I woke up with Jessie J.s song in my head today, and while I’ve been having more then my fair share of money problems lately, I know I’m not the only one out there. Sometimes it’s all you can do to even pay your bills, without much left over for fun. So today, I’m giving all my music away for free. Or pay what you can at least. I have 499 free give aways on band camp, I think it’s time to use them.

Today was a magical day of synchronicity. Things that have been all blocked and crazy for the last week flowed easily. Can’t get on the base, no problem Miss, we’ll help you. Don’t want to rush out of the house for a 7:05 ferry? Well there is no 7:05 ferry so all is well! It was a sunny, gorgeous, day of blessings and goodness.

The best part, at some point during the day I caught myself singing I feel pretty, which is kind of odd because anyone who knows me knows that I HATE musicals. So. Much.

Later that night, I find myself at a burlesque show, completely by chance ( my friend had actually meant to get tickets to a different show even) and the opening act was set to, you guessed it, I Feel Pretty.

Life is flowing, friends. Let the blessings roll in.

Just finished drinking Spider Bites with an old friend I randomly ran into while working on the Navy base, so forgive me if this post is a little drunky drunk. I’m a light weight these days. The lack of money sure does put a crimp on my micro-brew budget.

So, eventually I’m going to put up a post about surviving bad days, a skill which I have become pro at over the last couple of years. Right now, though, I’m all about the gratitude. The gratitude and the self forgiveness.

Friends and fellow fuck ups, we haven’t been given the best road map to happiness. Actually, we’ve all kind of inherited other people’s road maps to happiness, and half the time the people we inherited that map from don’t even know where it came from or whose happiness it lead to. Blindly we kind of stumble though the motions. I will be happy when…I have this money. When I have that job. When I have a boyfriend. When I have money, a job, and a boyfriend all at the same time (lucky bitch). Don’t feel bad if you’ve done it/are doing it. I’ve done it/am doing it. Welcome to America.

I can’t be the only one that internalized this belief that happiness is something I am not inherently worthy of. I have to earn my right to be happy, and I earn it through being miserable. Now GOD DAMN have I been miserable the last couple of weeks. Reporting first hand from Misery Mountain, I can tell you now if you are determined to scale the peak of unhappiness it isn’t going to get you squat. Not even some dumb t-shirt that’s three sizes too big and you’re only going to wear to bed because you are too ashamed to wear it in public.

The only way to be happy, I’ve found, is to choose to be happy. Even when life is straight up kicking your ass. Sometimes, the most amazing things happen when you are down and out.

So this last Monday I was chilling in Bremerton with my gas light on and no money to get home. I’ve been working on the naval base for the last week, and transportation has been seriously draining my limited funds. So I’m sitting in this bank parking lot, kind of crying my eyes out because I don’t know how to get home and it’s been a crappy day and I get paid on commission so crappy days mean I get paid , like, half of squat. But I have faith. I have faith that at the very least, I’m not going to die. I’m going to get home. I’m going to live through it. This minor crisis will become an entertaining story on my blog.

Wouldn’t you know it, the fellow who has been splitting shifts with me up on Bangor is kind enough to give me a ride home from the ferry if I want to catch a ride with him. Now this guy, he’s pretty rad, but we haven’t had much time to talk beyond the short changing of the guard, but thanks to that hour long ferry ride we got to actually plant some friendship seeds. Even better, I got to listen to his music, he got to listen to mine, and we’re talking about a collaboration now. I have this great memory of a mad cap dash through a fountain with my guitar strapped to my back to try to get on that ferry on time that I would not have otherwise. And it’s wonderful. Because some day my life will be stable and I’ll look back on these days for stories at cock tail parties.

