Unofficial Autobio – Part Two
I moved along on the path through high school. As previously stated, I never had a group of friends that I spent a significant amount of my time with. This was becoming very lonely. I had been playing a bass guitar at home a lot, and an acoustic six-string a little as well. I mainly learned Blink-182 songs and quietly wrote some of my own. For a week I played with a couple kids in a band called Two Times Tuesday, named after a Domino’s commercial I saw. If you know me, you will see the irony in this one already. My pops was really excited, he came, we played at a church. He must’ve had a few brewskis in him before he came because all he did was yell, “Play Freebird!” This was hilarious, yet embarrassing. I was nervous as hell to play my first show of my life, and here I’ve got this guy yelling shit at me. Now it’s really funny to think about, but at the time I was pretty annoyed. A short time later PMDD girl and her friend were buddies with me, and set me up to speak with a guy in my Philosophy class. In this class I would turn back to this girl and tell her she was beautiful everyday, then I asked her to marry me a few times, she politely declined. One day, the class took a journey to the library. I was told the previously mentioned guy played music with another guy. So I was determined to get in and play as well. I walked up to him at the end of class, “Hey, I hear you play music.” After a pause, “Yea, I heard you do too.” Another pause I purpose, “So, we should play sometime.” “Yea, that’d be cool.” We sat in silence watching the clock for the last minute until class ended. Salutations were exchanged. Cut to a week or so later, I am trying to get together for our first play date, some awkward situations at home lead me to get angry that I wasn’t allowed to leave to go play with these guys after a few failed attempts. I ended up moving back to nowhere land with my mom, and went to play with the boys. We played some bad vocal pop punk. We ended up self-releasing three things. Spanish Rice: Live Catcher in the Rice, The Hot Mouth / Mexico’s Best EP, and A Pessimist’s View of the World. We opened for two bands that I really liked, The Queers and Dogwood. With these guys and the two girls who set me up with them, I finally had a close group of friends. During this time, the band mate I met in Philosophy became closer and closer to the girl that I was calling beautiful in class. We all hung out, and after a few times I noticed they had something going on. When I confronted him at band practice for not telling me, he apologized, and the drummer man said, “Well at least he made sure you didn’t have a fighting chance.” Which is still to this day, one of the funniest things ever said to me. Also, during this time I was going out to Minneapolis a lot. I had a friend who was a little older than me and had a bunch of concerts at his house, Camp Firewood, named after the “Wet Hot American Summer” summer camp. I met tons of people I still know to this day and am delighted to see every time I do. I go out to a concert and run into these people and don’t have to say much but just enjoy what we have in common in the music I was growing up with. I did a little bit of falling in love with the cities, and was determined to do college at the University of Minnesota. In high school I ended up working about 20-30 hours a week, first at Subway, then a small pizza store delivering pizzas, and then delivering for Domino’s Pizza. I didn’t have an interest in extra-circular activities, so I didn’t do any. Nor did I have time. Gas and insurance were my responsibility, I also paid for all of my entertainment. So when applying for schools, I had little to show on my application besides a 3.74 GPA, which I didn’t really earn, I just coasted along to that. I was running an event in which some other classmates and I rented out a space every month and threw a concert called Antone’s Few Hours of Fun. We raked in a bunch of cash, but were constantly running into road blocks on how to make it more successful. With five people having an equal say in how this event was run, we ended up running into a lot of conflicts. Also with the owner of the space we were renting out seeing that we were bringing in money, he wanted to make sure he got a good share. This all eventually led to us giving up on it, but it was a good year and half of experience that set me up to want to run my own business in the future. I applied to the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and St. Cloud State University. St. Cloud accepted me right away, and I ended up being put on the waiting list for the U of M. I didn’t hear from the U for a long time, so I signed a lease with my cousin to go to St. Cloud. The next day, I got accepted to the liberal arts college at the U, and had to pay to get out of my lease. I really wonder how life would’ve been different if I didn’t do that, but moving on. I decided to get a single room at the U, and made a mistake in doing so. My freshman year I probably only made a total of four friends. Of course, I wasn’t drinking at this time and would elect not to go out to parties because I wasn’t interested in people’s main motivation of the night of getting drunk. I spent a lot of time hanging out with this dude I knew through a friend, we skateboarded around campus really late a night, and explored the hospital and all it’s creepy back halls. By the end of the year, I was moving in with that dude into a house in Saint Paul, and dating a nice girl whom I would spend lots of good and bad times with in a blink of an eye. I was hanging out with this girl and our mutual friend constantly, we went to a bunch of concerts together and separately. I wish I kept a running list of them all. The relationship here would define how badly I could mess things up with one slip of the tongue, and also show how disgustingly needy I could become. I kept a livejournal of all my depressing self-loathing thoughts, and eventually turned very bitter toward most things. A very wise person sniffed out my lack of direction at the time and straight-up told me that I had nothing to be passionate about. I gave up on studying business, my band was done with, I was investing my happiness into only other people, it was kind of rock bottom. I talked to a good friend about dropping out of school and opening our own pizza place, I wasn’t going anywhere with school at the time. After a bunch of conversations with this guy, I really found out I had some sort of future to look forward to. I think a lot of people go through that mid-college crisis. Things change so much. I realized at this time too that I had been ignoring one of the things I love to do most, video. I started this website, got a camera, and tried to start making stupid videos for fun. There were a few funny ones, and I regret not making more recently. I should start toting that camera around with me everywhere again. So I ended up changing my major to art, the U doesn’t have a film school, and started writing and creating a couple of my own pieces. You can still find them on this website. Around this time too, I started dating a new person and that would suck up two years of my life. I didn’t want to be involved for about 90% of the time, and felt more like a parent to this person. It was very unhealthy, and not really that interesting. I learned lots of lessons on how to have self-respect and not let someone else’s problems put your life on complete hold. I wouldn’t take it back though, it was an important lesson and led me to the best relationship I’ve ever had and am lucky enough to be currently in. After I graduated, I quickly landed a job with September Films, shooting a pilot for TLC, Mall Cops: Mall of America. I was a production assistant who was lucky enough to get a little bit of footage that I was asked to shoot put on the small screen. Working on a TV show had been my goal for the last few years, and I just accomplished it. But I would like to continue to work in this field, and will continue to try to. At this very moment I am waiting to hear back from the show runner if we are going to be shooting this for a season or not. Oh yea, I also stopped working at Domino’s finally. Five years I spent most of my Friday nights until 4am at that place. I won’t miss that one bit. Payed my bills, but I wouldn’t recommend working for that company ever. I serve at Sawatdee, and hope for more work. I don’t know how to end this thing.
Categories: Thinking, That's All
Tags: Narcissism, Story
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