. Or I'm the guy standing in the middle of the crowd smiling and looking around while nursing his drink. They're fun, sure. For a while. I guess I am just not a lively person. But we started planning out our mega crossover epic. Which is going to be amazing. Ambitious? Yes. Insanely difficult to pull off? Also yes. But it's a challenge, and challenges are fun. And if we can actually do the whole thing, it'll make history. Well, when we do the whole thing.

I'm excited about going to the beach. Too bad it's still a week away.

Today was a good day. We got to jam. And it was a string of three or four songs that we just pulled out of the air in all kinds of styles. It felt good. I soloed on clarinet for one of them. That felt good. I haven't been able to really do any real improvisation like that in such a long time. And despite all the squeaks and fumbles, well, I don't even know how to describe the feeling. Well, maybe I could take a shot at it. It was bliss. It's funny how easily those things will come back to you. Then we goofed around and pulled out as many covers as we could. From Jason Mraz to Sixpence None the Richer to poorly constructed originals, we were an unstoppable wave of musical fun. Playing music is so therapeutic. There's a feeling you get when you play with other musicians and you all click. Everything just works. Everybody feels everyone else and there's this vibe that goes through the room. It's such an incredible feeling, this musical synchronicity...

Next week will feature family scandal, almost a dozen murders, a drowned girlfriend, and lots of manic depression, yet it's not in any way based on Hamlet. That was my horoscope when I read The Onion today. Makes me a little worried about going to the beach. But today was a better day. I got fan mail for ben the box boy ! I mean, sure, I've gotten compliment comments on Facebook and whatnot, but it's different when it's over e-mail. It's like it really means something. They must have really liked it to actually sit down and write an e-mail about it instead of just mashing buttons on Facebook--something people spend too much time of their day doing. It's exciting stuff. Everything just went well today. And, hopefully, more of the same is in store for tomorrow. Feels good man.

It's hard to keep your head screwed on straight.

I've been feeling edgy lately. Like I'm teetering on the dividing line between acceptable and splodey . I feel pent up. Like a dog left in a kennel for too long. Or a cat that's being forced to take a bath. Just generally grumpy. Or touchy. Malicious, even. I just want to break stuff. I decided that this steadily building rancor would be best exorcised with a trip to the gym. I brought a change of clothes with me to my appointment so that I could get on the punching bag afterward. I was looking forward to it. It was time to let off some steam. After the appointment was through, I headed over and got changed and then realized that I had forgotten my shoes. I decided that I didn't need them and walked over to the gym in my flip flops and found out it was closed. It figures.

I was glad to hear from him--it was the first time in over a week. A long, bad week. He typed out short sentences when we spoke. "Hard problem. Bright people working on it." "We heard the conflicting reports." I said. "Both wrong." He said. "Everyone's got an agenda." The best lesson my dad ever taught me was to be cynical. To be distrust what you hear. To stay on your toes when it came to the world. And to assume the worst in people--because most of the time you'd assume correctly. Or, of course, you might be surprised when you were wrong. But when does that happen?

Well, it wasn't the trip I was expecting, but then again I have high standards. It was fun, even though it was brief and largely uneventful. I had hoped it would be physically demanding to the point of absolute exhaustion, but what can you do when there are no caves and the water is hot enough to make coffee with? Oh well. It was a nice couple of days and it let me forget about things. It's not enough, though.

I found myself at a traffic light the other day, watching the other drivers and waiting for my light to change. As I did, a man in no shirt drove by in a sedan. It was the most awkward thing I've seen while driving, I think. I never knew how strange it looked when people drove around shirtless. It looks like they might be naked. It's just awkward. And I'm a guy who drives shirtless on occasion. I've found that my worst ideas tend to be the ones I think about. Because I have time to consider all the aspects of them before convincing myself that they are good. My impulse decisions, which are also bad, are somehow less bad than those that I stew on for a while. A friend of mine told me that I seemed like a person who could pull off having shaved legs. I don't think of myself as a particularly hairy person, but I tend to worry about being considered a hairy person. And so his statement stuck in my mind for a long couple of weeks. Ultimately, it came down to t...