I’ve been quite for almost a month. I just haven’t been sure what to write about. There have been some very high highs. I have a new boyfriend, and all of the tender, beautiful moments that come from that have been beautiful. I’ve also had some pretty low lows. My parents have had to “cut me off” from any kind of financial support, I was on the verge of having to move home because I simply didn’t have enough money coming in to live off of. Then my 26th birthday came and went. My friends surprised me with a trip to the ballet and drinks at the Unicorn, I played music out at seabrook. I worked. I played. I slept. But I haven’t written anything. Where do songs come from? Or blog entries for that matter? My best songs felt like something I channeled more then something I wrote. I sort of had an idea, a story or a line, pictures, but that was it, and the song spun itself seemingly from no where. Sometimes I worry I lost that connection. That I will never write another good song again. That I will be discovered, but then, when I’m comfortable. When I’m happy. When I’ve made it, I will loose the music. But then again, I certainly haven’t made it yet, and I’m not writing. I’ve hardly even picked up the guitar outside of shows. Hell, I’m even slacking on booking shows. I’m just dragging my feet. The whole prospect seems exhausting. Happiness seems impossible. I don’t know how to be or do whatever it is I am supposed to be or do to be happy right now. So why am I sharing this with you? Because I bet you feel this too sometimes. You and me, we’re not that different at all. Don’t we all just want to be happy at the end of the day, and yet sometimes we can get so lost as to how to do that. Whether your in America or on the other side of the world, don’t we all just want to go to bed at night feeling like we’ve done something good? And no matter what we do, or who we feel called to be, if we’re chasing bliss then we’ve all faced challenges, we’ve all doubted ourselves, we’ve all hit a rock bottom. Ultimately, we’re all in this together. So you keep going, and I will too.

Thank god for the holes

the rough spots that trip us up

that hurt so bad we are forced to stop

and look at what we’re stumbling on

the broken parts of ourselves

we’ve tried to abandon

trailing behind us

still attached at the heals like shadows

and then we may scream

“you’re holding me back, just leave, you are not welcome.

you are not wanted. You are un-lovable. You contaminate me”

like a child, trying to scare away a puppy following him home

when he knows his mother won’t let him keep her

yelling at ourselves in the wilderness

but slowly, the hollow eyed ghosts become companions

the eyes become tinted with compassion

and stich by loving stich

we complete ourselves

knowing LOVE

we become Love

Holey, Wholely, Holy

Merciful and Mighty

God in three persons

blessed trinity

I haven’t been making a fortune with my job, but I’ve been making a somewhat comfortable living for the last six months or so. However, this pay check was small. Painfully painfully small. Much smaller then I would like for rent paying/living/fun purposes. I could be freaking out about this, for sure. I mean, I’m an old pro at freaking out about money at this point. But instead, I’m seeing it as a gentle shove to start including my musically inclined efforts into the money making circle again.

I haven’t been playing shows for a while, and I don’t think I will play a public show for a while yet. It stopped being fun, and even though I was being compensated for my time I felt under-appreciated, which is never a good feeling. Not by the owners of the establishments I was playing in, they always made me feel welcomed and appreciated, but by the patrons of those establishments who just didn’t seem to be into the idea of live music. I don’t want to take stage time if people don’t want to hear me. There are other bands out there that do bring a crowd and it’s better for them to do the stage time thing.

So I am faced with a quandary. How can I make money doing something that I love in a new way? I’m not sure, but now I have a bit of motivation to see what comes to me.

Tonight, I unwound with some guitar playing, a glass of wine, and open D. Today was not ideal, but I’ve decided to celebrate it’s completion as if it was. However, now I am about to collapse into a pile of goo and I’m going to respect my bodies desire to pass out. Tomorrow, I will bring you more musings from the road to joy. Tonight, I sleep.

I have a list of fictional men who have qualities of the ideal MAN.

Someone who has all the roguish independence of

Someone chill, intelligent, and philosophical without being pompous like

Someone with good musical tastes (preferably an appreciation for both Classic rock and grunge) I don’t have a fictional character for that but I figured I would throw that in there as well.

and joining the list tonight for the very first time

My friend Synth finally got me started watching Battle Star Galactica, and Lee Adama up there won a spot on the list for his courage not to mention his lack of ego in deferring leadership to Laura Roslin on the passenger ship. Granted, I’m only two episodes in, I can only hope that the characters all grow in depth and have some interesting character flaws, but episode one and two Captain Apollo is now officially on the man list.

1) Going grocery shopping and knowing I can get everything on my grocery list, worry free

2) Clean, cute underpants

3) Hot showers

4) Comfortable, attractive sweat pants (No lie, I feel sexier in my sweats then I do in a dress)

5) My new ipod alarm clock. I get up and boogie these days.

6)A made bed. Even if the rest of my room is a mess, if I have a made bed to crawl into at night, it feels like heaven

7) Morning Yoga/Walk/Coffee/Journal time (those mornings I get up early enough for it.)

8)Good audio books to listen to while I’m driving to and from work

9) My amazing, beautiful, dependable little infinity. I love her so very much

10) Kitty time. There is something about getting kitty snuggles that just feels priceless.

It’s all pretty simple basic stuff, but the combination of all of it makes for a pretty sweet life. Also, this is by no means the complete list, nor are these is order of how rich they make me feel. What are ten things that make you feel rich?