Last post of 2009....I think...

Day 365: Only hours left now. Not only does 2009 come to a close but with it the end of the first decade of the 2000's. Time to tear that last page from your day-by-day Far Side calendar or replace your desktop planner. Time to look back on the past 52 weeks and try to devise a plan on how you're going to make the next 52 weeks of your life even better. Time to think about the bad decisions you made and realize that they might not have been as bad as you thought because, well, you're still here aren't you? Unless you've managed to find your way to living under a bridge or somehow misplaced your hands you should consider 2009 somewhat of a small victory. For some people, this is a time to make "new years resolutions" or as I like to think of them "new years attempts at controlling some uncontrollable part of our life". Not to say that people don't follow through with their resolutions because the occasional shmo will make good on their promise to continue going to the gym or refrain from eating fried foods for the first couple months of the year but let's be real, are those really good resolutions? I mean, if you're going to make a resolution make it big. Like give up hustling Aldi's out of the quarters in the shopping carts, or try and give financial advice to the bums on the street rather than yelling at them. Try "Get a job!!" instead of "Get lost". I mean, chances are they're already pretty lost. They just need that little push towards a goal. My resolution this year: Stop complaining about my financial situation and start doing something about it. If there's one thing I can't stand it's the sound of my own mouth when the only thing coming out of it is the sound of my lazy lack of committment to pursuing a personal goal. So I guess what it boils down to is that my new years resolution is, "For God's sake just follow through with whatever resolution you pick, no matter what the hell it is!!"

Happy new year to all and I'll see you in 2010....so in like 10 hours.

September Update

I have recently discovered that, from time to time, fate intervenes even in the blogosphere and people will eventually find (and possibly even read) your blogs.

With that having been said I've decided to give it a shot for the month of September seeings as there's only approximately 24 hours left before October. So without any further adieu, I give you........ SEPTEMBER UPDATE!!! (not a very grand title I know but be glad you're getting anything)

Since my last post there's been a lot of things going on in my life. My dream of performing in the Russian ballet fell through on the heels of a bad night with a leotard and a liter of Stoli so I decided it best that I look for something slightly more befitting of a 23 year-old in the midst of a quarter-life identity crisis. After searching for jobs for the better part of the summer, something happened that I certainly didn't forsee: I was hired.

I suppose it wasn't so much the fact that I was hired that surprised me but the position that I was hired to fill. It was a position as a teacher's aide in a school for children with behavioral/mental disorders. To clarify, this does not mean that I work in Special Education. In fact, it's almost the opposite. The students come primarily from broken homes where substance abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and crime are all common to daily life. To say the least, these young people need as much support and guidance as they can possibly receive.

The reason why it was so much of a shock to me that I was being hired for this job wasn't only that it would be a great opportunity for me to try my luck out in an educational setting, but also because only a month before all this I had come to the decision that I wanted to try and get into guidance counseling. Now I've always been fairly skeptical of "signs" and "fate" but the mere fact that I had been called in for an interview with this type of school got me thinking that there might be more to this idea of getting into counseling than I had thought.

Now, three weeks into the school year I can already see positive signs that this could turn into something much bigger for me. Coming home happy, not being anxious to leave work right at three, or spending my free time at home thinking about different ways to make the classes more fun and interesting to the students: these types of things don't take a rocket scientist's analysis to determine that I'm clearly happy there. Now I know that I've only been there for the better part of three weeks and that anything can happen, but at the same time, when I was unemployed and looking for work, anything COULD have happened, but not just anything happened: SOMETHING happened, and it's "something" that was exactly what I was looking for all along. To quote President Obama, I get to be the change I wish to see in the world, and if anyone believes that there's something better out there than that, then I'd like to introduce you to some of the kids I work with, or the kids that the people of United Way work with, or the kids that the people of Make-A-Wish work with, or the kids that the people of Roswell Park work with... then we'll talk.

The fun we have

So I decided to paint my parents garage this week...

Ah the smalltown diners of America

This will be short and sweet but I just wanted to note how much the
older lady at the next table looks like a turtle wrestling to eat an
oversized piece of lettuce.

T=$$

So the past couple weeks have been pretty entertaining. After getting everything ready for the big move this past weekend, we received a call from the future landlord informing us that the house had been sold and we were no longer able to move in.........yes, three days before we were set to move in. Needless to say all three of us lost about 5lbs that day sweating about where we were going to live come the weekend. After about 20 phone calls to landlords and about twice as many miles of driving around the city in search of "For Rent" signs we managed to find a place in the same building as a friend. Everything was set to go by thursday evening.

