eventually, something will

i've had such a busy week i've hardly had time to blog. i went to mondays at ten for the first time, dead set on preparing something for next week and then all of a sudden it was friday and my plans for memorizing something quickly shot out the window but what the hell. i squeezed in some extra work for a tv show on wednesday in between restaurant shifts, getting ready to train for my next position, went to the LA artwalk and danced like crazy to my new fave LA band seanshan and saw robbie delong play a set at noize kontrol in the most random industrial neighborhood in huntington park last night. i was all set to go see cat on a hot tin roof tonight which was screening at the hollywood forever cemetary but i fell asleep instead. i've had a long week. tomorrow i'm getting a tattoo from my friend's tattoo artist who is having an open house and doing free tattoos as long as they are small and simple. then before you know it, it's monday again and i still don't have a new poem because i have such bad writer's block. i keep consistently writing in my journal every raw and boring detail of each day hoping that by the act of writing something will eventually come. eventually, something will. but it just hasn't happened yet. in fact, every page i end up writing, "but if only i could write a poem." i just really really want a new poem. and there doesn't happen to be one in me right now.

dad's canon

if i can ever take a whole roll of film without fucking it up, i have a beautiful new subject: koreatown. rookie mistakes like loading the film wrong or it getting caught on a mechanism forcing me to expose the whole roll has led me to many lost pictures. but hopefully you will soon be seeing my neighborhood from my dad's old canon ae-1. and maybe someday from my super 8mm. but that will be a much slower process. also, a new flash for my holga might make those photos come out better as well. mine are just not cool enough for the blogosphere. i'll have to get these things working because soon we will have couchsurfers and i must must must photograph each and every one of them.

here is a shot from an experimental roll.

azusa, ca

canon ae-1

a letter to my friends

as i laid in bed the other night i thought to myself, i can't believe i survived. i have been living at home for the last seven months....and i survived.

between the beginning of august to the end of september last year i made more life changing decisions than i ever have in that span of time. i had been living a pretty static life in azusa, working in a restaurant and not doing anything to push my career forward. so i moved home, endured a horrifying break up and settled into sacramento life. working in a restaurant yet again, living with my parents and leading a pretty solitary existence. when i first got up here i remember thinking, if only i could be in paris, if only my friends were near me, if only my loans were paid off, if only i could go to grad school. then i told myself, jamie - if you went to paris, you'd still be unhappy. all your baggage would follow you there. same for los angeles, san francisco, new york, london or anywhere. so i told myself that i wasn't allowed to move to a new city or travel anywhere until i could learn to be content here. if i could learn to be happy in rocklin, california then there might be some hope for me. it was time for me to finally learn how to do this. at first i had a five to six month plan to be back in LA, but then again, decided that i wouldn't move until a great opportunity fell in my lap. eventually it did.

the reason for my move home was mostly financial, but i additionally got to do some much needed "soul searching" as they call it. and as i pondered this in bed the other night i realized that i've made it. i'm through the hard part. i thought about how miserable i was when i first got here, how hard it was to even get out of bed in the morning. i thought about how painful enduring everyday was and compared that to how content and peaceful i feel now. i'm not gleefully happy everyday but i have peace, i can see light at the end of the tunnel, i see positive things ahead and i feel like i know who i am again. which has been the biggest gift i could get while being here.

so now i am packing up my things while i try to get hours at work. i am attempting to savor every last moment of being in the house i grew up in and living with my family, maybe for the last time. i am relieved to get out of the rocklin/roseville area because it can truly be heinous and i am excited to start a new life in los angeles - something i have been craving for a long time. i'll be driving down on a wednesday mornin' with a solid sense of who i am and what i want and a fresh set of new headshots. i feel ready.

jamie