Hunted By A Freak

I'm back. I don't even remember the last time I wrote. January, I believe. Why don't we recap what has gone down in the past two months.

I got the internship I was referring to in my last blog entry. The job is heaven. I get to sit at my own desk, in front of a computer, listening to Thomas Newman and Cult of Luna on my iPod, while getting paid to program. While this may sound boring to many, you must realize that I've been doing this for years and NOT getting paid for it, so I'm moving up in the world. I also submitted my resignation notice at Best Buy. It's crazy to think that I've been working there for four years. I was 17 then. That was two girlfriends ago. It was the first time I had long hair. It was before I knew what I was going to do with my life... It's flown by. My departure from Best Buy will be bittersweet. I will not, in any way, shape, or form, miss the stress that is working retail. I will, however, miss being able to work with a lot of friends I have made in the past four years. It's a shame the company doesn't take better care of their employees or I would definitely consider keeping myself employed there. Regardless... Good Riddence, Retail. Go fuck yourself.

bull dyke rodeo has taken off. We've play 3 shows in the past two weeks and have 2 more coming up in the next two weeks. All this at the same time that Werner decides that he may be leaving the band to pursue more serious musical endeavors in Chicago. I'm not sure what will come of bdr after his departure, but I wish him the best. Regardless, I'll be playing music, and I've got another project in the works as of right now with Bryce and Cory Rennison, of Dubuque. We're looking towards writing some more slow, sludgey, melodic post-rock. I'm excited to find the time to begin writing the songs.

More and more lately I've been thinking about graduation. I will graduate in about 14 months. What comes next? I have a pretty good feeling about the internship I'm currently at. I'm hoping I can at least stay there while I figure everything else out. I think I'm going to work there until next summer, save some money, apply to a ton of random jobs in random locations and just follow whatever one pops up first. I'm really looking forward to being totally independant for the first time in my life. I will be supporting myself without the help of my parents. I will have my own place to live where I can do whatever I want. It's not like I don't have these things now, but this is a milestone I've had set for myself for years, and it's going to come true in about a year. That is unless, of course, I get annihiliated by a drunk driver on a Saturday night. "Hey, It could happen" -Black Kid from Angel's in the Outfield.

I have really bad posture. I'm going to start working out soon so that I may regain the flexibility in my back and prevent further back pain from conquering my life.

I've been really getting accustomed to drinking beer lately. When I had tried it as a teenager, I thought it tasted like complete ass, but lately I have been enjoying its taste. I still limit myself to one or two over the course of the entire night, but I really have begun to enjoy its much different taste. Call me crazy. I guess I'm one of the last to jump on this bandwagon, seeing as how it took me until I was 4 months into my 21st year on this Earth before I began drinking. At least I'm not an alcoholic.

My overall quality of life has improved over the past year or so, I think. I've conquered a number of personal obstacles and I believe that I am now a much better person than I was last year. Still driving myself as hard as I can, but I'm now taking more time to try and enjoy life and I think it's working.

I'll leave you with these random thoughts:
I love hot sauce.
I got caught downloading Slumdog Millionaire by the MPAA last week.
I have really hard heels.
I bought two new guitar pedals this week.
I don't know when (or if) the new bdr album will ever see the light of day.

Coil

This too shall pass...

I've heard these words from two separate people in the past week, and I'm beginning to believe what they said. It certainly has been a week to remember. Some crucial decisions were made, and the cards are falling as they wish. I'm trying to play said cards the best I can, and I think I've handled it decently. I've all but lost two friends over the past week, which is unfortunate. I wish people understood what I was thinking, why my actions of the past week and half or so have been so out of character, but at this point in time, it's really not something I can explain using words. I hope to be able to explain this better at a later date, but until then, a select few and I are the only ones who have been able to understand.

For the first time in years, I am afraid of what the future brings. I'm second guessing what I want to do with my life, and for the past month or two, have been secretly desiring to live a simple life. I want a job where I can go home at the end of the day and not have to worry about what I left at work. I haven't felt that feeling in 3 years, and if I stay on my (current) chosen career path, I'll be looking forward to it for the rest of my life. I've finished two years toward my degree, I am half done. I can finish in two more years. The money is great. The job placement rate is high. I just don't know if it's what I want anymore. Lately it seems like I'd much rather work as a musician, or quit Computers and become something interesting, like a Chef.

Or maybe I'll just bitch out... make a lot of money, and try to buy happiness the rest of my life. We'll see what happens.

Struggle

3:23am, Tuesday July 8th, 2008. I'm not really sure why I decided to write this, I guess I've just got a lot racing through my head, and feel the need to write it down. Things have changed. A lot of things have changed. I'm not going to post these things publicly, and if you wish to know what's going on, you can ask me personally and if I trust you, I will share.