By the end of the summer session, the bus driver and I were on pretty friendly terms. When we got to my stop he would turn and say, "Alright then, brother. You take care now." And as I stepped off the bus I would turn and say, "Thanks a lot, man. You have a good one." And as he closed the doors he would say, "Will do. You stay out of the sun now, you hear?" And right before the double doors squeaked shut I would say, "Will do." For a large number of nights spread out thickly over a large number of years I've watched my reflection in the glass of the front door as I made my final stalk down the hallway from the kitchen to the stairs. By the end of the hallway my posture would be fixed and, fully upright, I'd stride confidently around the banister and dart up the stairs in my ill-fitting pajama pants hanging off my hips. My reflection was always the same: a slim, cutting figure that betrayed tales of Peter Parker-like flexibility a...

Little things set me off. Little things get under my skin. And I can switch gears in about 0.001 seconds from happy-go-lucky to furious. The whole hidden violent temper thing runs in my family. Both my dad and my mom have hidden violent tempers that often are not very well hidden. So you can imagine that, when mom + dad = me , the same applied to mom's temper + dad's temper. I'm usually pretty good about not getting my feathers ruffled though. I've learned to just bottle all of that up and then eventually casually toss the bottle out to sea so that some poor castaway can find it on his uncharted island. "Went all the way to worldpool cave!" it said, scrawled across the top of my news feed. I commented simply, "whirlpool, fool" and thought nothing of it. It was good that someone had gotten into caving. I went about my day doing the normal things I do, whatever that may actually be. I came back later. "Who cares if I spelled it wrong?...

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I were more confidently candid when I interacted with people. Or even when I wrote. By sometimes, I mean often. I think it would be a bad idea.

Last night I played a terrifyingly stressful campaign of Left 4 Dead in which I was the last survivor battling impossible odds to make it to safety. It was all very dramatic and I was shaking by the end of the whole thing which is somewhat pathetic, considering that it is just a video game. Nevertheless, I went to sleep soon after my harrowing experience with undeath. I dreamed about zombies. It was a terrifying dream. I had broken my ankle and I was trying to out-limp the massive mob of shambling zombies that were chasing me down a deserted city street. I had no weapon and no companions. Just a broken ankle and the constant moaning of the zombies, a reminder that I was only delaying the inevitable. I limped and cried for help and their hands reached out to grab me and I woke up. And I heard it. An eerie wail drifted through my window. A lone woman's voice--or what had used to be a woman--wavering in the late night. They were coming. I lay frozen in my bed for a moment ...

I took a day to myself. Let everything else go up in smoke. All of the day's plans. Poof . And I read. I read all day. I read at my desk. I read on the hammock. On the rocking chair. On the couch. On the floor. I just read books all day. Alice in Wonderland and World War Z and Casino Royale and started remaking a list of books I still hadn't read. And it was spectacular. I remember when I was a little kid and I spent all my free time reading books. Putting off homework to read a book by that month's favorite author. Putting off everything. And just reading for the sake of reading. For days. Spending an entire day reading a book instead of sitting at the computer. It's funny how things change like that. But mostly depressing. I need to read more. Make time for reading. Instead of messing around on the internet, I should be getting into a book. That's more productive. And rewarding. And I miss doing it.

The best thing about playing sports is when you limp away from the field. It doesn't really matter whether you win or lose, it's just the feeling of accomplishment. You did something with your time and have the scrapes to prove it. Feels good man. And ultimate frisbee is a sport.

Today, I was somebody's shoulder. Tomorrow? Who knows.

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...

I really hate Starbucks coffee.

Trying to surprise somebody is an exercise that usually fails. There are just too many variables in the mix that usually play out not in your favor. Something always goes wrong. Surprises get spoiled. They figure it out or something doesn't quite go according to plan or it doesn't have the impact that you thought it would. And then, when it's all said and done, you come away from the whole experience a little disappointed and discouraged. Most of the time. But when it works, it's great. Watching the gears turn in their heads while they piece everything together and then watching their eyes go wide in a slurry of confused responses makes it worth it. The big plans never work out. It's all about the subtlety.

