38 And 24

So as much as I bitch about Anderson, I know I'll miss it, even if it's just the slightest bit. It's strange, because what I'm going to miss are the people, but at the same time it's because of the people that I need to get out of here.

The numbers above are actually super important, and they just made everything seem so much more manageable.

24 is the number of days that I have class still.

38 is the number of days until I should be home.

It's gonna be strange, being home for more than a few days. It doesn't even feel like it was that long ago that I moved up here, and I was actually excited to just not be at home anymore.

It's gonna be strange waking up in a bed that I don't have to feel around for a chair to step on so I can get down. I actually REALLY like sleeping top bunk as long as there's head room.

It's gonna be strange cooking for myself all the time again, and not just walking down to the Marketplace or the Haven, as much as I kind of hate them some days.

It's gonna be strange not seeing all the guys I'm used to seeing. As much as I want to kill some of them like everyday, they've become important to me. I know right now I say I'm gonna come back on weekends, and I really intend to, but I'm afraid that with the way things happen at college, that I'm just not going to remember or be able to give up the time.

And it's gonna be downright stressful starting as a transfer at a new school, just like it was when I moved here.

I know change is good, and it'll be a change that will be great for me. It's always easier to just sit with the way things are, but I can't stay here, regardless of how easy it would be to just put up with the stuff that I don't like and pretend it doesn't bother me that much.

I already feel it after just one year, I feel like a burnout. I had a lot going for me, and I tossed it all away. And if I stay here, a burnout is exactly what I'm going to become, because I just don't have my normal passion when I'm here.

John Kenneth Brian Freaking Steele is no fucking god damn burnout.

Turn by Turn

I've officially started going around bluntly saying that I don't plan on returning in the fall, except for any time that I'm in the music building, I'm just not ready for that yet.

--Side note, I just love Glee so much, even when it's a rerun. It bugs me how people last year who trash talked it are now all about Glee, and try to talk to me about it when they don't know the history of season 1. Pretty much every time they cover a Top 40 song it turns out amazing. AND EVERYTHING IS 1000 TIME BETTER A CAPPELLA.--

---Other side note, I think that the Madea movies are hilarious, and there's a new one coming out around Easter. Ok, I'm done being distracted now.---

Last night I was giving a presentation, and I flat out said that I was planning on going to Ball State because that environment suited me better, and the areas of study that I'm interested in are worlds better than at Anderson. I was actually kind of happy to flat out say it, and relieved that my career advisor said she was expecting that's what I would do.

I'm keeping this from the Music Department for now, because each one of them will come asking me why, and while I actually like almost everybody in the building, and they're incredibly nice people, the way the whole department works at a whole, well it just doesn't work. And they're the kind of people that they'll try to get me to stay, to tough it out just one more year and then encourage me to stick with music.. It won't work on me, I'm smarter than that. I figure that they'll all find out eventually, and one of them might already know.

I was eating lunch with some people and ended up talking about my plans to transfer, not noticing that my mens chorus director was sitting like 6 seats down. So assuming that I was even half as loud as I normally am, he heard me talk about my plans. And the bummer about that, is that he's probably my favorite faculty in the music department.

It was a pretty good talk though, and it

-----Glee covering Dog Days Are Over, one of my current favorite songs. I forgot how good of an episode this was.-----

I'm on hardcore drugs and they're all intermingling in weird ways right now that I never would have guessed. Like I'm on half a pain pill left over from my wisdom teeth just because I couldn't find anything else to just dull me out, which makes me sound like a druggie. But I'm on tons of decongestants and allergy stuff too, it's insane. So as a result, I'm incredibly out of it, possibly more out of it than I was right after getting my wisdom teeth out, but I'm still functioning really well.

Ok ok, back on the train tracks. It was a pretty good talk, and now I feel bad that I'm finally finding some people I feel comfortable actually just talking with and I'll only be here for like a month.

I kind of had different sets of friends here at Anderson, and now I'm getting to the good ones. It just kind of sucks that it took so long. And even the people that I don't really know seem to like me. I bumped into some guys in the stairwell and they asked if I got on 3rd floor for next year and I told them I didn't plan on being here. They were actually kind of sad I wouldn't be here, but they understood. They even asked if I was going to stay with music, because somehow they knew how torn I was about staying with music. I just don't get how people got to know me so well, and I don't know like any of them.

I had a better idea that I was going to talk about, but these pills have totally taken me for a loop and I can't put together a solid idea anymore, so maybe I'll pick up with it at another time, if I remember about it.

