THE NEW FURY

I haven't updated this in a while, mainly because I was focusing on finishing school and getting some other stuff out of the way. It was weird that I was somehow busy the past few weeks. Well anyways, I'll break things down for everyone:

School- Finished strong, passed english, graduate on Thursday. The whole situation has given me a very indifferent feeling. The past 4 years I've been yearning for this day to come, and now that it has, I wonder what the fuck I was waiting for. Maybe if I had a plan other than to just "work and hang out" I'd feel better about my future but for right now I can't help but be apprehensive. But on the other hand, it does feel fucking great to be out of high school!

Tattoos- I am getting inked again tomorrow by my friend Ryan, who is also doing an apprenticeship like EMS and doing free tattoos. I will be getting this on my left thigh:

If you read 2 or 3 posts ago, you know I also planned on getting the Comeback Kid tattoo. That idea is still a plan and I've been talking to Suga Bear about it. It's just still a matter of money/the lack there of.

Music- Guts + Glory's last show is less than a week away. People keep asking me how I feel about it, and to be completely honest, I couldn't be more excited. It's nothing against the band or the members, but I feel like we had a good ride and that the engine had run out of fuel, so to speak.

I'm excited about the new band and to be able to a part of something from the beginning. I had a lot of different ideas for how I am going to write lyrically with the new project, but pretty much scrapped everything. All I can tell you is that I am going to really dig deep and get extremely personal with my songwriting. I really want to pour my heart out for this, so that's what I am going to do.

Job- Don't have one yet. FUCK.

Life- I figure now is a good time to get my shit straight and start living the way I want to live. It's not that I wasn't before, but I felt a lot of things were holding me down or back. Now that I'm out of school and am at that "new chapter" in life, I feel like I have a fresh page and I'm reading to start writing the best chapter yet. I got off to a bad start, but that's neither here nor there. I made a mistake, but I will always reap what I sow. Aside from that, I have a lot of goals I set for this summer including:
- QUIT SMOKING (for the 4th fucking time)
- Get in shape (mainly just running, hopefully to replace smoking as a stress reliever)
- Read a few books (any recommendations?)
- Work on writing short stories
- Get the new band completely up and running
I don't feel like any of these are out of reach. The first one will be the hardest and need the most focus. But I need to, and I want to.

That's about it for rght now. This past week my really good friends in Sleep Serapis, Sleep were in Edinboro for a few days and it was great hanging out with them. I love those dudes so much and I really hope to see their hard work pay of for them in the future. We went to Niagara Falls after their Buffalo show on Tuesday, so I'll leave you with 2 photos of that.

Stay you.

Niagara Falls at midnight


Red lights shone on the Falls or rape smoke? Your call.


Song of the day: "Sons and Daughters" by Verse
"Sometimes stepping out of line and walking away from all you know is the hardest thing to leave behind.
A new life defined, now we can defy the greedy men with the greenest of minds.
We never wanted to be seen as a commodity.
I refuse to be an object of a vision that blinds me.
Aggression.
I gotta break the mold.
Aggression.
Never let them take control.
Aggression.
Hands in shackles, minds confined to a cage.
Aggression.
I won’t stop until I’ve broken every chain."

OUTLIVE

15 days... that's where the count down is at until the end of my high school days. As of now, I'm this close "<>" to passing my english class. Good news is that we have a chance for a lot of extra credit, and all I have to do is read a book that I've been wanting to read for quite some time now called The Last Lecture. To summarize the book, it's about a professor at Carnegie Mellon named Randy Pausch who is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. CM has a series of "last lectures" where professors give speeches on what they would say/do if that day was their last. With Randy's situation, it literally is his last lecture, so he decides to focus his lecture on advice that he wants to leave for his children (who are very young and likely won't remember him) after he dies. So far the book has already been extremely influential and extremely eye-opening. The book has already inspired me to take a different approach with lyric writing. Since I want to be as sincere and real with my writing as possible, I've decided that I'm going to start writing songs as if I were on my death bed and this is what I wanted to share with the world about my ideals and experiences.

On a lighter note, I got a new tattoo:

Yes, it's a black sheep. Ink was done by EMS, who is apprenticing right now and doing tattoos for free... hit him up! It's not bad for his 11th tattoo. As for the meaning behind it, there's 2 main ideas. For one, if you look at my family, I'm definitely the "black sheep" but that's not to be taken in a negative connotation. My parents gave us (my siblings and I) a lot of freedom growing up and I turned out a lit bit differently than Cara and AJ. Second, I've never liked to concern myself with being part of the "in" crowd. I have many different groups of friends and in those groups of friends, I've always done my own thing and never worried much about trying to cater to or impress the different people I'm around. It's hard to say that with out sounding like a self-righteous prick, so take it for what it's worth.

I've already written a lot of shit with out meaning to, so I'll stop. I'll do another update in a day or two to focus on other things.

Stay you.

Song of the day: "It's Raining Again" by Grave Maker
"And if I've learned one thing from you
It's never do the things you do
You're hoping the sound of your voice will save me this time
Swearing ignorance is the key to the perfect life
But I'm better than that, than to leave my heart behind
And live for nothing"