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I have a running tradition of wrapping up my years with
notes. A note that reflects on the 360ish days that have gone past and trying
to come to some key things. This year is no different as far as the notes go.
But this year is very different in terms of the adventure.
2013 was odd; because it felt like, for once, I was living through the same things that many of my peers were. It was strange. Watching my life being played out, systematically, like some vain ’20 things you’ll learn at 22’ Buzzfeed page. That was the start of this year.
It felt like a lot of people my age were confused, disappointed, and yet most of them weren’t angry. Student loans, real world troubles, romantic woes; they seemed to happen to everyone and everyone seemed.... apathetic. Ready to accept that this was ‘a phase’. Ready to curl up into a ball, offer no fight, and cry out on Facebook for likes instead. I tend to not count myself among that lot, because while I put a lot about myself online for people to see, I fight. I fight hard for change. I know it isn’t easy and I know it takes discipline, and each year it offers new challenges, but I seem to find the right people at my side.
That’s what this years note is about. This year I relied rather heavily on my small, but strong, safetynet of family and friends. I can count on two hands the people I can trust to give me great advice. Since I first set foot in the US in 2008, that list hasn’t changed much. It includes a handful of kids I grew up with, some from high school, and some more that I met in my first months at university. You see, most people see a sinking ship, and they’ll offer you advice on how to swim for shore. Advice is usually useless though. Advice is offered from an outsider’s perspective, and if you refuse to take it, most people leave you to drown in your own ignorance.
My circle is different. I have friends that will grab a bucket, jump into the wreck, and start bailing water. They are insane, they will put themselves on the line, and I love them for that reason. They will call you, offer you advice, and kick you when you refuse to listen. I have friends who give me the one thing I need; the reasons to go out and fight another round or four. You know if you’re on this list; you know me as the guy with plenty to joke about and the one you rarely take seriously. You probably got a serious call or two this year from me and you had something smart to say. If you have any doubt whether you’re on that list, you’re probably not. And know this; that if you were there for me, I will be there for you, and nothing will change that. This year I am thankful for you.
This year I travelled across the country in my car, I stood under the waters of Niagra Falls as it pelted down on my shoulders, saw Kurt Cobain’s first guitar at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, and visited a vast variety of different places on my own. I took everyone’s warnings and shelved them and did what I always do; I ran my own course.
I found solace in the fact that I am not like most people and comfort in doing things my own way.
I reevaluated what I wanted in life and reminded myself not to be money hungry. I donated some stuff; my total possessions weigh 400 pounds less than they did a year back. I picked up another instrument and started to teach myself. I got in better shape. And one more thing…. I’m not coming back. My close friends are aware of where I am and what I’m doing; and that I’m happy doing it. I learned that a lot of people will say ‘Hey! We never hang out!’ but yet never make the effort to make plans. I have seen the need to be a better person more than ever before. I have tried to live life more like a dog and a little bit like a lion; unafraid of a challenge, regardless of how tough it may be, loyal, ready to stand up for what’s right and always enthusiastic.
I found joy in music this year. I got to work with a great variety of artists; some who have made it very far on their own indeed. I have seen the amount of effort they put in, the number of nights they go hungry in the chase, and their tendency to sacrifice money for quality.
I found, this year, very little use for anger and a much better use for
enthusiasm. I put things in perspective after realizing the futility of wasting
energy being annoyed or upset about the little things in life. The Earth is a
little blue dot; our interactions on this planet mean nothing if we are not
kind to each other. Where I can change, I have sought to change myself. Where I
can learn, I have been a student. Where I can fix things, I have rolled up my
sleeves and gone to work.
The universe has been kind to me this year. God has been kind to me this year. My friends have been kind to me this year. My family has loved me throughout it all.
With my friends behind me, my family at my side, God above me and the universe around me; I wish you a happy new year. Thank you all for being a part of my journey.
If this post goes viral, I can’t promise you any royalties.
Every once in a while, toe the line, take a leap of faith. Go it alone. You won't regret it.
But this year is very different in terms of the adventure.
2013 was odd; because it felt like, for once, I was living through the same things that many of my peers were. It was strange. Watching my life being played out, systematically, like some vain ’20 things you’ll learn at 22’ Buzzfeed page. That was the start of this year.
It felt like a lot of people my age were confused, disappointed, and yet most of them weren’t angry. Student loans, real world troubles, romantic woes; they seemed to happen to everyone and everyone seemed.... apathetic. Ready to accept that this was ‘a phase’. Ready to curl up into a ball, offer no fight, and cry out on Facebook for likes instead. I tend to not count myself among that lot, because while I put a lot about myself online for people to see, I fight. I fight hard for change. I know it isn’t easy and I know it takes discipline, and each year it offers new challenges, but I seem to find the right people at my side.