Lately (meaning the last month or so...) I've been getting feelings that I should quit school and focus on my music and audio production while working some shit full-time job. I've not had the urge to work on any programming lately, and I think that's why I'm getting these feelings. I would like to finish school, so that I can at least have some sort of decent job when I finally hit the real world. I guess I've just seen a couple friends get out on their own and just feel like I need some independence and struggle in my life to help me understand what life is about and kind of bring me off my high horse that I ride as a person.

I've been writing music lately. Since the demise of my first two bands, I have been in a severe writer's block for music, but this is seeming to subside as of late, and I'm really happy with some of the stuff I've got in the works. The band has a couple shows lined up, which I am really looking forward to. We'll be finally playing an All-Ages show in Dubuque for the first time in a year. It will go over well, hopefully.

I feel like I've got nothing to look forward to this summer. Last year I took the trip to Omaha with Kaylena, but this year I've got nothing. I'm hopefully heading to Chicago for the Wicker Park Fest in a couple weeks to see Isis, but we'll see if those plans actually happen.

Despite having drank a medium coffee beverage tonight, the caffeine is not affecting me tonight. Lately I've not been sleeping much, and have been getting through the days fairly well, while trying to make the most of every hour I'm awake.

My days are happy, but some of my nights I have felt empty and alone, like I've got no true friends in life. It's a really unfortunate feeling, but there isn't much I can do about it right now.

For the first time in my life, it feels like I've taken a backseat to myself, and have been letting my heart do the driving. I haven't thought a lot of things out very well and it's an interesting change of pace, watching the pieces fall into place without intervening with what my head is thinking.

To sum up this post... I am tired, I am in that tiredly-depressed state. I'm hoping it will all be better tomorrow, like it has been the past.

Lifeline

I'm here. But I'm not. Lately I've been feeling like I don't know who I am, who I'm around, where I'm at. I feel disconnected and I sometimes forget who I am.

It gets scary sometimes...

School's out, and I'm depressed... such is life...

Loss

I'm back. After a 7 month hiatus (almost as long as the band's hiatus), I am renewing this blog. I'm just really bored right now. Today is the last full day of classes of the semester, and I'm really looking forward to school being out. It's been 365 days (counting leap day) since I began this blog. Crazy. The past 7 months of my life have panned out as follows:

September through December (1st Semester) was filled with school and work, per usual. The band (http://www.myspace.com/bulldykerodeo) endured some trouble and eventually went on indefinite hiatus. School went well, decent GPA, met some people, you know, the usual shit.

December through today (2nd Semester) has been going great. My grades are great, I'm looking at possibly making Dean's List. Lot's of schoolwork. COBOL is a joke language, by the way, and my Software Engineering project took away over 50 hours of April from my existance. I'm kicking Calc II's ass, and Speech is easy. Deutsch ist auch gut.

I began playing with a new band with Loney, Bryce, and Tyler, which is tentatively named "The Escape Sequence". It's more post-rocky than BDR's stoner post-doom, and I dig it, though the last couple weeks I've been so busy with school work that I haven't had time to play much.

I'm presenting my SE project today, in about an Hour. That should go over well, hopefully. I've got 3 finals next week, all of which should be easy enough. I failed at scoring an internship for the summer, because I waited too long to apply, but hopefully will score one next year. Until then, I'm stuck at Best Buy.

I've been reading a lot lately. I've been trying to improve my life by eliminating the stress and anger in it, and it's been working splendidly. I've, as always, been reading a bunch of technical documentation, and am in the process of conceiving an idea for a Summer software development project. Haven't finalized anything, but am working on it.

Alright, that's all I've got now. I'm going to try and update this more, but it's not like anyone reads this shit.

--Cody

The Things We Fear Most

Today was an ordinary day. School, work, eventually I will sleep.

I've had something on my mind since about 5:15 today.

While walking out to my car to go to work, I noticed a neighbor of mine, Cameron, enjoying the great whether. You see, Cameron is not like most of us. He has muscular dystrophy which has crippled him to the extent that he can't do much except talk and push the joystick to his electric wheelchair. Cameron and I were once great friends. Despite his obvious limitations, there were times when he and I would play video games together, or get together on Monday nights to watch wrestling. As we grew up, we drifted apart. I was a teenager, I was living the typical teenage life. Cameron and I had lost contact and eventually Cameron had to leave school because of his health.

Today was different, however. I saw Cameron cruising up the street, enjoying the weather, and I left my house just in time to see him. He drove right past me, not noticing me until I said "Hey Cameron." He turned his wheelchair around and returned the greeting. Cameron and I had gone probably the better half of five years without speaking. This is surprising, considering we live less than 100 feet from each other. But when one person is wheelchair bound and not able to be outside year round, and the other person is living the life, going to college, working... there isn't much time in between in which moments like this take place.

