Treading, re-imagining, Aerosmith with Dokken but I don't know which is worse, first solar flare

The books are here for me to read and the FAFSA and financial-aid inquiry emails are sent, one week later.  Time marches on!  The out-of-place feeling is still there and may amplify somewhat, as I turn 38 in less than a week and senioritis has arrived much earlier than I expected.  An inability to focus has permeated this whole workweek, and I'm somewhat self-conscious about writing, trying to remember why I started writing this: I've made a change, it's just not here yet; like a new plant waiting for the proper season that's currently soaking up what it can, I have to remember that I don't have a dead-end job anymore.  I just have a job, and that's okay.

Jen found the Broadway recording version of "21 Guns" on demand and it sounded really good.  A couple dozen singers teamed with the band to fully flesh it out, a nice reminder of the creativity that can be expressed with skillful song arranging.  I miss that, especially when my job is now mandating detailed scripting in the name of "providing customers with a more consistent experience" or something to that effect.  It seems to work, given that the mortgage industry is essentially flipping burgers, but it takes more time, and so much time is already stolen away every day, making me wonder how it is all going to get done.  At least I'm wondering on borrowed time (soon to be borrowed money!).

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After spending a few weekends crafting them, I only got my grad-school essays the day before the final February 1st postmark date for early decision, stitching them together only after spending about eight hours at the end of a weekend pruning the excess down to the essentials in order to meet the word-count limits.  The package was delivered on Groundhog Day, and about five weeks later, I got the news that set the next phase of my life in motion, sooooooooooooooo slowly.  (Did you ever get concert tickets to see a favorite band when you were in junior high or high school, and the months-long wait seemed agonizing?  This is the same, except it requires packing up my life and hitting the road with - hopefully - ready access to tens of thousands of dollars.)

They'll be the next post.  I don't think I've looked at them since I sent them off, actually, and it will be interesting to see what I cooked up under pressure, my statements of purpose that worked exactly as I needed them to, providing a golden key to an as-yet-unseen lock.  My child-like impatience for Part Two makes me smile.

Work

I've been trying to push myself to get the financial aid ball rolling, but am still waiting on my school to publish its tuition for the coming academic year.  Plus, they're updating websites and some of the links aren't working, which is frustrating.  I'll have to just get in touch with the admissions office, find out what programs people have qualified for.  That's worked much better than trying to navigate the school's myriad of web links to this point.

At least all of the financial aid and visa application material is printed.  I realize just how stumbling ignorant I am about finding the right information: I've been very fortunate not to need financial aid in the past, but even if I had, it wouldn't have been for a school outside the United States.  So much of the information I've found seems to be geared towards students making a much larger transition from countries where it's assumed that there aren't the kinds of financial resources that a Sallie Mae would provide.  (Though I know that I'm the one doing that assuming, which is a whole different story entirely.)

I felt somewhat out of sorts after my workout last night and decided to order a couple of books online to get enough for Amazon's free SuperSaver shipping.  (Yes, I know Powell's is there, but I went with the biggie this time.)  I ordered "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis, which had a great excerpt in Vanity Fair, and "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky.  The former book I'd been meaning to buy; the latter was a happenstance find after getting into an online vortex to get to the $25.00 SuperSaver requirement.  As it turns out, I may have felt out of place due to a dehydration/muscle tension/brewing migraine stew that I fought off between 5:30am and 6:30am, but the books themselves represent two very different sides of my interests and personality: the financial crisis has touched everyone and I've been as fascinated by its roots as I have been in the past with studying such treasure troves as African-American history and literature.  But the second book, a long-running interview with the late author, appeals to the kick-a-hole-in-the-sky part of my personality that feels cooped up and fenced in, awaiting the big change coming in four months but drudging through the seemingly numberless (but truly numbered) workdays full of people running around in a panic like fire ants, palpable stress everywhere that never eases for long.

