Vegan Day 2/ Overdue rant on crushed childhood dreams

Here's something I didn't expect... being vegan feels a lot like having an eating disorder...
I realize that sounds like a joke but sadly, going on a severe dietary restriction that most of the population misunderstands and judges feels EXACTLY like it did when I was balls deep in ED back in school.

Bold leap, so I'l expand...
the last time I didn't eat my own birthday cake was sophomore year of college. i wish i had a really sexy compelling lifetime reason. like being an olympic level gymnast or a super model or ... anything really. even being a dance major at my school would probably make me feel better. but... I was a dance... minor (finance major/ german/ journalism triple major). I also wish that I was actually in the class that gave me so much anxiety but...
okay here's the pathetic details...
I wanted to be a dance major and I started out as an auditionee. and when everyone would gather in a pile of leg warmers and sewing needles for pointe shoes and gorgeous new leotards covered in destroyed, disheveled Rent T-shirts and discuss their semester's classes... I was always painfully jealous. Mariah (the bane of my dance career existence) had early morning theater and then advanced pointe work (with me) and then a TA position with the elective intro to dance class and rounding out with a Balanchine theory course.

Meanwhile, I was either the weird girl in a leotard in my econ class beforehand, or late to warm up and changing in the bathroom.

I hated it...

But i loved it...

okay so you get the dichotomy. the important thing to get from this is that when you already feel ostracized from something you love and you have little control, you tend to grasp on to the things you feel you can control, in the interest of saving some short term depression...

but i haven't mentioned the worst part...
Suzanne Ferrell.
google her. she's the most ridiculously amazing ballerina that ever lived, in my opinion.
and she taught at *my school*
at the class that was *after mine*

Because, you see, as an advance pointe non-dance-major, your class is right before the *real* dance major classes.

and i have been ob*SESSED* with Suzanne Ferrell since I was a kid.  I've been in ballet since I was 4. Everyone who sticks with it after the parental- preschool-hobby phase wears out, has a sick fetish for perfection. And I.... do not have an ideal ballet body. Every failed ballerina can list their flawed body type faster than their social security number... I have bad arches. My feet are too small. My shins are too short compared to my thighs. My hips have no turnout and I'm too tall.

Suzanne Ferrell had all kinds of body issues but she was... ugh. you couldn't take your eyes off her. She was perfect without being perfect. I worshiped her. She was a principal with NYC ballet during the Balanchine era. She was his muse. Some of my favorite ballets were inspired by her. Ugh. whore. anyway...

she taught_the class_after mine.

so i would hide in the office and watch. and listen to her post- rehearsal advice.

and obsessed over everything.

she told her class how cooking carrots took the vitamins out of them, so eating them raw meant you could get the nutrients without consuming as many calories...

this and other lessons... and blah blah blah... skip 2 years ahead I'm hospitalized for... anyway... I'm better now and that's all that matters.

BUT** the point of this entry was...
in those 2 years I skipped over... I felt embarrassed for the way I ate. didn't feel like anyone would understand. felt the need to hide.

and it was also the last time i didn't eat my own birthday cake.

haven't thought about that stuff in a long long time.

BUT-  in happy news, i'm on day 2 of the experiement and have no idea why i was able to maintain the ridiculous temptation of mom's cooking but i did so that's something.

thank god wine isn't made from animals....

So I play like I am waiting, but it's just my hesitating

Completely overwhelmed by alternating waves of peace and tranquility followed by violent stomach butterfly anxiety.

It's been a mindfuck.

Trying to play housekeeper to my own head and figure out what's really going on when I feel waves of panic over trivial things.

and the conclusion seems to be that all these fears are justified. I keep getting the urge to cry when i think about Nikki and Jess moving and it seems like an overreaction. But then I remember the last 12 months... 

One year ago was the dramatic kick-in-the-stomach end to the 3 year gut-wrenching saga of me and Dan. 

back and forth and back and forth and finally an ultimatum ending at the top of the space needle with a dozen Peonies and promises of a new beginning. A year comfort and peace riddled with unresolved issues and lack of trust. to the violent and bitter end.

The loneliest I've ever felt was losing that group of friends. Which I'd always known would happen, but hadn't stopped me from not making any new ones along the way. And trying to reconnect with old friends just made me feel more lonely and left out and so much had changed. 

So lonely that I let a boy I knew I didn't truly love, pack up his life and move across the country to be with me. It seemed ridiculous, but it felt better than the alternative.

That breakup ended with the beginning of the most unhealthy relationship I've ever been in. Despite all of my better judgement, I couldn't say no to the boy I'd always wondered about. It was intense. It was misplaced passion. I fell in love with the idea of us being together. I needed more than anything for him to love me because he represented everything I wanted... and then he didn't. and 4 years of "will they" turned into a hard no. and i watched someone go from lover to friend to asshole telling me i'm being crazy and need to suck it up for the sake of the band. 

and then C told me she was moving. and i hit rock bottom. and had a bender of events that led me to the therapist's office.

and then the healing process started to begin. and my therapist said i should reach out to someone i've always wanted to be closer with. so i agreed to go to SF with Nikki and Jess and found 2 of the best friends i've had. 

and now they're leaving...

and i'm falling for a guy who doesn't live here and thus has a very cap on how far it could go.

and all of this, the fact that i'm never going to get over my drummer while we're in the band together, and everything that makes me happy is in SF, and my rent is skyrocketing... it makes it so hard to want to be *here*...

but i can't leave yet. my career has never been on such a trajectory. and my parents just bought a house across the water.

so i'm just having nightmares and panic attacks and breaking down and crying at weird times for the stupidest reasons. 

I'm just not good at being alone. All my lowest points stem from lonliness...and it's extra hard to play the "starting over" game when I'm not motivated to be here. 

I guess there are worse problems to have than loving people so much it breaks your heart to miss them. After they move, there's a Hawaii trip in the works that will likely take the edge off. And a few weeks after that is my 10 days silent Vipasanna retreat. So I may come out extra zen on the other side.

In other news, I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and started writing half-asleep in my journal. Here's what I found this morning:

"Fuck, oh fuck. My ears are ringing/

I want to fuck, but I've been singing/

Praises counting on my fingers/

of the places he should linger/

stop, you have too many days/

and there's lots of flags he's raised/

so why not stop before it starts/

and be one less broken heart"

-Subconscious Kartarr

ManFrancisco Part II

I had a truly epic and wonderful weekend and it's almost making it hard to be home.
After meeting a boy in Shasta and promptly flirting over sms for a month, I packed a bag of Agent Provac and Kiki De Montparnasse and headed to Cali for a weekend to mutually enjoyed activities.

This is the second trip to SF that's exceeded my expectations and left me feeling that wonderful glow of having met new people that you connect with super quick. It was "Occupy ManFrancisco" where NiJesKa was born and last weekend did not disappoint.

There was something very safe and familiar about being a group of 2 couples. I guess this is why married couples like hanging out together. It worked really well getting to know T while hanging out with 2 of my closest friends. The dynamic felt good. and i laughed a LOT. which is always my measurement for a good weekend.

Stories of note-
1. Suite O
2. Accidentally going for a 6 miles run b/c I got lost on the Standford campus
3. The fingers...
4. Being so drunk that I somehow missed seeing T in bed, convinced myself he was lost and i needed to find him, wandering the streets of the mission looking for him, somehow finding my way back, interrogating G as to his whereabouts, then finding him in bed and falling asleep.
5. J to the pizza guy- "i'm sorry we're so drunk... hold on i'm getting flogged..."
6. T stepping on said pizza
7. Having to rush to make a 3pm armory tour
8. Drinking champagne (a lot of champagne) at the park
9. FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS!
10. 22 points
11. Photo booths
12. Getting high fived for an epic performance on the stage of a club

All in all, amazing weekend.