That’s what this years note is about. This year I relied rather heavily on my small, but strong, safetynet of family and friends. I can count on two hands the people I can trust to give me great advice. Since I first set foot in the US in 2008, that list hasn’t changed much. It includes a handful of kids I grew up with, some from high school, and some more that I met in my first months at university. You see, most people see a sinking ship, and they’ll offer you advice on how to swim for shore. Advice is usually useless though. Advice is offered from an outsider’s perspective, and if you refuse to take it, most people leave you to drown in your own ignorance.
My circle is different. I have friends that will grab a bucket, jump into the wreck, and start bailing water. They are insane, they will put themselves on the line, and I love them for that reason. They will call you, offer you advice, and kick you when you refuse to listen. I have friends who give me the one thing I need; the reasons to go out and fight another round or four. You know if you’re on this list; you know me as the guy with plenty to joke about and the one you rarely take seriously. You probably got a serious call or two this year from me and you had something smart to say. If you have any doubt whether you’re on that list, you’re probably not. And know this; that if you were there for me, I will be there for you, and nothing will change that. This year I am thankful for you.
This year I travelled across the country in my car, I stood under the waters of Niagra Falls as it pelted down on my shoulders, saw Kurt Cobain’s first guitar at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, and visited a vast variety of different places on my own. I took everyone’s warnings and shelved them and did what I always do; I ran my own course.
I found solace in the fact that I am not like most people and comfort in doing things my own way.
I reevaluated what I wanted in life and reminded myself not to be money hungry. I donated some stuff; my total possessions weigh 400 pounds less than they did a year back. I picked up another instrument and started to teach myself. I got in better shape. And one more thing…. I’m not coming back. My close friends are aware of where I am and what I’m doing; and that I’m happy doing it. I learned that a lot of people will say ‘Hey! We never hang out!’ but yet never make the effort to make plans. I have seen the need to be a better person more than ever before. I have tried to live life more like a dog and a little bit like a lion; unafraid of a challenge, regardless of how tough it may be, loyal, ready to stand up for what’s right and always enthusiastic.
I found joy in music this year. I got to work with a great variety of artists; some who have made it very far on their own indeed. I have seen the amount of effort they put in, the number of nights they go hungry in the chase, and their tendency to sacrifice money for quality.
The universe has been kind to me this year. God has been kind to me this year. My friends have been kind to me this year. My family has loved me throughout it all.
With my friends behind me, my family at my side, God above me and the universe around me; I wish you a happy new year. Thank you all for being a part of my journey.
If this post goes viral, I can’t promise you any royalties.
Every once in a while, toe the line, take a leap of faith. Go it alone. You won't regret it.
I bought a guitar this weekend.
Why?
I have been working with/watching/producing/doing the behind the scenes work that comes with musicians for about a half decade now. I've seen a variety of acts in a bunch of different venues.
I worked with a band for close to three years; I loved every minute of what they did. I even enjoyed it when we fought, that's how much I like those kids. A little band named Flashback Forward (if you want the real story for why we named it that forget about it) grabbed my attention, because they were talented, and mainly because they were wonderful people.
That's something that sucks about music these days. Everyone's mean. The managers are too busy to look you in the eye, the artists are too busy protecting their 'creative integrity' (aka nobody is buying their music and they need an excuse), and the fans don't seem to care what anyone's producing as long as the lights are pretty.... it's terrible.
Underneath the rubble, I found a rebel song. I found a wonderful little band, and they inspired me to be less of a manager and more of a musician.
One thing I've found about music is that it tends to be true that you either play the guitar or the drums. One requires control and precision. The other requires madness and destruction. Guitarists are surgeons. Drummers are demolition men.
Drumming is a taxing profession; you sacrifice your back, knees, elbows, ears and occasionally your brain to provide the service of timekeeping. Your band depends on you, your expensive equipment, and your basement to create proper music. We do it anyway. The attractive ladies that come to see the show? Forget it, they're into your red-pants-wearing bassist. Drummers are a different breed; we aren't here for anything more than the permission to play at 120 decibels without being hindered. Getting a first date is easier than being allowed to be as loud as a jet engine in public.
I bought a guitar because I speak a handful of languages, but I can't read music. My illiteracy in this one little area; an illiteracy that once drove me crazy is now something the enchants me, but I promise you, it won't evade me.
