I've been reading constantly. More than I ever have in my life, and more than I even realized I could. (On some days to the tune of 150+ pages a day) Any word I read that I do not know, I write down. Every word I write down, I look up. I am trying to make to make an effort to ensure I know the difference between understanding the meaning of a word, and the context in which it's frequently used.

I would like to say it's merely a result of the nonsensical programming that comes pouring out of the television ad nasuem, but I know there is more to it than that. I know I'm going to have to cover enormous amounts of material that may or may not be exactly to my own personal preferences, but if I'm going to get the education, and not to mention the grade point average I really want, I'm going to have to get used to it. So this is my autodidact boot camp. I'm teaching myself how to learn, or approach learning all over again, so that in the future, I may better demonstrate my abilities in an academic context. I prowl amazon.com looking for books with stellar reviews, or books that are related, however vaguely to others I have read.

After much needless deliberation, and some honest scrutiny, I have conceded that it's time to play the game by the rules. I'm not going in expecting to know what I want to do, nor expecting that I will anytime soon. I am going back to school with the sole intention of becoming a better student, and absorbing more information so that I may make a more informed decision when it comes to time to settle down, and decide on what to focus on. My fear of academic commitment, has been almost entirely the result of my irrationally impulsive desire to make decisive decisions without the appropriate or requisite information. In a sense I created for myself a false dichotomy... Either I had to know exactly what I wanted to do as a professional for the rest of my life, and go to college majoring in that field; or I had to drop out and work full time as a result of my indecisiveness. 

No more bullshit. This is not about getting a job anymore, this is not
about a career. It never has been. Although at some point or another I do believe I will be able to utilize what I have learned to significantly better my monetary status. However for the time being, this is simply about getting the knowledge that I deserve. This is my own personal war on credulity, and ignorance. I moved to this place, because left to my own  devices, I would have destroyed any semblance of my intellectual self in a very short time.

I have drank more in five years than most people will probably drink in twenty or thirty. I have smoked more cigarettes in a day than I will ever care to admit, and I have done more drugs simultaneously than anyone I have ever met. I knew there would come a time when partying unbelievably hard would serve no purpose. In fact oft I wonder, if perhaps I have gone to such extremes, and such unbelievable excess to simply speed up the process of eroding the novelty of perpetual intoxication. If that's the case then it has worked... and it is by sheer arbitrary luck that I have lived to tell about it.
My grades have never been an accurate reflection of my intellect.
Throughout my scholastic career I have shied from challenges I could have
easily surmounted had I just dared to try. It has never been my strong suit
to simply follow directions without understanding their purpose or relevance, but despite this
I have always been aptly capable of teaching myself almost anything. Realizing that I
could apply my ability to learn without instruction to things beyond my
immediate interests however, was a recent revelation; and has enlightened me
to the fact that not only can I teach myself how to become a better student in the
conventional sense, but how I may harness my curiosity as renewable fuel for
my academic inspiration.

This was the finale to a series of three dreams I had last night, I'm trying to decide if it was a lucid dream or not. I was not actively controling the enviroment, or scenarios as I can in some dreams, but I seem to have been conciously controlling my emotions. As per my reading, when I wrote down the dream I did it in first person to help me remember it as I backtracked through my thoughts.

  
   I’m joining a crowd at a place called The Rivera nestled high atop some gently sloping hills. There are tons of people here. Some are set up with strong drinks and lawn chairs. Most look cheerful, although some are visiably anxious. We seem to have gathered to watch something, but I don’t know what. I have my camera bag, but am agitated as I come realize that my camera isn’t there when I open it. I accept a piece of Heresies chocolate from a familiar stranger whose name I cannot place, and Ted mentions there’s still some beer left in the keg up the street. It’s not long after sundown, but it’s dark already. At first I can only notice the flickering lights of planes and helicopters in the sky. But then I see what it is we’ve all gathered to watch; an enormous black and orange, asteroid entering the atmosphere at a very low angle. At first it looks at though it will just pass us by, perhaps merely graze the surface, and from where I’m standing it doesn’t look to be moving all that fast, but quickly it becomes obvious that it’s going collide with the planet. The size of the thing startles me, and I say something like “woah shit… so that’s what we came out here to watch. That thing is huge.” The meteor slams into the earth probably hundreds of miles from where I’m standing, but just after impact everybody in the crowd is ducking down and covering their ears, preparing for the enormous noise that will follow. Like children hiding under desks, within the blast zone on nuclear explosion. It is incomprehensibly loud, and brings people to their knees.