In the airport, enjoying a ridiculously good lentil burger, it started to feel like there's more and more pulling me toward SF. and i have a feeling that when nikki and jess leave, Seattle is gonna feel a lot less like home.
and my lease is up in October... and Amazon's music team is based in SF...  feels... tempting...

and after 2 severely emotionally jarring breakups in the last few years, a new city could be cathartic.

or maybe i'm just still high from all the ... mutually enjoyed activities...

here's the the dreams i know i'm about to walk into...

but i like to do it...

Life... isn't about having a bucket list that you check off as you go along...
life... is about writing your bucket list as you randomly happen to do insanely crazy magical things.
also falling more and more in love with drunk kari. she cracks me the fuck up.

Top Drunk Ideas of the weekend-

1- Whilst sneaking onto the stage at McCaw hall during a charity gala, I grabbed a cart of dishes in an attempt to disguise us as the catering staff. Despite all of us being in cocktail dresses, drinking martinis...

2- While drunk food shopping after the white party, I decided it would be brilliant to try and bake cookies out of the little peices of cookie dough in cookie dough ice cream. Ice cream AND cookies in one purchase. However, I bought cookies and cream ice cream and ate half the carton, confused about how i hadn't gotten any cookie dough yet.

3- Discovering a new use for the "big words" app by using it to make pre-emptive captions to pictures:

Top Bucket List Accomplishments-

1. Playing an acoustic piano cover of "Tonight I'm F-cking you" on the baby grand Steinway at McCaw hall while my friends did an interpretive dance.

2.  Not only offering my apartment to some friends who wished to copulate and had nowhere to go, but serenading them from the living room with a beautiful rendition of ... you guessed it, "call me maybe"

In other news, had B over for dinner last night and talked until 3am. Really feel better about life when things are straight between us. Noticed myself do things that unintentionally friend zone guys. Not sure why my autopilot was going that direction. Maybe I'm getting to the point where I value our friendship too much to mess it up with complication. or maybe i'm just into someone else...

anyway, amazing weekend once again. this summer has been insane so far...

she's a bottle of water

wearing clothes is hard.
i hate it.
back from a week in Shasta. it was pretty much equal parts drinking, napping, pouting, yelling and "napping." but in a good way :)
met a boy. like him very much. and yesterday g bought me a plane ticket so i could visit him (and her and J). so... booty call sponsorship is off the bucket list.
this weekend was filled to the brim with love. 
parents were in town closing on the house, so i cooked them dinner, went for a walk by the water, played piano for them.
got an invite to the rare and magical "rich bachelor with a McMansion and a pool"'s house. laid around all day with beautiful people.
lots of BBQs with the rare and wonderful friends who really know their way around a grill and a cut of meat.
so much girl time, catching everyone up on shasta.
so much peaceful.
realized how devastated i'm going to be with nikki and jess leave. got teary just thinking about it last night.
breathe...
and then there's the new boy...
over and over and over and over and over.
we went to the same school, apparently, which made me curious about who he would have met, if he met me then. old journal entries from 2004. this was back in the Damon days. I couldn't help but miss that sweet spot of reckless passion. smart enough to know better, but naive enough to be hopeful.
past kari said things like "i hope he doesn't hurt me."
future kari will say things like "i'm going to end this before he has a chance to hurt me"
past kari was so excited when she ran into him in the library and she looked hot.
future kari will obsess over why he didn't text back even tho she looked hot.

i thought i would read those entries and feel sorry for how blindly I went through relationships.
but it left me kind of nostalgic for the times when i wasn't so damn cynical.

but...
there is a new boy...
and despite how much i know things can and probably will hurt at some point, i'm still crazy and reckless enough to say "fuck it." so maybe i haven't lost touch just yet.
or maybe i'm just following my labido more these days...

Why I'm going Vegan

Everything is challenging me today. Friends, band drama, boy drama, work stress. I don't wanna talk about any of it.
instead I wanna organize my thoughts around a question I'm sure I'll get asked a lot in the coming year-
why i am going vegan.


The short answer is, 70% health, 30% morality.


The long explanation comes from a lot of research...


This is something I started thinking of doing 2 years ago, but I wanted to be thorough and do all the research before making such a drastic change. 


In the last 2 years I've been slowly phasing out meat and dairy in small steps. First I switched to organic/free range. Then I cut back on red meat. Then I moved to a lot of dairy substitutes, soy milk etc. And on my 30th birthday this year, I'll finally cut the rest out. 


The final kick to do it has probably been the change in my social group. I'm around more vegans and vegetarians and when we cook together, instead of missing meat and dairy, I'm find a ton of new amazing food I've been missing out on. Avacados w/honey? Almond flaxseed butter with apples? Pita chips with peach salsa? 


So here's kind some of the things that stuck with me while I was researching. Some of it I kinda knew, some of it was a surprise. 


Health


1. Dairy products are designed by nature to include steroids and hormones needed by young animals of the same species during development. Dairy from other species contains naturally occurring chemicals which can be cancerous to humans.


2. Consuming dairy means consuming all the harmful chemicals ingested by the animal during their lifetime, fertilizer, veterinary medicine, antibiotics. 


3. Protein found in all l plants is healthier than the protein found in animal products because animal protein has saturated fat and cholesterol which lead to heart disease. 


4. Processed foods contain chemicals not found in nature. They effect the body by causing chemical addiction in the brain and also changing the receptors in the cells of the stomach lining which communicate the feeling of satiation to the brain.  


Ethics


1. The combination of price competition with no protection under animal cruelty laws incentivizes unethical farm house and fishing treatment. 
           -Since only recently pregnant animals produce milk, female cows are kept constantly pregnant. After giving birth, if the calf is a male, it will either be put to death or raised for veal. 
           - Many sea animals are in danger of being accidentally killed as a byproduct of fishing.  In Indonesia, for every one pound of shrimp, an average of 26 pounds of other sea animals were killed and tossed back into the ocean.


2. A vegan diet saves an average of 96 animal lives each year.


3. Farming contributes 40% more to carbon monoxide emission than all of the world's transportation combined.


4. Animal agriculture is a grossly inefficient way of growing food.  It takes 7 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat. Meat also takes 70% more water and energy to produce. As long as world hunger exists and we don't have unlimited natural resources, meat is the least efficient type of food to produce. 




***********************************
So while I recognize the stereotypes behind veganism, it feels very right to me. Taco Bell and cheddar cheese is gonna be extremely tough but I have a lot of will power when I'm educated.


2 more months....

the yellow one is the sun!

Lovely lovely weekend. just lovely.
these are the days when i don't have to put any effort into life to feel giddy happy. it just seems to happen.

Friday evening i went for a run after work and sat out on the rocks by the water for a while to watch the sunset. Came home and cleaned the shit out of my house. reorganized drawers, color coordinated my closet.  moved furniture around in my bedroom so my bed is now up against the window. slept like a baby the whole rest of the weekend because of it.

Saturday i woke up at 5am, threw clothes on and split a cab with Ben while it was still dark outside. The band got to play the Rock & Roll marathon and it was a complete fucking blast. Since we're all wireless, we played a lot of the show in the streets with the runners. A photographer for the PI went paparazzi nuts on us and we ended up in the paper:

Playing for 2 hours was a really good experience. About 30 minutes in, I hit that sweet comfort spot and got to experiment with different stuff for the next hour and a half. Was also really good practice with being forced to sing with proper technique. You can cheat a 40 minute set, you CANNOT cheat a 2 hour set.