Buy a guitar. Buy some drums.
You might make the neighbors mad. You'll definitely make yourself happy.
Why?
I have been working with/watching/producing/doing the behind the scenes work that comes with musicians for about a half decade now. I've seen a variety of acts in a bunch of different venues.
I worked with a band for close to three years; I loved every minute of what they did. I even enjoyed it when we fought, that's how much I like those kids. A little band named Flashback Forward (if you want the real story for why we named it that forget about it) grabbed my attention, because they were talented, and mainly because they were wonderful people.
That's something that sucks about music these days. Everyone's mean. The managers are too busy to look you in the eye, the artists are too busy protecting their 'creative integrity' (aka nobody is buying their music and they need an excuse), and the fans don't seem to care what anyone's producing as long as the lights are pretty.... it's terrible.
Underneath the rubble, I found a rebel song. I found a wonderful little band, and they inspired me to be less of a manager and more of a musician.
One thing I've found about music is that it tends to be true that you either play the guitar or the drums. One requires control and precision. The other requires madness and destruction. Guitarists are surgeons. Drummers are demolition men.
Drumming is a taxing profession; you sacrifice your back, knees, elbows, ears and occasionally your brain to provide the service of timekeeping. Your band depends on you, your expensive equipment, and your basement to create proper music. We do it anyway. The attractive ladies that come to see the show? Forget it, they're into your red-pants-wearing bassist. Drummers are a different breed; we aren't here for anything more than the permission to play at 120 decibels without being hindered. Getting a first date is easier than being allowed to be as loud as a jet engine in public.
I bought a guitar because I speak a handful of languages, but I can't read music. My illiteracy in this one little area; an illiteracy that once drove me crazy is now something the enchants me, but I promise you, it won't evade me.
Buy a guitar. Buy some drums.
You might make the neighbors mad. You'll definitely make yourself happy.
On the way up to Buffalo, I found myself on a long winding
road, and at some point I ended up hitting the brakes pretty hard before I
realized why.
A large, lumbering, powerful animal had wandered into the middle of the road.
Behind my thousand pound machine, armed with the knowledge that I was surrounded by steel and plastic, I felt my fingers tighten on the wheel.
A wolf, it seemed, had entered the scene.
Walked in and plain as day owned the entire road. Both lanes. No explanation.
We looked each other in the eye. He bared his teeth. Let out a low growl.
I looked closer, I wondered if I was reading it right; heterochromia, the lack of size, the unclawed feet.
From my rudimentary understanding of lupine biology I was pretty sure, but not entirely, that I wasn’t dealing with a pedigree wolf. Maybe a wolf with a lot of dog in it. Husky? Maybe a loose malamute? Someone’s pet, perhaps. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder why my foot then, was pushing on the brake to keep the car in place.
And then I got it.
I didn’t see the size, the heterochromia, or the feet.
A large, lumbering, powerful animal had wandered into the middle of the road.
Behind my thousand pound machine, armed with the knowledge that I was surrounded by steel and plastic, I felt my fingers tighten on the wheel.
A wolf, it seemed, had entered the scene.
Walked in and plain as day owned the entire road. Both lanes. No explanation.
We looked each other in the eye. He bared his teeth. Let out a low growl.
I looked closer, I wondered if I was reading it right; heterochromia, the lack of size, the unclawed feet.
From my rudimentary understanding of lupine biology I was pretty sure, but not entirely, that I wasn’t dealing with a pedigree wolf. Maybe a wolf with a lot of dog in it. Husky? Maybe a loose malamute? Someone’s pet, perhaps. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder why my foot then, was pushing on the brake to keep the car in place.
And then I got it.
I didn’t see the size, the heterochromia, or the feet.
I saw the growl. I saw the teeth.
I saw the line drawn in the proverbial sand.
I didn’t see a wolf with a lot of dog in it. I saw a dog with a lot of wolf in it.
Wolf or dog…. I learned a simple lesson.
Sometimes it is all about how much you respect the things you have earned and showing other people that they should do the same.
He trotted slowly across the road, took a sip of water from a puddle in the middle, and disappeared into the woods.
Sometimes it is about letting people know that you are still capable of standing up for yourself.
I didn’t see a wolf with a lot of dog in it. I saw a dog with a lot of wolf in it.
Wolf or dog…. I learned a simple lesson.
Sometimes it is all about how much you respect the things you have earned and showing other people that they should do the same.
He trotted slowly across the road, took a sip of water from a puddle in the middle, and disappeared into the woods.