Plus, I tried to read DFW's "Infinite Jest" several years ago, and thought it was obnoxious, sprawling, unfocused work that could have benefited from some judicious editing to attain the clarity and incisiveness of prose of other writers I admired and still admire (such James Baldwin and Bill Bryson).  But in the course of willfully banishing myself to cube-land and out of band-land, I've felt like I've given away a lot over the last year - maybe too much.  I want and need to get back to that place of optimism in work so as to better launch myself into my new future, and a sprawling work may do wonders for the mental straitjacket I feel, using the same scripted and habitual language over and over during the week.

My girl is helping too, spurred on by feeling much better physically of late, and perhaps excited by having sent in her passport last week for renewal, which will soon have a dependent visa sticker added to it.  Spring is in the air, and I am doing my damnedest to catch onto whatever renewal and rebirth I can find, to let it carry me through, help me to let go of presuppositions, enable me to more casually embrace the unknown and replace the first thought of "I have to be prepared for this in case something goes wrong that I could have potentially controlled for" with "things are going to be alright, things are going to be awesome, the future is bright, a new tribe of millions awaits us just a thousand miles away."

But "things are going to work out" will work just as well, and in truth, it's that which I've been taught so well to doubt.  Jen has that frame of mind, and I'm trying very hard just to let go and embrace it.

For letting go, ironically or no, is hard work, at least for me.

The Concept of Enough (or Enough, Already)

So much of the world's economic vitality involves armies of paid interrogators and interruptors working non-stop to ensure that you cannot avoid their attempts to get in front of your face or into your ears.  They all have the same message: you don't have enough; you need more; until you pay to obtain more of what we are selling (be it a product or service, a tangible or an intangible) or meet and exceed the targets of what you are paid to sell, we will do everything in our power (and our power is considerable) to make you feel physically uncomfortable, anxious, irritated, and worthless.  And if it all falls apart for you because of over-consumption or lack of forethought in whatever amount or kind, hey, it's not our fault; we're just presenting options, motivating you to always hunger for more, to not be Satisfied with Enough.  Just because we present the option doesn't mean we're responsible when you fumble away our promised outcomes.  After all, you'll never be the one who's Too Big To Fail.  (Unless the strain makes you fat and overweight, in which you are deemed to have failed.)

I had already meant to write about this today, as I fell out with the American cult of the linear path to Not Enough so long ago, and it takes a herculean effort for me to understand people who seem to have spent much of their lives being rewarded for linear progress, talking about things like home renovations, babies, and new furniture.  That cult seems to be the unspoken hovering force in this article about a person whom I've read before, who has previously been praised for "candor" in the midst of crisis.  There's no risk in praising the successful after the fact, unless the success is fleeting and demoted to a flash in the pan, or if the success is undesirable to a moneyed target audience, or if it raises expectations to an unsustainable level (thus begetting sentences that start with "It was inevitable that...."  All of the real reward in finance that I've ever seen is given to those for whom the idea of Not Enough is the driving force.  It'll be the force behind countless scams masquerading as options that will be before me in the future.  "Endless Opportunity."  "Potential for Significant Growth and Advancement."  "Aggressive, Hungry Go-Getter Wanted."  Fuck.  It never ends.

Even in personal realms, Not Enough rears its ugly head: I may be lucky enough to be in love with the greatest woman in the world, but that still doesn't prevent me from feeling that I should lose more weight or work harder for more money so as to provide more thing-based comforts than I'm able to.  It took a long time for me to realize that Jen likes nice things as much as anyone, but that the life we have really is perfect in so many ways - the simple, cozy, cluttered apartment with humble furniture is okay, the lack of a busy social life is okay, the relaxing with on-demand cable goes way beyond okay to desirable, as do the two cats relaxing and stampeding about.  I'm grateful for being able to recognize that perfection on a near-daily basis, which chips away at the biggest fear I ever learned growing up - the fear of being broke and alone, so that even in the midst of prosperity, in the back of my mind I should be worriedly preparing for my future so that I don't end up "that" way, at the wrong end of the scale that has Not Enough, Enough, Success, and Excess burning rubber like hot rods far off in the other direction, sometimes displacing one another on the continuum depending on who's doing the measuring, or the selling.