It started pouring after our set and Ben and I walked home in the freezing cold. But I took an epic well-deserved nap listening to the rain.

Woke up, threw on a dress and went to a big lovely family dinner in honor of Jess's mom, who was in town visiting. Lots of story telling and wine and being endeared by the similar mannerisms of your friends and their parents.

Went home, threw on a corset and met the girls for the closing night of the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. Drank overpriced rum, danced in heels, had fun int he photo booth, and attempted to call it an early night, but ended up having a youtube party til 4am with B.

Woke up early for Sunday Funday yoga brunch with the kids. Moved things to Nikki's place and did an hour of yoga in her living room while a friend of ours cooked homemade bagles in the kitchen. There is kind of nothing more amazing in the world than doing yoga with the smell of baking bread. very happy.

after brunch, the boys did dishes while nikki gave me a thai massage to fix this neck issue i've been having. so for the record, yes, sometimes we do get half naked and rub oils on each other.

caught a ride home with a new friend and napped the rest of the day. woke up, changed out of yoga clothes and met up with the kids for Sunday Funday rock box karaoke. Ended the night with gelato and more storytimes.

fell asleep watching a documentary about veganism (for my impending "year without meat or dairy") and texting puppy pictures back and forth with the new friend.

 i'm putting all of my time and energy into the right things, so i'm falling asleep each night feeling more and more at peace. I'm really looking forward to the Vipassana retreat and a year of veganism and my 28 birthday parties and new friends and getting better at climbing and making music with the band and learning Mozart's Requiem on piano.

There's a whole end of the spectrum I haven't really explored and so far it's bringing me a lot of happiness.

also- there's putting a Top Pot Donughts on the bottom floor of my office building. win mother fucking win.

the in-between

I think my favorite time of day in the whole world is between 7am and 9am. Let me rephrase, my brain is at it's most amazing between 7 and 9am.
I set my alarm for 7 and end up hitting the snooze button for longer than most normal people.
I do this intentionally, because my brain does incredible things when i'm halfway between awake and asleep.
I solve real problems with stupid illogical solutions that make total sense at the time and make me crack up when i remember them later.
Dear Brain,
How in the hell did you think making kayak paddles out of taco bell tortilla shells was going to fix your multi-user database override problem?
love,
Kari

I also come up with elaborate reasons to stay in bed. At least this motivation I get, but if I'm sleep deprived enough, sleepy brain logic can overpower normal people logic.

Dear Sleepy Brain,
While I admire your powers of persuation over regular brain, my boss was not amused that I missed our 9am meeting because you convinced me I'd come up with the most comfortable sleeping position in the history of mankind and it was socially irresponsible to waste that rare oppertunity.
Love,
Late to work Kari

This morning was pretty epic.
It started with a dream. I was sleeping in a lovely sunlight treehouse when my vibrator, which was shaped like a Ken doll, turned on by itself. The regular on/off switches weren't working, so I spent what felt like hours removing layer after layer. Batteries, power cables, cases and covers.
It still wouldn't stop buzzing.
So I took a hammer and beat it to a bloody pulp.
When I woke up, I realized that the buzzing was my cell phone, which had been going off for 3 1/2 minutes. It's strange when you're made quickly aware of the discrepancy between dream time and real time.

After the dream, my brain stayed in the half awake for a while and convinced me that I was showing a rare skill in how long I could keep myself half awake. Sleepy brain made me feel proud of how quickly i could turn off the sleep alarm. Sleepy brain convinced me to sleep with one hand on the alarm clock and another on my cellphones so that i could turn my back up alarms off as easy as my primary ones. Sleepy brain convinced me that I was a genius for this.

Late to work Kari missed her doctor's appointment and first meeting because sleepy brain had once again taken control of the 7-9am.. so she killed him with redbull.

The end.

everyday i'm slipping more from where i was before

Had an existential crisis cleaning my house today.
you just like... mess everything up. and then clean it. and then i guess hope to make enough money to pay someone else to clean it, so you have more time to... to what?
whats the point of moving forward in life, it if only frees up your time to think about how little you know what to do with yourself with free time.
in other news, hangin by myself tonight.
with no chores, no work. no life stuff. had a great productive work day. followed by a super productive recording session for the new single. practiced piano for an hour. then started cleaning and now....
honestly don't know.
maybe this is why people get married.
day is done. not feeling particularly social. but wouldn't mind hangin with someone in that cozy stress free way.
suppose that means i'm reaching the end of my single phase.
suppose i should "get back out there"
ugh.
sucks out there.
so many annoyingly stupid boring people.
guess as long as i balance the "trying" with enough alone/happy fuzzy friend times, it won't feel like such a chore.
or maybe fuck it. i'll spend the next year with luca in expensive silk pajamas, eating taco bell and catching up on all the TV i missed while i was busy being ... not alone.
whatever it is- tonight is the first night i've had some time to myself and i really just wanted to be held.

Get out of my life, wait where are you going?

My therapist picked a hell of a week to go on vacation...
Nick broke up with me. Or I, him. I'm not sure. It felt mutual but in that "i resent how much you suck at making me happy so we're done but this is still your fault" kind of way.
Definitely feeling sad. Though logic tells me I shouldn't feel sad. He still wants to be friends. And sex is still on the table. Just removing the relationship part, which didn't seem to be working for either of us.
So this should be a good thing.
But maybe I'm taking it a little hard because I'm not great when close friends are so harsh. Hard not to shrug it off. I'm not bad at relationships. But I am terrible to be in a relationship with when I'm not happy. Faking it is not something I do.
And I'm right about why it wasn't working. And it's something neither of us should take personally. Neither of us felt like the other one was making an effort in the right way. The things he was doing to show he cared, are not the things I need. and vice versa.
For what it's worth, I don't think i've ever been in a relationship where that part was so clear. So it's a good lesson.
I need all the little things constantly. I need consistent reminders that I'm important. Text messages, gchats, being updated on plans even when they don't involve me, advance notice of things that shows respect for my schedule, over-communication. Things that make a relationship feel like a partnership.
I didn't realize how important those things were until I dated someone more independent than myself.
He needed gestures. Sacrifice. Actions that showed I was willing to inconvenience my life for someone else.
But I think after being in so many failed relationships, I see sacrifice as a bad thing. Like, when I'm with the right person, we'll just click and nothing will need to be compromised. Or at least not as a primary way to show affection.
The things I do to show people I love them don't feel like sacrifices. I buy presents, I write songs, I text little afirmations, I go to things to support them.
When I blow off happy hours or brunches because I need alone time, it has nothing to do with how important people are. And my truly close friends have never seen it that way. And the friends who do take offense, have never stuck around for long.

Naturally tho, the moment he left, I sat in my  hallway feeling more alone than I have in a while.
I sat at the piano until I realized it was night and I was playing in the dark. and i wrote this:

the strongest thing I was feeling at the time was how unfair it is that you flip 180 degrees and suddenly miss someone the second they leave. even after weeks of being frustrated, annoyed, pressured, trapped.
all someone has to do, is end it. and you can't even feel the relief of freedom. 15 seconds later and you're going through "a breakup"
i hate how not in control it makes me feel.
i know i should feel better. logic says I should be okay.
but i freak out and go straight to "i'm gonna die alone"
at least I got a good song out of it.
I also learned the first half of "Apres Moi" By Regina Spektor. Which is on my "fucking impossibly  hard piano songs that i want to learn before i die."
so i guess yesterday is a wash.
i hope i can stay in sad but reflective mode for long enough to want to be friends with him. Knowing me, if something hurts for too long, I have to fix it.
#control issues
and back to something i can control, work.