I actually like cooking quite a bit. I jump at opportunities to cook for myself. Or for other people. My heart skips a beat sometimes. It's an art, really. Chopping, dicing, mixing, spreading, baking, grilling. All those wonderful kitchen verbs. And the sounds. Sizzle, pop, bubble, crackle. It's a satisfying experience. I want to cook more.

"Hey, did you go to Westlake?" She asked. "Yep!" I said, taking out the bottle of KHP. "Did you go to the movie club?" I thought. I didn't remember any movie club. Oh, the film organization. "Yeah, a couple of times." I said. She took her bottle of KHP and we went to our weighing stations. "I thought I remembered you from that." She said. I weighed my three samples and recorded the data in my lab notebook. "Do you remember me?" She asked. "Yep!" I said. I put the KHP back in the container and took my samples back to my lab table. I am not good at meeting people. I never really know what to say. How to carry on conversations. And then I get lost in my own thoughts. I'm just not a very sociable person, I guess. Oh well. Something to work on, I guess. I started to network with the rest of the cartoonists on the staff. Talking to them and friending them on Facebook. Meeting up with them i...

I tried to finish drawing the story arc in my comic today as fast as I could. I was doing pretty well for a while. Everything was looking surprisingly good and I was making good time until all of a sudden my computer shut off. And I hadn't finished. Or gotten a chance to save. And Photoshop doesn't have an auto-save or a recovery function. So I lost most of the work. But, that's how it goes. Now I'm frantically trying to download the Windows 7 Release Candidate and install it before my computer shuts down. Apparently the "bi-hourly shutdowns" started today. Which, I think, is pretty ridiculous. But better than having your computer melted or completely shut off forever, I guess. Friday is coming up quick, and I'm mildly excited. Free Willy, it turns out, is two hours long. Sitting through it as a little kid was much easier. Sitting through it again now? I'd almost rather have my computer shut down before I'm re

Sometimes I open up chat windows with people and don't type anything. I think about what I want to say. What I'd like to say to them. I try to figure it out before I start so that it will sound eloquent. Sophisticated. Charming. Classy. I don't like fumbling for words. It's graceless. And some people just know exactly how to tie up your tongue. With a nervous kind of energy. I sit and I think and then they sign off. Or I start talking and forget everything. It's silly. That is how things go, sometimes.

I'm tired of going to school. I kind of just want to sit around and write my zombie story for a while. And play some music. Maybe draw some comics. I guess we're planning on seeing Transformers eventually. It was just a sort of vague suggestion that got agreed on. It'll get figured out. I struggle with turning off my brain during movies. It'll be good for me. My inner snob really comes out when it comes to movies. I have a hard time just sitting and enjoying hours of mindless explosions and weak plots. And I have a hard time getting over my dislike of terrible fad actors and talentless directors. And I can't get over the fact that you have to pay a lot of money to have your brain rotted out of your skull. And I can't stand the mindless obligation that people exhibit when a new film gets excreted into theaters. But I really like Starscream.

I love taking trips with friends. The more friends, the better. We used to take big trips when we were all still in high school band. To Corpus Christi every other year. And we got to pull pranks. One year our friend fell asleep on the couch with his hand nestled on top of his crotch. We were young and juvenile men then. Not much has changed. So, naturally we messed with him. We put toothpaste and shaving cream on him. When he woke up and found out what we'd done, he got angry. We all pretended to have been asleep. I told him that the front door had been left unlocked. We all speculated that someone had come inside while we were all asleep and perpetrated the prank. He believed it. We were in a hotel with doors that locked themselves. He believed us for years until we finally told him the truth. He was speechless. I'm excited for Schlitterbahn.

My friend came back from India with Indian candy. So, we sat down and ate some. We struggle to scrape the thin layer of aluminum foil off of the candy as it had apparently been glued to the candy pieces. Only afterward did we find that the candy was supposed to be constantly refrigerated and thrown away after two days. And things take an inconvenient turn for our plucky hero.

I've noticed that the worst drivers on the road (speeding, tailgating, swerving, general poor driving, overly aggressive, most road rage prone, etc.) tend to have church bumper stickers on their vehicles. I'm not sure why it is that way. But I don't like it.

Balancing logic and faith seems like a very hard thing to do. Some people seem to manage it, though.