The only thing we had to wait on was me, and the fact that I hadn't heard from the company I had applied for a job with. Since I couldn't prove that I was going to be able to pay rent they had to hold off, and potentially consider some other douche fuck bro turd that was also looking at the apt. So by friday morning when I finally heard back from my new employer (yes, I got the job) we had all lost probably another 6 or 7lbs stressing about that. Everything cleared with me and they gave us the go-ahead to start moving in on friday afternoon.

All that out of the way, we now had the incredibly difficult task of moving jordan's entire life up the smallest stairwell in Buffalo to the second floor (oh yeah, forgot to mention that we're on the second floor).

But I guess we're leaving the coffee shop. ta ta for now.

shop photo of my new tat

Newest ink piece

Memorial to grandpa Mac.

Quote of the week

"I was drinking whiskey and wine in the same cup! So what?! That's not
drunk! That's awesome!!"

T=$$

Ah second thoughts...and thirds...and fourths....and....

So I'm beginning to think that my course of action for my life over the past several months has been slightly misjudged....let me try and explain as briefly as possible...

I spent last summer working for the Maine Media Workshops as an intern in their film tech department. No doubt a dead end position since it was an internship but also equally an incredible opportunity to not only gain experience but to network and be able to buff up my resume that much more. Long story short, my contract ended, they couldn't offer me any other position so I came back to New York broke and unemployed.

During my time there, I had attempted to get a job working with a Documentary film group out of South Portland which I found out through a family friend who is friends with the man who owns/operates that group. After finally getting a response I was told that the work was going to be very demanding and that I would have to prove myself to them (clearly something I understood by choosing to go to school for film anyway). Long story short, I decided to stay around WNY and make some money before making any serious career moves.

Now I'm unemployed and broke again and I'm seriously thinking that I should have pursued the work in South Portland. I've been trying to get this teachers aide job here and since I just signed on for another year lease any move out of the area is completely out of the question, however, my plan to attend grad school next fall for guidance counseling is also starting to seem out of the question if I still have ambition to work in film, which seems to have been rekindled in my absence from any type of film work over the past 10 months.

Longer story short, I'm rather confused about what I want right now but I know that I miss being a part of a film crew.

Puppies make everything better

Except maybe in this situation...

My first failblog submission

Well, I guess if you have the right tools on you...

Is this real life?

Is this going to last forever??

aaaaaAAAHHHHHH!!!!!


Ok so I took that from that video of the kid who's all doped up after going to the dentist but it pretty much holds true for the way I've been feeling lately.

For starters, I lost my job two weeks ago under some pretty ridiculous circumstances and I still have yet to find another one so I can blame most of my depression on that. It's a pretty awesome feeling not having to get up to go to work for that long but once you reach that two week mark and you realize that your savings is only gonna pay your bills for so long, you start looking at the bums on the corner as entrepreneurs rather than irritations. Now I'm not going to start begging for change around town but it certainly is eye-opening to know that these individuals don't even have a home and they're still making more money than me.

On another front, I've recently signed the papers to move into a new apartment (coincidentally enough two days before I was fired) and therefore agreed to the headache that goes along with packing up my life into my Malibu yet again only to drive it 2 miles away just to unpack it all again. Not only that, we were casually informed by our future landlord that he's selling the house that we're moving into............"Shouldn't effect you guys though"..............needless to say my ulcer decided to do it's best impression of Mount St. Helens when we received that kosher little tidbit of information. I may just be joining Buffalo's finest sidewalk surfers before long after all.

As for the rest of things, I can't complain much...well...I could, I just don't want to. Hopefully by the next time I post I'll have some good news to report, whether it be of a new job or that "Sylvester and the Hobos" really don't smell that bad, once you get used to them.


Oye dios mio.

with open arms and open eyes

sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear....

It's rather ironic that those were the first lyrics to play on my ipod as soon as I started to type because they pretty much sum up my mood right now. In a nut shell, after having lived at my current address for just shy of three months, I'm moving again. In a way I'm pretty scared, but at the same time I'm excited, and yet, there's a sense of sadness in it all, so I guess uncertainty is the best way to describe it. In all, the whole process has taken approximately one week to transpire from initial discovery of the place to actually setting down in ink (and in monetary deposit) that our intentions of moving were not mere speculation. Despite the hassel it's going to be to pack everything up again and move it roughly one mile from it's current residence, I'm feeling hopeful. I don't feel that my first chance in this city went as well as I might have hoped, and a great deal of that has to do with the fact that I was feeling greatly pressured and stressed about not only my job but also with my relationships with my friends. I've become somewhat of a hermit in my own home for reasons that I can't fully understand but now, I feel that I've been given an opportunity to stop trying so hard to live and just live, just feel, just enjoy being a healthy individual in this world. This is a pretty generic situation I suppose since I'm more than positive that I'm not the first person in the world to ever feel this way about moving to a new place, but it helps to get it into writing.

