I'd better document last week, 'cause if I don't remember it, then it was of almost no value. Even though I *did* a lot (meeting one of my current personal goals), it was of a consumptive, rather than productive nature, leaving nothing for me to show but a few souvenirs and less money.
But it was not ill-spent.
Except Tuesday. I worked, and stayed up late watching TV because it was easy. Hateful.
Wednesday, after some internal debate, I agreed to go with Steve Gole to Cleveland to see his friends' band State Fair play. They didn't even start till 10pm, so it was a late night. But Steve drove so I could sleep, and musically it was worth the trip. State Fair crosses the line from "good band.. for friends of mine" to "good band. Period", and even got into "I don't care about the band, I'm immersed in a highly enjoyable sea of sound at the moment." Really something for some guys playing in "The Grog Shop!"
Thursday Steve, his friend Rachel, and myself met up at the Strip District, grabbed some dinner, and went to see Eisely play at Club Stratus. We ate at this cool "island cuisine" place. Shwanky. Not cheap. But delicious, and I felt cool being there :-) The concert was small, personal, good sound quality, and yieldinous of a new band. "The Myriad" was opening when we got there, and they grabbed our attention even before we got into the building. Bought a CD, talked to their bass player, and rocked it out in the car on the way home. Great stuff. Cool "night on the town."
[This is all I can remember. I didn't finish this post, and now I have forgotten that which I sought to preserve :-( This illustrates the reason I want to write in this blog. Somewhat of a negative motivation, but so are a lot of things in life.]
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Caution: Discouragement below
Today I met one of those people who makes me feel like the most unaccomplished, wasted, insignificant and lowly person walking this globe. I saw a Behringer headphone amp on craigslist, emailed the seller, and ended up driving out to Greentree to pick it up at his office this afternoon. Garry had long enough hair to be a tried and true music guy, but short and neat enough to be very professional. He had mentioned his studio on the phone, so I asked him about it as we stood in the stark lunchroom (straight out of The Office!) and he hooked up the unit so I could test it. Turns out he ran a studio all the way from a four track tape rig in the 80's to a full-blown 32-channel board with all kinds of gear and people working there... while playing in bands himself and working as a software engineer. He's finally knocking the studio down to a home rig since the crazy amount of work and time and lack of sleep was getting to be too much. I use Cakewalk Sonar 2.0 as my recording software. Turns out he was on the beta testing team for Cakewalk for years, and he wrote some of the code that they use in Sonar. He spoke about mics and boards and gear and bands and musicians with the ease of immense familiarity.
I drove away from the gleaming office building despising my pitiful, introverted, connection-less, lackadaisical, unfocused, unmotivated, unproductive little suburban life. Hearing about Ken's accomplishments in Africa hasn't helped either. Leading tours, hanging out with a multimillionaire client, setting records in Ethiopia, working on writing a field guide, posting 100% professional-looking pictures of vistas that make me almost wet my pants, planning and working to break the North American record for the most bird species seen in 1 day (which he's got sponsors to pay for, by the way)...
While here I sit in my colossally tiny world of church friends (Whom I love, don't get me wrong! You guys are.. far better than most of the world even knows can be), a few work friends (with whom I have no connection outside of work), and... what is it 1? maybe 2 friends from college? I roll through this life safe in my car, paying for everything I do and everywhere I go, talking pleasantly with strangers behind counters whom I'll never see again, and holding unrelentingly onto my time and activities. I find myself waiting to end conversations with people! Just because.. it's less effort to not talk! The thought of making my life, my evenings, my hours, my meals, my time, my effort, part of something other than church, work and the occasional trip to Akron or elsewhere is inconceivable.
That is the functional reality I am faced with in those moments when I crave being accomplished in real-life, professional-level fields. I am so far from real music people, people running studios, the actual livings and breathings of professional musicians and studios that it makes me snort a despising laugh at myself. And the thing that kills is that I can't kid myself that I'll start making those kind of connections. My life isn't going to change that drastically! If it was, it would have by now! I have never done my recording at the level of fierce seriousness that gets you moving up and into professional (or even just freakin' serious hobby) circles. And though I hurt inside for the lack of accomplishment, I know that that is not the same as a motivation that will begin to generate that kind of productivity.