Sometimes it is about letting people know that you are still capable of standing up for yourself.
This story begins, funnily enough, a few years back.
Two kids moved into their respective dorms in 2008.
One was a clean shaven, Nickelback listening kind who refuses the idea that Eminem is the future of American music. He’s the kind of
guy that most women like, that speaks relative truths that appease larger crowds, and the one that drives ATV’s on summer weekends. The other is a
little more unusual, he has ideas that most people don’t understand, the kind
who is talkative and that people usually don’t like at the start. He’s
the fast talking, vocal kind that some people need a couple days to understand, like a parrot with no off switch.
Five years on, those two kids are friends, and I’m the second one if you hadn't guessed already.
The first guy in that picture, though, is Vincent Gray. Vince is more than a
character; more than one of those people who appear as passengers on my
journey. Vince conducts the bus. His shell; a rough beard, a faded shirt with
college style lettering, the occasional red solo cup in his right hand, his
left hand in his pocket, it all stands at stark contrast with who he is inside.
Most people never figure that out. Most people never see this side of my rough
and tumble, tough as nails and spikier than a cactus MMA fanatic friend. I've known him since my first month in college. As he often tells our friends, “Raj was one of those soccer ball kicking Indians who was outta place in Central Pennsylvania”, and yet three months later I was there saving his behind as much as he was sticking up for me. He’s like most of us who end up miles from where we began. He’s looking for more.
Most other people would be dissatisfied, other people would
lie, but Vince knows his truth and he pushes yours out to you. I approach him routinely
to be told exactly what I’m doing wrong. I've learned some neat things by watching him.
Accepting the notion of sitting; the meaning of routinely being happy with the things in front of you instead of the things you’re told you want is a strange, but worthwhile pursuit. Learning what it means to put the needs of other people before your own. And while the world may think that it might lead to never being happy, maybe they're right, but they're almost definitely wrong.
After five years of barely knowing a guy who lived across a hallway from me, I was chilling with him, tailgating with a bunch of guys dressed in camouflage. They had different accents, different ideologies, and a fair number of stories I couldn’t make any sense of.
CNN and Fox News would tell you that we are too different to get along.
The crappy thing for those news networks is that I watch Conan O Brien, Vince watches MMA, and neither of us cares about news that tells us what our futures should be.
There’s one thing that I’ll never understand though; why these guys dress in hunting camouflage when there's nothing to hunt.
Accepting the notion of sitting; the meaning of routinely being happy with the things in front of you instead of the things you’re told you want is a strange, but worthwhile pursuit. Learning what it means to put the needs of other people before your own. And while the world may think that it might lead to never being happy, maybe they're right, but they're almost definitely wrong.
After five years of barely knowing a guy who lived across a hallway from me, I was chilling with him, tailgating with a bunch of guys dressed in camouflage. They had different accents, different ideologies, and a fair number of stories I couldn’t make any sense of.
CNN and Fox News would tell you that we are too different to get along.
The crappy thing for those news networks is that I watch Conan O Brien, Vince watches MMA, and neither of us cares about news that tells us what our futures should be.
There’s one thing that I’ll never understand though; why these guys dress in hunting camouflage when there's nothing to hunt.
I have friends who make plans.
We all do. People who say things like ‘Come visit me when you’re in town!’. Except that visit never happens. Something comes up. The girlfriend’s play, a show, a concert, work, school, something.
Something interrupts the plans. Something takes precedence over a spontaneous
moment of positive self expression.
I have watched as, over the last decade, people have become
increasingly non committal. I am part of a generation that sometimes houses
individuals who don’t know whether they want to buy a house, get married, have
a family, own a dog, or even whether to get the large two topping pizza or call it a night with a bowl of cereal and a bottle of Mountain Dew.
We're a generation who talk about looking out over an edge, but yet when we do, we don't even seem to enjoy the view.
In a lengthy search that began somewhere at the end of college, I began to realize that I had a choice to make. I had to decide whether I wanted to remain blissfully ignorant. Or whether I wanted to accept the burden that comes with trying to figure out who I am and where I fit.
Sometimes in order to gain true perspective, you have to pack everything you have in the trunk of your car, and go. Sometimes you have to say to yourself, and to everybody else, that enough is enough.
A lot of people told me I was being foolish, impulsive, that two days of packing wasn't enough. That traveling alone wasn't smart. That, while what I wanted to do was cool, it wasn't an idea that they would entertain themselves.
People told me not to put the keys in the ignition. They told me not to put the car in gear and start heading west without a real plan.
In the second week of October, 2013, that is exactly what I did.