Think of this as my Post Secret

<TMI>

1.Not being over him is making it impossible for anyone else to really love and trust me.

2. What hurts the most is the idea of being rejected by the idea of him.

3.  i don't think i can love myself again until I understand why he doesn't.

4. I've built my identity around loving the things about myself that someone like him should love and without it i'm lost.

5. I was always comfortable with my mania because i thought it was necessary for the best parts of me to exist. If I have to fix the crazy stuff for anyone to love me, I'm scared I won't know who I am anymore.

8. I don't trust the world to make me happy on it's own and I survive with self medication.

9.  The better things get, the less excuses I have to be sad and the more guilty I feel for being sad.

10. Every moment when I feel beautiful and proud, gets ruined because part of me is so angry you can't see it

11. I only feel safe when I feel skinny.

12. Sometimes I stop eating because I don't know how to understand how to fix anything else.

13. Sometimes I stop eating because at least people will worry about me for good reasons. People understand the need to be thin but not the psychotic obsession to be loved by something that barely exists.

</TMI>

honors calculus and gun violence

The hardest I ever worked in college was in honors calculus. Like the arrogant standard obsessed girl that I am, I refused to take business calc even tho that was all taht was required as a finance major. and I refused to take regular calc. I wanted the smart kid class. And while, the material wasn't particularly challenging, the pace of the class was insane. People would be like "you can solve it like this" and the professor would be like "well, that's 3 chapters ahead but yeah that works." and i'm like "hello! I've never taken calc before maybe stick to the FUCKING CHAPTER WE'RE IN!"
anyway-
i took all the problems in the book and put them on those 5X7 flashcards and kept them next to my bed.
I worked really. fucking. hard.

and it started messing with my head.

when a girl jumped off the roof of our dorm and killed herself, i walked around calculating whether or not she hit terminal velocity based on her weight and the height of the building.

yesterday some people got shot in Seattle by a random crazy guy with a gun.

and now people are going nuts about crime statistics and how safe seattle is and who is at fault.

and i'm realizing, that my job is like my honors calc class.

because i absentmindedly start picking apart people's claims and challenging assumptions and wondering about the data sets and how i would accurately claim that one city is "safer" than another.

what is "safety?" and in a world where people are afforded the luxury of free will, who IS at fault when someone mentally ill lashes out in violence?

genetics? and is it our fault for unnaturally prevailing as a society, curing sickness and passing on defective genes?

statistics? the larger the city, the more people there are to go crazy? are we a less safe city because 1 shooting for us is relative to 100 for new york or chicago?

quality of life? what measures can we take to ensure everyone is satisfied in their lives while still preserving the capitalistic healthy competitive nature that drives our society forward?

my brain goes in circles and i want data sets and i want to look for patters and find the data to back it up when i say "stop talkin shit about my favorite city"

but probably the biggest mindfuck is when that "let's all be good to one another" glow wears off after the media coverage dies down and people go back to being dicks and no one learns anything and we all just wait for the next excuse to feel alive.

impossible condition

my friend nikki said it best when she told me "kari, when people say they don't want to hurt someone, it just means they don't want that person to think badly of them. it's always selfish because it hurts the other person much more in the long run to be protected in the short run."

It takes a lot for me to dismiss someone as a bad person. Obviously, given my track record. I forgive. And there really is good in everyone if you're able to be objective and not let certain actions cloud your view.

I may have too much compassion tho. Somehow got myself into a mess and i'm having trouble seeing a way out.

Let me open with this. I wrote this yesterday. It's called "Leave it Open." Apparently I am incapable of writing anything on the piano that isn't incredibly sad sounding. But the song is basically about how hard it is to cut ties with an ex when you break up on amicable terms. You lean on them for support because they are the one person going through exactly what you are. Support turns to friendship, turns to "hey this is nice without the pressure", turns to "what's sex between friends?", turns to regularly sleeping together, turns to a giant grey area that's confusing to friends and hurtful to... side projects.

and i really did not want to ever again get involved with someone who had a complicated half-relationship. of all the things i have learned in my years of dating, it is that those situations will always eat you alive.

yet despite going into this with the understanding that the person in question was undeniably single, he continues to go back to his ex and lie to me about it. well, i'll be fair. not lie, but position things in a way that is not representative of the real situation. misleading maybe...

and yet- i have little interest in dating him. i bounce back and forth in my level of investment depending on what else I have going on. and who the hell am i to judge someone for hooking up with an ex?

so i wouldn't give it a second thought except... misleading me on how close they are and misleading her on his extra curricular activities is leading to situations that could have been avoided if everyone knew what was going on.

and this is what i find most irritating. but you can't change people. and i'm willing to take whatever responsibility i owe. i just can't figure out what that is.

Do I owe him my discretion? Even at the cost of lying, walking on eggshells and silently supporting their public relationship displays when we're in a group?
Do I owe it to myself and to her to fill her in on what he's neglecting to say so that we both can make informed decisions on things?

kinda torn on this one...

we were nothing

Things here have been interesting as usual. Lots of drama. Lots of love. Some crying. Lots of singing. Sex. Art. Heartbreak. Panic. Inspiration. Rejection.
Can't really sum it up in any kind of box.
Maybe partition by category.
drama-
shasta is on the horizon and i'm both excited and nervous. excited because, in all honesty, my bod is pretty rockin right now. and lots of exes will be bringing their new sig-o's. And i'm shallow (or more honest and self aware) so feeling skinnier than someone can often be as much as i need to feel better about a breakup. and i've got an arsenal of Agent Provacateur bikinis to rock.
but alas...of the 7 guys on my boat, i've slept with 5 of them. and only 1 of the 5 is public knowledge. and there's varying degrees of how much drama would be caused by people finding out A- about the past and/or B- whether or not it happens again during the trip.
those odds + alcohol + 7 days on a boat + no safe backup booty = how in the hell is this not gonna get dramatic? 

love-
still feeling ridiculously lucky to have 4 women who completely accept me. even tho 2 of them don't live here and the other 2 are moving soon, i feel so  much less alone lately. or maybe late 20s is just where it's at in terms of women i connect with. "it's nothing against her, i just have nothing to say to a 23 year old. all they do is talk about youtube videos. which as exciting as they are to watch, somehow i find it difficult to stay engaged when they are described to me."

crying-
still consistently upset about band stuff. still feeling stuck. still feel no one really cares about my suggestions. and then blames me when i'm not able to really get into our live show. still stressed about the growing number of times my drummer drops the ball, doesn't share info, isn't available for one thing or another. but i can't change anything so i must accept it and move on. feels like fame is to this band what a baby is to a failing marriage. i keep thinking success will excited everyone and reengage people. but he forgot to turn in the W9 that we need to get paid for our first ever paying gig. And no one's even shared on facebook about the magazine cover we were on. So it feels more and more like these problems won't be fixed by success or maybe by anything. so it's something i keep crying over and it should be the one thing that never makes me cry. and that's stressful.

singing-
played 2 really fun shows in the last 2 weekends. and did 2 ridiculous nights of karaoke at rock box with some climbing friends. and finally posted a somewhat not-terrible version of my gotye cover that i've been working on forever.

