The Road Not Taken

I think push has come to shove and I'm finally disappointed with my job. It makes me wonder if I am not made for my line of work. Or maybe I just haven't found the right job yet. To move even further from those points, I have been thinking if I do want/have to move on from the job I have, what would I want to do?

Become a musician?
Get a law degree, become a politician?
Become a writer?
Get a finance job in a foreign country?
Sell worldly possessions and move to a foreign country to help other people in a genuine life-changing pursuit?

Of all these things, the most attractive option to me seems to be the last one. How great would it be to say that I changed lives for the better? Shit, I guess that's self-serving anyways. But you get my point, right? I'd love to make a difference in someone else's life for the better, but that's risky to me. That kind of risky pursuit starts to corrupt futures that could have been. It makes these futures into hazy pictures attached to a fishing pole. Except the fisherman attached to this pole is malevolently yanking the pole away from me right when I get close to chomping down on this picture or rather this future that could come into existence.

So what should this man do? He wants to take risks. He wants to guide his life by a directional wind with one finger in the air and two feet off the ground. Saying it like that makes the person more determined to have change in his life. Maybe not now, maybe not ever, but soon. There is still a string attached to his shoe-lace keeping him grounded. He's not sure what this string might be. Is it San Francisco? Is it the idea of finding love and settling down? Is it the fear of commitment or instability?

He's still happy where he is. He's just thinking ahead, because he can. Because he's young and unsettled. He's still searching for something. He hasn't found it and doesn't know what it is. It is somehow vampiric in its entirety. It can't be satisfied this hunger for change no matter how many souls I drain.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken"

Do I Really Need A New Years Blog?

I would say that it might be beneficial or at least illuminating to write a New Years blog. If not for you, I think it would help me to realize how far I've come and what I've experienced.

2006 ended on a down note. I would say that if it were a chord, it would be the most dischordant melancholy minor chord that has ever been played. While I broke up with my ex in July of 2006, our relationship continued in a "she's lost that loving feeling" format (sans the Top Gun version). I knew that I had made a mistake by breaking up with her on a short-term basis, but after all was said and done I know that it was the best thing for both of us.

So the end of 2006 described the filter that I saw the world in for the first part of 2007. I was an addict without my means to be an addict. You never realize how many things you take for granted in a relationship until it's all over. I felt almost deaf and mute to the world during that first part of the year. I could read lips, but I couldn't interact with the world around me through conversation. Don't get me wrong, I still lived and loved life. I didn't shut myself off from the world, but I couldn't shift my life past 2nd gear.

At this point, my job had become a means to indifference. Annum Ford was faltering as a band. I think the turning point for me came when the Nicks and I visited Boston and New York. It felt great to be in a city that had so much character and so many things to do. It felt great to use public transportation. It felt great to have something different in my life. While at that point, I was not extremely serious about moving to another city, the idea started to build momentum after I returned to Las Vegas. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Las Vegas. But I only enjoyed Las Vegas because of the great friends I had made there and my family that lived there. It was an enormous comfortable blanket with a deathly cold outside its exterior.

In May of 2007, I started looking at Seattle and San Francisco. San Francisco won out (while Seattle was a very close 2nd). I found a job and ended up moving to San Francisco on the 20th of August. I was immediately happy with my decision and while I've had my share of missing Las Vegas and my friends and family that live there, I've discovered the beauty that is San Francisco. The smallest things that I do here seem somehow so much more epic in comparison.

In December of 2007, things took a turn for the ridictastic stage. My friend that I haight so much (Libby) and I moved into an abode together. We then signed up two other roommates (Bryan and Meredith) to join in at the Fill Home (Full House (We live next to that picnic park) ---> Fill House (We live on Fillmore) ---> Fill Home (Home is so much more Homely)). We are 5-7 blocks from 4 awesome areas of town and a short bus ride away to most others. The house itself is awesome and while we all are way different in so many different aspects, we are all left-handed. We also have other things in common of course.

So right now I'd have to say that I'm way stoked on life. The filter that had begun 2007 is no more, although I tend to think about it and its ramifications from time to time.

2008 Goals:

1) Find a mad-fly honey who digs Jon
2) Go to Israel and Egypt in February (tickets are already bought)
3) Go to India with Nick and Lowell in December (You best not back down kids)
4) Keep on Keeping On