   The crowd suddenly becomes aware of a secondary shockwave preceding the first. People start screaming and running, and for a second I’m temped to join in just to add to the chaos and cause more panic. Perhaps not totally realizing the severity of the scenario, or just because I know it doesn’t matter and think it’s funny. A woman screams “look at all those people dying” and in the distance, miles ahead the wave is visibly destroying everything in it’s path. Vaporizing people as they instinctively try to flee. It's turning everything into dust and ash as it passes, and at the sight of this the crowd totally panics. People start screaming, and crying, and praying, and running everywhere, as utter chaos erupts. You can hear it all over the city seemingly for miles. As it draws closer we can see individual people being turned to ash as they are consumed by the meteors shock wave. My heart begins to race, and I become aware that it is the last time it will ever do so. But I am totally calm, and I make no sound. I turn the opposite direction, look my friends in the eye one last time, and shrug my shoulders casually, as we are turned to mist in an instant. The ashes of my person are carried off and dispersed by the strong wind that follows; yet I experience no fear, and no worry. I am totally relaxed, and thankful for the things I have seen, and experienced. Though I know I have just died, the essence of my consciousness still remains. And despite the ensuing chaos, and overwhelming sounds of fear that permeated my last memories, I am totally at peace. As my consciousness drifts away, gently skyward with the wind I think to myself “Life was just a dream.”

I awake in my bed, lying on my back feeling oddly at ease, and prepared for another simple day.

My license is reinstated, after what amounted to basically 2 months worth of playing aggressive footsie with the DDS. I'm going back to school soon, and I'm building two new guitars. I'm hoping to getting around to building my dads blue Stratocaster, this year, but before that I'm going to build a cream white Telecaster that my neighbor in Kennesaw literally gave away, with all the vintage looking nicks and scratches a killer guitar needs before it gets built with killer after market parts. I'm very pumped. I have a vintage bridge on the way along with other parts from Warmoth.

Everything is boring, and Peachtree City is a huge joke. This is the place, where successful conservative white trash takes refuge from the colored influence that makes up the ever expanding landscape of Atlanta. But what else is new? This is Georgia, beautiful countryside dominated by savage rednecks playing rpgs in religious themed costumes.

In this new year of the lord 2009, may the forgiving Christian god grant me the strength to get a good GPA, and bail on the hillbilly landscape.

New years was bitter sweet, said good bye to one of my oldest friends, and did the best I could to strengthen my resolve to better my silly life.

All charges against me have been dropped. Not one or two, not the big ones, all of them.

Now it's just a matter of going through the steps needed to reinstate my license (which I don't think is going to be an easy process), and getting on with this school stuff.

Epic Win. I fought the law... and well... fuck...
I won.

lulz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh4Se60-u44

John Mayer covering Stevie Ray Vaughan's Lenny and leading into Man On The Side.

How many roads must a man walk down,
before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail,
before she sleeps in the sand?
And how many times must the cannon balls fly,
before they're forever banned?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist,
before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist,
before they're allowed to be free?
And how many times can a man turn his head,
and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many times must a man look up,
before he sees the sky?
And how many ears must one man have,
before he can hear people cry ?
And how many deaths will it take till he knows,
that too many people have died?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

-Bob Dylan

(Get on YouTube, and look up Leslie West doing his acoustic cover of this song. It might just make all the hair on your body stand up.)

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

-Bob Dylan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsiqtGnpU1w

Downright awesome cover of "Holy Diver" by Killswitch Engage. This song is responsible for me embracing drop C tuning once again, and temporarily giving up the blues.

Being exhausted, and being tired are two different things. One afflicts the body, and the other the mind. Being exhausted is what you feel in your body, working as a server; even the part time shifts linger in your bones on the following days off. But tired is what you do when you've become sick of thinking. Tired is what you become when education becomes ineffective, redundant, and ceases to be stimulating. Tired is sick of doing everything the longest way possible, only to find out there was a shorter, and more simpler way the entire time.

Even though I'm exhausted, I can't sleep because my mind isn't tired; in fact it's getting more and more agitated everyday with the mundane, and stupefying reality before my ever curious mind. What I see before me are two choices; and they are as follows; Stick to living on my own for the time being, and eventually succumb to some average $40K a year job only to at best become another faceless ghost of a human spirit in the dreary American middle class. To transform from an artist, and man driven by creative impulses, and thoughts; into a zombie, with a corporate agenda that will never be aligned with my spirit. Or get my cautious ass on with the opportunity to study what I love, while I have the chance. To try and make a career out of the things that derive to my person the most enjoyment.

If I didn't have a soul, or a free thinking mind I'd join the military without any reluctant hesitation. Nothing in my adventurous mind seems like a better deal, than being paid to get out of the States for a while; but unfortunately I have this whole other asshole in my conscious who will not allow me to point a gun at someone, knowing they potentially didn't deserve it, or never wanted to be at war at all. The men who fire the guns are never the ones who decide on the war; but they're always the ones taking cover when shots are fired, and taking lives when they feel cornered.