sex, art, inspiration, heartbreak, rejection, panic... i'll save for another entry. itchin to get home and work on the cover more ;)

we loved each other in strange ways

seems therapy is the only thing that inspires me to write. i suppose because it inspires me to think. about everything.
i keep thinking there's a similar skill set between therapists and producers. each session is an hour long. i go in, hafhazardly speaking and by the end it wraps up with a nice conclusion, tied in theme and cliffhanger for next time. or maybe i just have a really good therapist.
this week is all about relationships. which, the more therapy i do, the more i realize, this is really what i want help in.
i get bored. i start to hate the things i loved. i start needing something, anything else.
and then i fuck it all up and destroy people. and then i miss them.
i don't want to be like that anymore.
i guess i want an answer to one question- am i not married because i haven't found the right person, or because there is no such thing as a right person?
because i like the idea of marriage. of loving someone else so much that i want to be with them forever.
but i've never found anyone i haven't started to hate after a few years. and i'm 29. i've been in 5 very serious long term relationships. with men i still think about very fondly. and all of them, i could date again... for a few years... and then i'd get bored.
5 relationships. with wonderful men. each amazing in one aspect. and i cheated on all of them. because i couldn't leave mediocraty by myself. i needed to do something societally unforgiving to make sure there was no going back.
................
this is coming from a few minutes ago. i was looking for something i stashed in a shoebox in my closet. i pulled down the wrong one. it was Dan's. Dear men of my past, Yes, I am still 13 years old and I still keep a shoebox of stupid shit i collected while i loved you.
In Dan's box is the following:
1. An AWS nametag. He came over to my house after some work function. I remember loving how it said "Senior Manager, AWS." I remember loving how powerful his job made him in my eyes. So I stole it.
2. Four photo booth photo strips. This is from the Ace Hotel in Portland. After the fetish club. We were drunk and spent about $60 on photobooth pictures. If i die, i hope someone burns these before my parents see them.
3. A masquarade mask. His 30th birthday was a masquarade ball. I went to a party with Jason earlier that night. It was my last double header. I met LK that night. It was the first time I felt really torn between the 2.
4. A burberry tag. The first of many lavish gifts. He came back from some Vegas trip with the burberry rainboots i'd been in love with. After we broke up, I bought myself a pair of Hunter Wellies as a symbolic gesture. I will buy my own damn expensive plastic boots!
5. A backstage sign from Sassquatch. We stole it, and a golf cart from the backstage area of the mainstage that we snuck into to see NIN. Years later, while staying at a winery down the road from the gorge, we tried to ride bikes back in and find the spot, but security kicked us out. It felt ominous.
6. 10 "I love you" cards that I never sent. I've made it a habit to keep a stash of greeting cards when I'm dating someone I've fallen in love with to stick into work bags or on car windsheilds. I kept these as a reminder that I never made it through the stash.
7. A pregnancy test, the first and only I've ever taken. I kept it because I remembered how weird of a reaction I had to it. It was the first time I almost almost almost wanted it to be not negative. Having that reaction scared the shit out of me.

theres a bunch of hotel keys, poems on napkins, ticket stubs, pens, and stupid shit.

was hoping going through the list would help me understand my final conclusions on that relationship, but i'm still a mix of happy to be out and missing the good times. but i guess that's all relationships in one way or another.

i guess Regina Spektor said it best, "You love until you don't."
keepin movin i suppose.

next week should be fun. i'm supposed to make a list of pros and cons of all my exes and discuss whether they are rational deal breakers or me obsessing over flaws.

maybe i do feel better...

had dinner with my parents who just bid on a house on some island that's a 30 minute ferry ride from Seattle. Feeling... oddly comforted with the thought of having my family so close. i ran away to DC so many times during the drama that was mine and Dan's relationship. It'll be nice to run away for the cost of a ferry ticket instead of a cross country airline flight..... there was a trip I took probably 3 or 4 years ago back home. I left because he was having some party and i wasn't invited and that's how ridiculous things get sometimes.
and i was happy, watching dexter, eating deviled eggs in my pajamas when i accidentally overheard my mom talking about me to my aunt on the phone. and she was so angry at dan. and maybe more heartbroken than i was. and said something about how I had said that no one before understood me the way he did. and i really thought he might be the one..... and it was so hard to hear that in an overheard conversation. and she got protective, telling my aunt that if he ever expected to date me, he owed her and my father a big apology...
i kinda lost it. something weird about hearing your parents heartbroken because you're heartbroken. supports my theory that it's never helpful to breakdown and be your emotional irrational self in front of other people. they're affected by it too.

okay. the box is back on the shelf. i'm no closer to any answers but i do know this-
i refuse to live in a world where friending someone on facebook is more intimate than fucking someone.

the end.

the rap battle

Round 1-
Nick ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150344990417580&set=vb.615852579&type=2&theater )
I know you got Chris pickin up the slack
he'll be bouncing throughts off you but they won't bounce back
he's pitching you're catching, i'll play the shortstop
there;s 2 people out while i eat your porkchop
i got a hungry flow that will eat your fears
make you weap to the beat and reheat your tears
i don't have to try, can watch you beat you
shut your own shit down like machupichu 


Kari (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aadbu0SDPOM)

Yo, relax a little son, why you look so serious?

 You’re a tall drink of water, have a drink on us

Oh wait you don’t drink, to keep your senses in line

I’ll out-rhyme you anytime after a bottle of wine

You can’t stand the heat up in local 360

Take a walk around the block, but you can’t keep up with me

We’re full contact runnin,  knock yo ass in the street

Don’t think I hesitate to  curb stromp  yo meat

speakin of meat, you take my chops, like sloppy seconds

all alone in your bed, with your tears I reckon

chris may be helping … with my orgasm

you and the littlest rabbit… yeah.. have fun…

Round 2-
Nick- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150345067012580&set=vb.615852579&type=2&theater
The littlest rabbi gonna bless this track
add my meat to your dairy thats a non-kosher snack
i do things with my rhymes that you wish you could
i don't need to drink wine til my lines sound good
try to curbstomp me girl that just makes me laugh
put my mouth on the sidewalk, i'll bite it in half
drink 2 dollar chuck i drink mollatav
then i'll blow out ya face and yell mazeltof 

Kari- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhKNej5qxLs
Yo nick where'd you go? Thought this was a rap battle
droppin out so soon, i mean you realize that'll only
make me wanna throw these rap at you harder and harder
flip yo shit a little bit and make you wish you never dissed a chick so fit with fuckin skillz like this
so it's 2am where the fuck are you?
I thought since you didn't have a real job, you'd be here too
i don't know why i'm instigating someone with no balls
here's 20 bucks, you can keep the hot dog




Round 3-
Nick- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150360691152580&set=vb.615852579&type=2&theater
This could get dark so I hope you don't get mad at me
call me patriarch the way i fuck start your family
start to get smart and you'll rethink your strategy
start to get farce and i'll turn into a tragedy
say you want beef but you got no appetite
say you got something for me but you can't quite rap it right
lacking presence of mind let me present whats in mind
i rap circles around your rhymes like london underground 
so delete your verse it's too prerehearsed
it's not quite hot if you reheat it first
you get completely worked when you compete with words
we had a 2 person battle and you came in third

Kari
(MIA for the moment)

Round 4-
Nick- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150383981062580&set=vb.615852579&type=2&theater

you could rhyme on amphetamines and still get slept on
be as big as king kong, youd still get stepped on
youre gonna get beat like a redheaded step son
on your path to defeat, let me start at step one


you do your little songs so ill have someone to style on
smile while i rip your weak style like nylons
get my eight mile on, suckers cant say shit
youre just another mouth for me to have my way with

boast about rhymes you wouldnt host online
but think its fine to whine if i dont post on time
you may decide to hide all of your crappy raps
i take pride in my craft while i whip that ass

Kari- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI71X-xJFgU

I’m pickin this rap battle where we last left off

If you were Germany, your rhymes would be hasselhoff

An Embarrassment to the sport, your lines they come up short

It’s obvious who’s come out on top in round 4

afraid to rhyme on me cuz you got nothing to say biotch

cuz I get off being the one you have your way with

fight you with both hands tied behind my back

but it’s my ass that’s getting battled when we rhyme like that

threatenin to beat me like you always do

I’ll put the paddle in your hands and count it out for you

Keep smilin thru weak stylin that you put me thru

We really like this place, please let us keep it Lou!!