So I stood there and chatted with him. I noticed how frail he had become, though he seemed to be in pretty good spirits. I don't talk to him about his health, because if I were him, that'd be the last thing I'd want to talk about. After I told him about my life and how things were going, we parted ways... Sounds like a typical encounter between two reunited friends, but this was different.

On my drive to work, I just kept thinking about the encounter. I was overwhelmed with a feeling I can't describe. Take guilt, for not remaining friend with Cameron throughout our teen years, add some depression, and maybe even some happiness and mix it with every emotion you've ever felt... That's how I felt.

I can say that I am very glad that Cameron is alive. I am depressed because Cameron is the strongest person I've ever met, and deserved better. Throughout the years that he and I were friends, I never once heard him complain about his health. NOT ONCE. You want to meet someone who has never taken life for granted? If there exists such a person, Cameron is that person.

I guess the whole point of this blog is to address a few things. We all take life for granted. Every single one of us. We go, day by day, we have friends, we can walk, we can laugh, we can learn, we can drink ourselves into oblivion, we can smoke ourselves to death. People go out and risk their lives drinking and driving, having unprotected sex, committing suicide. These are careless acts. For every person who ends up paralyzed from drinking and driving, there is someone who can't help that they're paralyzed. For every person who gets AIDS from unprotected sex, there's someone out there who's dying of cancer, and there is nothing they could've done to stop it. For everyone who commits suicide, there is someone in a wheelchair watching their life fade away. For everyone who carelessly lives their life, there are those people out there who wish they even had that chance...

Some people don't have it as good as we do, and we just take it all for granted. People complain because they are fat, or ugly, or have nappy hair or a big nose. Yeah, well...what if you couldn't fucking walk? Walking is a basic task that not everyone has the privilege of doing. Now, I'm no exception. I complain about things too. I don't like being overweight, or having stupid looking hair. I don't like that I don't have all the money in the world, or that I'm paying for my own schooling on said lack of funds. People live life like there's no tomorrow, and I appreciate that. Maybe we'd be better off knowing that there most likely WILL be a tomorrow for us, and not for everyone. What if you knew you only had so much time left on this earth? I'd bet you'd have done things a whole lot differently...

I know I would have...

And so it begins...again...

So yeah. School started, again. It's school, to say the least. Basically my days consist of waking up at 6:45am, getting to school by 8am, sitting around in the student center until 10am and then having class until 3. From there, I do homework when I get home and go in to work most days at 5:30pm. Needless to say, I'm not really enjoying it. The weeks have been going by fast, which is good, I suppose, but I have little to no free time anymore. I'm always kind of tired and just want it to be over with. The band's progress has slowed to a crawl because of the lack of free time and that's crappy.

In unrelated news, Since my last post, the band has finally issued our first full-length album, entitled "Jailbreak." The entire album is available for download/streaming on our last.fm page (http://www.last.fm/music/Bull+Dyke+Rodeo) - if you're interested in picking up an official copy, please get ahold of me (via Facebook, email(cjsand@gmail.com), or AIM(marpstar)). All album purchases come with free stickers and other cool (read:none) shit.

So let's talk about school. This year I am taking:
1) Principles of Sociology
2) Elementary German
3) Calculus I
4) Programming in Visual Basic
5) Object Oriented Programming & Data Structures II

Basically that means:
1) Math takes up most of my time
2) Programming is a close second, but since I'm fairly driven to program, I tend to work on programs right away and get them finished, leaving me with a week of no programming.
3) I'm trying to learn a second language and it's not fun.
4) Sociology class probably won't benefit me a whole lot in my given field of study.

I can't wait until I'm done with school. I could've taken the easy route and just gotten some certificate from NICC and this would be my last semester, but I'm somewhat empowered by the fact that I'm attending a university, rather than a community college. That and I've never met someone from NICC's computer program that actually knew anything, but who knows what I could have done.

Kaylena and I are thinking about moving to Omaha once we're done with school. We visited Omaha over the summer and we totally loved the city. Plus it'd be a nice change of pace for both of us. Most people who graduate in this area stay in this area. I don't want to be one of those people who's stuck in Dubuque the rest of my life. I want to explore. I want to move around. I want to experience living in a city where there is actually something to do. I fell in love with Omaha's 'Old Market' - basically the downtown area filled with small shops and restaurants. The atmosphere was just there, and it was indescribable. Plus Kaylena loves the zoo, and the zoo is massive and is "awesome."

But, I suppose we'll see in about...4 years how things pan out. I, personally, can't wait.