So I sit in our kitchen with a knot in my stomach, hatred for myself, and thick chains of laziness, personality and years past and gone locking me down. There is no one to blame but myself.
You may protest - oh! You go to Akron! You travel around! You're a better guitar player than me! You have a studio in your basement and you've made two albums and like 70 songs!
All that is is a pitifully small pond in which I might look like a big fish. Any kind of respectable, real-world pond leaves me a bacteria floating in the water, worth nothing to anyone.
When (please Lord) God saves and changes me, I think I will look back on this post as the wretched misery of a person trying to live for himself and being resisted in his pride. I can't just snap my finger and make that change, though. And right now, I'm in the valley of despair--at least in the moments like today when I look at my life and compare it to lives of actual accomplishment in the world.
Here again is a poem I wrote awhile ago and posted. It gives a bit of emotion to the content of the paragraphs above:
Your wings have feathers and here you sit
Watching them folded at your side
You didn't know which way to fly
And so you never tried
You write the songs but never make a sound
You'll spend the rest of your life on the ground
A couple things I'm happy with:
- Basketball. I'm exercising myself, hitting shots, and getting outside.
- Jamming with Steve Gole. So much fun, and some pretty cool music!
- This post. At least I was non-lazy enough to exercise the creative energy necessary to type this up and work it over.
- My music collection. It's huge, I know almost all of it, and it's recently been expanded by another 7 CD's.
I don't know what that's worth. Documenting this period, I suppose. Pretty dinky stuff I guess, but at least it's not depressing, and I enjoy those things. I don't want to be ungrateful or unreasonable.
--JPB
I drove away from the gleaming office building despising my pitiful, introverted, connection-less, lackadaisical, unfocused, unmotivated, unproductive little suburban life. Hearing about Ken's accomplishments in Africa hasn't helped either. Leading tours, hanging out with a multimillionaire client, setting records in Ethiopia, working on writing a field guide, posting 100% professional-looking pictures of vistas that make me almost wet my pants, planning and working to break the North American record for the most bird species seen in 1 day (which he's got sponsors to pay for, by the way)...
While here I sit in my colossally tiny world of church friends (Whom I love, don't get me wrong! You guys are.. far better than most of the world even knows can be), a few work friends (with whom I have no connection outside of work), and... what is it 1? maybe 2 friends from college? I roll through this life safe in my car, paying for everything I do and everywhere I go, talking pleasantly with strangers behind counters whom I'll never see again, and holding unrelentingly onto my time and activities. I find myself waiting to end conversations with people! Just because.. it's less effort to not talk! The thought of making my life, my evenings, my hours, my meals, my time, my effort, part of something other than church, work and the occasional trip to Akron or elsewhere is inconceivable.
That is the functional reality I am faced with in those moments when I crave being accomplished in real-life, professional-level fields. I am so far from real music people, people running studios, the actual livings and breathings of professional musicians and studios that it makes me snort a despising laugh at myself. And the thing that kills is that I can't kid myself that I'll start making those kind of connections. My life isn't going to change that drastically! If it was, it would have by now! I have never done my recording at the level of fierce seriousness that gets you moving up and into professional (or even just freakin' serious hobby) circles. And though I hurt inside for the lack of accomplishment, I know that that is not the same as a motivation that will begin to generate that kind of productivity.
So I sit in our kitchen with a knot in my stomach, hatred for myself, and thick chains of laziness, personality and years past and gone locking me down. There is no one to blame but myself.
You may protest - oh! You go to Akron! You travel around! You're a better guitar player than me! You have a studio in your basement and you've made two albums and like 70 songs!
All that is is a pitifully small pond in which I might look like a big fish. Any kind of respectable, real-world pond leaves me a bacteria floating in the water, worth nothing to anyone.
When (please Lord) God saves and changes me, I think I will look back on this post as the wretched misery of a person trying to live for himself and being resisted in his pride. I can't just snap my finger and make that change, though. And right now, I'm in the valley of despair--at least in the moments like today when I look at my life and compare it to lives of actual accomplishment in the world.