The reality is that there really is a finite amount of stuff to go around, in a macro sense - hence the constant push and pull of politics and governance, fighting over the forms of capital that are necessary for entities to survive and flourish.  It's alright to want more, but knowing when to stop, to moderate on one's own terms to Enough, is the greatest thing I've ever learned.  As Flea (of all people) once said, "I'll take all the money I can get, and I won't feel guilty about it at all," but at least I'll know that I'll have all the money I need once all of my personal debt has been extinguished and I no longer owe a dime to any entity, anywhere.  My MBA will "tell" some people what my values supposedly are, but it's not my job to convince such people - yet (if it ever will be).

Personal debt of zero dollars will be an Enough that I haven't known for many, many years, and once I get there it will be cause for real celebration.  I'll celebrate in Toronto, I believe, where I'd like for us to be able to stay for awhile.  But something tells me that I'll be well into the vaunted range of Success the second that Jen and I drive over the Bluewater Bridge in Port Huron onto the 402, officially crossing over into a new life, a new way of seeing.

Financial aid windfall

Found all of the financial aid information I could find over the weekend and will sit on it until I can think straight again, as two straight all-day training sessions are only half-way over and work keeps on piling up in my absence.  One part of me just wants to belt it out, but I need every dime I can get before the end of this summer.

While fishing out a book I borrowed from a friend three years ago, I found this, with no idea whatsoever where it came from (as I don't think it ever belonged to my old roommate) but I must have packed it with the move here.  Our first Canadian money.  A good omen for the near future.

I hope I'm not always this tired while in school, though.

Van dreams

I've had several dreams involving my departed 15-passenger Dodge Ram Van lately, the most recent being yesterday evening.  An old friend's dad was driving me, Jen, the old friend, his wife, and I think what I imagined to be their kids, making faded stops along Everytown streets of mixed-use commercial buildings and trees, ending up in Denver, where I was then floating in mid-air above the van, looking down at it, where suddenly everyone was out of the van wishing me good luck, as I got into the front seat as the van crept forward on its own, the seat too far forward, where the brake pedal was of no use as it just rolled on, the arc of my vision still from up above, somehow.  The next thing I knew, I was slowly plowing into a row of black Mini Coopers with UK license plates along a cobblestone road in central London on a bright sunny day, the van pushing them all forward, like I was in a drug haze where I knew what I was supposed to do, but was powerless to stop the van, and then the pinball-machine sound of my phone alarm.

Not much to read into there.  A change dream with lurching, unalterable motion, soaked with past images and mindscapes.  At least the van wasn't stuck in reverse at the same ambling speed, on a massive street with no traffic but parked cars all along the road, as it was in a dream I had about a week before I received the news of acceptance to graduate school.


What it also means, though, is that a huge part of me misses being in a band, with playing shows, going on tours, and seeing the country part and parcel of the whole experience.  It's been nearly a year since I bid farewell to my last band, which was a chance to spend time with good friends on a regular basis just as "the unemployment year" was gathering steam and I was realizing just what a long, tough fight I was in for.  I gave two-and-half years of my life to the band I was in before that, which was a great ride packed with ecstatic, visceral moments unlike any other, but after nearly 100 shows it had morphed into something I didn't recognize anymore, and it was just time to go.  I'll never forget the ride of my first band, when (after we'd finished our first and only tour) I woke up one day and panicked, realizing that I had accomplished the one thing I really wanted to do that I had any control over (unlike all of the grad programs I was looking into, trying to find something where I felt I could really contribute something).  I literally did not know what to do next, and lo and behold, I ended up somewhere that I would only get about two years' furlough from over the next eight years.

I used to go to shows all the time; they kept me going.  So much restless and organized creativity was to be drawn from and contributed back to (which was the part of the "scene" that was always the biggest draw), great people to get to know.  Plus, working in a bar that boasted a great live music venue allowed me to take in hundreds of bands, many of which were outstanding.  But suddenly I wanted to be away from everything, to take stock and figure out some other way to turn people's heads.  And with my money spigot quickly slowed to a trickle and not wanting to talk about having been booted from my job (the first wave of The Great Recession, long before everyone knew someone who was out of work), I just stopped going.  Nothing out there was inspiring, and it felt good to stay in on the weekends, as though I was taking my life back from the constant checking-out-of-bands.  And frankly, I was, and I did.  I was done with hardcore, done with pit ninjas, ADD kids, and poseurs masquerading as people somehow against the grain of society.  (Then I went back on that for a spell, and it was fun, but I'm REALLY done with it now.)