"Geology pre-med?" They say. "That's a strange combination." I cock my head and grin. "I know." "And what do you want to do with that?" They ask. "Maybe be a doctor. Maybe stick with geology." "What do you want to do?" They ask. "Music." "Oh." I've noticed that I like to be different. I try to be. Try to stand out. Be eccentric. Try to do things people don't expect. Try to do everything. Like learning new and arbitrary instruments. Like being a pre-med geologist. It's a thrill, doing something out of the norm. Being a jack-of-all-trades. People try to focus their lives too much. They limit themselves and miss out on everything. I'm not a rebel, I'm not a non-conformist, and I'm not trying to grab a spotlight. I'm just having a good time.

We're going to play some music this week. Maybe we'll sit down and crank out our recordings. I hope so. I can think of a few songs we could run through and record in a sitting. We need a bunch of random instruments to add as fluff. Clarinet? Saxophone? Keyboard? Violin? Trumpet? Congas? Our toy box is deep. It's all very exciting.

When the waiter stopped referring to me as "kid" and "boy," I started to talk to them. I told them about my classes and how that was going. I told them about my computer troubles and how that was going. I told them about my summer so far. "Oh." They said. I told them about my story. My music. "Are you planning any trips for the summer?" He asked. I thought for a second. "Well, we were talking about going to Schlitterbahn, but that's not really a trip. I wanted to take some day trips around to places like Enchanted Rock or McKinney Falls or Pedernales." They smiled and nodded. I took a breath. "And I wanted to get a team of adventurers together and canoe all the way out to the Gulf." I said. They perked up. "So you'll pass through La Grange?" "Briefly." I said. "Only to get food and such. But we'll probably be on the river for a few days, pushing all the way out to Matagord...

I totally had it coming. I knew it before I even thought about starting. Bad karma. I had it coming for a long time. Some people like to say, "If you play with fire, you'll get burned." It's more like, "If you do stupid things, stupid things will happen to you." And you will deserve it. Because you did something stupid. It's like a self-inflicted wound. Well, it is a self-inflicted wound. I almost lost my zombie story. It's hard to explain to people what that feels like. Sometimes bad things happen to you and you lose something you worked hard on. Maybe it's the song you spent a week writing and recording. Maybe it's the drawing you spent six hours on. Maybe it's the painted you spent a couple of weeks on. It's all frustrating. But I've been working on that story for almost a year and a half, now. Not constantly, just off and on. But I started it a long time ago. I made people , not characters. I made a giant san...

On this strange evening, I find myself pondering the cosmic events that lead me to the situation I am in now: studying biology in a bed that isn't mine while standing guard over a house that isn't mine full of dogs that aren't mine while potential burglars prowl the streets outside the house that isn't mine. Curious indeed.

Someone close once passed a quote on to me from someone famous that was something about sunshine and shadows and standing. I forget the details, but the idea behind it made a lasting impression. At an early point in my life I came to realize that I was a generally happy person. Outwardly, not so much. But I was always easily amused by various childhood imaginings and simple things and dogs. Later in life, I came to realize that I am--for whatever reason--generally uncomfortable with being a generally happy person. The logic behind it escapes me. It's some kind of conflict between heart and mind where the mind is generally pessimistic and cynical and bitter in order to cope with and rationalize all of the happenings of the world around it. And, so, outwardly, I became generally pessimistic and cynical and bitter which, occasionally, gets absorbed into the other part. The inside part, I guess. It's a cyclical thing that I haven't quite gotten the grasp of. Yet.

I'm just in another panic mode. Just more anxieties and concerns and insecurities coming out of the woodwork and, since I have so much free time during the days, I just sit at the computer and contemplate it all until I'm a quivering mess of anxiety. It's not healthy, no, but that's how it goes. It's everything, too. It's the comparisons, the lack of contact, the disparages between things. I need more distractions in my day. I need to fill the void space with other things so that it won't get a chance to bother me so much. Maybe it was the movie that set me off. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too insecure. It's frustrating. So distant. And yet I had nothing to say. It's hard to talk about important things. I worry too much.