Here again is a poem I wrote awhile ago and posted. It gives a bit of emotion to the content of the paragraphs above:
Your wings have feathers and here you sit
Watching them folded at your side
You didn't know which way to fly
And so you never tried
You write the songs but never make a sound
You'll spend the rest of your life on the ground
A couple things I'm happy with:
- Basketball. I'm exercising myself, hitting shots, and getting outside.
- Jamming with Steve Gole. So much fun, and some pretty cool music!
- This post. At least I was non-lazy enough to exercise the creative energy necessary to type this up and work it over.
- My music collection. It's huge, I know almost all of it, and it's recently been expanded by another 7 CD's.
I don't know what that's worth. Documenting this period, I suppose. Pretty dinky stuff I guess, but at least it's not depressing, and I enjoy those things. I don't want to be ungrateful or unreasonable.
--JPB
Monday, April 14, 2008
Killing some time at work
I'm sitting at work icing my ankle, with a few minutes to kill, so I have the luxury of writing whatever I want in here! I'm ignoring the burden of past experiences that I haven't yet documented.
My left ankle is pressed up against a stiff ice pack that's pressed up against my man boot that's pressed up against my desk. I'm hunched over to reach the keyboard, backing up every minute or two to fork off another piece of enchilada, or take a sip of the SoBe Essential juice+energy Berry Pomegranate flavored energy juice drink. Nobody else is around, so I'm playing The Strokes comfortably loud through my desktop speakers. Since mowing the lawn last week, I've gotten to like them a good bit. More British stuff from Craig.
XM47, "Lucy," plays at volume notch 1 in the speaker above me. It's just on so I can hear a page if one comes through. Gotta pause the iPod quick and try to catch the repeat. "JAWN BAREIN, WUN SEVINDY FOWR.. JON BARIN, WUNSEVINDYFOR PLEEZ." And since it's night turn, you never know when you might get a whoop in the background as they're hanging up the phone, or maybe some intentional clatter of the receiver, or best yet, a multi-syllabic mispronounciation of Frank Fronzaglio's name :-)
My hot end is in good order. Dale didn't show up, so I've been hauling cullet most of the night (which is why I'm icing my ankle), but I've got 7 truckloads, and we use about 9 per shift, so I'm close to even. The sand car is done unloading and I pushed it down the tracks to the other empties. The tin bath is running well and we've got two of the most experienced operators there right now. Frankie is learning the furnace from Josh, and they've got some hot & dusty cleaning yet to do. We may not get the debris cleaned out from under 3 port left and right... we'll see. Roy Hi-vac'd all 3 levels of the batch house, so I'm waiting awhile before I ask him to clean up the busted glass in the casting hall. QC tests show that the glass color is holding steady, and the last defect sampling didn't have any bottom tin pickup, so we seem to have licked that. There's not much I can do about the tab alumina or chromite, and the seeds & bubbles aren't bad enough to warrant action. Joe has been cleaning up around the tin bath, and that's one of the main things remaining for the last 3 hours of the night: cleaning up the place for all the daylight folks coming in in a few hours. I try to leave them as few things to complain about as possible.
It's been a very relaxed weekend, which is welcome after the HELLACIOUS day last Tuesday. I messed up, we went out of spec, lost a lot of glass, and didn't have a very good reason for it. Bleah. I learned my lesson, though.
Enough sitting around. I could do this all night, but I gotta always light a fire under my own rear and get out there, look around, think, take a step back mentally, scout around for anything left untended, anything that should be done, anything that somebody could give me a hard time for not doing or fixing or addressing or noticing. If somebody walked in right now and looked around, what would they see? What would they ask me about? Would I have a good answer? Could anybody look in on me right now and say I'm being lazy? Would they be right?
That's what these weeks as a supervisor-in-training have been like. On good days, I love it. On the bad days I want to bash my head into an I-beam.
There have been many more good days than bad.
Ahhhh. Good song just came on :-)
Hope this was somewhat profitable, or at least mildly entertaining to read!
--JPB
My left ankle is pressed up against a stiff ice pack that's pressed up against my man boot that's pressed up against my desk. I'm hunched over to reach the keyboard, backing up every minute or two to fork off another piece of enchilada, or take a sip of the SoBe Essential juice+energy Berry Pomegranate flavored energy juice drink. Nobody else is around, so I'm playing The Strokes comfortably loud through my desktop speakers. Since mowing the lawn last week, I've gotten to like them a good bit. More British stuff from Craig.