What a terrible thing to do to a person, to unjustly stick him in the middle of a conflict zone, that you have created, only to make him feel justified in taking life, because he was protecting his own. This is how we blur the lines between the sociopaths, and good soldiers on the field. We boil their experience down to their perception. If you tell a group of soldiers they're going to war to fight cunning militant terrorists, they're expectation is going to be exactly that. They're going to be scared shit less, with a quick trigger finger in the name of self defense.

The mystique around my love for music puzzles me more and more everyday. For it has been, the only truly consistent variable in my life. It is unwavering. Whenever I get done doing, whatever I'm doing in my day; I'm going to pick up my guitar. It's not a question, it's a fact. I've grown as a musician from playing guitar every few weeks when I was younger, to every few days when I was in high school, and now I essentially play every few hours. Doesn't matter what, I just have to be playing. Unfortunately what I may posses to be my finest ability, is also my personally perceived weakest creative area to exploit as I have no traditional training. But I guess the only truth in that is that, that my training isn't traditional. I may not be able to read music, or understand the methodology behind rhythm; but my training is enough for my brain to know how to tell my fingers what my mind wants to hear. So in that logic, there is nothing for me to be afraid of except an unknown approach to a language I can already speak.

I think If I have to live by the rules of my society, that is to say, to "work" everyday to pay my rent, and live my life; I want music to be my major profession. I want to get paid, for getting high, and enlightened and letting my mind wander around the fretboard, as I slowly start to realize it's full potential in the scheme of music. It's the only way I can play by the rules, and still possess a free mind, or at least a mind that enjoys it's time in the cage, because it acknowledges the cage.

It occurred to me while debating the idea of journalism vs. music. Most good musicians, are good journalists anyway. It's just a slightly more philosophical, and multidimensional form of journalism.

Reading this book is helping to open my eyes to the possibilities before me, even the potential I posses. If all goes well, before this summer's end, I will have formulated a rough plan for the next awesome decade of my life.

I'm not tired tonight, because the world I'm setting myself up to be a part of, will never stimulate my mind in the ways I know it could be stimulated. It will never help me grow in the ways I want to grow. I'm not tired, because I know a delusion will never distract me from what I know to be true about my world today, and that the only way I can avoid having to create a delusion is by staying true to my heart and what I love; no matter how unlikely, and how intimidating the path before me looks to be.

Some men can't be without a girl in their bed, or a loving woman in their life because some of them are so uncomfortable with life's tough questions; and because they lack confidence when it comes to believing in themselves and their dreams. Some men have to have a woman in their life, because the only way they can feel that miserable life is worth living, is if there is a strong and caring woman pushing them through it. I think it could be said, that behind every great man, a strong woman does push. But what about the guys who were already comfortable with silence, and solitude? What about the guys that didn't need to be attached, to continue to care and love? What about the guys who don't need another girlfriend to help them shake off another dull day in a dull world?

I probably won't start seriously dating until I'm 30, only then will my female peers be looking for, and wanting the same thing I do out of a relationship. Up until then it all seems a bit silly. Oh well, since that's the case I've got all the time in the world to do whatever my mind desires. I just can't be one of these people who meets someone at work. The love of my life, isn't going to be someone I meet at any dead end job; and it's not going to be someone I accept within the deepest confines of my being, simply due to our mutual proximity, or mutual dissatisfactions. I guess I need a soul mate, not a baby sitter.

Peace, patience, and persistence.
To all those who try.
Much love,
-Rob

Unprepared, and unaware
Of the pressing questions at hand.
Unmotivated, and unfulfilled
in another tyrants glorious land.

Keep your head up if you dare
But don't you dare take a stand.
You'll see your life as meager once
Slowing becoming exponentially more grand.

Keep your head down if you'd like
Live your life in the fashionable American cave
But when I quit praying to the gods we have created
I saw you were all unwittingly made slaves.

Different purpose, oh what a striking proposition,
To ignore the little life you knew,
and embrace your personal and spiritual expedition.

More awake now, than ever before,
As the weight of this knowledge,
Nearly pins me to the floor.

But in spite of my apparent insanity
I've been given the gift
to stir up quite a calamity.

It's time as a species to grow, and embrace.
No longer the time, to ignore and displace.

We are the voice of the change
Soaring on the wings of a peacefully pleasant,
and not so distant future.

Courage hides, in intelligence's shadow
But when it's realized, you have nothing to fear.
Even if the whole world seems hallow.

-R.G.