i should have seen this coming...

i haven't completed reading a book in such a long time.

i'm pretty sure that this fact has been draining the creative juices out of me.

so i'm giving myself a goal; i'm going to read a book.

and i'm pretty sure that the book will be blue like jazz.

i've made the selection hurriedly, but sometimes hurried decisions end up being the best decisions.

...and there's this burning.

just like last year at about this time, i'm realizing that after living in a tropical asian country, i'm still not used to cold weather. we've hardly entered autumn, and i'm feel like i'm going to catch frostbite. but honestly, i enjoy cool weather. i've just been surprised at how not used to it i am. i suppose it's time to break out the coats and jackets and big fluffy blankets.

i've been having these inconsistent bursts of songwriting output lately. for example, i've gone for at least a week just tossing around old ideas and trying desperately to incorporate something fresh into them. after not being able to do so, i became frustrated and sad. i felt as if any skill that i may have previously possessed had somehow abandoned me to find someone more worthy of possessing it. last night, however, i sat on the edge of my bed with my guitar and wrote 3 or 4 neat little parts for songs. just know that when i say "neat little parts", that is only abiding by my standard of neat. but i like them, and i guess that's all that really counts right now.

ha. alright. well.

i don't feel like i've become a better person after writing this post. maybe some of you will feel better after reading it. seeing as hearing about my life is sooo enriching to everyone elses. hahaha.

bye.

sorry.

to anyone reading:
my last post wasn't meant to be griping self-centered plea for sympathy. i was reading back over it, and i saw how it could seem that way. but i wrote it at a time when alot of things were running through my mind, and i felt helpless. i apologize for anything/everything that may have come across the wrong way.

the quiet things that no one ever knows

i came dangerously close to posting one of those really vague posts. you know, the kind that has no real direction. the kind of post that leaves you with an obscure quote and the challenge for you to interpret it correctly. and everyone thinks in his or her own mind that they know where i'm coming from. i wonder if they do.

so, i decided against it. because i'd hate to give anyone the responsibility of reading my mind, especially when i have so much on it.

the one that i wanted to find

good afternoon, all of you.

my school-week is officially over, and i couldn't be any more pleased. i'm leaving for myrtle beach this evening with tim keeler, cory wilson, scott holiday, and david wright, for a weekend full of bikers, bass-playing, and beachtime. we're going to be playing outside of murrell's inlet mall tomorrow and on saturday, for a good bit of the day. then we're also playing for a chapel service on sunday morning, then we'll return later on sunday. we'll have to be on our guards, however, for this week is Biker Week '05. i'll have to be careful not to be snatched up by a mysterious biker. i'm thinking that it'll be pretty fun, though. plus, i love the beach. so hopefully, it won't be too cold, and i may be able to take a dip (or two).

but i'm also really quite tired. and i need a nap. soon.

there's a certain someone with an eighteenth birthday happening on sunday. and that someone's name is amanda. 18 is a pretty good number. and plus, you can vote. hurrah. happy birthday, amanda may.

so anyways, i need to go to the bank pretty soon (like today) to deposit a couple of paychecks. i'll be rollllliiin' in cash once i get that taken care of. hot dang.

i hope everyone has a suuuuper safe weekend. don't do anything dumb.

caleb the dreamer

i was recently informed of two dreams that my six year old brother, caleb, has had in the past week. both could easily be made into some sort of cartoon or video game. enjoy.

dream number one: caleb began describing this dream by saying that he was "really small". he proceeded to explain that he was in the yard riding atop his trusty centipede. he was then struck by lightning. [/end]

dream number two: caleb found himself wandering through the shadowy halls of a castle, and stumbled into a secret room. in the room, he found a guinea pig wearing a crown and a cape. the guinea pig gave him a peppermint. [/end]

itsy bitsy

this morning began just as most mornings do. i pressed the "snooze" button on my alarm clock about five times, in ten minute intervals. once i had wasted nearly an hour, swinging back and forth between the states of being asleep and being sort of asleep, i decided that the time had come for me to brave the day.

as i was pulling out of my driveway, and onto the main road, i saw a small movement in the corner of my eye. ignorantly and much to my regret, i paid this "warning sign" no attention.

five minutes later, i found myself face to face with death, epitomized as a menacing little spider. he was sitting on my lap, seeming to grin at me as he crawled hurriedly up my shirt. all the while, i'm swerving into the other lane and back, trying to maintain my calm. i was doing a very bad job. once the little devil had reached the collar of my shirt, i felt that it was dire for me to take action. i was quite sure that if i didn't, he'd crawl into my clothing, create himself a home and raise a little family of baby spiders. my hand slowly made it's way towards the little monster. i grimaced with every inch. i finally was able to snatch him up, and toss him out the window.

