Life Update – SOHO 2016, Teaching, and Gateway Grizzlies

I realize that I haven’t really just written a general life update for my blog since November, so I think I’ll just talk about what’s been going on with me.

     

I’m still teaching at a school for autistic kids. That’s my day job. Summer school has been really fun, and the kids have been very relaxed. I feel sad that I’m losing certain kids after summer, though. I really like teaching them how to read, but I’m going to be working with a non-reading crowd in August.

I’m working on writing novels by night. It’s a real challenge, but I’m positive that what I’ve been doing will be worthwhile. I paid off my car in February, and that has been an awesome feeling (also, no car payments keeps money in my wallet). Then, in March, I got rear-ended by a woman driving too fast. It was her fault. The dent was small and hard to see, so I didn’t press the woman for insurance cash, and I feel good about that. I try to be a good person when I can, and that would have been very expensive for her for such a small dent. She seemed grateful, anyway. 

Also, I cut my hair. Crazy. It's been years and years since my last cut (seriously, like 8, I think).
Lately, I’ve been driving up to Springfield a bunch to see my friends. Birthday parties, engagements, music festivals… The last few months have been really fun.
My Aunt Rose had a big birthday party, too. My uncle rented out a suite at the Grizzlies Baseball Field and we had a gathering. I’m very lucky to have such an awesome family. We all care about each other. I never knew my father’s side, but my mother’s side has more than made up for what I missed out on.

Looking forward, I am a week away from having 16 days in a row off from school for summer break. I’m planning on working on my writing and going to a retro-gaming convention, but other than that, not much else. I’ve been apartment hunting. I have not found anything yet, though.
Overall, life is going well. I have a good job, good friends, good family, and I’m having fun. What else is there?

The Other Night, a poem by Harrison Aye

She was caught up like she always was.

She would pause things,

they were still-frames in her mind.

From the audience she’ll follow you

with her incandescent eyes.


The first two hands to strike applaud you.

They set off a chain reaction,

Christ, that crowd adores you.

A bold technician turns the spotlight.

Can you overthrow the banshees and

slay the critics this night?

Because they see all

and they cannot be seen.


I entered in your dioramic view

from a crawl space,

where you could not see behind.

From this lofty spot I dreamt of you,

in senescence and supine.


The other night,

when I told you what I thought of your design,

the path that you chose, deceived us all.

the other night I chose to be the only one,

the one that told you and freed us all.

But paint doesn’t come off dry.

I left it there despite.

The set’s a brilliant red,

I painted you instead

I think I’m going to blog a little bit today about what exactly I did with the month of June as a writer. First off, I didn't do much. Excuses, excuses, I know. I worked a summer camp for special needs kids all June, but it has finally ended. It was a fieldtrip camp, and it tired me out most days (although it was a ton of fun).

Beyond that, something has blocked my writing from me, and I should just put it this way: I’m not good at splitting my creativity. I usually can only handle one artistic project at a time. Before wanting to become a writer, I spent every drop of my creative-self writing songs for the bands I was in. When I moved to Seattle, I had left behind my musician friends, and therefore was able to focus solely on making my novel happen. 

Now, since moving back to the homelands, I’m enjoying making music again. I’ve always been the songwriter in whatever band I’ve been in, and it started out that way mainly because I was the only one of my friends who would do it. However, it grew to be my main outlet of personal expression. I wrote hundreds of songs and selected a few to become full-band performance pieces. I have a hundred-something page document of pure lyrical madness. 

 

me performing at Pop's Nightclub, a long time ago

My drummer and I are planning to start a new band, and I’ve made it my intent to write all-new music for it. I want to see what I can come up with as the person I am now rather than simply reuse the old material. So, that’s been eating my creative energy. Maybe I’ll update again when I get that going. So far, I’ve written seven songs. They are really cool and fresh (I think)! But, I feel like I’m finally getting back to the point where I can focus on writing fiction again. I guess I just needed a break after doing my novel’s 2^nddraft. 

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