MCC Said It:

He played a lot of places
Where the only wages
Were food and beer for free
He played fancy licks
And he had him a gift
For the kinds of songs he'd sing

But you do what you can
To be a satisfied man
Just to have your peace of mind
So he gave it all up for a government job
Where the paychecks come on time.

(Further justification of this life choice to follow. I can't believe myself).

I Am A Selfish Jerk.

What am I supposed to do? How is it that my life winds its way around into grand examples of irony at every turn? See the previous post. See how I feel a little content with my choices for myself finally? And don't get me wrong...I still am, with every fibre of my being.

However, I had a great job interview today. Which is just awful. I wanted it to go badly, so I could skip out of the room and think "Oh well!" This job is bad because it offers:
- a cool work environment
- my own OFFICE.
- medical/dental/vision benefits
- a retirement fund
- my OWN OFFICE. Love.

Yeah, see how much that stinks? Now, I realize that I have not been offered the job yet, but what if they do? What will I say?

a) Duh, Jana. You need health insurance and some cash flow, plus a place to work up. Do it.
b) Hello? Who just decided to work 30 hours/week to have more time to focus on the real reason for moving to Austin?

Sigh. People would think I'm an absolute loon for turning an offer like that down, but I think my gut says I have to. What do I want? A list:

- money to pay rent, utilities, gas, food.
- some extra to invest into music items such as press kit printings, posters, swag, and gear. Ideally, music will eventually pay for music, but that ain't never gonna happen unless I work at this with everything I have.
- TIME. I need time to write, to network in the evenings, to do the enormous amount of online maintenance and correspondence that needs doing, to practice, to be available at the last minute.
- the freedom to take a 3 day weekend and play a gig somewhere outside of Austin. Do mini-tours. Go back to Albuquerque.
- a job that when the time does come to do a longer jaunt on the road, won't make me feel like a heartless jerk for quitting.

Is that selfish? Is it impractical? I told Josh today that I don't think it's utterly impractical because we ARE approaching this in as practical of a manner that we can. I'm not sitting on my butt waiting for gigs to come, or waiting for songs to come anymore. I spent 5 years in college putting things off. Saying "oh I'll write more in the summer." Or "too bad that gig is on a school night." It didn't get things done. Things are happening NOW, and I think I just have to ride this wave out until it ends. Am I a dreamer? Yeah. But I guess I'd rather be one of those than in perpetual "I'll do it when I have more time" mode...been there, done that...not fun, just depressing.

And is it selfish? Susan once said she chose a job that gives her applause every 3.5 minutes for a reason. True. I get that rush, I really do. But who does anything toward their ultimate career goal that does not involve that little bit of selfishness? A lawyer wins a trial, a doctor saves a life, a philantropist feeds a child...a musician connects with another human being? Is that so bad to have that rush? I love playing music, I love writing it, I love listening to other people play it, I love shaking hands and adding Myspace friends and driving and setting up and I love watching people from my corner in the coffeehouse. I love it all. I don't want to give it up. I don't want to make a decision that will force me to compromise. I'm done with compromise.

"It goes all night like a broken record..."

the studio
Originally uploaded by Czech Girl.

Hm. Friday. Sweet.

I think I might have passed over the "3 month hump" of living in a new place, because I feel happy lately. I mean, I was never miserable here...well, ok maybe. Let's break it down:

June: Moved. Spent the majority of the time settling, driving around, getting the lay of the land, feeling like an outsider. Went back to ABQ in the middle of the month, didn't feel like I had been gone at all.

July: Freaking hot. Oppressively hot. Freaked out about jobs. Looking for a full time job. Convinced I need benefits and 40 hours to even survive. One gig. Listless, lazy days. Open mics at night. No direction. Positive life was passing me by and all my old friends forgot about me.

August: Still freaking hot, but used to it. Still freaked out about jobs. Decide to "business-ize" the music, make progress organizing my life and giving purpose. Start waking up at 7 AM or earlier every day, find that I get things done in the morning and feel better. Get a part time job. Acclimate pretty well. Enjoy income. Schedule September gigs.

September: Come to the conclusion that I want a 25-30 hour/week job that pays decently so I can work the other 30 hours/week on music and probably another 10-20 on performing and networking. Schedule more gigs. Meet more people. Get Texas plates, quit feeling like an imposter. Feel at home. Marvel at how well I fit this place. Write a lot. Finish songs. I hope this mindset continues.