XM47, "Lucy," plays at volume notch 1 in the speaker above me. It's just on so I can hear a page if one comes through. Gotta pause the iPod quick and try to catch the repeat. "JAWN BAREIN, WUN SEVINDY FOWR.. JON BARIN, WUNSEVINDYFOR PLEEZ." And since it's night turn, you never know when you might get a whoop in the background as they're hanging up the phone, or maybe some intentional clatter of the receiver, or best yet, a multi-syllabic mispronounciation of Frank Fronzaglio's name :-)
My hot end is in good order. Dale didn't show up, so I've been hauling cullet most of the night (which is why I'm icing my ankle), but I've got 7 truckloads, and we use about 9 per shift, so I'm close to even. The sand car is done unloading and I pushed it down the tracks to the other empties. The tin bath is running well and we've got two of the most experienced operators there right now. Frankie is learning the furnace from Josh, and they've got some hot & dusty cleaning yet to do. We may not get the debris cleaned out from under 3 port left and right... we'll see. Roy Hi-vac'd all 3 levels of the batch house, so I'm waiting awhile before I ask him to clean up the busted glass in the casting hall. QC tests show that the glass color is holding steady, and the last defect sampling didn't have any bottom tin pickup, so we seem to have licked that. There's not much I can do about the tab alumina or chromite, and the seeds & bubbles aren't bad enough to warrant action. Joe has been cleaning up around the tin bath, and that's one of the main things remaining for the last 3 hours of the night: cleaning up the place for all the daylight folks coming in in a few hours. I try to leave them as few things to complain about as possible.
It's been a very relaxed weekend, which is welcome after the HELLACIOUS day last Tuesday. I messed up, we went out of spec, lost a lot of glass, and didn't have a very good reason for it. Bleah. I learned my lesson, though.
Enough sitting around. I could do this all night, but I gotta always light a fire under my own rear and get out there, look around, think, take a step back mentally, scout around for anything left untended, anything that should be done, anything that somebody could give me a hard time for not doing or fixing or addressing or noticing. If somebody walked in right now and looked around, what would they see? What would they ask me about? Would I have a good answer? Could anybody look in on me right now and say I'm being lazy? Would they be right?
That's what these weeks as a supervisor-in-training have been like. On good days, I love it. On the bad days I want to bash my head into an I-beam.
There have been many more good days than bad.
Ahhhh. Good song just came on :-)
Hope this was somewhat profitable, or at least mildly entertaining to read!
--JPB
Friday, April 11, 2008
Buffet
I had a thought awhile ago. A creep-out, actually. A being-creeped-out that there are days when I never get my heart rate up or use my muscles for anything but walking, sitting, standing, walking again.. laying down... Augh! Jibbly jibbly jibbly.
Sitting there stagnating when I'm 23 years old!
So Sunday was a good day for buffeting of the body, and I went for it headlong.
A group from church--the elder 4(!) Calvettis, Taylor boys, Graham guys, elder 2 Q's, Kevin, Dad and myself--convened in the sunshine and breeze at Quinlisk Park eager to get the disc flyin' in a Providence Church ultimate frisbee game. We putzed around at first, and took a break to drive to Wendy's after an hour, but we still logged plenty of foot-pounding, lung-pounding action over the grass and through the sky.
I tell you what - football could never compare to frisbee. You can't bend a football throw around three people and have it lift up higher, hang in the air, and float down to a receiver right in the middle of defenders.
Round about 4 o'clock my legs were starting to tell me I couldn't go on much longer, and I was relieved to find that that was the general feeling. So a couple more goals, and we were done. With frisbee, that is. I've been itching to play basketball, and I had Mike Q bring a ball from the Q's house, so I headed right over to the hoops. An over-inflated ball with double rims makes for tough shots, but Brian, Mitchel and I still got some good 21 action in. Then the Hetricks came, Mrs. Bodine picked up Brian, and the games continued. Till I rolled my ankle. Not good. It hurt so much at first I didn't think about much but getting through it, but pretty soon I saw the weeks ahead looming with ace bandages, ice packs, limping all over work for 12 hours.. just like the last time this happened.
