Damn, I just had to put out my Jibber-Jabber to write this. But it's gotta happen. A blog renaissance is brewing.

I am currently awake, which, if you subtract my hour nap at 1 PM, means I have been awake for 24 hours +/+. I am currently listening to Frontier Psychiatrist (it's ending as I write this) by the Avalanches and it's always been a favorite. Now it's Asyd by The Televibes (very good, check them out, I'll send you what I got).

Anyways, I haven't updated myself in a while and now's the time to reflect. My brain is deteriorating at an alarming rate. So I'll keep it simple (I hope).

I just worked on a set for free. It was hands down one of the worst sets I've ever been on. The only saving graces being Dan Finlayson & Co., along with new G+E friends, with whom I snuck off and smoked with the entire night through. That part was fun and I can definitely say I did my job better because of smoking. I was much chiller. I let it all just roll. I got angry towards the end, but who wouldn't be after 16 hours on set overnight.

I also hate my job at the camera house. It's just no good. I work to the bone, I slave over these orders. I can't take it for much longer, but deep down I feel like I have another 6 months. (Side note: Player's Ball by Outkast just came on you have no idea how good this is right now. I gotta send y'all this playlist it's been just fucking great. It's called  "It's 330 AM Why is time?" and consists of 42 songs I picked over the night from 330 onward and, damn, it's killing it). But yeah, I can't quit. I need money too much. I have 1500$ floating around from Vice when I was shooting with Lance Bangs (of Jackass). That work has been great. I'm seeing comedians and shooting cool stuff. Hope that shit picks the fuck up soon.

Anyways, I'm not feeling fulfilled. The only fulfilling things in my life are my Ghost Roommate webseries and MMA. Ghost Roommate is moving. Finished a second episode. I like it. I'm working on the third but I haven't had anytime to write this week because of work work work. It sucks. It really does.

My birthday is coming up soon and I count that as an obvious "New Year" day. I didn't do much with 23. I did stand up, fine. I got some cool freelance, okay. I've learned a lot, fair. But, I haven't felt fulfilled. Not that I ever plan on being satiated. But I need something to be completely mine. I need more photos and I need to keep writing. So I'm gonna try my best. It's about being my best.

I'm not gonna make this another list of what I need to do with my life. I already know what I need to do, now I'm just gonna do it.

I miss you guys a lot. I need to do way better of seeing you guys in the future. Adrian, I hope you're keeping strong man. I know it's hard and this is just the worst. All of my vibes are being sent to you and your own.

Love you all.

Good night.

(The playlist just started The Operator by Brain Mountain. I can't even).

I just found out about health goths

Update from the East

I kinda feel like an astronaut, reporting from so far away with everyone back there.

Anyways, since I last blogged about my dad, I talked to him and basically confirmed that there's no time table. He's continuing to see his oncologist which is good. This week his bloodwork was a bit improved, and he gained some weight, which he'd been struggling with, so that was also good. Still not on any treatment for the cancer though.

So anyways, I'm left with the choice of staying here indefinitely to try to help my dad however I can, or coming back home in a couple weeks, being on standby to fly back if his condition worsens, but otherwise continuing my life as normal.

I'm gonna give it a few more days to decide, but the last couple days I've been leaning towards coming back home for October. Being around you guys and keeping busy with work (which for me is a pretty positive environment) would probably make me feel better. But obviously that's a selfish decision. Which feels bad and re undermines the whole better-feeling thing.  But how do I stay here indefinitely?  My mom mentioned I could take a more formal leave of absence from my jobs and get a part time job here, but that just feels like the last thing I want to do.  Like as much as we shit on LA, whenever I come back here to visit I'm always reminded of how much I feel like I belong out there, especially with how much I've been back this year.  

Idk, even writing through my different options and the pros and cons of each is hard as fuck. I guess I'm gonna feel sick unless I do what's best for my dad, so maybe I just have to try to squeeze an answer out of him. I wanted this to be an ask the audience type of post but looks like I darn coughed up my thought-mucus all over this page. I swear I'll clean it up with a dumb poem tomorrow. But for now, anyone have any words of wisdom?

Tinder poem 00

Talkin to some ladies
Typin on da phone
Met 'em on an app
For those who wanna bone
Asked about her music
Asked her where she lived
Asked about some bullshit
That she said she did
One gave me her digits
Said to hit her up
Gonna wait a day
'Fore I send a "sup?"
Sometimes wake up horny
So I hit the app
But today I just don't care
Don't even wanna fap
Maybe by tomorrow
My balls will wake again
Hope I think of somethin
Smooth to message then
Probably won't happen
And I will be to blame
But that's just fine
It's been some time
Since I felt any shame

Doozy

Dear blog,

I haven't made sweet wordly love to you since May 24th, and boy has this life been a doozy since then. This life has just been a nonstop train full of doozy...

Coming into 2015, I kinda had a feeling it was gonna be a year I'd always remember. Maybe because I have an affinity for odd numbers, maybe because 2014 was so forgettable, or maybe because on some level my consciousness has already experienced all moments of this incarnation and is just progressing through them to create the illusions of time and free will, and what I perceive as intuitions are actually reactions to a future event that, on a higher plane of existence, has already happened. 

