I need to write

2 pieces of news first.  The first being, I am home.  I spent a long time away from my home and family, and it took a long toll on me this year.  My mother my freshman year made the observation (and it has held true every year since) that I am very tense when I get home for winter break, but by the end I tend to have really loosened up and seem recharged.  I think it's hard for people to imagine what it is like to be so far from your family, especially one as involved in your life as mine.

Obviously I have immediate contact with my family whenever I need it, technology has seen to that, but I have no escape clause.  If at any moment school is too much for me, I miss my family too much or anything should happen while I am away from home, I have no way of getting back- it is simply too expensive and too taxing for me to do.  That is a really difficult concept for my subconscious to obsorb.  I had a few conversations with friends at school towards the end of the semester who were similarly from the other coast about how hard it can be knowing that you are so far removed from the people you love most in the world.

This past semester was a very good one for me as a student of drama, but I do not think that it was my finest hour as a human being.  I allopwed myself to become more selfish simply because I knew I was restless from my exile of the western United States.  Especially come the end of the semeter I completely released my mind to allow myself to be a bitchy and complantive human being because I missed Arizona and my family and high school firends so much, for evidence please see previous entries.

Coming home is always such a pleasant experience for me, and I love getting the opportunity to spend as much time as possible with my family, which again I have taken advantage of this break.  I do think it is kind of at the sacrifice of my friends from Boston that I live my life this way, but frankly I know no other way to conduct my actions.

When I came home this break I was looking for a golden release.  I kenw that coming home usually made me a happier person, and I was banking on that.  And at first, even though I was enormously happy to be home, something felt as though it was missing.  I now believe that it is because so much of myself has come to release the idea of "home" that I can not truly embrace the thought of being in Arizona.  True I am with my family and those that I love, but the friends, relationships, and passions that have grown in me since I came to college are at a standstill now when I come home (even though I get to continue to grow as an artist in a judgement free environment for once).

I am at a crossroads where I do not feel complete in any place that I see myself, neither in Boston nor in Arizona, and that is painful for me to come to terms with.  My nomadic childhood has prepared me for a lot of things, but certainly not the idea of not having a home at all.  It is part of growing up I think.  

I am starting to really get scared by the fact that I am going to be graduating in a few short months, and whats more I do not know what is going to happen to me when that time comes.  I know that I am a strong human being who will persevere no matter what comes across his path, but I don't know where I will be six months from now, and the ideas that I am playing over in my head land me anywhere from Tokyo to New York to Arizona to the Caribean to Edinborough.  Though I have to say for myself (and to my parents credit for raising me this way) I have a true sense of adventure about me, and so as scary as the prospect of not knowing where I will land is, I am unconditionally excited by it.

The one thing at this point that I know I want to do is to continue to create.  To create music, to create art, in some way I know that is my calling as it always has been.  This break piano has called back to me and I have been drawn back into the magical spell it once held over me.  At some point I lost that touch, but it is slowly coming back.  I have started composing again for the first time in ages, and it is terrifyingly beautiful to be doing that.  I have no confidence in my ability to create art, only to live it, and so starting something from nothing is a thrill that I am appreciating again for the first time.

Since I got home I have been anxious about going back to Boston.  It isn't that I don't want to go back, but that I am simply not ready to yet.  I only hope and pray that when the time comes for my return I am ready for it, though I feel I know in my heart I won't be.  

Changes are happening in my life that are hard for me to appreciate at this juncture, but they are surely influencing my development and for that I am thankful.

Now on a slightly lighter note, I got inked today.  Yes, I got my second tattoo.  I decided I wanted to get a second tattoo the summer after my freshman year of college.  I decided I wanted text and I decided I wanted it on my right side, but the only question left was what text I was going to get.  It was about a year ago that I first thought of the ending lyric to the sound of music, but I kind of pushed it aside until second semester when it sort of became an obsession.

By this summer I knew I wanted it for my tattoo, and I kept it to myself and reflecting on it until I was ready, and the time came this winter.  My brother and Amanda were going to get tats with my mom, and then I told them what I was wanting and they loved the idea, so it was the final straw, I knew I wanted it bad enough...

My favorite song ever is "The Sound of Music" and this is the last line of it.  Not only my favorite line in the song, but in the musical theatre canon.  "My heart will be blessed with the sound of music and I'll sing once more."

I don't think I need to explain to anyone the profound influence that music has had over my life.  I do credit it with being the single force that pulled me out of myself and allowed me to begin to experience life as something greater than I as a man could comprehend.  Through violin, clarinet, piano and voice I have come to learn to express myself in a completely unique way that I and only I can understand, and for that reason this lyric really touches me.  that is why I was first obsessed with it when I realized it would be the perfect text for me.  The fact that I am a singer, and what being a singer means to me was the nail in the coffin, for singing is more than an occupation, a talent of parlor trick in my life.  It is something that reaches down into my very core and explains why I was put on the planet.  I am going into the relm of the very heady now, and I won't bore the world with my deep intrinsic searching, but I love this tattoo and I profoundly believe I could not find anything more perfect to physically show what is a part of my inner being.

Oddly enough, the reason I started this post was because I had just watched a clip on youtube of the Haunted Mansion, and I realized that it has been two and a half years since a worked there. Crazy huh?  Time certainly does fly.

At teh end of all of my posts I feel like I am leaving you all with something to be desired, like I want to sum up everything that I have said with one profound and clever statement that is all emcompasing, but I have nothing for you.  My theory on life has been of late that I need to start doing things more for me and less for other people.  To be okay with the fact that some people are not going to be happy with me, simply because I need to be okay with me first.  It takes a toll on those around me and I recognize that, I only hope and pray for the understanding of those I am with for tolerance and patience, because I do recognize the sacrifices they are making for me.  THis is why I count myself so blessed to be the son, brother, friend, lover, of all of you, and I thank you for that.  Similarly, I hope I can repay you all at some point when my life makes more sense to me.  Who knows when that will be.  

In the mean time, I love and appreciate you all, and goodnight.