My Friends Carry Me Home

I suppose that this would be a good a time as any to write a pseudo-"update" date post about myself, as the earlier published post was the first thing I've written on here in over a month. Even though I generally try to do more opinions and kind of "I was thinking of this today..." inspired posts most of the time (Because God knows that nobody would ever be interested to read the boring, menial details of my every day life.), I do like to include some personal details from time to time as this thing is really starting to become a sort of scrapbook of my life.

As I have been since January, I am living in Kitchener-Waterloo, this time with 1/2 of my band in a wonderful house. It's really great waking up and getting to hang out with some of my best friends in the best house I've lived in.

There was a stretch of a few months recently that were extremely trying on me. I was having an extremely hard time finding any type of job, lived in a real shithole of a house, the band was hitting huge delays in recording our EP, had been single for more than three years and it was really all starting to mix together and overwhelm me. I was really worried that I would have to move back home and thus kind of give up on Beat Noir. Then some type of magic happened. I got a shitty job that, while being pretty much the worst, allowed me to stay in town. We moved to a new magnificent palace of an upstairs apartment over our friends. I met a girl and even though it ended up being a short fling, was still something that I needed.

The most important of all this is that I started volunteering at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in town. In fact, I have a draft of a post I started writing about a March Break art camp that I helped run there and how much fun it was, but it turned out to be a lot harder to write than I thought. Volunteering at this gallery has been a tremendously rewarding experience. I do a wide variety of stuff there, but mainly help run the kids programs. It's great to teach kids things about art they probably don't get in school and in return they melt my heart on about an hourly basis. It's seriously so great.

Another huge advancement in my life is that I'm in the process of applying to the Master's of Art History and Visual Culture program at the University of Guelph. It's obviously still up in the air if I'll be returning to my stomping grounds or not, but the idea of going back to a place where I have some good memories and friends and generally enjoy being in has me completely enthralled. My parents have been on my case (in a good way) about applying to post-grad programs since I graduated and of course as soon as I look into it, lo and behold, I receive positive feedback. I'm very excited about it.

While on the topic of parents, the following is a straight(ish) quote from my dad, further proving that he is the absolute greatest:

"You know, during that call a few months back, it seemed like you were kind of at the end of your rope and, you know, it really bummed me out. But when you told us you were applying and not just that, but that you were excited for it, it just made us feel great to see you excited. We all have these anxieties about things and it always seems like as soon as we act on them it always turns out the way we need it to. Imagine if we all acted on our anxieties!"

Like seriously, he's the best fucking guy in the world.

Anyway, I know that was some serious mutant hybrid of TMI and shinfo for you, but that's more or less what's going on with me. Now I'm going to go enjoy the sunshine and wear some neat shirts and skateboard and re-connect with old friends and share some beers and get used to low levels of sleep and drink too much coffee and see some shows and play some shows and smile and wear sunglasses and grow my hair and lead some art tours and play with some kids at camp and go swimming and wear my Vans until they're mega-stinky and fuck man, I don't what else, but when I think of that, you know I'm gonna fucking do that too.