That Feels Better

Today was good. It began like this...

My alarm went off at eight this morning. I had set an alarm because my car was parked on the north side of the street which is subject to street cleaning on Thursdays from 10:00 - 1:00.

I first responded by hitting the snooze button which gives me an extra 5 minutes of sleep and a little extra time in whatever dream world I was currently part of. This continued until 9:25. I hit the snooze button 16 times.

I reluctantly got up, stepped in the shower and stood under the stream of water for 10 minutes with my eyes closed before actually doing any washing. By the name I got dressed and formed a plan of action it was about 9:55.

As I walked into the the street towards my car, I noticed the parking enforcement lady coming around the corner. She parked behind a car that was a few car lengths in front of mine and waited for it to turn 10:00. They don't fuck around.

I drove to a coffee shop in Silver Lake, got a coffee, went outside and simply sat and watched the cars go by for the first 15 minutes or so. A couple tables over from me I noticed an actor that had worked in one of my blocking assignment back in MPV375. I thought I'd recognized him earlier but he had just taken off his glasses now and I knew it was him for sure. I didn't say anything but I did silently revel about the coincidence for a short while. I then read about 25 pages of "The Sun Also Rises," taking cigarette breaks at certain intervals. At that point I realized that I was going to have a good day.

I left the coffee shop around 11:45. I had planned on driving to the reservoir and walk around for a bit only because I'd never done it and it looked nice this morning. However, as I was driving down Glendale, I remembered a guitar shop nearby and it occurred to me that I could finally go pick up some new strings for the banjo which has been 'out of order' since...June? I don't know. It's been a while.

I got back to Koreatown at about 12:30. As I walked through the hallways of my apartment building, I noticed I was walking with a slight spring in my step. By that I mean, I literally felt I was much...bouncier with my walk. Now, having completely embraced my day's worth, I was a little let down to see a fairly messy apartment. Without taking my shoes off, (which is usually the absolute first thing I do upon arriving home,) I started picking up. I hung up some clothes, made the bed, did the dishes, swept the floor. And at about the point where I usually consider my apartment clean, I just kept going. I began my fit of cleanliness by completely cleaning and organizing the shit out of the bathroom which took about half an hour.

Finally, I got to stringing the banjo which went much more smoothly than usual.

It sound so fucking good. And so I fiddled around with that for a good while.

After that is when the real craziness kicked in. I noticed a bunch of loose envelopes and papers just laying around everywhere and It really started bothering me. At that led me to think about all of the crap I have stored inside of boxes that are just sitting up in my closet shelves. I said fuck it and I emptied out everything in those boxes and decided to get rid of everything that I truly don't need.

Granted there were a few things that were kept because they held a certain level of sentimental value. But this is the pile of stuff that I decided to throw away...

And this is what it all looks like inside of trashbags...

What this morning was 5 large cardboard boxes worth of crap is now 2 large cardboard boxes filled with some important things, some sentimental things and little bit of crap.

Among the crap that I went through today, I found 4 old pictures frames that I had used on set a long, long time ago. I also found a roll of posters that I had on the walls in my old apartment. They were the posters you find in the free swag bins at record stores that cost 50 cents a piece. So I utilized four of them to work with the pictures frames...

- This one is from a My Morning Jacket poster. It's kind of lame but whatever.

This was from a Cursive poster. There was an antique, dirty looking sky that surrounded the logo so I cut it up in pieces and put it together in a collage sort of thing. It didn't quite turn out how I had wanted it.

This was from a little pamphlet thing I got from LACMA when they had the Dali exhibit either last year or the year before. It folded out into this fairly large still from from "Un Chien Andalou."

And then the last was from a promo poster for The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife." It turned out to be my favorite.

My font changed for some reason halfway through this but I'm not going to bother changing it.

So after all of this, I played some more banjo, read a little bit, ate (for what I realized was the first time all day) and then began writing this.

The internet wasn't working at all throughout the day. If it had, I don't think I would have put forth this much effort. But once I had done all that I could do, the internet started working again. I kind of wish it worked that way all of the time; stay inactive during the day until I've done something productive. Night privileges.

Anyway...it was a good day. I hope for another one soon.