Ben There, Done That

I wrote a song for my Nikki! Rough as shit but ask me if i care.

You've got a smile that can cut like a knife
Like a certain virgin America pilot
Hey Nikki you're so fine / So fine you blow my mind

Me and Jess got you're back like a traveling headboard
We'll keep it locked down like the first rule of fight club
Hat trick by your side/ rackin up those airline miles

Boys change their minds faster than weather
You could curse the skies or bring and umbrella
Let go of the hurt that's been filling your head
And let's skip to the part where there's Whiskey again

You need a detox but not from red wine
From the thoughts of a boy who's consuming your mind
 His loss for not seeing you, the way the rest of us do

Cuz we don't fuck around, when we're fucking around
And we're not the kind of girls to be pushed around
Every weekend's a bachelorette party, but no one's getting married

                       
Cuz there's plenty of fish but we might need the ocean  
So if you bring the booze, I'll bring the ibuprofen                        
When it's us don't say we didn't warn ya
We'll drink til there's no booze left in California

when all you do is talk of hearts, that's just one fifth of lucky charms

in the memoirs this chapter would be called "if they only knew..."
another beautiful weekend filled with music, writing, fighting, art projects, climbing, sunshine, rain, applesauce.
i wonder how long before things feel routine but i'm not confident they will.
seems to me, that the point of it all is to find that balance.
there's a lot of thigns that are momentarily amazing and lastingly unhealthy. and vice versa. seems like the trick to things is to try everything once until you find that the right combination of things satisfy you without exhausting you. and vice versa.
i'm being cocky. i should quite while i'm ahead.
but it's not all coming from one place, so maybe it's okay. or maybe it never comes form one place, but one place has more weight than the rest. and vice versa. haha.
.... time lapse.....
yup. shouldn't have been cocky. major work fuck up to ruin my good mood. being smart enough to be mad at yourself for being dumb is like the most annoying level of intelligence.
crazy that i'm less worried about the heat i'm gonna take and more upset that i impacted our bottom line. that's a new one. so i guess the silver lining is that i like my job...
alright, vocal coach awaits. maybs singing will halp...

all you need is wub

oh where to begin....

went rock climbing for the second time this weekend and it was magical. dub step + rock climbing gym = sheer madness. 

walked around the city afterward with manuvah, climbing trees and enjoying the sun. was a particularly delightful saturday afternoon.

had a lingere baking date with S & A where we put on our hoe-ish best and made cupcakes. discovered edible glitter frosting and the world as i knew it was forever changed.

got to catch up with an old friend... and i'll leave it at that...

certainly having a really fantastic month. seems like there are 3 things i'd been missing, which have been really wonderful for my mental health

1- doing epic things

2- having people to tell epic stories to

3- having those people respond with equal amounts of epicosity

the funnest part of the last few weeks has really been gossiping about it to my friends and laughing at how ridiculous our lives are. i realize a lot of people say that and wish i could elaborate but no, not here.

finding myself back in the place where i get excited to be alive all the time again. new friends can make you excited to explore the world. finding myself with lists upon lists of adventures to be had. I think I always feel like the world, or at least Seattle, is like a playground, but sometimes i don't feel like playing. 

getting a little nervous/excited about shasta. first year going alone alone. could be relaxing and drama free.... likely to involve drunken mistakes with exes who are not single.... likelier to involve extreme sexual frustration...

we shall see. psyched for friends and sunshine and showing off my new Agent Provacateur bikini tho...

i'm sore for like 8 different reasons... 

Occupy Manfrancisco

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now you're just somebody that i used to know

Revenge is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.
sound advice.
i finally feel free of the band drama. it took a lot of thinking and trying different approaches but in the end, like most things, you just have to forgive people, even when they don't apologize and let them go.
it does drive me crazy when i feel like someone doesn't see me for me. i feel like i have to prove myself. i have to constantly try and make them see how i'm not the person they think i am.
i didn't even realize that i was doing it though until today. and that's the real reason i've been so angry.
i feel like people's actions toward me are a reflection of how they see me. so i feel like i have to fix myself in their eyes.
and i never realized how much energy i was wasting on it. sounds cliche but, i don't owe anyone an explanation. and i really don't need to prove myself to anybody. and all that energy should be put into the people i do care about and not the ones who are toxic.
for the first time in a very long time, i feel really at peace with everything.
and i know it's not gonna always feel like this, but understanding is half the battle.

in other news, i got in a fight. a physical fight. and i have a black eye and i may have broken my hand. it's been a rough week. i'm not blogging because there hasn't been a single day this week where i would put what happened, even hints of it, on the internet. even in a private blog that no one reads.

home watching BSG icing my face and gonna sleep, hopefully, for the first time in a long time.
not sure i can keep up with this rockstar crap much longer. but next week is... not looking like a promising start to any sort of detox...flyin to SFO with some girlfriends for st. patrick's day and the weekend is already filled with scheduled chaos.

here's some fun vagueblogging:
there's half a bottle of whisky and 30-40 records thrown about on my living room floor... someone read me a bedtime story a few nights ago... it hurts to swallow b/c i may have damaged my throat and this is not related to the fist fight i got in...my vanity mirror is broken and i have no idea why... there's a cocktail named after me at bathtub gin :)

g'night babies.

this is what it's like

+ i'm wearing a custom limited edition franco shirt. given to me a few nights ago by the designer to wear on stage. cross promo etc. it's sunday and i just found it while i was emptying my gig bag. putting the undrank pineapple juice back in the fridge. honey, cough drops, glitter, sharpies. 

-and i can't stop thinking about the ex i saw tonight. how given 1-2 more glasses of wine and 2-3 more nostalgic stories and i would have been tempted to do the one thing you're never supposed to.

+ i played the king cat main stage on friday. raj did another epicjob on my makeup. my ass looked stellar in my new sequin pants. J even came to see me for the first time ever and i loved the feeling of singing to him. pirate was there. that guy was there. the bandmance was there, including a certain diva who i subconciously keep turning down even tho i dream about him constantly. everyone who's ever made me feel loved was in the crowd.

-and i can't stop obsessing over the guy who wasn't there. the guy who i fear may never be there again. the guy who shouldn't be there. but who keeps showing up in my dreams to make peace. and i wake up so happy only to be crushed when i realize none of it was real. the more i dream about him, the more he invades my waking thoughts and i don't know how to really fix that. 

+I spent another wonderful weekend balancing alone time and connected fun time with someone i'm starting to really enjoy. someone who is scarily similar to me, it feels unreal. i keep making up mental abyss stories in my head to make him less like me only to realize we're still on the same page. it's really really weird. it's like too easy. i feel like there should be something in fighting for this kind of connection. like if it's too easy it must be wrong.