JKBFS

John Kenneth Brian Freaking Steele

That's my real name, though as you can imagine the Freaking is just in there for fun, because I'm John Freaking-Steele, and I do what ever I want, like bake muffins at 1 am and stuff.

I came back to Westfield for the weekend, as I plan to every weekend, and it's super boring today.

My throat has been bugging me most of the week, and I say it's my fault for stretching my vocal range up to tenor over the last week while still singing bass. It's turned me into the 13 year old with his voice cracking all the time that I never had to go through. I was lucky, my voice like never cracked when I spoke during puberty, not that I'm likely out of it though. Most guys are done around 19 1/2 or 20, and as late as 23. I know kind of random things.

But my throat was really terrible this morning, I could barely talk. It's mostly better now, but I'm taking some cough drops to help. All I have are Halls, and they work, but not like Ricola. Ricola might as well be candy, but it's not, because then I couldn't have them. See how bad I am at staying on topic? Holy cow. Well now I think I could have been almost sick, because I came home and Julie looks like death, and even Kroger sent her home from work. Then I went over to Lauren's last night, and she wasn't feeling well but I didn't mind and hung out anyway. So I'm faced with the fact that I might be sick? I don't feel sick, just like I slept with a window open and my throat got irritated. I take vitamins because I know I'm not getting everything, I get lots of Vitamin C from all the fruit I eat, and I sleep more then like every college student that I know. So I doubt I'm in a situation to get sick.

I thought I was going to end up writing a much more personal ENR than I am, I'm not sure what happened to the train of thought I had earlier. It was actually a pretty depressing train of thought about how much of my life has totally sucked, and I was wondering how I ended up being such a cheerful and optimistic person.

Like I really never had a childhood after 3rd grade. We moved back to Arizona during the summer, and I started 4th grade there and made no friends. Exactly 90 days later we moved to Indiana, where I made a few friends, but never did anything fun. And then it wasn't too long before my mom had the brain tumor and she was in the hospital for a good 2-3 months I think. And when she got back for like another year or so it was all about taking care of her.

My dad was at work all the time, so that left Julie and I home alone sometimes all day. He'd be home in the mornings just long enough to wake us up, then he would leave. We rode the bus to and from school. Got home to an empty house and it usually stayed empty until like 8, and when you go to bed at like 9, that's not much.

My mom got stable and then my dad got diagnosed with his fat people diabetes because he was eating even more shit than normal. So then basically all food became "diabetic-friendly". Not cool with a chubby 4th grader. If we had snack food, we had to hide it because my dad would just sit and eat it all. I remember one bag of cheetos in particular that I hid and he found. He basically ate the entire bag in like 3 minutes. His justification was that he only took "one handful". Well I certainly didn't get my hands from his side, because he's got massive hands, and you can grab about 8 servings of cheetos in a good handful. Ever since then I'm never surprised when I go into the garage and find candy wrappers stuffed in his work bench, or empty cans of frosting in the trash can in the computer room. There's a way to be diabetic and eat crappy food.

I forgot to mention all the times he would get a gym membership to help with the diabetes. He would go like twice a week, and ride a bike super slowly and somehow still get drenched in sweat. It was pretty pathetic.

Things seemed to get better in 5th grade when we moved into my the new house, and then Julie had a seizure and was diagnosed with epilepsy. For the next 5 years my parents pretty much set me aside and put all the attention on Julie, trying to get her situation under control. It really wasn't until my sophomore year that I felt like my parents noticed me again.

Yeah, they loved me and stuff and went to my band concerts, helped with homework every now and again, took me to baseball practice, and went to most of my games. But it wasn't anywhere close to the attention that they gave to Julie, and she wasn't even good at anything.

So pretty much I've raised myself since like 4th grade, and I feel like I did a pretty damn good job. I determined what was moral and unmoral, who I should look up to, when I should get to bed, I got myself up in the morning and got ready to get on the bus, and I made most of my own meals, granted they were a lot of cereal, eggs, and noodles. And somehow I even figured out how to be a really supportive person and learned how to be there for the important people in my life.

I know I'm a kid on the inside, and I like doing childish things. I hope I never grow out of it, because I never really got to grow into it.

That was close to what I thought I would say, or thought I would say. And it's almost a bit much to just put out there, despite that maybe 3 people will ever see it. Most of my friends don't really know any of that about me, and I rarely ever bring it up. Some people think they've had a tough time growing up because their parents would ground them, wouldn't let them have friends over, or wouldn't buy them the video games they wanted. Well those people don't know tough.

But as lovely as revealing all these raw things has been, I think I'm done playing shrink for the night.

