It’s kind of hard to keep the rhythm of blog posts when you’re working and schooling so much. So this is a bit of a recap and a bit of a rant… here goes.

One concept that I (at the moment) cannot remember whether or not I addressed earlier: I now am required to clock out a half an hour each work day to take a lunch. The reason I find this to be a defeated purpose even before it begins is that it’s unnecessary. With my metabolism and eating habits, I do not enjoy sitting down for a half an hour to just pig out. I am compelled to eat at a regular pace, about 6-8 times a day, small amounts each time. In addition, the job inevitably requires both people to be working nearly all of the time. I’ve had to clock out for “lunch” and then get up and help with check-ins, while not on the clock.

It’s also frustruating because it means less hours a week. You might think “but, aren’t you there for 8 1/2 hours then?” The answer is no, I’m not; my manager’s reasoning is that I have “racked up loads of overtime” and need to make up for it. The truth in this matter is that, at the MOST (very rarely), I pulled in an extra hour every 2 weeks, and this was due to (1) clocking in a bit early because it was busy, (2) clocking out later since I was informing my coworkers of the status of affairs at the hotel, or (3) clocking out a lot later because certain employees were late regularly. The other truth is that we’re all getting slightly less hours since it is a slow season, but an extra 3 hours every pay period can add up for me. Coupling that with my benefits, which ironically seem to be less of such since I am hardly ever sick (and never sick at work) and they are eating about $40 out of each check, I’m running pretty tight on funds. I’m going to be looking in to temp work on Monday, since another job would be rather hard to slip into, only to possibly leave in June or July for school fulltime.

I’m feeling less of a strain on being tired, except on the weekends. Getting up for Spinning is decidedly easier than getting up for Kickboxing, despite that it’s an hour and a half earlier. I know I said this before, but I pinpointed the reason this time: with Spinning, the music tends to be more enjoyable, and we work in intervals. On the flipside, Kickboxing is with BT and a bit later, as mentioned, but I seem to “die” faster in Kickboxing than Spinning. It’s a double-edged sword. However, the workout is killing me less than the polarized weekend work schedule, which continues to be difficult until I’ve gotten myself to work, at which point I usually occupy myself enough to wake up. (I did need a giant cup of coffee last night, though.)

Tomorrow is President’s Day, so I will be relishing in a day off from Kickboxing. It’s going to be the first day in a long while that I can sleep in as much as I want, and I can do whatever I want to do. My main priority now is to work on either my concert book, or my publication. I did a search on info for zines, and thus far I have been unsuccessful in discovering the best methods for zine printing and/or distribution. I may just have to print everything on 11″ x 17″ paper and fold it over, and sent those out; methods are being researched. It’s also going to likely be mostly online-based, so even if I can’t afford to get it in print form, I can work on putting it up on the ‘net.

I feel compelled to change over to a LiveJournal or MySpace blog, for the simple fact that it’s pretty rare when I do blog, but lately I’ve been doing it more with a sense of “so, this is what’s going on with me — anyone have any advice?” It’s not that I specifically ask for advice, of course, but neither does anyone else, hardly; however, we like to know that people are curious about what is going on within our minds. If such were not the case, why do we put such phenomena online? To see it online, that’s one thing, of course; more often, though, it’s because we KNOW people will be curious or voyeuristic and want to read it, and perhaps offer their own thoughts or opinions — which we in turn are also curious about.

I am one of those people who also has a tendency to write about everything that is on my mind at once, after which point I go “good, I got that out” and delete the entry. Well, why bother to make the effort? It stands so that I can look at it again later, and so that others can see my mindset at that time and place — especially when I write up a blog when I’m GENUINELY concerned about something, and it’s noticeable. Writing is still the best way for me to express myself; I enjoy expressing myself to people.

And now, back to work.

A note to the readers: this is a wrap -up-of-recent-stuff post. If you already know what’s going on with me, you might be little impressed. More rants will be coming in the future; my schedule is so busy that my brain positively feels winded by the time I have an opportunity to write a blog post. Anyway…
If the title sentence is confusing, go listen to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk. The reason I put the incomplete phrase in the title is because it’s more fitting — at this time in my life, none of it is particularly harder work, better craft, faster accomplishment, or stronger rewards. It’s all pretty even, and at a pace I can take, which is surprising since it is a faster pace than I am used to.

For starters, there are early mornings and late nights. Four days a week, I am up between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning for a PE class, either Kickboxing or Spinning (bicycling) depending upon the day. Either one is a killer workout, though I would say that Spinning tends to be easier (obviously, because I am sitting, and there is less arm work) but I feel much more accomplished at the end of a Kickboxing class. Coupled with these two, I’ve been eating better. Mostly exclusively from Trader Joe’s, but I’m also making an effort to cut all unneeded sugars and fats out of my diet.

