Anxiety

It's starting to wear on me.  I have been finding myself staying up all night and sleeping all day just to avoid the usual. I have been spending more and more time alone, and just thinking about everything that has been surrounding me recently. Blah blah blah life is tough and mysterious. 

I am ready for a shift and a change to occur and spark my interest in something new. I am sick of shutting out the bad instead of facing it head on. I am sick of being a coward on the inside that is terrified of change and difference. I will be the one who will take the reigns and steer this life in the direction that I see fit. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks or cares about my decisions. I face the consequences of my own life.

Listen to Sun Kil Moon

Edit: after reading through this post, it made me think of this:

He Hate ME

I have an interesting relationship history with the Cedar Falls PD. I got off work this morning at 4:45 AM and had to drop off two guys I work with. While driving back up College St. a cop pealed out and started following me real close. When I got to the top of College Hill, he threw on his lights and siren, thinking well here we go, I pulled over and got my ID ready to go, having had plenty of practice in the past with dealing with the Cedar Falls PD. As I was patiently waiting I hear a voice over the loudspeaker behind me, telling me to turn off my car, throw the keys out the window, and keep my hands out the window. I honestly thought for a second that maybe this is new procedure for Cedar Falls finest. As I was thinking this two more cops pulled up in front of me and blocked off the street and shined their spotlights on me, and I saw them get out cocking their shotguns and taking aim at me. Hands still out the window I see to my right about twenty yards out about three more cops with shotguns aimed at me surrounding the area. At this point in time I realized, well this might not be new procedure, and I started running through all the possible illegal things I have done in the past week that would result in this action. Before I could come up with  a solid answer the officer behind me told me to open the car door from the outside and step out facing forward. He then told me to put my hands above my head and walk slowly backwards towards one of the many police cars behind me. Being the honest and law abiding citizen I am I did so and when I was right in front of his car he told me to get down on my knees and keep my hands on my head. I could see in my back windshield that there was about five or six other officers with their weapons drawn and pointed at me. The officer put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me and had me stand against the hood of the cop car. He asked me my name and if I had any weapons while he was feeling me down for said weapons. 

Now, a little backstory to this, tonight at work was Studio 54 night and I was dressed as a gay cowboy, including skinny jeans, biker boots, size extra small tank top, ten gallon cowboy hat, shitty belt buckle, a disgusting brown leather coat, a tobacco smoking pipe in my pocket, and to top it off sporting the creepiest molester mustache I could possibly muster with three days notice.

Now that you have an image in your head I will continue this ridiculous story. After searching me, the officer asked where I was coming from, I told him I just got off work and dropped off two coworkers, I also made sure to mention that it was Studio 54 night at work and that explains why I look like a complete fuckin creep. He explains to me that some kids got the shit beat out of them with baseball bats down the street and apparently someone thought my car looked the same as the one that took after the beating. So, they put me in the backseat of the cop car and asked to search my car. I told them to go ahead with a sigh of relief knowing that I had just cleaned it out two days earlier of all "suspicious" objects, including a fog machine, multiple tire irons (I stripped a lug nut and tried a few different ones), a few empty bottles of booze, 60 empty Red Bull cans, two weeks worth of clothes, and enough garbage to fill a garbage can. They scavage through my car and I smile in the back seat of the cop car knowing that it is spotless. They then bring a witness up to where I am to try and identify me as the attacker, and the guy just shakes his head when they shine the light at me through the window in the cop car. At this point I am smiling ear to ear and have that feeling of excitement after exiting some sort of amusement park ride. The cop takes me out of the back seat and takes the cuffs off of me and says, "Sorry about that, we were told that a car of your description was fleeing an assault and we had to take all the precautions necessary". They handed me my ID and my keys, all 6 of them shook my hand and say have a good night, and one of them even gave me an escort the whopping 4 blocks home.

With that being said, that was more exciting than dressing up as a gay cowboy and sadly enough, will probably be my only shot to ever be on COPS! Fuck Compton, Cedar Falls is hard as nails!

Attached is my salute to the Cedar Falls Police Department, as you can see I am swelling with patriotism.

again....and again....and again

Well, I guess it's time for me to start journaling again. I used to have a Dead Journal account(yeah, that long ago) and I always enjoyed just having a written record of life. My life is about to change quite a bite in the upcoming months and I definitely want to have a journal of it for myself and for my friends.

I weened myself off of playing music and really "following" hardcore about a year ago. I was working up to 60 hours a week, I was ready to get into a serious relationship, and I was ready to settle down and finish out college to get serious about a career, or life, or whatever people call it when they make that decision. In the past 3 months I have felt my entire thought process shift. I can't explain it, all I want to do is detach myself from everything and get back to writing and touring.

Unfortunately, while making this decision I have ruined a great relationship with my constant flakiness and inability to really cope with a lot of things going on in my own mind. For the first time in my life I am standing by myself having to make decisions that affect me and my future, I don't have a guide, or a "parent" there to tell me what is the best choice. Since my parents getting a divorce, my Dad deciding to move to China, my Mom mostly falling out of my life, and my future in general being something that I am more than unsure about, I have found myself venting with music. This town holds nothing close to me and I am ready to start moving again.

Former Thieves came about a few months back when Josh Parks and I were sitting up late one night talking about music and reminiscing all the outrageous and fun time we have had on the road. Within this conversation we both realized that we both were in the same place in life, questioning what was next, and it only made sense that the best of times that each of of have ever had, was playing in bands, writing music, and touring all over the place.

We decided it would be logical to start up our band Desperation again, we left Desperation in a place where we could pick it back up and continue on if we wanted to, no last show was ever played. Our dear friend Josh Sparks had recently moved back to Cedar Falls after living in Buffalo and playing in Damiera and who I had played in Spirit of the Stairway with, so we thought that it was only logical to sit down and see if he was interested in playing drums with us. We got Josh on board and this whole idea starting picking up momentum. We made a phone call to Brad and Cole Highnam down in Iowa City to see if they wanted to sit down with us and talk music. A week later the 5 of us were having a conversation about playing music again, and this time taking the band full time, and making this band our lives. Brad and Cole have a lot of things going on with both of them and it didn't sound like the amount of touring and time we were talking about putting into this was on the same par that they were looking for.

Back to square one the 3 of us decided we would start a new band and start writing music immediately and build things from there. As of right now things are going better than could be expected. We are close to having a set ready to go, we are in talks with a few characters to fill in our vacant bass spot, we are going in to record for a 3 song that we will be touring off of this summer, tour is actually mapped out, artwork is being put into place, vans are being looked at, and we are looking into all moving in together, so we could logically live off of this band.

Things are moving so quickly, but I feel that the 3 of us have a good enough grasp on reality that things aren't moving too fast. I am more excited about this band than I have been in years! 

With that being said, this is the beginning of an avalanche in my life, and I really want to share all the moments with anybody that cares to listen! I'll try to keep this thing updated as best as possible! Thank you everyone!

Matt S