I miss playing and seeing live music terribly, but as a performer, when I stopped seeing many people I really wanted to see at the shows I played - when it became more about performing in front of strangers than getting to know people as people, instead re-imagining a "fan base" to try to cultivate or pander to - it was time to take time out.  I'm really hoping that Toronto has a musical needle in a haystack to find, one that'll re-open the outlet in a small way.  Until then, I bide my time, give thanks for all the people I've been able to get to know as a part of that process of taking in and giving back, and look forward to what lies ahead.

My next "tour" will take me, Jen, Negative, and Xenu to the northwestern edge of Lake Ontario, which will be only the second time I've seen it.  The only other time I saw it was just north of Rochester, New York, the day after playing a show as part of one of a dozen bands to 300 people all going a huge swirl of awesome crazy inside the lodge of a public park in Pittsford.  This view was nearly the polar opposite, but just as beautiful, and as happy and content as I was at that moment, I had no way of knowing that one day I'd call the other side of that Great Lake home.

I'll be getting familiar with the website of the Canadian Consulate in Detroit, as it turns out.  My stress level has plummeted after giving it some review, as my work experience that related to U.S. immigration and visa laws led me to expect far greater difficulty.  (The hardest part, if I could call it that, will be getting the financial aid piece hammered out over the coming weeks.)  As if to assuage people who work with numbers constantly and have been conditioned to expect the worst, they have a breakdown of how many applications are processed within various timeframes ranging from 2 days or less (49%) to 28 days or less (81%).  Not weeks or months, but days.

My friend Don gave a great recommendation to ditch the U-Haul idea and pay someone to move everything from here to there (which will surely cost more, but saves a flight back from Toronto to Minneapolis to get my car and our two cats and do the whole 1000 miles over again).  Now, if only Allied Van Lines would stop calling constantly to set up my in-home moving cost estimate (honestly, it's been over a dozen calls in the last ten days, from the same 260- number in Fort Wayne, Indiana).  At least I know what it's like to be desperate for a callback for work that doesn't come, so it's easy to put that insistence aside.

I can't really explain how unemployment eventually improved my outlook on pretty much everything, but it sure as hell did.  Especially since I only ever stress out about things when I'm tired.  More and more (and timed well with Jen's new job), when I get stressed, I think, "it's time to go to bed," and eventually I get there, sleeping it off.  I've become a big fan of the quiet, late at night.

It literally is a thousand-mile journey, the one step long since taken.

Having cleared the toughest hurdle of admission to the program, I took some time and made a rough outline list for the transition that grouped easily into four categories:

- visa
- moving of stuff
- money
- finding an apartment


The fact that money was third tells me that I've got the right perspective going forward, as I keep reviewing maps of the Greater Toronto Area to start to hone a sense of geography.  Anytime I've committed to moving, my compass of "home" starts to change at that instant, but less so this time, with no mental map of any kind.  Strange that now I can use things like Google Earth to get a literal sense of what a neighborhood looks like, and reviewing apartment postings on Craigslist and the associated maps has already helped me to realize what places are simply too far-flung to be practical.  I'm hopeful that Jen and I can find a place that will be equally convenient for both access to school and employment opportunities (reviewing the killer public transit options will help that long) and when I think of the two of us walking around and exploring our new town... well, few things make me happier than that.  I mean, there are eleven streetcar routes!  And a solid subway system to boot, which to me has always been the hallmark of a big city that's proud to be big and welcoming of all comers.

So often, it's been the case that there's never enough time to fully digest something new and interesting, be it a book, a magazine, or a city that I played on one of the In Defence tours.  The play-it-faster part of me (as well as the "band father" that looks to manage the unknowns) has been the cause of some anxiety with so much far off, but the wrap-the-horizon-around-my-waist part (a favorite part of this great book) is starting to win, and instead of feeling the glums of another work week about to begin, I'm feeling inspired, relaxed, and ready for what lies ahead.