He read us the text message from his mother. "There's a tornado effect, be careful. The wind will stop right before the storm hits." We all had a good laugh and played a long game of ultimate frisbee. Then, when it was all over, we looked up and saw that the sky was turning black. "Ah, shit." I pulled out to the intersection and looked up at the trees. They weren't moving. I turned off the music and laughed. And then the rain started. It was a terrible drive. The road was impossible to see in the dark and the rain. Each flash of lightning revealed the literal curtains of water that swept their way across the road. And then the hail started. I came home to find that the power was out. How inconvenient. That's how it goes, I guess. Makes things fun.

I remember when I thought writing an eight page story was hard. I couldn't think of enough things to have happen to my characters. That was back when I fleshed out every detail of my story before I started writing it. Before I figured how to start doing it correctly. Most of the stories ended up being three or four pages. All of it, just crammed in. Painful to read. I don't write like that anymore. It's been a long sort of week. Sunday feels like it was a month ago. Friday seems so far away. I need stimulation. It's a strange feeling when you run around all day and realize you never saw a familiar face.

I had a dream last night that I was in a car wreck. The doctor amputated my hand afterward because it had gotten mangled up in the car. After the whole procedure was done he leaned down over me and told me that no hand meant no more music. I do not like sleeping. I ate lunch at the turtle pond today. It was nice. I watched a turtle try to climb his way up the rocks while I reviewed my notes from class. His turtle shell made it hard for him to deal with the edge of the rock. His little turtle nails clawed across the rock with turtle speed. What I can only assume was a freshman walked up to the pond with his friend. They pointed at the turtle and approached it. The turtle stopped moving. "You scared him." The friend said, sneering. The boy bent over and picked up the turtle roughly. "Let's help him up." He said, mockingly. "Put the turtle down," I said. They looked across the pond at me. I lowered my notebook. " Now. " The boy...

"I talked to my dad about joining last night." He said. "Oh yeah?" I replied. "Yeah," he said. "I'm thinking about joining next year, probably." I almost spat out my drink. "Are you talking about enlisting?" His friend asked. "Yeah," he said. "I mean, why not?" His friend shook his head and returned his attention to the television. "I rationalized it as having two lives," he continued. "I'll be a surgeon and then, when they tell me go to kill some people I'll be like, 'Okay!'" For a second, I felt tethered. Like I was obligated to keep an eye on him if he did it. Like a shepherd. Or a warden. It was worrisome. But, I guess that's how it goes.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I had a better sense of self-control. Every time I do, I come to the conclusion that, in theory, I would never regret doing anything. Nothing stupid, nothing silly. No big mistakes. And that just sounds so boring.

I had always thought about doing it. It had always been there in the back of my mind. From when I had a glorified vision of it to when I rebelled against the idea and, finally, to when I understood and accepted what it actually was. It's been a lurking urge somewhere inside of me--for better or worse--somehow related to an obsessive search for purpose and balance and maybe even some kind of naive patriotism. Enlisting . "Yeah, honestly: I've always wanted to do it." He said. "The discipline and the structure and the hierarchy; I like following orders. I could be a surgeon and also be in the Army. It's like having two lives: saving lives in one and saving the country in the other. I don't want to sit around after college for months and not do anything. I'll never be able to do anything with my life after that. I want to do something, you know?" Then, when the others were around, he continued. "And I really want to kill somebody....

Sometimes--a lot of times--I wish I could get inside of peoples' heads so that I could see what they were thinking. That probably stems from some sort of insecurity. Or that I say dumb things sometimes. I try not to worry about it. Probably not the best idea. I had something to say, but suddenly I don't feel like talking anymore.

I am always tired for some reason. I wake up tired. It doesn't seem to matter how much sleep I get the night before, I wake up tired. I've been studying it for some time. I can sleep for two hours, twelve hours, six hours, or eight hours and wake up feeling exactly the same. Tired. So, recently, I've narrowed it down to a few major "life motives" which--I acknowledge that I named rather uncreatively but--I fail to fulfill routinely. Primarily: sleeping and eating. As an early conclusion of my ongoing self-study, I have decided to ignore the sleep variable and blame my constant fatigue on the fact that I don't eat enough. As such, I've decided to make an "almost mid-year resolution" where I eat a whole lot. Like, a lot of food. Then I'll collect more data. It's also probably an effect of cuddle-starvation, which is tragic. I'm trying to draw higher quality comics, but I don't know if I can keep that up. Classes started to...

