Good evening! Jeez, it's been a hot minute since I've been here. Life has caught up a bit, I've been busy with school, band stuff, and other personal stuff. I'll dive into a few things but for brevity, stuff has been looking up. Hopefully I'll have some fun stuff to talk about on here over the next few months or so, even some backlog stories from the past few months. I'll cover some small things here today but it's good to be typing here again.
Well, another year has passed and with it, another age has passed. I turned 20 two days ago and it's a strange feeling. My birthday as a whole has always been a lukewarm day at best but this year, it's even more... off-putting? melancholy? just the thought that I'm officially out of the "teens" is so strange. Especially since I'm in the limbo between being a teen and being able to drink. It's one whole year of purgatory until I'm completely launched out into the world. Despite the bad memories surrounding my birthday and the melancholy feeling surrounding the day as a whole, this year was better due to someone special. I couldn't ask for someone better to spend the day with and I'm thankful for every moment with her and I can't wait to spend more time together in the future.
Besides other bigger events that I'll talk about in later posts, I have been buckling down and focusing on music for a bit. Following my pseudo-hiatus, I started the semester at junior college. I went into the semester thinking I would just finish that bit and transfer to a different school, not knowing what I wanted to do and more annoyed about the lack of opportunities there. However, the first week changed my whole path. The teacher of the music classes talked about the music program being brought back and how there is now room for students to take up music as a major again. I was weary about doing this at first just because I knew it would be a complete grind but I only had a few days to decide if I was going to go through with it or not since the deadline for adding/dropping classes was nearing. After less than a week of mulling over in my head, I walked down to Dr. White's office one crisp Thursday morning, knocked on his door, and informed him that I wanted to change my major to Associate of Fine Arts (music). Following that, we switched around my classes for this semester and here I am now, spending 80% of my day working on music theory, aural skills, and guitar techniques and I couldn't be happier with my schoolwork.
Related to music, I have expanded my music taste a ton. I don't generally like talking about music with people because the gatekeeping of bands and even genres is insane. I started listening to Social Distortion, Reverend Horton Heat, Gun Club, and other punk/cowpunk bands! They've really itched a scratch in my brain and I love the mix of country and blues with intense topics and loud guitar riffs. This is surprising to me even since I honestly don't like country music in general.
That's about all for now but I do have more to talk about later. It does feel odd typing this out and thinking it's possible that almost no one will see this but if there is anyone out there reading this, thank you for taking time out of your day to read my ramblings and I hope you are doing well. Remember people care about you, do great things, and keep being you. Best of love, Jack.