-Cheers.

Spanish, French, And The Words In-between

I'm stalling on a paper that I have to turn in tomorrow morning, that I was supposed to turn in on Wednesday, that was really supposed to be due on Monday. I'm pretty proud of this extension that I've managed to get, considering I haven't even been to class all week.

I spent most of my time thinking that I'd work on the paper, and that was at like 7:30. Instead, I've been translating things in French, and typing Spanish like all night. I really miss knowing Spanish actually, it was fun until I had Miss SLutz. Yeah, if you ever saw her old door thing, that was ALLLLL MEEEEE. One of the things I was always proud of. It stayed there too, for like 2 years. I'd get texts from people in her class when she'd randomly notice it again. I wonder if she ever knew it was me, or that I went down to guidance at least once a week to complain about her while I was in her class.

A while back, I talked about going to live and study abroad for like an entire year, but had to rule out somewhere in Spain, and stick to somewhere like London, because I only know English. But if I got good at Spanish again, that would all change! And then Kaylee and I could totally go to Spain to chill out for a while(note the pun, "chill out" because Spain is probably hot). Even though the actual odds of that happening are probably super slim, I think it'd be pretty freaking awesome, and then we'd learn Dutch and go look at windmills and countryside stuff.

I've gone off topic, a reason I'd be an excellent and a terrible teacher. Ummm, I was talking about Spanish? Yeah, well when you're trying to translate French, and then think of a reply in English, and then go into Spanish your head can get kind of jumbled, so I wish I knew Spanish better than I do.

Today kind of sucked, like it's the worst day I've had in a while. I think I felt it coming though, I've been due for a really shitty day for a while now.

I woke up 2 hours later than I wanted to, and was groggy for a long time. Lunch sucked EXCEPT FOR THEY HAD GRAPEFRUIT AND I FORGOT IF I LIKED OR HATED IT SO I ATE THREE ENTIRE ONES TO TRY TO REMEMBER IF I LIKED THEM OR HATED THEM. I like grapefruit!

I was supposed to play my recital today too, but I didn't find out until I was ready to play that I had been bumped, and now was going to have my recital on the 21st, pretty much a month away. So that really kind of pissed me off, considering I saw Dr. Murray like 3 times earlier that day, and he didn't even know my recital was SUPPOSED to be today, let alone that it had been moved.

Later in the day, I had a meeting with my career advisor again, and I complained about the Murray's and how Dr. Murray might be loosing it a little bit in the head. Jo agreed with me. Then we did my scheduling for the fall... yeah......

We've talked about transferring, and even talked about Ball State for a good 10 minutes before hand. I don't really know why people just assume that I'm staying here.

Life is a bitch, and today she's been rearing her ugly head at me. And now I really need to start on that paper.

Missing What You Had

There are good moments and bad moments, but mostly I feel bipolar by the hour right now. And it's because it's such a sudden shift, I've confidently ruled out any kind of medical reasoning. Bipolar people don't shift in 10 minutes like I do, they have weeks of one thing or another. I did find an answer that the internet couldn't though, Anderson.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'll say it forever. I'm unhappy 95% of the time that I'm here, and this thought came to me as I was eating my apple. I wondered why I was bothering to eat it, it wasn't the kind of comfort food I wanted. Then I decided that I should make it my new comfort food, I can't see how that can backfire, which then made me remember I forgot to post something on here like 2 weeks ago.

Lent has started, and I'm not doing the whole "no meat on Fridays" thing, that's nuts. But I did give up something, I gave up a lot actually. I decided no more sweets or fried foods.

At first, I figured sodas, cookies, cakes, ice cream, french fries and the sort.

It's been freaking insane. I know I'm being really healthy right now, but I'd love a milkshake and fries right now. I didn't realize just how broad "sweets" and "fried" really was, nor how much food here at Anderson is artificially sweetened or fried, it's no wonder people in America are fat.

But it's whatever, because hopefully come easter I'll want nothing to do with either of the two.

43 Days and Counting

I've survived my first full day back. I feel like the easiest way to break today down is with good and bad.

Good:

Oddly enough, my bed. I went from super soft to a ton of support, it was alright.

Waking up, and deciding that English wasn't worth my time this morning.

International Government, despite being rather quiet today.

The weather, nothing to do with Anderson though.

The 14 minutes and 43 seconds that we waited for Dr. Murray to be 15 minutes late so we could leave.

Taking off jeans and putting on cargo shorts and a tie, again nothing to do with Anderson.

The MASSIVE amount of strawberries I ate at lunch.