It always amazes me how complicated things can get when people get involved. The simplest tasks turn into huge ordeals that waste so much time. Like checking out at a grocery store. I was in line behind a woman with her handful of items for what felt like fifteen minutes while she somehow managed to drag out the whole process by digging in her pockets for coupons and payment and all kinds of other nonsense. It is, theoretically, a fast transaction. Scan, swipe, receive receipt, collect groceries, leave. Yet for her this was some kind of new and foreign concept. It was like watching her ride a bike for the first time in decades which, in theory, is a lot like dancing. Finally, she collected her garbage and began trudging toward the sliding doors. The cashier began ringing my groceries up. "Good, you?" I said to him. "Plastic's fine." I said to the bagger. I swiped, got my receipt, grabbed my bags, and walked out the door. As I stepped into the sunligh...

"Oh, I didn't realize it was family coming in, dude." He said. "You told me it was just peeps coming to stay at your house for a while." I shrugged. "I don't know, man. They're just peeps to me; I don't really know them all that well." He laughed. "Everyone is just peeps to you." I tend to take things for granted. Especially my relationships with people. Or people in general. It's a bad habit that I need to work on. Plenty of time for that, I hope. I like to think that other people are fairly patient. I envy the people who have convinced themselves that they know what they want to do with their lives. I can never keep my plans straight for more than a couple days and some people already have their lives charted out apparently. It's been more than a few months since I finished my EMS course and I still haven't finished it. "I've got to finish that up," I tell people. "Take that test....

I went trail running today. It was a nice feeling. Running, jumping, sliding. I might consider it as an alternative to mountain biking for a while. I don't think I can keep it up though. My ankle still hurts, which is a little concerning. I've never sprained or broken anything before this, but I'm not convinced it's supposed to take this long to feel better. Oh well. I'm not too worried about it. I went to the creek at the end of the trail and sat for a while. I watched clouds. Watched fish. Listened to the creek. It was a very meditative experience. I had a good chance to think about things. Not about the things I should've, though. I still don't know how to go about this whole 'life' thing, so I think I'll just keep on playing that one by ear. See what happens. That sounds like fun. We're all going to Lake Georgetown tomorrow. I've never been to Lake Georgetown before and the one opinion I've cultivated was that ...

I was feeling especially musical last night, so I went through all my old music. Scraps of old songs that I had arranged or written. Folders of sheet music. Pages of lyrics and chord charts. It was interesting to see how many projects I had started and abandoned. And how many I'd actually finished and then abandoned. More interesting, though, was how much it all changed over time. They started off as simple songs. A couple chord changes, end. Then more chord changes got added. More complexity. Riffs, written out. Lyrics. But it was all very formulaic. Two verses, chorus, two verses, bridge, chorus, end. Or maybe a slight variation of that. Two verses, chorus, bridge, one verse, chorus, end. Simple, constricting rhyme schemes. Forced lyrics. I could go on. But there were lapses in the record. A couple months of nothing, and suddenly something new. Something better. Matured. And so I traced it all to the present. It was a fun exercise, trying to match the stylis...

Everything went better than expected. We caught up first. It had been at least a couple of years since we had really caught up. Maybe more. He's going to Beijing for 10 months to teach English. And to find himself. I hope he does alright. I know he will, but it doesn't hurt to wish him the best. "I had to sell my mandolin for a plane ticket." He said. We smiled. These things happen in real life, too. We went upstairs and started setting up. "I don't play covers." I said. He tossed out a chord progression on the guitar. I listened for a moment and started piecing together a solo on top of it. We toyed around with the guitars for a little bit. Every once in a while something clicked. I could feel it. A spark. We paused. "Alright," he said. "Go ahead." I thought for a second. "Here we go." I started playing my progression. We messed around with it for a few minutes. Then he got on his set. "Plug in, ...

