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i_like_pizza_steve
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Name: JW
Country: United States
State: Indiana
Metro: Indianapolis
Birthday: 2/5/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: the truth
Expertise: self-deprecation and a killer bloody mary
Occupation: bartender/firefighter/musician
Message: message me
AIM:  benzyiu
Member Since:
10/14/2005
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| success/failure.. it's all relative (i hope)Happy 25th birthday to.... me...
I overheard someone say the following tonight:
"If you're not successful by the age of thirty, you probably never will be."
Two bachelors degrees, almost two years out of college, and what do I have to show for it? A bed at my parents' house, a car that hasn't moved from the driveway in the past five months, and a bartending job in a small town that no one outside of Indiana has ever even heard of.. Almost sounds like a good country song, if only I could get it all to rhyme.
I'm what most insecure people would label an "underachiever".
It always sounds like a bit of pity when people tell me I'm "way too good" for my job. I think it's jealousy. I think they envy the fact that I didn't follow the rat-race like everyone else and jump into a career I was destined to hate right out of college. I'm taking my time. Why hurry up to define myself by what I do? I'm not "Jordan the lawyer" or "Jordan the accountant" or "Jordan the frustrated desk-monkey". I'm "Jordan the... what's he doing these days, anyway..?". I think I like it better that way. I like leaving things open-ended.
Is this the road to failure? What is failure, anyway? Screw that... what's success?
Is success having everything you could ever want? If that's the case, no one's successful, because in this society we are bred to always want more. Faster cars, bigger televisions, more square-footage, two and a half kids...etc.
What would you rather do for a living? Rule over a group of people and make "ok" money, or be a slave for "good" money? I guess it all depends on where your priorities lie. Does the lifestyle you've become accustomed to demand that you work your ass off so much that you can't even enjoy it? I've seen what that does to people. They become bitter, they become jealous, they become completely insecure-- especially when they see those who make less enjoying life more. Doesn't really seem worth it to me.
I'm honestly glad that I was completely broke during my last year of college. Living off ramen noodles and the campus burger king, reading books because the only TV station we had was PBS, hanging out with the friends at the house because the bars were too expensive.. In comparison, the life I live now, I feel like a rich man whenever I record a program on the DVR, or order chinese-takeout. It's the simple things in life.... right?
Now, I'm just rambling, but really, why is it that success is not gaged on our relative happiness, but by how much meaningless crap we can accumulate in our lives? (I mean, really, it's not like we can take all those cars, coach purses and square-feet with us in the end). I'm currently happy being a struggling musician who works at a bar. Should I not be? Should I go out and find a "real" job so that I can assimilate my view of success into everyone else's? According to the world I should be really sad about the current state of my life. Well, the world's retarded. And besides, it's another five years until I'm thirty.
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| me + work + music = major lack of writing
No free time nowadays. Although, that pretty much just seems like a lame excuse.
Either I'm working at the bar or I'm playing music at one of a few bars... It's nice to finally average a gig or two a week, but between that and the "real" job it leaves little time for anything else but sleep.
I know I've been the quite the stranger, and I'll I've done so far is reiterate that, but i promise it really bugs me that i don't take the time to do this anymore. Sometimes I honestly feel that I just don't have anything to say, and for someone who's kept an ongoing journal for the last 12+ years, it's not only frustrating, but it's a bit scary as well. For instance, at this exact moment I'm not feeling very comfortable writing any of this down because I feel like I've lost "it" and that I'm just grasping at straws trying to find the voice that used to be so confident.
Maybe I'm just looking at it all in the wrong way. Maybe, like I've said time and time again, "Happiness writes white". Maybe I just don't need this outlet anymore like I used to. Because, I did need it. It helped me through the hardest moments of my life. All the one-sided heart-wrenching relationships, all the moments of self-doubt, all the times when i needed a mental health break from hours of studying... You'll see shades of all these things if you take the time to read through what I've written on this xanga site in the last two years.
Maybe it's that this place is no longer a haven for me... i don't necessarily feel like i can say whatever i want to because there are just too many people who are close to me that know of this site. years ago i didn't have that problem-- i could just say whatever the hell i wanted to without having to worry about hurting anyone's feelings.
maybe i need a new venue.
Hello again, hello
Just called to say hello
I couldn't sleep at all tonight
And I know its late
But I couldn't wait
Hello, my friend, hello
Just called to let you know
I think about you every night
When I'm here alone
And you're there at home
Hello
Maybe its been crazy
And maybe I'm to blame
But I put my heart above my head
We've been thru it all
And you loved me just the same
And when you're not there
I just need to hear
Hello, my friend, hello
Its good to need you so
Its good to love you like I do
And to feel this way
When I hear you say
Hello
Hello, my friend, hello
Just called to let you know
I think about you every night
And I know its late
But I couldn't wait
Hello
-Neil "the effing man" Diamond
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| Cigar Bar Gig 
36 E. Main Street
Brownsburg, IN 46112
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| 1,203.8 miles (round trip)"They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about
where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how
they'll get there--and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see." -Jack Kerouac On the Road
I woke up Friday morning with the full intention of driving the 45 minutes down to Bloomington for the weekend. I went to bed early Saturday morning six hundred miles away in Athens, Georgia. Roughly twenty hours I spent by myself driving the miles of interstate that lead from central Indiana to North-Eastern Georgia and back again. Of course, the reason I went was to take advantage of the long weekend by visiting a dear friend of mine at the University of Georgia, but the drive itself was almost worth the trip. I don't know too many people who could truthfully say that they would enjoy a ten-hour road trip by themselves... But, maybe that's why, since I've been old enough to drive, I've had a poster of Kerouac on my wall. The whole thing was completely unplanned until just a couple of hours before I left on Friday afternoon, but that just added to the adventure. It was impulsive and spontaneous, and according to some, mildly "crazy", but on the long stretches of highway between places like Cave City, Kentucky and Summerville, Georgia I feel alive. Windows down, stereo cranked (while downing the Red Bull as if it's the one thing responsible for keeping me alive...) As I was driving tonight along the bridge that connects Kentucky with Indiana, I saw the sun setting over the hills along the Ohio River. I would have driven two hours just to have seen that. What a great weekend. The open road does my soul good.
