Life As I Know It

I used to live my life utterly and completely honestly and openly on the internet. I blogged about everything, good, bad or ugly. My life was an open book for anyone to read. I enjoy being a completely open, honest person with no boundaries and I still live extremely openly on the net but sometime last year I changed a little bit. I started keeping a lot of the darker, more painful or negative things out of public view. I’m not sure what exactly changed, I just know that I decided there were some things that I just didn’t necessarily want to spew onto the web any more.

I think there are several layers to this, one being that I really want to be a positive person, and I believe what you put out into the world is what you will get back. Maybe it’s also because, while I still talk to friends in private about anything I need to, I don’t think the world at large necessarily wants to here me whine, complain and be all emo. During this process, I’ve found that being forcefully (and sometimes slightly falsely) positive about something, actually does make me feel happier and more positive in reality. That was something good to learn!

It’s also made it harder in some ways when things have been going on. The open part of me wants to share and be honest and cry out but it just doesn’t feel right any more. That’s something to do in private with those close to me. Part of me misses the days when I would share that, but I do think I’m overall happier in my new skin.

It’s been a year of a lot of changes. I’m still dealing with a whole lot of things in life, but I always try to remember as I’m going to bed that in the grand scheme of things, my life is charmed and I’m a hell of a lucky guy. And every now and then, I get a glimpse of something that shows me that I’ve taken a step closer to being the person I want to be.

I tend to go for long periods without blogging (especially since I twitter so much now) and as time goes on and more and more things accumulate it becomes more daunting to try and write about it all to play catch up. So inevitably I end up with a post like this that just spills out a dense summary of my recent life.
First, as most of you probably already know, Jess and I split up a while back now. She moved out and is moving to Seattle this week for a great opportunity with her job. There’s no big drama, no bombshells to drop or anything like that. It’s all very cool and amicable, just a case of us not being right for each other. I’ve been incredibly public in the past about my entire life including relationships but there was a point when I started playing things closer to the chest and keeping some elements of my life a little more private. Still, I’m pretty much an open book so no need to walk on eggshells or anything. I’m fine. In fact all in all my life is pretty great. Which leads me to…
Now with that news out of the way, the next development in my life is that I’ve met someone. After Jess and I split up, I got to talking tosomeone on Facebook that I’d actually gone to school with up through 9th grade. Being that my 20th high School reunion is coming up, a bunch of us have been reconnecting on Facebook. I never really knew her in school. I knew who she was (her name is Tina for future reference) but we weren’t actual friends or anything. I don’t think we ever even actually met or spoke to each other but we knew a lot of the same people and as it turns out grew up less than a mile or two from each other and went to a lot of the same places frequently. The more we’ve talked the more we’re can’t believe that we never managed to really know each other back then. At the moment, it’s a long distance relationship (though we have met in person and will be seeing each other again in July) but still amazing and totally fulfilling.
As most of you know I live my life very publicly. If you read my blog/twitter/facebook then I think it’s pretty easy to get a good idea of who I really am and what I’m really like. Apparently Tina had found me very intriguing from the moment she added me as a friend. Of course, at the time I was also married so she didn’t really pursue that line of thought. Quite often there are fun comment threads on her page involving lots of cool folks. I started participating and leaving more comments and such and once she found out I was available, we started some pretty heavy flirting. Facebook comments led to messages, texts and then phone conversations. We very quickly realized there was some serious and rare chemistry between us. We had a LOT in common and yet just enough differences to make us interesting and have areas in which we could enrich and educate each other. And she’s hot. Seriously, like Kelvin scale hot. She makes the sun sweat. Part of me wants to just go on and on about it here and part of me wants to not say too much as it’s still new and sort of special and precious to me. Suffice to say we formed a fast, intense, deep bond for a lot of different reasons.
Next up in all the news that’s fit to print: Lars and I filmed three scenes from the feature film we’re trying to get funding for “Brimstone Orphans”. We wanted to film some samples to submit for various grants and to use for further fundraising purposes. It was by far he most ambitious and most professional thing we’ve ever done. We had an awesome crew of about 25 people who were all immensely talented and more than that, were genuinely excited and enthusiastic about the project and being a part of it. Thanks to many generous donations of time, equipment and materials, we shot for about $2500 what should have cost more like $10,000 or more. We picked three scenes from the script that we thought showed the various tones and atmospheres of the story and that would make a good sample of what we wanted to do with the full feature.
Life has been very turbulent, wonderful and magical for me for a long time now. As I’ve said before, there’s something in the air lately. I believe big things are just over the horizon. Even though life can be full of vertiginous highs and heart-wrenching lows, I am incredibly lucky and happy to be who I am. Who wants to live a life of mediocrity in the middle anyway?

I’ve called a realtor. I want to sell this condo and go back to a rental house. I’m meeting ehr on Friday to at least get the ball rolling.
I’m tired of living in a sound prison because our downstairs neighbor gets disturbed if we fart too loud. An exaggeration? Only slightly. Sound travels all to well through our floor. Ever since we got Rock Band there have been problems. The first day we got it she came up after we had been playing for like 6 hours. Now I can understand how that might have been annoying, don’t get me wrong, but then there was the day she came up at 4:00 in the after noon. And then yesterday at 5:00 in the afternoon. Then began the exchange of letters taped to doors. Starting with my letter to her:

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Yesterday I was in the condo when I heard the sound of a huge crash outside. I went to see what had happened. A tree obscured my view but I could hear a woman crying fairly hysterically and saying she was so sorry. From the sound of how hysterical she was I feared something very bad had happened. As I rushed down to see if I could help I feared finding someone gravely injured or dead.
When I got downstairs I was very relieve to find no such scene. I heard her say she was on the way to a job interview and had been looking at some papers for a second while driving. That second was all it had taken for her to rear end a neighbor’s car parked on the side of the street. The neighbor had heard and come to investigate and the driver had been apologizing frantically to the neighbor. I had also, from my balcony, heard the driver call her grandmother, crying, and saying she had been in an accident. When I got there, another couple from a few condos down was helping the shaken woman to sit down on the patio of the neighbor whose car now had its rear end completely smashed in. The driver had a bloody lip, had hit her head and was naturally feeling some soreness in the neck and back but otherwise appeared, at least outwardly, to not have any major injuries.
As no one had had a chance to call 911 yet, I did that and explained the situation. As they gave the poor girl a bag of frozen vegetables to put on her lip, she just sat crying, hysterically upset. My instinct was that I wanted to take control of this situation. I wanted to take her hand and look her in the eye, find out her name and tell her that everything was going to be O.K. They were just cars and the important thing was that she was alive and no one had been severely injured. I wanted to comfort this poor, shaken, traumatized person who also felt so foolish at her own mistake which led to this accident. I felt that I had the power. I felt like I am very good at keeping my head in situations like these and making people feel more at ease. I wanted to do all this…but I didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe I felt it wasn’t my place. I don’t really know. I look back and I really regret that I didn’t follow my instincts. I think I could have made a difference.
The police and EMS got there and began to tend to her. I told the officer that I had called 911 and asked if there was anything else needed from me. He said there wasn’t so I decided to vacate the premises. I hope I never have to face a situation like this again but if I do, I will follow my instincts next time. I hope that wherever she is, that she’s O.K. and has realized how lucky she really is. Cars can be fixed or replaced. So please, friends, remember that it only takes a second of taking your eyes off the road to possibly lead to a some very bad things. We all do it. Fiddle with the radio or iPod, look at a text message, glance at a piece of paper. I know this had made me more aware of my driving habits. I hope it will do the same for you.