Hearing about how exhausted the guys who went to go hookah are, they got back at 4 am and it serves them right.

Remembering how important warming up your vocal chords can be.

Stealing 6 apples from the Marketplace.

Getting out of Jazz Ensemble 45 minutes early for my class at 6, which was canceled tonight.

Talking to people back in/from Westfield.

Deciding that I'm going to make it a goal to piss people off, mostly by saying exactly what I'm thinking when something happens, and not being forced to conform to this shit-tastic mold.

Bad:

Waking up early.

Waking up again after I decided not to go to English.

Taking a cold shower.

Getting my variation back in music theory and seeing 24 notes circled and a comment "wrong note"***I'll get to this***

Not being able to sing as loud as I should.

Lunch at the Marketplace.

LART.

Having Dr. Murray bring up totally random things to talk about in a freshman seminar class, which is pretty much an english class.

Having Dr. Murray think that discussing premarital sex was somehow a good topic of conversation.

Dr. Murray not calling me out for texting for the entire duration of the conversation because I didn't get to tell him exactly how I felt about the class.

Wind Ensemble playing stuff I could have played four years ago.

Dinner at the Marketplace.

It looks neck and neck between to two, but I'm flat out unhappy here, and I let it show a few times and people asked me if I was alright. I couldn't tell them that being back for one day was already crushing every aspect of me, not yet.

So music theory..

The top says "Arranged by John Kenneth Steele", yet somehow the notes that I arranged into the piece can be declared "wrong" by outside parties. Like seriously, WHAT THE FUCK. I very clearly put a god-damn "G" in the part, and since the arranger put it there(THAT'S ME) I don't see how someone else can look at it and decide if the note it "wrong" or not.

Also, I didn't leave pop chords on my piece, we weren't supposed to. She went ahead and wrote them in. I really didn't mind, until all of the sudden I had WRONG CHORDS. Again, WHAT THE FUCK?? I didn't put those chord signs in, you did. According to my chord structure, that chord is exactly what it needs to be. I would love to know how someone else gets to decide which chords I "meant" to use, and just somehow used the "wrong" chords.

Fuck Anderson.

Fuck everything about this place.

I'm ready to go back to Westfield right now.

"Friends" For Now

Any college kid can tell you that having to make an entirely new group of friends kind of sucks, I'm no exception to that population.

Tonight just reminded me of that. I went from a week of being with the people that, for the most part, I've known for like a third of my life, the people that I know really well, to the people I've only know for maybe 7 or 8 months, and haven't had the chance to get to know yet.

I got back, and I was kind of excited to see some of these guys, and we all decided we were hungry and went out for some Chinese food, and it was pretty cool. And then they started talking that they wanted to go smoke some hookah, so that's where they're all at right now. They invite me time after time, and they know I wont go. Tonight one of them tried to change my mind, about how it burns at a low enough temperature that there isn't any tar released that will collect in your lungs. That might be true, but you're just inhaling flavored syrup instead, pretty close to the consistency of tar if you ask me.

But on top of the hookah, they wanted to go buy a bunch of spice because it's so much stronger than pot. I really just had nothing to say at all.

I feel like I'm a fun guy, and I break plenty of rules, but I feel like such a goody-goody when I tell them I don't want to go smoke spice. Gonna get plastered? Sure I'll come along. Wanna go trespass at 3 in the morning? I'm there. Need to steal some traffic cones? I've got shotgun. But there's just something about smoking anything that just completely turns me off. I tell them all it's because I don't want my lungs jacked up because I play trumpet, but that's really not it at all. I just don't see any enjoyment in the whole thing.

I couldn't tell these people that, I have to go on about my lung capacity and trumpet and whatnot, because they wouldn't accept that I don't want to because I don't. The people from Westfield would get that, and it just really gets to me how social structures change when you get to college, I'm still not used to it.

Like, the people that agree with me are the ones that look like a goody-goody from a mile away, and wouldn't ever dare do something they could get in trouble for. But I'm not one of those, I fit in with the other crowd. But then it comes to times like these and I don't fit in with them either and it's just, ugh.

I don't know how they do it, it's a Sunday night, and granted it's still "technically" spring break, I for one have a shit ton of stuff that's due tomorrow, and I'm sure they do too. I just don't get how they pull it off.

But whatever. I have 5-6 more weeks left here and then I'm home free.

Some Call Me A Rebel, But I Call Myself A Dork

St. Patricks day was pretty good, considering I was with a group of college kids and we were all completely sober. Got some Olive Garden, then went to CVS so Cambron could buy some stuff. Then back to Tims house for a movie. I think we watched Love, Money and Other Drugs? It was pretty much about the story of Viagra, it wasn't terrible.