So my cousin called yesterday all sad about his new military living quarters, and the attitiude of people there. It's definitely a switch for him, but I told him (since he'll be there for at least 2 years) that he needs to give it 3 months to settle. By then he won't be the new kid on base anymore, and his fellow base-livers will get to know him. And in no time he'll be the "old timer" and forget these initial awkward days. I do believe that. That's all you can tell yourself.

Happy Austin City Limits Festival Weekend. That means that Lamar, the street I live along, will be crowded with thousands of tourists for three whole days. I did not buy a ticket, but next year I will. I'm sad I'm missing Kathleen Edwards (and about 60 other people but I lurve Kathleen like I love popcorn). I think I'll avoid traffic all day if I can except to pick up my paycheck and play the gig. Free coffee. Awesome.

This just in: I have a lead on a PAPASAN CHAIR!!! $35 and green. Mmm. I look at it tomorrow. And then hopefully try and fit it into my car. Ow.

The Ballad of the Neighbors

John and Grace grew up together in the same small East Texas town. Their parents were in the same social circles, and they went to school together all through high school. They knew of each other as acquaintances, but nothing much beyond that. After graduation, John went off to school at UT in Austin, and Grace went to get her masters in education. She was a self-described hippie kid, trying whatever drug was in fashion at the time. She swears she never took anything with a needle.

Grace married Bill, just a guy with a job, and they had two kids. While she taught music lessons to earn some money, most of her life consisted of being married to Bill. He was one of those demanding husbands who liked things "just so," and his idea of a fun weekend was fishing on the lake with Grace in tow. Grace really didn't know much else, so that's what they did. She called it happiness.

Meanwhile, John lived out his years at UT having what some might term...too good of a time. He was on the football team, and also hung out in the legendary Austin music scene. A pretty decent fiddle player, John hung out with many of the guys who are in well-known Texas bands today. John never really fit in among the musicians, though...and as a skinny kid, he probably never fit in among the football players, either. He did partake in the drug scene, snorting coke and who knows what else.

John graduated from UT and went on to medical school in Dallas. There's a failed marriage and a son in there somewhere, though the details are sketchy. About a decade in to his medical career, John was arrested for writing himself Vicodin prescriptions. His license was revoked and he was charged with a 3rd degree felony. He served out 10 years of parole without practicing medicine.

In the meantime, Grace's husband was slowly succumbing to cancer. It was a painful death, and Grace found God after a lifetime without religion. She said daily prayer and affirmations of strength were the only thing that got her through the illness. John had heard about Bill's diagnosis, and small town circles are always connected, so John sent word of a doctor who might be of use to Bill's treatment. By then it was too late, but Grace took note of John's concern.

Bill died in January of 2006. John was invited to the funeral, and there he moved Grace to tears with an acapella version of Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain." While John was trying to piece together life in East Texas and Grace was living in Austin, a "romance by phone" blossomed in the following months. By May, John moved to Austin and Grace used some of her life insurance settlement money to rent him a studio apartment. In June, they moved into a two bedroom apartment and furnished it to the nines. A baby grand piano, because John insisted that Grace indulge her love of music. A big screen TV to watch the beloved Longhorns. Plenty of beer in the fridge.

Life looked pretty good to the neighbor kid upstairs who encountered John moving into that new apartment. The music was free-flowing and Grace's cats were friendly. It seemed like a charmed life. John was expecting to find a job any day now, and Grace was going to find some former piano students and start teaching lessons again. A new life together after so much heartbreak, Grace's being so recent, seemed like a promising thing. It was a fairytale match...two small town friends reunited after 25 years. They went out to bars, watched live music, played piano and sang Hank Williams songs until 2 am.

Grace had battled her addictions, spending time in the hospital years back to get off alcohol and prescription drugs. By the time Bill died and John came along, she was a clean living music teacher. John didn't seem to drink much beyond the usual...a beer or two at the dancehall as all Texans do. After a month of living together, Grace noticed this changing. His drinking would start at noon and soon 11 AM and then 10. A beer was a constant fixture in John's hand, whether he was calling the Mexican Consulate to see if they would let him practice medicine in Mexico or he was watching the neighbor kid at an open mic. He would lie about how many beers he had drank that day, and Grace would later find out from a friend of John's that he probably had a bottle of whiskey hidden in the car, too. That's how John worked. Maybe he was off the coke and the prescriptives, but the Lonestar beer wasn't going anywhere.