But this time I knew without question that we should pray for it. God is stirring things up here at Providence, and moving, and I could totally see Him healing this and having mercy on the consequences. So Jeremy prayed, and from then on it has seemed like a one-fourth as serious accident. It calmed down greatly, and I walked around a bit, although I could tell it would get jazzed up if I did much. I drove home with the stick shift, took a shower, and pretty much went on with my life! It's been a bit sensitive, and now it's mildly sore.
...after playing basketball for two and a half hours yesterday! So praise and thanks are due to God for straight-up mercy on my weak joint, making it heal way faster than is normal for me.
That was an abrupt end of the action Sunday (for me), but yesterday (Thursday) was an off day on my shift schedule, and I met Jeremy at the BP community center at noon for some more Bball, which was sweet. It was a great day off. Basketball at the cool new community center gym, then a big lunch at Chick-fil-A sitting out side, then a stop at the church office for some youth camp stuff, and lastly, another hour of basketball at Quinlisk Park. Running around dribbling and sinking shots, with Good Charlotte pumping out of my car and the warm air and occasional sun breaking through... it felt good, man.
I like Bethel Park, I like basketball, I like days off on the shift schedule, I like spring weather turning warm, I like exercise, I like my subwoofer and sound system, I like Chick-fil-A, and I liked Thursday. It was a good gift from God, and I'm grateful, and I don't deserve it.
May the body buffeting continue.
--JPB
Sitting there stagnating when I'm 23 years old!
So Sunday was a good day for buffeting of the body, and I went for it headlong.
A group from church--the elder 4(!) Calvettis, Taylor boys, Graham guys, elder 2 Q's, Kevin, Dad and myself--convened in the sunshine and breeze at Quinlisk Park eager to get the disc flyin' in a Providence Church ultimate frisbee game. We putzed around at first, and took a break to drive to Wendy's after an hour, but we still logged plenty of foot-pounding, lung-pounding action over the grass and through the sky.
I tell you what - football could never compare to frisbee. You can't bend a football throw around three people and have it lift up higher, hang in the air, and float down to a receiver right in the middle of defenders.
Round about 4 o'clock my legs were starting to tell me I couldn't go on much longer, and I was relieved to find that that was the general feeling. So a couple more goals, and we were done. With frisbee, that is. I've been itching to play basketball, and I had Mike Q bring a ball from the Q's house, so I headed right over to the hoops. An over-inflated ball with double rims makes for tough shots, but Brian, Mitchel and I still got some good 21 action in. Then the Hetricks came, Mrs. Bodine picked up Brian, and the games continued. Till I rolled my ankle. Not good. It hurt so much at first I didn't think about much but getting through it, but pretty soon I saw the weeks ahead looming with ace bandages, ice packs, limping all over work for 12 hours.. just like the last time this happened.
But this time I knew without question that we should pray for it. God is stirring things up here at Providence, and moving, and I could totally see Him healing this and having mercy on the consequences. So Jeremy prayed, and from then on it has seemed like a one-fourth as serious accident. It calmed down greatly, and I walked around a bit, although I could tell it would get jazzed up if I did much. I drove home with the stick shift, took a shower, and pretty much went on with my life! It's been a bit sensitive, and now it's mildly sore.
...after playing basketball for two and a half hours yesterday! So praise and thanks are due to God for straight-up mercy on my weak joint, making it heal way faster than is normal for me.
That was an abrupt end of the action Sunday (for me), but yesterday (Thursday) was an off day on my shift schedule, and I met Jeremy at the BP community center at noon for some more Bball, which was sweet. It was a great day off. Basketball at the cool new community center gym, then a big lunch at Chick-fil-A sitting out side, then a stop at the church office for some youth camp stuff, and lastly, another hour of basketball at Quinlisk Park. Running around dribbling and sinking shots, with Good Charlotte pumping out of my car and the warm air and occasional sun breaking through... it felt good, man.
I like Bethel Park, I like basketball, I like days off on the shift schedule, I like spring weather turning warm, I like exercise, I like my subwoofer and sound system, I like Chick-fil-A, and I liked Thursday. It was a good gift from God, and I'm grateful, and I don't deserve it.
May the body buffeting continue.
--JPB
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