During the movie I got outed while texting Lauren. I realized I had a dumb smile on my face the whole time, and about a minute after I realized it, Jess noticed too. And Jess being Jess, she had to know, and I wasn't able to play it off as Twitter, though I would have had a better chance if I hadn't just started smiling more.

Yeah, so that's that. I'll officially be attending the 2011 prom as well.

And now it's time to go finish the yard work I started yesterday but didn't finish. This will net me 25 bucks that I could really use about now.

The Days Are Numbered

I haven't been this happy in such a long time, just, in general. There's a lot to it, but mostly it's just being back home where I feel needed. I just can't even imagine having to go back to Anderson for like 6 weeks, it's going to be miserable. I think I'll come home every weekend, because I just can't survive up there. It's just miserable beyond words, and that's why I'm so happy here.

As much as I might have gotten bored living here, I don't want to be anywhere else right now. I'm sure I'll get itchy during the summer, but everyone is going to be back, I should be working 2 jobs, and I'll be able to see the people I want to.

-I'm not thinking in any particular order, just as things come across my head.

People that I've talked to said that they miss their friends from college right now, and think about them. The "friends" I've made at Anderson are almost fake friends, and I haven't given them any thought at all.

Had a crazy crazy dream. It had themes from so many things going on, that now I can't even remember but just one bit of it, and I already knew how important this person is to me, so I can't take the dream for any kind of subconscious feelings or something.

I like the warm weather.

I like it when it rains on Friday and Saturday nights.

I like that last one a lot.

I like Westfield.

I like the people I had to leave when I went to college.

Not much is new with me. Talked about paint colors for the kitchen and living room, as well as how I'm going to paint my room whenever I get around to it. Oh and something happening late April, that's happening too.

Once I get back to hell, I mean Anderson, I'm going to be running a count of how many days until I'm free. I think I have roughly 5 weeks of suffering, and then I'm back. Until then, I'll be back like every weekend too.

One A.M. and the Rain is Slowing

I'm in a foul mood today, at least as long as I'm in that music building. As a whole, I'm straight up exhausted, and I feel like that's a lot of the cause. The rest is because I have more fun when I'm not at college than I do when I'm here, there just isn't anything here for me and this weekend only strengthened that line of thought.

FAFSA was due by the 10th, so I had to get home and get that all in order. While I was home I did the usual stop by the high school and talk to a teacher who knows me well and can offer some general life advice, stopped at my house quickly, meet up with Bret at Starbucks, and went to go play magic. That's usually my friday nights when I'm at home. It wasn't my friday night this weekend.

I acted on kind of a reckless impulse, that's not the wording I want because reckless impulse implies it was something bad, but it works enough. I told a slight lie to my mom as to where I was, because I'm usually home around 11. I ended up at someones house at 11 instead, and stayed outside in the rain for a good 2 hours with them. I actually only left because the rain was starting to die down, and of course as soon as I get home, it picks back up. I almost even went back, but my mom was still up when I got home, and would've been confused as to where I was going at 1:20 in the morning.

Next day I hung out with them again, though all of the rain turned to freezing rain, to hail, to snow in like 20 minutes, no joke. Stayed out long enough to get pretty damp and pretty cold. Those two days are the reason my hair is doing the opposite of what it's supposed to, I don't know if I complained about it on a public media forum or not. It flips to the left, and I sleep on my right side when I'm home. I when to bed two nights in a row with soaked/damp hair and not it's kind of stuck flipping to the right instead. It's just enough of a difference that people ask if I got a hair cut. Funny, actually.

But back to where I was before, because I'm just as bad at telling a story online as I am in person. I remember when weekends like that weren't so uncommon, though nothing like this, but just random things would come up on the spot and it would be fun. I almost didn't believe I was going there until I got to their house. Kind of a personal achievement, because I don't do enough impulsive things. I guess that's as much as I can say while staying vague on the topic as well.

Anyway, I'm sticking it out over spring break, just chilling with people there and looking forward to it. Then I'll be on the long haul till the first week of May. We get a nice Easter break, so that makes the last stretch not quite so bad.

After tonight, I'll be 8/26ths done with this week, I'm counting it by classes, and it'd be 28 if I counted chapel, but I could skip if it I wanted to. 8/26ths is over 30% of my classes in a week, and it's all on a Monday, maybe that's why I'm kind of in a foul mood.

Oh well, ho hum.