-and so i'm obsessing over that. and/or worried about how horribly this/everything ends. 

+300 people came to see my friday night. 100ish people talked to me after the show. 80ish people complimented me. 30ish people hugged me at the afterparty. 15ish invited me to a punk show the next night. 11 people tagged pictures of me on facebook. 

-0 people want to watch a movie and share a bottle of wine with me right now. 

and that's what it's like. going through the motions. everything on paper. it feels like it should make up a life. a really good and happy life. and knowing that only makes the depression worse. guilt on top of that emptiness. 

so i'm gonna go to sleep alone in a really nice apartment. and wake up and go to my well paying, culture-fitting, intellectually stimulating job. and i'm gonna go to my voice lesson, given to me for free by a fan of the band who happens to be a music teacher. and then cw is gonna come by and fix my preamp so i can listen to records. and then i'll make him leave and i'll be on the floor listening to zeppelin alone again.

all of this. and some stupid facebook picutre of a guy kissing his gf and proudly posting how adorable he thinks she is. and it breaks me. and none of it seems to mean anything.

how fucking stupid is that?

it's only human i suppose.

or maybe i'm just pissy because my record player is still broken...

if it were working, i'd definately play Queen first. 

"caaaan...... anybody..... find me.... somebody too.....

love..."

wanna f? nice shoes. oh wait.. i think i got that backwards

Dear people of the internets,
I am about to share a universal truth. You may suspect that sooometimes there are cases where this is not true, that there are exceptions. but it needs to be revealed, cuz i'm sick to shit of girls doing this.
okay ready?
There has NEVER ever ever ever been a single instance, when a woman was legitimately bothered by being hit on.
Ever.

sorry girls-i-will-never-be-friends-with. i'm growing impatient with this ridiculous exchange between the sexes.
you pretend to be bothered by how many men want you, guys pretend to empathize...
all i ever hear in these conversations is someone saying "look! look how many people want me! you should want me!" and the response of "wow! it's so impressive how many people want you! let me show you how much i want you!"
i want to live in a world of blatant honesty :)

When you hear a ladyfriend explaining to you that she was genuinely "annoyed" and took "some thinly veiled" action to avoid repeated instances, I urge you to ask yourself-
-Is there really nothing to gain by complaining?
You will find, the answer is ... uh...NEVER. there is ALWAYS something to gain. ALWAYS.

It is not difficult to avoid being hit on.
what is difficult, is admitting that everything we do in life is to attract someone of the opposite sex.
the clothes we wear, the social activities we do, the things we find entertaining.
it's nothing to be ashamed of. we're programmed, rightfully so, to procreate and populate the planet. so... gots to be teh sexiest.

so what's so wrong with being hit on? it's not annoying. it's flattering. and if you don't want attention, there's a lot you do that don't involve such egregious extremes. (omg i always wear this fake engagement ring when i go out to clubs. it's so the creepos don't bother me cuz it's laaaaadies night)

no, i don't have a lot of close girlfriends, you are correct :) cuz most of them are so unbelievably clueless about how obvious and pathetic 90% of their actions are.

this is a way meaner entry than i intended.
Let me self-depricate a little to balance the aggression.
I get hit on. I wouldn't say a lot but I don't typically engage in behavior that makes it easy for most men to do so.
I'm shy. I don't dress very lady-like. I'm almost always with another guy. and i'm not really of that "smokin hot" variety.
and i have complained about getting hit on. on multiple occasions. but i was totally lying. past kari had much to learn. if i'm being really honest with myself, i was absolutely complaining for attention, even the smallest amount.
and another truth- i like getting hit on. is very validating. i like attention. and sometimes i dress up with the very intent of getting said attention.

anyway, at the end of the day, there is absolutely no situation where a girl actually means it when she claims to be bothered by being hit on.
cuz really what they're saying is "i find it displeasing to know that i appear valuable to another human being."
which if that's really the case then i guess you are truly allowed to complain.
but everyone else needs to shut the fuck up.
k thx :)

The Scientist

My therapist had me work through a personality test yesterday. Normally I hate doing them. I have so much trouble answering the questions. "Do you use data to make decisions or go with your gut?" Well, it fucking depends on the situation.
But working through it with her helped a lot and the results were terrifyingly accurate.
it's quite comforting tho. to understand yourself. all the lit she gave me talks about common challenges in work and relationships that this type of personality has. it left me feeling like... more okay with my shortcomings.
A couple of the relationship points that were glaringly accurate:
-Is extremely sensitive to rejection, but no one will know it
-Insist their partner be logical and rational if they are to be convinced of their point of view

we worked though some recurring problems i've had in relationships and was able to find some underlying conflicting personality types.
oddly enough it made me realize how compatible i was with dw. how we complimented each other's contrasting pieces and shared them with the ones that matter.
Apparently the N part of the myers briggs test means i feel connected with people who share my need to make crazy future plans and dreams without worrying about the details. the T part means I think relatively complexly and get excited when someone understands the way i explain things.
That was exactly why I fell in love with him so hard.
therapy makes me wish we were talking. 9 months later and i still haven't found anyone i want to share things with more than him. i wish i could tell him that not everything was either of our fault. that i have some stuff i need to work out with myself but i could be in a place to build something real when i'm done.
le sigh. anyway, the good news is, business analyst was right at the top of the list for recommended careers..
and so was artist :)

let the drummer kick, let the drummer kick that

I should have written down all the things I was thinking about last night. Everything felt really clear. Completely and devestatingly heartbreaking, but clear.
I stayed in the studio for hours after the guys left just thinking, and crying, and listening to music and crying more. I never feel like I can just go home or go to sleep until I find that thing, that one idea or plan or concept that makes me feel like this feeling won't last forever.
but even after 6 beers and 90 minutes of my emo playlist, i couldn't come up with anything.
If i'm being totally 100% honest with myself, I'm a lot more messed up about this *thing* than I a- let myself believe and b- know i need to be.
at the end of the day, i lost my 2 best friends in seattle. and i'm not over it.
convinced myself i was over losing dw because i was so over the relationship. jumped right into one new thing after the next and replaced feeling trapped and bored with butterflies and adolescent honeymoon drama. but when all the boys are busy and i'm alone, i realize how much i miss the connection i had with him. and how no one around me right now comes close. and how it's easy to mistake puppy love for a genuine connection... until it's over. i know it's been almost 9 months, but the distractions are finally fading and i'm finally mourning my break up. and it's gut wrenching.

and i convinced myself that i was fine burning out a 3 year "when's it gonna happen?" fling. rationalizing how incompatible we are. focusing on all the reasons why i don't want what i was told i couldn't have. swallowing all the bitterness i felt for the way it all ended. playing nice so the rest of the things would be affected. and even when that friendship turned to spite and fighting and emotional abuse, i convinced myself it was okay to lose a friend. that friends come and go. that i didn't need him. that maybe he wasn't such a great friend after all.
but it's exhausting keeping up those perspectives. they're broken over and over again every day that i see him. every time i have to email a question and i'm met with cold calculated answers. every time i text with feedback on something and i'm met with monosyllabic bare-minimum responses. every time i see him with someone new.
and every time i try to rationalize with him i'm reminded that i cannot feel ANYTHING. it's absolutely forbidden to just be hurt by any of it because it's completely counterproductive to everything and I should absolutely just get the fuck over everything.
and every time i get mad at the lack of empathy, i mourn the loss of my friend more.
it's hard enough when someone you love stops loving you. it's even harder when their actions seem hateful. it's even harder when they deny they're hurting you.
it's too much to deal with.
and the answer to all of this is remove the source of stress. because i clearly can't fix it and i can't force someone to be nice to me.