And so yeah. At any given moment I've been drowning in the depths of overwork (know I'm not alone here), experiencing a palpable revival of my appreciation of the universe through camping/traveling, and/or facing our mortality and the fragility of life through the lens of my dad's diagnosis and fight with cancer. And in this moment, I find myself lying on a guest bed in the house that my sister and her fiancé just moved into (Oh yeah, forgot to mention my sister got fucking engaged and moved into a gotdamn legit house) with basically my "normal" life on hold as I try to figure out how I want to handle my dad's situation.

More backstory. Last Friday, about a week and a half ago, I was just about to get out of bed to go to work when my dad asked if he could give me a call. I also forgot to mention that my grandmother has been in the hospital since early July with liver cancer/surgery complications, so I picked up bracing myself to hear something about her. And as my dad told me that he had some bad news, a small part of me hoped that it would be about her, but it wasn't. Basically my dad's doctor had told him that after months of trying different treatments, nothing had been able to stop the cancer from spreading, and there was nothing else they could really do for him. He was going to start hospice on Monday. Then his girlfriend was on the phone saying how he put up an incredible fight, then he was telling me how his sisters and dad were there with him, and how he and his girlfriend were going to their beach house in Hull for the weekend. Somehow I blabbered my way through that phone call, then just kinda let everything sink into my reality.

Perhaps a frivolous sidenote, perhaps not, but for me what happened after that was a super-aware state of mind. Colors and sunlight were brighter, and I swear I could smell my celery plant from the toilet door, which maybe you guys can and I just have a weak sense of smell, but in that moment everything was noticeably heightened. (PS-can someone water my celery plant?) Anyways, the human experience never ceases to fascinate me and I thought this was noteworthy.

So moving forward, I told my bosses about the situation, talked to my mom and sister, and got an earlier flight to take home. I had a great bike ride with Tyler that night, had a great last meal with some of y'all, and most surprisingly had a great talk with my documentary boss, who gave me a book on Tibetan Buddhism that deals heavily with the subject of death. And then I flew home, preparing myself to face death head on without avoiding any aspects of it or having any regrets about the process. 

When I went over to my dad's for the first time, I found that the "end is nigh" mindset that my dad and his girlfriend (and pretty much everyone else here) I had perceived on Friday was replaced with a business-as-usual attitude. They were trying to continue to fight it with his diet, and hoping to recover his immune system, and maybe get healthy enough to get back on treatment. The main thing, his girlfriend said, was staying positive.

When someone's survival strategy is staying positive, it seems counterproductive to ask them how much time they have left. But without that answer, I don't really know what to do. What feels the most right is being around, trying to enjoy time with him, and trying to help with his diet strategy. I love my dad, and I want to do whatever I can to help him through all this. But I can't just hang out here forever, because all craziness aside I do love the life I've cut out for myself with you people, and i have to get back to that at some point.

My dad's going to the hospital in the morning, and I was hoping to go to get some intel from his doctor, but he didn't want me to go. But maybe he'll let me know what they tell him. Anyways, as tough as my situation is, I know his is exponentially harder, so I'm trying to bear with that. So we shall see.

That's all for now folks. I'll leave with a quote I pulled out of the book my boss gave me. And maybe I'll blog more about this book and my other readings sometime soon.

"Whether we fear death and refuse to face it, or whether we romanticize it, death is trivialized. Both despair and euphoria about death are an evasion. Death is neither depressing nor exciting; it is simply a fact of life.

How sad it is that most of us only begin to appreciate our life when we are on the point of dying. I often think of the words of the great Buddha master Padmasambhava: 'Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret. But isn't it far too late?' What more chilling commentary on the modern world could there be than that most people die unprepared for death, as they have lived, unprepared for life?" -p10

I Still Love This Blog

It's late, my mind is being very anxious and impatient. I need something to settle me down, something to ground me back to myself and the people around me. Its past 1am and no one is up; where am I supposed to go? The blog.

Even though all local and statewide projections say this is going to be the slowest blogging year in the history of human records of this blog, I know that blogmate change is a hoax! I still think this blog is amazing! This year of blogging has mainly been dominated by mushroom trips and who doesn't love that? I know the reason the blog has been so inactive is because we all see each other a lot.

Thats all well and good but I do long for the old days. I long to have an amazing adventure and then have the automatic thought "I've got to blog this". I miss documenting our changes and the stories of our lives as they unfold. Whether we are together or not I think we all miss out on something when we don't have a health blog and that is the opportunity to go back and see who we were as individuals and friends at any given time. I can't tell you how valuable that is to me.

Maybe our lives are moving too fast to document. If that's the case I think we need the blog now more than ever. With things changing as fast as they are I don't want to loose track of who I am as an individual or as a friend.

I check the blog every day. Just seeing that drawing in the background makes me feel better. Anyway, I just felt I had to say this. I love this blog and I miss it.