There's always these rules that feel pretend. Don’t forget to put the chicken in the fridge or it’ll make you sick. Brush your teeth or they’ll fall out, etc. Well, fuck me then! I forgot to put the chili in the fridge last night. I know that with it being as hot as it was last night I’m better off just throwing it away. It’d be best to throw it out. I don’t want to throw it out though. I have less than 90 dollars in my name, and my credit card bill may be late by the end of the day. I planned to eat this chili for the next four days. Now the voice of reason that sounds a lot like my mom is chirping off in the back of my head. I hate it when that happens. 

It’s these rules that send people into a dizzy. Rules that in theory are set up to help people but just make life harder. Something I hate to admit sometimes is that life is hard for everyone. I know it’s selfish of me to think like that but that's how I feel sometimes. My life has always felt disproportionally harder than my peers. In the grand scheme of things my life has been great and I’ve been blessed with a capable mind that allowed me opportunities to change things for myself. That hasn’t made growing up poor and in a single-parent household any easier.  

In 3 years that spread across first grade to fourth grade. I lost my last living grandparent, my grandma, My cousin passed away due to a simple medical procedure gone wrong, and my dad died a week to the day of my tenth birthday. These things changed me. It’s naive to think they wouldn't change everyone, they would. I don’t think I am any more special because these happened to me. I often felt very embarrassed that this happened to me. Things that most of my peers didn’t start to experience until our early twenties. These events along with the poverty and depression that followed them, gave me a new set of rules that felt pretend. You should never talk about the grief you’re feeling or it’ll be met with silence that makes people feel bad. You should lie and say you got the Xbox 360 for Christmas or they might not want to hang out anymore, etc. 

All things in hindsight are stupid and elementary. At that moment though they felt like the rules in a way that felt a lot less pretend than they do now. Did they help me? Did they protect me? Who's to say? I do know they’ve changed me. So many of those rules and those like it, I’ve spent the past 8 years trying to unlearn. More often than not they feel like Excalibur’s sword, this unmovable object. Draining me of my power, time, and resources. Fuck those rules.  I want to make my own. I want to live somewhere between eating the chili and not getting sick. Right there on that edge. Knowing that I lived I learned and saw it for what I wanted it to be.

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• The Sweater song by Weezer: I love this video and this song. I still remember hearing it on Rockband for the first time.
• Drew Ducote’s Rednecks with Paychecks: I came across these photos in my daily interweb jog and can't stop thinking about them. I Would love to talk to the guy who made them.
• Private Parts Directed by Betty Thomas: I watched this movie for the first time last night and wow. What a story and I can't believe they made a movie about this guy but then again I can. I also have a huge crush on Mary McCormack. 

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I am so playing a Solo show today flyer below