*thanks again, D, for being so hospitable under such short notice :)
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| who says wisky doesn't age in the bottle...?I bet you're wondering about that title.. well, let me fill you in quickly before i get down to business. It's a reference to the fact that I just poured myself a glass of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch out of a bottle that's been sitting under my home bar untouched for the last 5 months or so... and prior to that sat untouched on top of a refrigerator in a girl's apartment since roughly last December.
It tastes funny, but I think that it's probably just my expectation bias.
Now to the business. About 15 minutes ago I turned off David Letterman, put on a mixed CD that I titled "Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines", poured myself that glass of scotch, pulled out the laptop and told myself that if I don't write something of substance tonight, I'm going to punish myself with loads of guilt.
So, here I am. 12:22 in the a.m... Listening to Mr. LaMontagne, Mr. Oberst, and the like, trying to find some inspiration for creativity, or at the very least some surface-level BS (kind of like my last entry).
Forcing myself to write these days is like (to use a completely lame and tired analogy) pulling teeth. It's almost like I'm so afraid that all of my talent and creativity have gone that I don't want to risk anyone ever finding out. I should take a step back here for second and be completely honest with myself-- my writing was hardly ever "creative" except for those few short stories I've written (one of which you can find on my xanga site if you look hard enough) it's mostly just straight forward, honest, and to the point. It's just been pissing me off as of late that I apparently had so much more to say in college and now that I'm in the "real world" I feel like I've fallen into that "I'm complacent with my routine of working, eating, sleeping, working, eating, sleeping...etc" that I stood so strongly against, granted at somewhat of a distance, for so long. For some reason it reminds of that old REM song "Stand". It's so annoying that they themselves refuse to play it.
Moving on...
I want to talk about someone else for a second or two. There's this 60 year old guy, John, that's been coming into the bar where I work for about the last 8 or 9 months. When I first saw him, I thought he was a homeless alcoholic and that he might piss on the floor or steal our old magazines if I didn't watch him closely enough. I also refused to leave him alone with my female coworkers. Anyway, after a couple of visits, when I finally realized he was much less harmless than he was creepy, I started striking up conversations with him between popping open his bottles of Bud Light. During these conversations, which over time became longer, deeper, and more profound (that's what she said...ha) something dawned on me. Of all the people that I've met, he is the one person who has most reminded me of my good buddy Brad, who died a year ago next month. It was something about John's mannerisms and the way he said certain things.. maybe it was because I always saw John drunk and well, Brad was mostly drunk most of the time.. but there was seriously something that struck me about the guy. Come to find out, he's a recovered heroin addict who's at the bottom of a long list of people who need liver transplants asap. But the thing about it that really impresses me about John is that he is by far, just like Brad, one of the most genuine people I've ever met. He never hesitates to say things exactly how he sees them, and he never hesitates to drink another beer. He knows that because of the lifestyle he's lead that he's on borrowed time-- and I think in some weird way, Brad knew that too. Anyway, over the last few months or so, John has by far become my favorite customer. He's an ancient sage who speaks from decades of life experience, and unfortunately I seem to be the only person who respects that about him- or even takes him seriously, and it kind of bums me out. So, lately if he's there on a weeknight when I'm closing the bar, I'll drive us up to another bar, hang out and drink beer and shoot the proverbial shit for a couple of hours, then drive him home. I've done this a few times, Monday night the most recent. I have to tell you, I feel super shitty for ever thinking the guy was creepy and might piss on my floor... in truth, I can honestly say that he's become a mentor of sorts. Seriously though, if you knew you had only a few years of life left, how would you spend it? Sitting alone in your house feeling sorry for yourself..? or.. hanging out in the nearest pub, getting happy drunk, making friends, and having great conversations? I have to give this guy total credit for really living his life to the best of his ability. There's a lesson in all this somewhere, I swear.....
Anyway...
I'm currently still in the middle of trying to make one of the most important decisions of my life... I would say I've gone from 80/20 to 60/40 in the last month or so. A lot of things have happened here recently that seem almost like bright neon signs telling me to go in a specific direction. But, my mind is not made up- and I think it will be another month or so before I can really commit to one path or the other. So, all of you who keep asking--chill out---you'll know when I do.
Alright, I'm close to a thousand words tonight, I think that will have to do for the moment. Hope you all have a fantastic Labor Day weekend :)
cheers,
JW
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