... i don't think i've seen the last of little mister spider. if not him, then i am confident that one of his little cousins will emerge from beneath the seat of my car as i'm driving to school, and the cycle will repeat.


moral: steven is scared of spiders [hey! that's an alliteration! sort of.]

the dying breaths of a blog

this blog is inches from destruction, for undisclosed reasons. i feel a need for change. that change may be the tearing down of this page, and the creation of something new. or maybe even the tearing down of this page, and the creation of nothing new. i'll know in a couple of days what i should do.

i wish that i could read minds. however, i suppose that if i were given that ability, all of the suspense would be drained from my life, and i'd eventually become bored. i sometimes just get wary of not knowing what's going on.

i've lost nearly 5 pounds in the last week, and i haven't an explanation. well, except for my appetite, which doesn't actively exist anymore. at least it's not the appetite i used to know. the one that always demanded to be appeased. i find myself eating 2-3 meager meals a day, reaching "fullness" after hardly anything.

the varsity boys reigned victorious in their game yesterday - 8 goals to none. they made my heart glad.


i suppose that's all for now. i'm pretty tired, and i have some school work to tend to.


byeeeee.

so long, sweet summer

[the end]

your words hit like a train

it's like you know what i'm thinking
and whatever you want to say
always comes out the perfect way


sunny blunder had a show last night at NBT,
my amp died in the middle of a song.
cool, huh.


school is starting in two days. that's too soon. there's still so many things i want to do. mmm. whateverrr. i'm still working on my schedule. it's starting to look like i'll be taking a minimal amount of classes at GCS, and a handful from Piedmont Tech/home.




"you are the star that's in my sky
and i am yours and you are miiiiine"
[listening to: the rocket summer]
[mood: heh]

you have my attention, like you've had all the while

i'm sitting alone in my house. i could probably list about eight better uses for my time than blogging, but i need to write. it helps to clear my mind- and at the moment, my mind resembles a tropical storm. alot has been happening in my life lately.

last night, one of my younger twin brothers, Caleb, got sick with a fever. this morning, he was still doing terribly, after throwing up several times, having an abnormally high temperature, and complaining of a headache, and just not being himself at all. after i showered, i drove my mom and caleb to the Abbeville Hospital, in hopes that they'd be able discover the cause of his illness (my other brother, Josh, and my Dad went to our new house to paint while we went to the hospital). I waited in the van, not knowing that the afternoon would last as long as it did. Juan Bonetti (who was treating Caleb) came out to the van and told me that they were going to need to take Caleb to the emergency room to give him an IV because he was really dehydrated and not doing so well. so i drove around the hospital to the emergency room side, and waited for even longer. finally, my mom came out and told me that i could come inside. as i entered the room, i saw my small, fragile brother laying in the hospital bed, wrapped in his favorite blanket, and hooked to an IV. he seemed really tired, but he was able to talk. they finally discovered that he has strep throat, so they prescribed him antibiotics and did various other procedures.

in the meantime, i had to leave the hospital to run errands in greenwood (the majority of which ended up being less than successful). and here i am at home, counting down the hours before i must leave for work at 8 o'clock. i'm the epitome of unenthusiastic.

i decided two days ago that i'm not going to be playing soccer this year. there are alot of things that led me to this decision - believe me, it wasn't an easy one. you can ask me about sometime if you want. i don't feel like writing it all out on here right now.




sunny blunder update

that's all for now.

i don't have much of an appetite.


fall in love

it's been a month since the fourth of july

okay, so maybe not exactly a month, but we're close enough, and it was appropriate for me to use that as my 'title' since it's a line from the song i am listening to >> "recovery room", the jealous sound. so if any of you have never heard it, i would advise you either to find me and sit with me in my car for a few minutes to enjoy it, or download it or something. it's worth your while.

so last night i saw ben folds live. i think it was one of the many items on a constantly growing list of things i'd like to do before i die. one down, 100,000 to go. ben folds has more showmanship than anyone i have ever seen. for that, i love him. if you want details about yesterday, i can give them to you in person, because they'd probably be much more interesting that way.