I always get anxious when I think about playing music with someone new. I basically grew up playing songs with Spencer and Kit; doing that now, almost eight years later, is second nature. It's a trust thing, I guess. You know what to expect and it's okay to branch out and try weird things. It doesn't matter if you screw up because everybody is a good friend. They don't care. With new people, you have to worry about making a good impression. About playing as well as you think they can. About living up to the idea that they have of you. About not screwing up. There's a lot of, "Are they going to dig this style?" and "What if they get bored because I suck?" and general insecurity and self-consciousness that goes along with it. And it's all a bunch of bullshit. I'm jamming with Thomas tomorrow afternoon and I am anxious. The last time we played together was in high school with Spencer, and I was playing keyboard. I couldn't eve...

It was a nasty looking bike. Most of the frame was covered in rust, which was in turn mostly covered in a layer of dust. The wheels wouldn't even revolve. I could barely move the pedals around. It was an old, disgusting BMX bike that had been sitting in his yard for some undisclosed amount of time. "I have no idea where it came from," John said. We looked at it and ate our hamburgers. "I'll take it." I said. It wasn't that I needed the bike. I'm resourceful; I can pull strings and have bikes fall into my lap. I wanted the bike. I wanted a garbage bike. An $80 bicycle from Wal-Mart. Rusted and abandoned in somebody's backyard. Messed up. It gave me an excuse to fix it. So I spent the next morning taking it apart. I cleaned it and oiled it and fixed it up and a few hours later, I was riding on a bike. I took it down the driveway. It was smooth. Everything moved wonderfully. I stood up as I got close to the end of the driveway. I...

"Music was fun ," he said. "And it still is." The spotlight came down on him with an almost awkward intensity. "That is a bright light." He added. He talked more about how grateful he was to have been able to build a career out of music. Then he explained jazz. "Improvisation isn't just noodling around. And I know people that make a career out of that. It's a language . Jazz is a language just like any other language." His speaking interludes verged on rambling, but ultimately it all clicked. It resonated. He was a musician speaking to musicians. Bill Evans was amazing. He was one of my idols as a jazz musician. He was a classical clarinet player turned jazz saxophonist and I aspired to be like him. Seeing him on stage was incredible. He just played and played. One of my friends stood up and traded solos with him. I was jealous. After the concert, as I stood talking to a group of friends, he walked right in front of me...

"Well that was fun." I never know what to say. Maybe I'll make some flash cards with phrases on them. Probably better just not say anything at all. I have a tendency to let words fall out of my mouth. I should get a handle on that. I am not particularly good at preparing for finals. They're coming up on me quick, which is terrible. I can only get work done if I'm multi-tasking. It's a weird thing I got from my dad. I can't concentrate unless I'm multi-tasking. I don't get any work done unless I'm distracted. But since I'm distracted, I don't get any work done. If I'm not multi-tasking then I lose my focus. It gets complicated. But complicated is not a bad thing. Anything worth having requires complications, I think. You have to jump through a few hoops to justify anything, really. Then, you have more at stake. And if you don't have everything on the table, then you aren't really playing the game, I guess. An...

I was walking back to my dorm late last night after seeing Star Trek again. Campus was quiet and empty. As expected for that hour, I guess. I walked slowly and thought about things. A fat cat walked out of the bushes and waddled toward me. I stopped and knelt down, reaching out with my hand. "Hey kitty," I said. "What's up?" The cat sniffed the air and stepped into the light. "Come here, buddy. I won't hurt you." It was not a cat. It was a raccoon. "Oh God!" I yelled, jumping to my feet. It hissed at me and waddled back in the direction it had come from. I continued to shoo it away. When it disappeared back into the bushes I started down the sidewalk again. Things are never really what you expect. That was the point of that experience, I guess. A minor consequence for a "leap before you look" attitude. Things never happen the way you think they will in your head, assuming you tried to think that far forward. S...

I don't forget things. I remember the details. The little things, the big things. Things that happen. Faces, people. I remember them. People don't believe me when I say that. But it's true. I have dreams. Realistic dreams. The ones where you wake up and can't decide whether or not they actually happened. Whether or not it was a dream or a memory. And I get confused. It's the little things. Conversations with people, mostly. I have a hard time deciding which one is the real one, and it blurs. It's frustrating, but that's how it goes. Sometimes people get to you. It's okay, I guess. It's just little things.