I suppose I will see the most improvement after a few more months of my PE classes, but I’ve got it started on this end, at least. A banana, bran muffin, two pita sandwiches and a PB&J each day, plus assorted soups and fruit/vegetable juices when I can. A lot less meat than usual, though I will occasionally splurge with my roommates on pizza (and I figure that, one slice every 2 weeks won’t kill my dieting habits). Either that or I need to learn more about cooking…

I am also taking a career planning class, which I am hoping will point me in the best direction for a degree to pursue. While I firmly believe I want to go in for sound design or sound recording, there could be other careers I am overlooking — careers that, for the time one would need to put into them, the schedules they would require, the benefits they offer, etc., might be more advantageous to my success in a professional lifestyle.

One slight stab to the confidence I’ve had in a recording career was the “recording class” I started, and have since dropped. I put in quotes because I could barely call it a class with the approach it was given. The professor, on the first day, made it clear that he was computer-illiterate, ProTools-illiterate, and he planned to let the students loose each day to work on their material individually/group-wise. So, basically, as little instruction as possible — and this, I found infuriating. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to fool around with professional-grade software and equipment — but if I’m going to be able to mess around with it, I want to do it on my own time, not within the short confines of one 5-hour class period. Perhaps I will have better luck in a class/degree at a 4-year college.

So that’s school. What about work? It’s the same. The schedule is nauseatingly restrictive, preventing me from doing nearly anything in my social life (which is currently a lacking one), though I did manage to secure a ticket to a Tragically Hip concert. I’m also getting the general impression that, as much as I can enjoy a day and spread out my duties over the eight hours so that I’m neither too busy nor too slackworthy, I need to be moving on. My desire is to figure out this 4-year thing by the end of the school semester (aided by the career class and a counselor), and then apply for as many grants and loans that I can. If I’m going to graduate with a BA then I can most likely land a big career and be able to pay my loans off in a relatively decent amount of time, and I have some more inheritance headed my way for that, also.

Hmmm, what next? Leisure, I’d say. I’m becoming fiendishly addicted to Guitar Hero II, despite not having the game myself (nor being very good at it yet, as I’m still nursing a career on Easy). Most of the last few days has been spent watching videos of people playing some of the most difficult songs on the highest difficulty level. Thrash favorites, like those from Lamb of God and Avenged Sevenfold, are a shoe-in, as well as big classics like “Free Bird” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” with their mesmerizing solos; eschewing all the rest, however, is the mindblowing shredfest that is Buckethead’s “Jordan”. Disregarding even the main fact that it already sounds like it’s from another planet in the first minute or so of the song (aided by Buckethead’s custom-added killswitch, producing a synthesized electric buzz from his guitar, no plucking or strumming required), the six — SIX! — solos in the song are absolutely the most difficult thing on earth to play. My first venture at this song netted me 24% on the highest difficulty level, and most of my ineptitude was caused by my staring, or rather gawking, at the sheer number of notes that exist in the solos for the song. I am sure the actual song is played in the same method Buckethead plays most of his songs — with both hands dialing down the frets like fingers on a keyboard.

In the interest of the pursuit of new music, I’ve been listening to a lot of things, as usual. Old school punk and post-punk, such as D.R.I., Cock Sparrer, the Stooges, Sonic Youth, and MC5 are on my playlists a lot; also world music, mainly acquired from one DC++ user’s collection of songs from Turkey, Afghanistan and India. For my indie cred, I’ve been polishing up my Bob Dylan collection, and also balking at the fact that Dylan’s albums all have about 10 pages worth of information — each — on Wikipedia, as opposed to the average album having, oh, maybe a few sentences, occasionally a page. It’s the before-and-after Dylan history each time — just in case you forgot it! Not to complain too much, since Dylan is, of course, fantastic. (Except the “Saved” album, of course.)

Recent never-heard-ofs: Vibrasphere, a psy-trance group with impressively chill music for its relatively high BPM; the Mahones, a celtic-punk group that is freshly different from Flogging Molly or the Dropkick Murphys; Lymphatic Phlegm, probably the first and only goregrind band in my collection, with an album of verbose medical phenomena for song titles, and choking, gurgling sewer drains for vocals; and there are others. As for recent should-have-been-listening-to-for-a-while, there’s the overly-gothic fantasy metal of Nightwish, the impressively widespread indie rock of Yo La Tengo, the quirky-pop Crash Test Dummies, and the bizarre-but-awesome Butthole Surfers.

Hmmm. Books? Books. Neil Gaiman is my new god. Goth cliche? Possibly — apparently he’s becoming the poster author for goth kids around the country, which seems odd to me since his work rises so far above the inanity that goth culture has become. Neverwhere and Stardust impressed me greatly, and American Gods was also impressive (though it came at too many angles for me to appreciate fully), as was its follow-up, Anansi Boys. No book, however, has impressed me more than his collaboration with Terry Pratchett in Good Omens. It’s hilarious, it’s clever, and it reminds me of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy without being too overwhelming (which, unfortunately, I did find in parts of HHGG). Go out and read that now. At the moment I’m slowly working my way through Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It’s very interesting but very descriptive in that Tolkein-and-yet-almost-Steinbeck soft of way, but the occasional odd throwbacks to more archaic speech keep me interested.

A sum-up for a blog post? So much for my constant schedule. I need to get back into that rhythm… but I suppose that means I need to find more things to rant about. Stay tuned.