Another day in the life of...

I'm pushing 24. I live by myself...sort of...in a small room in a small house next to the most ghetto suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Sort of black and white, day and night, that sort of contrast and I'm on the right side of the tracks for once. Small place, small job, small body, small smile, small life, small beginnings.

It feels like a small life and beginning anyway. It doesn't seem so large, but everyone tells me it has been. I guess you can't see it when you're living it. But everyone else can because they're not.

I do have to sit back sometimes and reflect on everything I've seen said and done on ocassion. I'd go nuts if I tried to ignore it, because really, you can't ignore yourself. I guess this is one of those times where I'm sitting back and thinking about a plethora of things and am staring at my life in amazment, thinking "Did I really do that? Did that really happen, or has it been one long drawn out dream."

Odd thing to trigger this, but I was walking home a little while ago, listening to Cex Cells, and for whatever reason was paying really close attention to Davey's voice. And I got hit with a shockwave because it's like...how can I put it...it's not really just a voice. Well it is sometimes, but it wasn't at that second. It was a voice that belong to a guy that I at one time really looked up to and isn't just another face on a poster but is someone that I actually got to meet a few times, that I got to shove around in a mosh pit, that I've seen on stage countless times. No longer faceless.

And it's like a snowball effect. You think about how you got to do one thing or see one thing and you start thinking about all the other things you've done and you sit back and just go, "...wow." And that's what I've been doing for the past hour, just going "whoa."

I've moved over 30 times in my life, lived in two other states prior to this and moved out here on a whim nearly 6 years ago. I've gotten to interview bands, I've put myself through school, been in and out of quite a few relationships and friendships, traveled to both ends of the state for concerts and friends, gone OUT of state for shows, have found and reconnected with people I haven't seen in almost a decade, deeply established myself in two places, have been homeless and jobless - both seperately and at the same time, fallen in and out of love, survived both a suicide attempt and a couple of overdoses, survived my teen years, survived school in both the ghetto and the richest parts of town (both can be equally dangerous), had enough guts to tell my parents and step parents off, stayed out until the sun came up doing absolutely nothing with my best friends countless times and I could go on and on and on.

And in the long run, it's pretty insignificant. But at this very second and for me, it's made this very small existance a lot bigger and in it, the meaning of my life is hidden. At this moment, it's making me a person.

And I'm done waxing poetic.