So I guess with all that having been said... whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there....

an old tune in a new year

so let's see, i haven't written in....well...a very long time let's say. if i said i didn't have much to write about i'd pretty much be lying shamelessly. true is, most of what i would write about would consist of rants and vent sessions about how my job is so horrible (but at least i've got one) and how i don't have any friends (when i know right out that that's a lie) and all that other bologna....boloney....whatever. But the truth is that right now I'm kind of starting to feel that no one really cares anyway (and I mean that in the least emo way possible). In reality, everyone has things about their daily lives that dig on them, but that doesn't mean that other people want to hear about them, and let's face it, 99.9% of the time it's really not that bad. Today I got a little bummed for awhile because my boss was in a cranky mood for losing a ridiculous ammount of money over the weekend at our last auction (oh yeah, I work for an auction company btw haha). He came down on all of us at the shop as if it was our fault that people didn't show up and those that did pretty much kept their money in their pockets. I got all bent out of shape about it but after awhile I realized that I really don't give a shit. I mean, what's the worse he came do? fire me? oooOOOooo, better watch out. C'mon, I'm 22 years old (23 next month) with two college degrees and the plans of enrolling in grad school next fall. I honestly think that there's much more horrible things that can happen to me than getting fired from a job that has done nothing but manage to get me on anti-depressants 20 years sooner than I ever thought I'd be (note: I haven't taken them in almost a month and the voices are finally starting to forgive me for that). I guess what I'm getting at is, well, OPEN YOUR MINDS PEOPLE!!!!!!! Don't live unhappily just because someone else is unhappy, because at the end of the day, aside from friends, family, that favorite spot at that hole-in-the-wall pub, or anything else that is important to you, all you've got is your own happiness. That's it. Once you've got that down, then go have a little fun. You'll find that getting up each day is a little more enjoyable. Now go. Make good decisions my little snowflakes.

shooting from the hip with this one

Ink; it's not just for the papers anymore. It hides in places far more private and yet far more informational, emotional, sensational... with all the permanence of your first time. Taking the virginity of your epidermis with such a pain that your shell has never known... Yet that pain is welcome. For some out of healing of other wounds and other just for the sensation of feeling something at all. For me though, for me it's about the artistic statement, the passion, the drive, the love that one must have for something in order to make it or something symbolic of it imprisoned within their skin cells for as long as though cells remain... a part of that person, truly.

the state of things.

I find it very interesting the way that things seem to work in the real world and in the whole scheme of how things play out in the professional world.

Take my sister and myself for instance; she works for the county in the Youth Bureau dealing with prevention services heling to keep kids out of potentially harmful situations in their lives. Since the economy has been slightly less than par as of late and since New York State budget dealings have a wonderful way of making people wish they had their heads submerged in a toilet somewhere, my sister's job is now at stake since the division of youth services that she works in is being dubbed by the governor as non-mandated and therefore unnecessary of state funding. Her job may be terminated as early as this coming summer. She loves the work that she does and works for peanuts to do it because it's something that, in the long run, is worth a whole lot more than an extra digit on the end of her pay stub each week.

Myself, however, I work for an auction company; a place that takes advantage of consumers by convincing them that closeouts and display model items are worth just as much as the real deal. This job fell into my lap when things failed to pan out into anything long term from an internship that I had held last summer doing film work. Since I needed money I kind of had to take the offer. Now, less than 6 months after I was initially hired, I've gone from being the lowest paid person at my facility to being the highest paid after being promoted to supervisor.

So here I am, getting promoted at a job that I hate and my sister spending everyday with the thought of searching for other work in the back of her mind while simultaneously worrying about the future of her type of work and what type of an impact it will have on the rest of those similar services not only statewide, but across the country.

It's so weird how this works. I suppose it's just the way things are going at this point... but then again, what does an auction worker know.

Asp in December

Why I love where I live

just because I have a laptop fittingly placed upon my lap

It's 3:36 in the afternoon and all I've done since waking up is check facebook several times, read a blog called "FUCK YEAH SHARKS", ate 2 slices of meatball pizza, and then typed this. Maybe I'll move from the couch soon.


I rule.

should old aquaintence be forgot...

I'm never drinking again... that's my new years resolution. Well...at least vodka and cranberry... and possibly whiskey sours... but I'll probably break that resolution because I'm a champion like that and give in to peer pressure way too easily. Go me.

...and for the record, Kenny G's version of Auld Lang Syne is the most depressing song when you're standing by yourself in the middle of a crowd of couples all embracing in the first moments of the new year.....maybe next year.