life has been throwing me curve balls lately. don't misunderstand me though - they are somewhat pleasant curve balls, or could potentially be. they are just situations that i never foresaw and don't always know how to handle. that's why it's so much easier to let God do the "handling" and let me do the "trusting"... which i'm also quite awful at. but it must be done.

i have about a week left to finish us history and consumer math. it's more than possible for me to do so, i just need to put forth about 100% more effort than i've been putting forth as of late.

and i'd like to take a trip to a zoo pretty soon, after having a recent conversation with a friend about interesting zoos can be. as a matter of fact, even the word "zoo" is quite interesting.

i leave you with that.

Episode II of the Tragic Buick LeSabre Saga

The day began just as any other would. I awoke staring sleepily at the plain white ceiling. Showered, ate breakfast, and headed to work. To set the mood a little bit, I must inform you all that yesterday I was left with no choice but to abandon my usual transportation, "The Buick", at my workplace. Why? It was in one of those moods. I was forced to depend on the golden Volvo to accommodate my driving needs, and it performed decently - however, nothing beats the crisp sound system of the now broken Buick.

After a completely uneventful day at work, I headed out into the sweltering heat to see if the Buick would come through for me. To my utter delight, it roared to life with such zeal that I felt like a small boy again. I figured that it would be best for me to go ahead and take this opportunity and run with it, before the car decided to fail me again. I hopped in, plugged in the iPod, and headed on my way. The thought of the car just "dying" in the middle of my voyage home never really crossed my mind. It had happened once, but like lightning, I never dreamed that such misfortune would strike the same defenseless driver twice. To my horror, shortly after I passed Greenwood High, the engine died. To my luck, however, I wasn't nearing an uphill stretch of road. After I finished celebrating my luck in not being at a hill, I realized that I'd need to find a place to pull over, or else I'd slow to a stop, and disgruntled drivers behind me would pull out their firearms. Finally, after scouring both sides of the road (and slowing to about 20 miles an hour in a 35 zone), I turned into a neighborhood called "Bell-Meade". If the spelling is incorrect, I apologize. I conveniently came to a stop completely blocking someones driveway.

Once I realized that I wasn't going to get home by sitting in the car and crying, I got out and assessed the damage. I came to the following conclusions:
(1. The car wasn't going to start
(2. I wasn't going to sprout wings, enabling me to soar home for help.
(3. No one would know I was stranded unless I gathered the courage to knock on one of the nearby doors asking for a phone (I foolishly left my cell-phone at home, not foreseeing this tragedy).

So that's what I did. I knocked on the nearest door (which happened to belong to a spooky and seemingly single red-headed man). He was nice enough, but was watching some awfully creepy murder movie in his living room. I stayed for the briefest amount of time possible. I simply couldn't stand his mysterious moustache and the rubbish-equivalent movie that was playing mute on his television.

After long, tireless minutes of waiting and wondering, the calvary (aka my dear mother) came to my rescue. We pushed the wounded vehicle forward, as to unobstruct (Not sure if that's a word) the driveway that it was in front of.

My mom drove me back to Bruster's so that I could at least drive the Volvo back home. I stopped at Chick-Fil-A for food on my way home.

This evening I plan to gather my emotions and maybe try my luck one more time in starting the car. If it happens to honor my efforts, I'll swiftly zoom over to Crider, where I'll park it and leave it to think about what it's done. Hopefully I'll have someone look at it in the next few days.

If this has never happened to you, count yourself blessed, and pray that it never does.


My car is a heartbreaker.

i will consider you gone.

if your car ever gets in one of those fiendish moods and decides to disappoint you by not starting when you need it most, just know this: i've been there.

i had bright plans for today. i spent the morning/afternoon mowing the lawn in the scorching summer sun, walking the impossibly thin line between fatigue and a heat-stroke [during this time, my family left for atlanta until tomorrow afternoon, loaning me the title "King of the House" for a short time].

after manicuring the lawn in a fashion martha stewart would have admired, i met andy at the civic center to play a little tennis, as we often like to do. actually, martha may not have admired my grass cutting. i don't really know if she ever does lawncare, but i needed an excuse to use her name in a post.