so...
i sat on the couch in the studio and thought long and hard about what i needed to do to fix things. cuz i can't convince myself that everything is okay anymore. i feel broken.

but nothing ever came. i don't think i can fix everything myself this time.
desperate aggressive drastic action feels on the horizon...

brain cleanings

I must say I am really enjoying therapy. Probably for 2 big reasons. 1- I love talking about myself. I mean that in an honest way. I find myself genuinely interesting and enjoy sharing parts of me with others. I am very proud of who I am. 2- I see therapy as a problem solving exercise and i really love puzzles. It's like a game. Why do i do this? or feel that? how has my life chiseled these complexes into me? and how do we fix?
it's probably the perfectionist in me to wants to have the most healthy and functional life possible but honestly it's like problem solving crack.
so what has therapy revealed about me so far?
well, I am too guarded in relationships and i have trouble letting myself be vulnerable in someone else's eyes. i don't have a good sense of myself in making decisions about relationships. i seek too much outside counsel and i don't have a filter for what advice i should be giving weight to.
none of this is news.
but it is very interesting to dissect where it comes from.
it would seem a lot of it comes from having an irrational fear of being too needy and high maintenance. I've started lumping all emotional reactions as irrational and I feel like i should be able to talk my way out of feeling anything that hurts.

so the homework this week has been to acknowledge when something hurts my feelings, admit it to myself and feel shitty about it before beginning the rationalizing process instead of skipping straight to it.
i asked my therapist what happens if I let myself get upset and I can't get out of it? She said that's what you bring to therapy and you work through it with help.

kinda wish everyone was required to go to therapy. it's so helpful to do mind cleaning. and god knows the people we usually rely on for advice are helplessly littered with bias and agendas.

anyway, a fun exercise i've been playing with, which honestly I think will do wonders for my song writing, is this:
when you get that hurt feeling, you write down what happened and your instant gut reaction to why it hurts. then you write down what you think is the irrational reason why it hurts. then you try to come up with a logical reason why it should hurt.
so the example i'm working through is like...
What happened- I didn't have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day
Gut reaction- I'm lonely
Irrational reason-  It's my fault that I'm lonely  either because I messed up all my relationships or because I'm not good enough to be loved by anyone. :)
logical- I'm lonely because society tells me there's something wrong with being single and I would rather be alone than with someone i don't truly love so I haven't chosen to settle.

this led me to write a really rad song on the piano last night actually.
combining the puzzle solving with the letting myself wallow by belting out lyrics that express the irrational was a total catharsis.

long story short- head shriking = fun

The Audition

This weekend I auditioned for a TV show called "America's Got Talent." Normally, I would never in a zillion years do something like this. Why? Because those shows are not for good singers. They are for phenomenally gifted singers. So why bother?
But one of the show's casting agents asked me if I would send her a non-band video of me singing. I recorded a few things and didn't think any of them were very good, so I kept putting it off until the casting agent demanded I send her one. She told me she ran it by the producers and they wanted me to come in for a private audition.
Srsly, the video was ridiculous. Emo  Kari playing a Jewel cover in her bathroom. I was almost embarrassed to send it.
So I figured I had to do it if I was being asked and was skirting the open call auditions.
So last Saturday I threw on a flannel shirt, my ripped jeans and chucks and headed to this hotel downtown where they were doing the auditions.
They were running behind so I had a half hour to wander around. I found this gorgeous grand piano and used it to warm up.
Outside the audition room was like a circus. There were break dancing troupes doing backflips and people riding unicycles and playing bagpipes and belly dancers and drum circles.
I was the only singer in the group but I'm curious how one can judge if like I'm a better at singing than that guy over there is at juggling. Apples to oranges.
Anyway,  I get called in to this giant ballroom where there is a 3X3 peice of hardwood flooring in the center of the room. There's a panel of 5 producers and a camera behind them.
The producer tells me that I'll sing first and then they'll ask me some questions.
So I start singing  (Criminal- Fiona Apple) and I was happy with how pretty the room's acoustics were making me sound. Then my voice started shaking a little and after that I was super paranoid about being nervous and they were staring emotionless at me. So I made sure to look at each of them in the eyes and smile and be as flirty as humanly possible while singing.
After it was over they clapped, which I thought was odd. Normally no one claps at an audition.
They asked me about where I was from and what I did for a living. They asked if I was nervous and I said a little because I'm used to loud crazy rock shows and this was certainly different. They asked if I got nervous on stage. I said it is much easier singing for a crowd of people than for a few.
They asked me if I would be available for the show's filming in a few weeks. I said I thought I could manage taking a few days off to film a show.
Then that was it, they said to reach out to the casting agent if I didn't hear from them soon.
The super hot guy who escorted me back to the lobby said I did a really great job and had a great voice.
And then I put my Aviators on and walked home.
bizarre day.
Not expecting to get a call back but kinda hoping I do. Would be a very welcome boost of vocal confidence in a time when I need it most.
I swear, I'm having the weirdest month...

i don't even care if it hurts...

this week has been fucking nuts. i think i'll do this entry debate stylee and come up with a verdict on what adjective should be used to summarize.

Pro-

Our Album dropped on Tuesday. Purevolume featured us on their homepage for 2 days and we've had almost 4,000 listens this week. They also interviewed us, which was really surreal. I remember when just saying "band practice" and "studio" felt all legit and cool. Now I'm saying things like "Being compared to Gwen and Hayley is really flattering because they are such phenomenal vocalists." Since then it's been a worldwind of email. So and so tagged OLP on facebook, so and so is now following you on twitter, so and so commented on your Purevolume page, so and so just became your fan, so and so would like to book you to play X show, so and so would like to write a review of your album.  

This is the most  band email I've ever gotten in a few days. It's really exciting. 

Con-

Work has been absolutely impossible. I am an excel ninja, but our business is growing so fast it's becoming impossible to use excel to do my job. I am actually breaking it. It's making me frustrated. And there's more pressure than ever to make sure everything is correct. I spent 16 hours straight working on ONE report. Even with every excel trick in the book, it still took that long. is stressful. 

Con-

Had my first real fight with Pirate. From there everything seemed to spin out of control. He's mad about something I did to fix a different problem. Tried to seek advice from another friend who picked me up after Pirate threw me out and got in a spat with him. i feel very trapped and I can't get out of anything without hurting everyone. ended up having a long chat about the state of my mental health and got some harsh but necessary feedback. left feeling like i had somewhat of a plan to slow things way down in all aspects and sleep more. then talked to some other close friends who basically said "wtf? why? don't you enjoy being crazy even if it does cause a bit of drama every now and then?" 

So, yeah. Being vanilla isn't going to make me any happier. he's probably got a point on the sleep thing tho...

Pro-

Been hangin out a lot with some friends in other Seattle punk bands. Makes me really miss my capital hill group from years ago. Must say that drinkin with a big group of musicians is what happy is all about. Lots of band chats and good music and karaoke and dancing and flip cams and hipster games and cheap beer and inside jokes on facebook walls and feeling famous. There's a lot of love and support in that group. 

I suppose that's sort of the state of things. Band is having the greatest week of it's life. Work is stressful and I'm still in the mental funk. 

got lots of material for the next album...