Jaws Theme Swimming…

So, I have been trying to maintain some sort of "Social networking" mind frame when it comes to this website, but it seems like the best I can do for right now is just write some entries for my own archival purposes.

I don’t have a whole lot of leisure time lately.

 

I am currently doing school, full time, at Salt Lake Community College.

It’s nothing great…but greater than nothing, right?

Other than that, I have been hard at work with getting the re-formation of Dane and the Death Machine off of the ground, into a new album, and back onto the stage. This hasn’t been taking a whole lot of time, but has been taking a lot of my energy, merely because I have found myself with the new (to me) task of actually having to delegate my time and energy in a sequential pattern of what is most important to what is least important. Dane and the Death Machine falls somewhere close to the bottom of the "very important list", which is not to say that it is not very important, I just have a few lists, and as far as the most important list goes, it looks something like this.

1 – Constantly improving myself, my morals, my priorities, and over-all becoming a man…the type of man that people are not ashamed to be associated with.

2 – Taking care of my beautiful love, Rachael. Making sure she is safe, okay and comfortable. Not too stressed out, not too over-worked. I am trying to make sure that she does not have to take on the challenges of life alone anymore. I want to make sure that we can continue to build on the friendship that we formed some ten years ago, while also solidifying a structure for the new romantic relationship we are creating. She is the first person I have ever been in a relationship with where I feel like we are a team. I have given selflessly to her more than I have ever given to anyone, even myself, and she has reciprocated every single drop. She is amazing, beautiful, smart, talented, artistic, funny, sweet, understanding, and so gentle and caring it blows my mind. We might be the two luckiest people in the world because I never truly thought that there was a love like this in the world. I have always heard that it is better to be friends with someone first, but even in most friendship first cases, people don’t get as lucky as we are.

3 – Taking care of Rachael’s daughter; Echo. I never wanted to be a father because I am afraid that my genes are so fucked up whatever child I brought into this world would be just as equally fucked up…I’m starting to see now that maybe my crazy tendencies were never in my genetics, they had a lot more to do with nurture than nature. My mom even told me a few weeks ago that she is starting to think I was never bi-polar…but I was abused in so many ways at such an early age, and started so many chemical dependantcies by age 13 that it was maybe impossible to say anything was wrong with me when no one knew who I was except for the few fleeting glimpses between black-outs. Anyway, for a while there around December I was thinking about how my life could maybe benefit from having some other people to man up to. They were kind of just weird thoughts, but I ended up getting one of my friends pregnant and she aborted it without telling me…until about April. Since February of 2009 I have been going through a lot of really rough and hard changes. A lot of cold reality, and way too many bullets to bite.
            Right before I Rachael and I started to date in mid April of 2010 (and I actually hadn’t seen her for a few years until then) I decided to cut all of my hair off. My great grandmother was full blood Native American and my grandma and a lot of my dad’s family kept a lot of the spirit and tradition of that heritage alive, because the Native Americans are, and have been, facing the slowest genocide the world has ever seen for some three hundred years now. One of the things that always stuck with me was when I asked my grandma why so many of the men kept such long hair. She told me that it had to do (in our tribe at least, and I have heard in others) with a sense of pride in being who they were. When you saw a man with shorter hair, it was usually because he felt it was time for a certain chapter to close in his life, and altering his outward appearance was just a reminder to himself and to others that he was no longer the same man he had been holding on to for so long…I made the decision to cut off a good six inches (at least) just days before Rachael came back into my life…and then I met Echo.
             The strangest part is that, no matter how hard it feels at times, taking care of this little girl has already begun to change me in so many great ways…I live with the two of them now, and for as tired and stressed out as I can seem to get, I wouldn’t ever, not even under the fear of death, be able to say that every second is not worth it.

 

4 – School comes in at fourth, although it is kind of in a limbo somewhere, because getting school taken care of actually plays a big part in numbers 1 – 3. Number 1 should also not sound like I put myself first before my girls, because it is not about making sure my needs are met, it is about making sure I am able to meet the needs of others. School actually somewhat plays into the whole bettering myself thing, but for the sake of time allotment, it has to have it’s own spot on the priority list. A lot of time goes towards this, and I am just hoping the pay off will be worth the investment.

 

5 – Dane and the Death Machine comes in at five. It’s something that will always be important to me. I no longer care about making money from it, I don’t care about being famous from it, but my gorgeous love, Rachael, is in the band with me, and it is a great way to let out our creative side, and share in something that we are both extremely passionate about. It’s a great bonding experience, and the reason we even started dating in the first place…one late jam session just got a little heated haha. But yeah…this is something that will always remain important to me, but until school is out of the way it’s going to have to play fifth fiddle for a while.

 

6 – My friends. My circle of friends has shrunk dramatically in the last year. Being homeless, overcoming addictions, and making amends has really shown me who my true friends are. They know who they are and they know how much I love them. I try to make as much possible time for them as possible, and they all love the new "family" I seem to be making for myself. They even love the "new" me as I am starting to emerge as a man who stands for something…my biological family has also been noticing the effort I am making to become something more than a bottom feeding monster, and I have been making amends with them as well. It’s really weird…it shouldn’t be, but it is…my dad has always tol

d me that when you try to help yourself, others will flock to help you as well. My "brother", The West, even put this down in a lyric, "Heal yourself and they will clap out-loud."
              I’m feeling grateful for the first time in my life. I’m feeling lucky…I’m feeling blessed.

 

Anyway, I just finished up some school homework shit, I haven’t slept a whole lot in the last few days, I have been stressed, I haven’t had a cigarette in 28 hours because I am finally quitting for the final time, I don’t drink as much so it’s harder to sleep…I have been grumpy all day, but spent it all with family, and as I lay here next to my gorgeous Rachael, I realized that maybe I should put down in cold hard words exactly what my priorities are, and how thankful I am for the things that I have right now.

 

Goodnight OD land.

 

-Dane