"Hey asshole!" The man yelled from his window. He squeezed himself through the frame and raised his middle finger. His friends cackled from the backseat. "UT sucks!" The man hung out the window and laughed as the car spun off down the road. And I kept walking on the sidewalk, with my hands in my pockets. I saw Star Trek and really enjoyed it. A fun movie, good friends, and a good time. But now it's time to get back to studying. Long days ahead, but just a handful of them. Back to the grind. Further down the road were two cars parked out in the street, hazard lights flashing. A man had pulled over to help a woman whose car had run out of gas. He stepped around her car and emptied a canister into her tank. "Oh, thank you so much." She said. "It's no problem, really." He said, shaking his hand at the bills in her hand. And I kept walking on the sidewalk, with my hands in my pockets. That guy was right about UT.

This is a busy week. "Are you coming home this weekend?" She asked. I paused before I opened the door. "Yeah," I said. "It's Mother's Day!" I added with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. "Uh," she said. "Okay, I guess." I got out of the car and went to class. It wasn't quite the reaction I had hoped for, but it was the reaction I expected.

"We are not them." It was alarming to hear it at first but after the worry wore off, it was wonderfully encouraging to hear. Hopeful, reassuring, and all kinds of other adjectives that more or less describe the same type of feeling. It was nice. Nice to get that kind of statement. And with such finality. I've been thinking, these last couple of days, about the kind of person I am. Or, mostly, the kind of person I don't want to become. Also, the kind of person I could be. Not too interesting of a topic, I guess. It just seems like we spend a lot of time not being ourselves. Our real selves. I don't think we even know who we really are anymore. We pretend and fool everyone else into believing that we really are who we're acting like we are. And then we fool ourselves. Or maybe I'm being bitter. Somebody stole my bike. We do know, though. We know exactly who we are. Lackadaisical, cynical, goofy, bitter, moody, social, happy. And, more importa...

This week seems to be starting off on the right foot. I saw Sonny Rollins play and it was glorious. He just waddled out on stage and started wailing. Even with his microphone difficulty, it was awesome. Makes a guy want to jam out on a saxophone. I have a feeling that this is going to be a pretty good week. My hand was too shaky to draw my comic properly.

It's been a long kind of weekend. The kind of punctuation you'd expect after one of those weeks. I am ready to start a new week now, I think. Summer is so close. I talked to my godfather a couple days ago. "Do you have my cell number?" He asked. "Yes." I said. "Okay," he said. "If you get into any kind of trouble, if you need anything--call me." "I will." I told him. I miss my dad. I haven't heard from him in almost two weeks. I miss my bike. It hasn't been my week. I ate an entire box of tic tacs today.

It's been a day. It wasn't really a good day or a bad day. It was just a day. A long day. I saw the doctor this morning. She told me I had a sprained ankle and that I couldn't participate in any physical activity for one or two weeks. No biking, no climbing, no Judo. I have a Judo final next Thursday. We'll see what happens, I guess. I felt tired and disconnected all day. In a haze. But I was anxious. Stomach churning anxious. John and I went bike shopping today after class. It was a lot of fun. I rode a lot of different mountain bikes and road bikes and BMX bikes. We spent a few hours doing that, and it was time well spent. Except it was really hot outside and we were wearing khakis, of course. It was a sweaty time. And while we were doing this, my bike got stolen. My heart is broken. I called the campus biking organization immediately and filed a stolen bike report with the UTPD. They sent an officer over to talk to me. We met up and walked over t...

When I was younger, I talked to my dad about my plan to make a movie. "I'll have to get in contact with the people in charge there to make sure we can film there." I remembered what had happened the last time we filmed without checking. Escorted out of the building by the bank security guards. Twice. My dad turned to me slowly. "In my infinite wisdom," he said. "I've learned a very important life lesson." I sat down on the couch next to him. "Don't ask for permission," he said. "Only ask for forgiveness." "Okay." I said. And I went back to my room. I've tried to apply that mantra to my normal life ever since, although I think that it is a generally bad idea. I do not need to justify being more impulsive or reckless than I already tend to be. How do you balance that? I need to figure it out. One of the things about being reckless is that you can go through life at full speed. You don't have to...