>>it has been about a month and a half since i’ve given up smoking.  it has been pretty crazy.  i have caved a couple of times, once because i found a brand new cigarette sitting in an old pack behind the TV (?!?),  and once because i went and had drinks with my friend Helice, who convinced me to indulge in my drunken state.  whatever, its not a big deal.  i can get over those hiccups, i told myself, and i did.  

>>what was really daunting was the rest of my life.  

>>for a short while i just felt like i had become unhinged, like there were gears inside of me that all of a sudden bolted off, belts and cables coming undone. i have been struggling immensely with time management, not just with my friends (as aforementioned in previous entry), but with my art, and my schoolwork.

>>this is something that has been dogging me since i first moved to SF, and i suppose you can say that my quitting smoking this time around was really the catalyst that set my desire off, to really want to figure out how to legitimately balance my entire life. i felt like i had let my lack of finesse in this seemingly moot but immaculately important department really ruin or deter some of the finer things that have come and gone in my life, including a romantic relationship that basically dissolved on the basis of me really not being able to configure myself and my priorities correctly.

>>i am still not 100% perfect, but i feel like i am getting better at it. for the first time in my life, i am actually planning stuff like casual hanging out very far ahead in advance. if i get invited to do certain things at certain points where i know that i am unavailable, i always make it a point to reschedule somehow. this is then all written down on a calendar, which i would never have started doing had i not needed it to keep track of my progress in quitting cigarettes. i hate to say this, but i can actually see myself “NEEDING” an electronic organizer of some sort now, to keep everything in check.along those lines, however, i believe i am just changing as a person, also.

>>gone are the days when i dont have to worry about my longterm, big pictured future, where i can just relish in the trade winds of life, enjoying the semesters and the summers and the winters, wasting fat minutes whenever i chose to. that luxury is far gone. in fact, with graduation looming, i now wished that i had spent more of those carefree moments diligently drawing, or in the very least, DOODLING. it is an understatement to say that i am now making up for lost time. there is a large part of me that even wants to excommunicate myself from my social participations and whatnot, and really focus on simply recalibrating my state of mind to always be artistically alert, and burn from within to create at all moments of consciousness.

>>it is for these ongoing trains of thought in my life that i decided to head out to Ocean Beach today and draw whatever came to mind (PICTURE BELOW). with everything thats going on in the world, with the mess that is the Olympic Torch Rally, the imminent elections and that ever-present malaise that is Iraq, and with all the shit thats been going on in my life regarding time and my ill-mannered concept of it, it has not been very fun to be alive…. but the cool thing is, it is moments like these that make it fun as SHIT to be an artist. i had a million things going on, and i just busted out my copic wide colors and started laying colors down.art has a funny way of knocking life into perspective. it really puts everything in HD, a new angle on things that sometimes isnt welcome, but always very much needed. 

>>

>>for example, the other night, chris and i went and saw Les Claypool at the Warfield. anybody who knows me well enough knows that i am a huge Primus fan; i have seen them live 4 times, and this particular night would be the 2nd time that i would have seen Les Claypool as a singular unit sans Primus. as we waited for Les to come out, i was subjected to the opaquely stupid hippies that surrounded me. these fuckers seriously werent even old enough to BE hippies… if anything, they were probably the end products of a long, broken-condomed and LSD-barbed night back in 1968.so in more or less words, these lousy motherfucks were Gen X’ers who WISHED they were hippies. not even real hippies!!! everything from their hippie dancing to their incessant howling in between sets, and obviously their excessive joint sucking……all a pathetic attempt at touching a nerve in a movement that they themselves were too young to even be a part of.fine, i’ve been to Primus shows before, these crowds are old news for me.

>>but what REALLY disturbed me was the 40-year old yuppie/hippie/MILF, hanging off the nutsack of her 25-year old boy toy, trying to make coherent conversation with everybody in a 5-person radius. fine, again, old news. overly enthusiastic hippies trying to talk to me simply in hopes of me potentially pulling out a joint at any second to share with them, nothing i havent put up with before. it was this particular yippie-woman’s blatant peer-pressuring of the 16 year old kids standing next to me that really, REALLY got to me, like needle nose pliers to my spine. fine, do your drugs, but encouraging irresponsibility and making TEENAGERS feel square for not partaking in yours??? wat the fuck is that all about??? i seriously wanted to turn around and box her in the ears, but it was then and there that Les trotted out on stage with his clicks, pops, whammys and shammys, taking us on a decadent journey with his bass guitar, one that all of a sudden felt a little bit too familiar and not all that interesting to listen to anymore for a second.