after the tennis playing, my plan was to hustle back to my house, shower, go pick up my paycheck from work, then go deposit money at the bank. then hoooopefully go to some musical event at anderson college with amanda and bethany.

these plans were going fine until the part where i wanted to crank my car. you have to understand, my car won't start unless it really wants to. 75% of the time, it doesn't want to. needless to say, my night has been crushed like a wingless moth in an avalanche.

so here i sit, home alone. ben folds is blaring through my computer speakers, offering competent compensation for my current disappointment.

in other news, life isn't getting any easier. i've been doing pretty well, but there are always issues that leave me dumbfounded and without direction.

i hope everyone is doing well.

chasing the fading daylight of the world around us

i'm so afraid of the future. i'm afraid that who i'm becoming isn't who i want to be. it's so far from who i was one year ago, and that thought is overwhelming.

and i realized tonight that the world has so much more to offer than what i have now. i mean, sure, my resources are limited and i can't shoot for the stars when i have nothing to take me there. but i can only take one step at a time, and i feel like i'm stepping backwards.

it seems like everyone these days are chasing what isn't real - some glimmering mirage in the distance, just waiting to disappoint you. it will only last for the amount of time it takes for you to see it up close. how much is that worth? nothing.

my naivety is so dumbfounding. i only THOUGHT i knew what was going on. i thought i knew how people worked. i really have no idea. i think i could use seclusion from everything for a little while, just to let myself breathe. maybe i could take off the mask that i wear half of the time and let my real eyes see the light of day. i'm sure it will be blinding.

i don't feel like i know much of anything anymore. and this isn't a plea for anyone to reassure me that i do. i'm so tired of that. this blog isn't a place for me to whine and then be complimented by everyone who reads it. it's chief purpose is to give me some peace of mind and let out some of my thoughts before they can drown me. if you want to comment, it's fine. i do appreciate it. but that's not why i write.

i've given so many wrong impressions in the last 24 hours, it makes me want to throw up..

goodnight everyone.

here's the thing...

[taken at new brookland tavern]

i'm not "quitting" my blog, but i'm about to change some things around a bit. when i say "about to", that could mean in the next two days, or the next two weeks.

but i wanted to give everyone a heads up.

by now i thought you would have given up, but i think i like that you haven't

i've been having weird dreams lately. they actually just "started back", because i had them alot more a couple weeks ago, then last night i started having them again. they are undescribable. i've tried explaining it to different people, but i'm never really able to do them justice, because they are vast. and varied. and just awful and confusing.

in a nutshell, it's like i have these dreams that could or could not happen in the future and/or could have maybe happened in the past. then during the day, sometimes they happen. sometimes all of the memories of the dreams flood back into my mind...and it's overwhelming. it's not just events that are in my dream. voices. songs. images. everything. it's completely off-the-wall.

last night, i had several dreams, but the most notable one was one that seemed to be pre-apocalyptic or mid-apocalyptic. there were so many elements of the dream, i couldn't begin to list them. i don't even remember them all myself. but it was part thrilling and part terrifying.

that's it.

if everyone thinks that i have a psychological problem after saying all that, then, so be it. it's just been bothering me alot, and i don't know what's causing it all.


but it destroys my train of thought.


i wrote all of that in a rush, and i'm sort of fearful that any good reputation that i may have had for writing has now been thrown out to the dogs.

everything looks perfect from far away.

i'm having some trouble with life. it's nothing terribly important, yet it has become nearly impossible for me to get past. this another one of those "describing-the-situation-but-not-telling-you-what-it-is" sort of things. i'm sorry to do that so often.

i'm pretty tired. i'm weary from always having so much to do. i have a workload the size of Everest, and the more that i try to climb it, the further i seem to slip behind. my plans for diligently completing 3 classes this summer are slowly but steadily going up in smoke. work is, well, work. i get paid tomorrow, for which i am very glad. but that's not going to change anything. half of it will go into savings, and i really don't know what will become of the rest. i start teaching drum lessons tomorrow. i'm getting paid, but not a ridiculous sum. and then there's the things that i enjoy doing in my spare time: playing music, writing, taking photos, and such. i'm only able to involve myself in those things when i can find a little slot of time in my increasingly busy schedule.

maybe i'm overplaying things. i do that alot.



we should suspend ourselves between the stars.
we'd float above the passing cars.
and watch the sunrise from atop a cloud
and at the end of the day, we'd come back down