don't turn the lights on

I'm not a great person. I'll be the first to admit that. I make bad decisions. In fact, I make bad decisions a lot. I've hurt people, I've been hurt, and I've been hurt in a way that serves me right. I don't give enough to charity, and I don't find change for homeless people who ask me for it on the street. When a stranger passes by and asks for a light, i say i don't have one even when i do. I never thought that was really a problem. I could always pull out an excuse from my full stockroom of excuses to justify my actions. "we are human, we are flawed" is a popular one.

But it's times like these when I really think about how I've been acting, when I really wonder if whatever I do can be justified. I'm not a teenager anymore, I'm twenty now (shudder) and the world is real. My life is real and my decisions are real and I need to be accountable for them. I've made a lot of poor decisions recently. I feel that I can potentially be hurting a lot of people, people that I'm close to, and I just can't stop. I don't need to be weak. The decisions I've made won't necessarily bring me joy, but I keep making them. It's as if I just want to see what will happen. How much I can get away with. If I really have this kind of power to let a fuck up in my own life become a problem for others. Pretty sadistic, right? pretty fucked up.

I'm just not in the right frame of mind. city living is wearing me out. the nine to five is wearing me out. I'm so tired all the time yet I'm so, so fucking bored. I just go looking for trouble because I want something to happen. It's the first time being incredibly busy is incredibly uninspiring. I haven't had a break in so long, and that is why I am looking forward to this upcoming china trip so much. I just know china will sort me out. Being away from the city for a moment, being away from what my immediate living environment is now ( and I have to admit it, though in my heart I will forever be a girl living in China's capital city), just being in Beijing will give me time to think and time to reflect and time to be a little bit more rational. See I've never been an irrational person. I'm just making irrational decisions, because, well because I'm in New York.

That's me justifying it again. with another excuse from the stockroom of excuses. I keep it pretty well stocked back there. I just can't stand being here for another day. I'm scared of myself. I'm scared I'm going to do something unforgivable. I wish I could escape back to New jersey, back to my mother's house and spend a weekend on cold cherries and library books and bad driving like I always do and purge my mind. But I can't now, not in the middle of the week. and there are still three more days until Beijing. I hope I can last it.

love is a mixtape

Just finished reading "Love Is A Mixtape" by Rob Sheffield. Sheffield's a contributing editor at Rollingstone and a pretty badass rock critic. He wrote a pretty badass book. It's a pretty beautiful book, too. Yeah, I just used "pretty" and "beautiful" together in the same sentence. And it worked.

Sheffield's writing really got me thinking about music and life a lot more than I have before. Music's always been extremely important to me, of course. Aggressively searching for new bands and new songs on various indie music blogs ranks right up there in my hobbies with shopping and eating the shit out of new food. And I have had many a melancholic, some would call "emo" moment with song lyric segments and an atmospheric picture, where I ramble about woe is me and about how only this song gets me in the world world. But wow. that's nothing compared to what 'Love Is A Mixtape' got me thinking about. Music is his life. Music was their life, him and Renee, the person he lost. That's pretty amazing that something like music could be the focal point of your whole life. And that it could actually mean something. be poignant and profound and not "i'm trying so hard to be hipster right now."

His writing sent shivers down my spine and really made me feel. and he was writing about music. His writing is music. I wish i had something like that. I don't think music does it for me as much as it does for him, just yet. I always thought my relationship with music was pretty sacred, pretty profound, pretty one of a kind. It's pretty superficial compared to what it could be. I guess what I'm trying to say is-- and I'm never trying to say anything with these blog posts, really, because if I wanted to write an essay with a thesis I would submit it to an English professor-- I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to live life with more. with more feeling, with more something, with more music. i want to live life with more life.

what if my life were a mixtape? I know these songs would be on it.

The Decemberists- Here I Dreamt I was an Architect
Elliott Smith- Between The Bars
Stars- Don't Be Afraid To Sing
Stars- Calendar Girl
Sunset Rubdown- Us Ones In Between
Bright Eyes- "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning," The Whole Album
Ben Kweller- Sundress
Keane- Bedshaped
Ian Broudie- Song For No One
Ben Gibbard- Carolina
The Decemberists- O New England
Dirty Vegas- Home Again
Green Day- Jesus of Suburbia
The Fratellis- Whistle For The Choir
Bishop Allen- The Same Fire
Bishop Allen- Butterfly Nets
Bishop Allen- The Chinatown Bus
Simon& Garfunkel- America
Rilo Kiley- Spectacular Views

and probably many more. Man, I kinda want to make a mixtape now.I wish I could make a mixtape that says how excited I am to be in New York but also how scared and how anxious and how angry. I wish could make a mixtape about how much I love Beijing and how much being away from home hurts and gnaws inside, and I wish I could make a mistake about how disgustingly, disgustingly lonely I feel sometimes. Rob sheffield probably could. I wish he would teach me.

Update from my life? nothing much has changed. Those who know me will know I'm interning at NBC Universal now, with the local integrated media department. I can't say much about it because apparently that would be violating my contract with NBC. not that there's much to say about it. But assume I'm happy.

I'm also interning with Dujour magazine. I've gotten some bylines. Pretty excited. I'm being worked like a horse but it's worth it. Summer classes have ended. My grades come out in T minus one days. Gpa pressure is currently killing me but hopefully I can pull through. It's a rare day that i have time and can sit down and type out a blog entry. It's a rare day that I feel like doing so. I'm glad I did, though, and I think it has made me feel better.

Thanks Rob Sheffield.
Everyone, just go out and read this book.