>>by the end of the night, (going back to my original point), i just felt like i could have spent all that time at a cafe, sketching robots or sumthing. dont get me wrong, i will still continue going about doing the things that i love, and i am still a Claypool fan for life, but it really made me think about seriously grafting my artistic universe together with my social universe. i know tons of my peers do it with zero to no flaws, but this is a new concept to me…. one that i wish wasnt so new.it is all about looking forward now, though. i do not want to look back on this time and say that ive wasted myself away artistically, rather, i feel like ive been gradually becoming more aware and awake, and plan on building on that energy from there. as ive mentioned, i feel like i am about to turn a big corner artistically, i feel like something big is going to happen, and i am very excited about the possibilities that it holds. —jon   

April 9th, 2008 | friends, life, misc., other, relationships, school, shows | 1 comment

***BY THE WAY*** sorry that i have not posted anything new in the galleries. i will post new stuff when i have more material, and actual time to back-catalog everything!!! will let everyone know when this happens! *****THANKS!!!****

it has been about 3 weeks since i’ve quit smoking, and it has been a very strange time for me. with the assistance of the patch, i have managed to stay smoke-free for every single day since, except for one night when i was (too) drunk and got suckered into a menthol by a pretty girl. and while it is awesome that i have basically lost the urge to smoke, it has not been without its unpleasant side effects: bad skin, bad temper, moderate headaches, loss of sleep, and loss of focus.

the biggest one has been my loss of focus, concentration, and ultimately, motivation. ive been patching it since right before spring break, and since then, i have been practically dragging my knuckles to school, and always felt completely out of it. i just didnt ever know what to say whenever it came time to critique or offer my two cents about stuff, and i’ve been late on a couple of assignments already. it is even affecting the way i normally function and talk to people. sometimes ill forget what i was going to say mid-sentence, and as a result have been stumbling around like a child in the dark, dialogue-wise at least. i am just thankful that i have had a week off, not so much to relax, but really evaluate myself and figure out what the hell to do next so as not to tank the entire semester.

initially i was nervous about entertainting the idea of going off the patch, but then i realized that the patch itself has become almost a psychological crutch, that i was relying too much on this thing to get rid of cravings instead of really challenging myself and motivating myself to truly quit. the choice became easy after i talked to my mom about it one day, who merely gave me a bunch of support, and suggested that i start eating healthier, drink more tea, and take more vitamin B.

there are different things i can do in my life now to move forward without cigs, both long-term and short-term, but like my mother pointed out, while the patch was probably a good starting point, the ultimate oppurtunity cost doesnt really come in my favor if it is severely hampering my artistic endeavors.

another interesting aspect of my life that i have been dealing with since i decided to quit smoking is my concept of friendship. maybe it is just me dealing with a bunch of weird mood swings and my mind doing weird things to me, but i have felt out of synch with just about everybody for the last month. like, EVERYBODY. i cannot think of a single person who has not rubbed me the wrong way, either by doing something while we were hanging out, or by saying something, or by acting in a certain way. i just couldnt fucking relate to anybody 100%, not even my closest core group of friends. no offense, anybody. and i felt like i had all this emotion and all this stuff i wanted to express, but if i did, nobody would understand. i guess i have always felt this way, but with the quitting of smokes it has just magnified these emotions in both directions.

needless to say, while i have surrounded myself in friends and company i dont normally get to have on a regular basis, i was almost always someplace else in my head, somewhere between loneliness and the infinite melancholy. i really dont want to disrespect anybody, and i hope nobody feels personally singled out, i am not trying to be malicious or critical, it is just something that i am going through right now that i feel like nobody can really relate to.

i hope things get better. it is easy to say that it will, but making it happen is definitely going to take a lot of hard work.

-jon

March 24th, 2008 | friends, life, misc., relationships | 2 comments