When he drank he got mean. When Grace threatened to do something about his problem, he would grab onto her arms and squeeze so hard she had bruises. One day the neighbor kid recalls hearing about a jammed finger, from unpacking moving boxes. It turns out she had hit John so hard one night, her ring finger jammed. Grace had started drinking again, too. She couldn't let John have all the fun, and the initial honeymoon period of their relationship brought ample opportunity for her to match his efforts.

With John's drinking becoming constant and Grace's money leaving her bank account en masse (a new guitar for John here, a fiddle bow for John there, a stack of CDs for John...), she knew she had to act. She pondered it for weeks, and one Wednesday morning, she found an opportunity.

She knew she had to catch him before he started drinking, because Sober John was...well, whipped. He truly did love Grace, and in his moments of lucidity, would do anything for her. So Grace had to turn stark raving mad. At 9:30 AM while they were having coffee, Grace swung her mood from tranquil to irate, telling John to go put on his best shirt and boots and go out and apply for a job. She raised so much hell that John immediately obeyed and changed clothes. She kept yelling, asking for his keys. Asking for his wallet so she could take back anything that was hers.

When he walked out the door into the muggy Austin morning, Grace locked the door behind him. She felt a slight feeling of elation. She called her son-in-law, worried that John might try to come back. The son-in-law encountered John walking down the street later that morning, and threatened to kill him if he ever set foot near Grace again.

The next day, the neighbor kid got home from work late in the afternoon. There was a knock at the door. Expecting that John wanted her to come down and play music with him and Grace, she tried to dismiss him. However, on seconed glance, it was quite obvious he looked like hell.

"I need a friend. Grace kicked me out. I've been drinking for 3 days. Tell me what to do."

Then he broke down. The neighbor kid, being a whole inexperienced 23 years old, suggested rehab and a minister. Other than a pat on the back, there wasn't much else to be said. John limped down the stairs and hasn't been seen since.

Apparently, he checked himself into rehab. Grace wrote him every day for 2 weeks, cussing him out and encouraging him, but becoming more and more enraged at how he took advantage of her for 6 months, how he capitalized on her pain. John asked that Grace bring him some new clothes and his hat during visiting hours last Sunday.

She never went. John sat for four hours last Sunday, waiting for the love of his life to bring him his Longhorns cap. Over a Bloody Mary with the neighbor kid that night, Grace expressed her fears. "You kind of expect life to get easier when you get older...things to settle down, to have a lot of money in the bank. Things don't always turn out like that." She's a self-supporting woman now, for the first time. There's no one waiting for her at home except the cats.

Grace stumbled back to her apartment, the neighbor kid unlocking the door for her because she is too inebriated to match key to lock.

"Do you ever feel scared?" Grace asks.

"No, I don't," is the only reply.

Here I Am

I had a dream the other night that there was a flood where I lived and I went to see my house in the aftermath and all I recall from the dream is pulling out my guitars from the rubble and having them be completely and utterly destroyed. I felt such an intense feeling of sadness that I woke myself up. I'm not sure if that means I am too attached to my guitars or what. I don't think I am necessarily attached to them as objects...moreso what they allow me to do and where they have gone with me. My Martin that I bought 5 years ago has been across the country a few times, and to every gig I've had. I say it's earned the right to be in the family. It was a weird dream, whatever it meant. Also the dream made me realize I never, ever want to live through a flood or a hurricane. Ergh.

I went through the process of being a legal Texan yesterday. I have stickers on my windshield, license plates, and tomorrow morning I will complete the process and get a license. Even though it cost me a couple hundred bucks (gah), I have to say I felt an immense sense of pride and excitement when I got those plates. I am now "from" Austin.

Otherwise I'm exhausted today. I dunno why. Could be the insomnia. ;)

File Under: Huh?

Things I've heard lately that I'm not sure what to think about:


"I saw your website. It's cute." Someone said that to me. I was confused. I hate that word.


Newspaper Ad: "American Idol Tour comes to Austin...sponsored by Pop Tarts!"


And lastly:

Make your own sanitary pads! For the frugal liver. I guess I'm not that frugal.