Yikes!
Within these past few months, the amalgam of annoyances with the apartment I've been living in for a year and a half has boiled over to the point that I'm paying the enormous fee to get out of the remaining eight months of my lease. It's even more aggravating because the renting market here is a nightmare. In fact, I just checked to see how much they're charging for my studio now that it's available and it's $150 more than what I was paying, not including the extra $100 they'll charge for utilities. With the additional fee they'll get from me, it'll be as if I fulfilled the entirety of my lease anyways. And I'm sure they'll get someone to occupy that space quickly...I don't know if I'll feel sorry for that new tenant, but I'll at least leave comments online about my very frustrating experience with this property.
So I've come full circle. I am supremely fortunate to be at my parents' house again. And at this point I don't think I have an ounce of shame left in me. Not just because I did a whole ass flop with a teenage dream in Hollywood, but imagine what the future is for children born in the past couple years. Heck, even the kids suffering through COVID college right now. Already, it's a pretty rigid choice between the cost of living or the cost of education. All while climate change continues to pass breaking points and conflict isn't so much avoided as it is sought after.
This is why NG is great. It doesn't necessarily try to be an adult, which every other social media outlet has to do to some extent. And it also challenges people to create content, arguably more so than any TikTok challenge does. The irony is that I'll say this and then not be very participatory here. There was a time when I really really was, but as mentioned in the beginning...real world things get more and more insistent the older you become. In fact, I wanna plug the more positive real world activities that make me busy.
The biggest one is my further involvement with the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra. Late last year, I was officially selected as one of two repertoire editors to our restructured library branch. I'm also officially the choir's accompanist. AND I also had another arrangement of mine performed at our first in-person concert last Fall, which was also performed at DisCon III. If you take a guess and squint, you can see me in the choir:
Now that COVID never existed again, and now that the org has thoroughly experienced what a struggle it is to try and coordinate online performances, we're trying to stick with in-person performances from here on out. In our upcoming Spring concert, there will be two arrangements of mine being performed, one of them based off of the soundtrack from Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. It's coincidentally timed with the recent release of The Forgotten Land, which I have played and had a great time with. Below, you can guess and squint again at how this snippet of an eyesore I put together is somehow the iconic Gourmet Race:
I really like arranging. It keeps both my analytical and creative gears turning. But what about music entirely by me? For Zipper, I've been considering doing another outburst of content in the form of another album. If you haven't ever listened to an album of mine, The Fire Sects is a long-ago gem that I didn't upload anywhere. Otherwise, there is a student clarinetist with a recital coming up soon, and he'll be premiering a piece of mine that I wrote for him specifically. You definitely don't have to squint to see my Target-hat-face in this flyer:
And don't squint to see this snippet of the piece here, because I just love showing off engraving yes PLEASE steal everything. This is the beginning of the last 'movement' per se...it's not a very long piece, about 5 minutes, but it is divided into three tempos:
Speaking of Target, I've been working with them for three and a half years. And although the work itself gets rough a lot of the time...the friendliness and sense of belonging I get from my coworkers makes everything tolerable. If I can make it through the inception of COVID with them, I can stand to stay there for a bit longer while other turmoils still rock my life...like ignoring the emotional damage from my LA endeavor! We'll just see what happens once the nuclear warheads finally obliterate DC!
Anyways, if you didn't already guess, the moral of this post is...don't try to be an adult. You'll always have a bit of happiness if you take at least some of your guilty childish pleasures seriously. Whether it's playing the piano badly, drawing boobs on the bathroom wall, or eating ice cream for breakfast. The bottom line is not caring about what other people may think. I mean, just look at how other people can be so terrible and so painfully boring and still be handed the riches of the world with no concept of respect to its incredible value.
Alright...I think that's the most I can come up with. If you wanna help me with some money, that'd be nice. You could buy that album I plugged up there. It's cheap. Maybe that's whY noBOdY wANtS tO GO oN a DAte wiTh mE???
~ ~ ZipZipper
TomFulp
I heard a quote in an exercise class that I liked, "We take the work seriously, but never ourselves." I think that's a good way to look at NG, too.
On the topic of climate change and world events, I do wonder a lot how NG could encourage a sort of "positive NG lifestyle" without coming off as preachy / self-righteous. Like making it hip and cool for NG people to also eat less meat, buy more sustainable products, etc... But keep it fun and not too serious or judgy.
There's different ways to look at the personal responsibility angle. I saw someone recently refer to it as a psychosis where you can never do enough and you will hate yourself more and more. Other people will argue the concept of personal responsibility for the environment was created by large corporations to deflect blame from themselves, and while there is a lot of truth to that, I still think that big changes can be made if people collectively make better choices.
I hope you give the new album a shot!
ZipZipper
I think NG would lose a bulk of its charm if the whole site took any stances, and unfortunately that would mean even so much as nudging anything with the notion of "be a better person" since there's an overwhelming amount of people who believe nothing is wrong with anything that matters to them, and anything pointing out the contrary is a personal threat. Though I've admittedly only checked front-page stuff now and again, I don't see NG going in a negative lifestyle direction.
In fact, I think the positivity speaks for itself in what good has been headlined here across the decades. Just gotta continue looking out for it, and perhaps encourage it through creative competitions or contests. That'd be an ironically not-so-judgmental way to get users to participate in a nice thing for the world if they want to. And the good thing about a contest is that it has a definite end, and then NG can go back to "normal" for those who are offended.
If you're REALLY really thinking about spurting good into the world and haven't done this already, you could always setup charitable events hosted by NG, or get some not-smelly users to represent the site in someone else's event. But all in all, it's what you said as it being a psychosis. The work never ends and no solution is good enough because ugh time keeps going for some reason wtf why is there no definite end to time?
Tom WHEN can I date you!? GREAT. I can't wait for two Toms against all the not-Toms.