June Backlogs

6/16/23 Nose Update #

Dang fam, it’s been a while. I’ve been pretty busy since I quit my job. I skimmed the last blog post I made and saw that I was mentioned having these depressive episodes. I still kind of have them, but I just kind of accept them when they happen and now they’ve been happening farther and fewer.

I’ve been back home in my hometown of Scranton, PA. I went and sang a Title Fight cover down at the Hyperview sign and I’m going to throw it up on YouTube soon. Other than that I was recovering from a nose surgery to correct my deviated septum. It was rough and left me completely incapacitated for 5 days or so. I don’t recommend nose surgery, but if you do I recommend Dr. Nyquist at Jefferson haha.

6/18/23 Lil Buddy #

I’m looking for a new car. Mine is having too many problems. I haven’t been able to have a real hard workout since my nose surgery and I can’t for at least another week and a half. I have a lot of anxiety as I write this. For a lot of reasons. I think I’ve returned to this blog to make it better. Writing helps. (Sometime soon I’m going to finally put this blog on my website for all to see.) The immediate anxiety I can feel however is about these Instagram reels I made. I tried to make a stupid joke about being gay and doing crime in my caption, and I got what I believed was deserved criticism. Although I have to learn to be immune to the haters I think this moment solidified that I have to be extra careful on certain topics. The anxiety I’ve gotten from the Instagram reels I’ve made has been pretty wild. I have a hard time looking at the anxiety and the situation from an objective point of view, but as time has gone on I’ve gotten better and better at it. I made them mostly for myself. I’ve gained insight into myself. And I’ve made progress with this fear of the online perception of myself. Progress with the fear of preserving my online persona. Whatever the heck that is. It’s fodder. It’s blah blah blah. With the reels, I set the bar low on purpose.

Since I’ve been home I’ve hung out with Albert Kausmeyer quite a bit. He’s in two bands here in Scranton. Pollen and Bullied by The Elderly. Pollen is a Scranton super group. Their bassist is in All Day Special. Their songwriter and guitarist Caleb was in a different band back in Texas where he’s from. And their drummer, Ian, is in Channel 65. I love them all.

I made a video for Channel 65 and their song “Lil Buddy” and it came out perfect! I seriously haven’t gotten sick of it. It conjures the vibe its going for. Go watch it:

Albert recorded the music for “Lil Buddy” at his home studio, which I had the pleasure of seeing yesterday. It was like an oasis of instruments and microphones and interfaces. I always love seeing the Scarlett 18i20. It was clear to me when I saw his home studio that Albert is a league above me as far as gear knowledge goes. I don’t know the first thing about recording to be honest, except that experimentation is key. A one inch misplacement of a microphone is more noticeable than it being changed from analog to digital. So get freaky with your gear and your recording equipment. Maybe Dimmer will record at his house. We’ll have to wait and see. I know that I want Dimmer to sound really full and mixed and mastered well. While still remaining rough around the edges. I feel like if an audio engineer in a studio heard me say that they’d roll their eyes.

I’m trying to work on my own project soon. I want to have something that is all mine. Obviously I want to be open to suggestions but I want full creative control. I’m a performer at heart. And I have a lot of personal shit to express. I was going to revive the name “2Long”, but I don’t want to run another social media account. “2Long” might be the name of the album. The thought of having access to and running multiple instagrams is nauseating.

It really is peaceful back home. I wish I was doing more fun things with other adolescent folk. Everybody I know works like a dog. Especially back home. No young people I know have both the time and money to do fun stuff. I think maybe they lost the attitude to have fun as well.

I hate worrying about money. Sometimes this world makes me absolutely sick. I’m so thankful for my friends and family.

I think I narrowed down what I want to do with my life for the foreseeable future. I’ll keep you posted.

6/21/24 More Shows #

The news happens to be on as I’m writing this. It’s saying how Louisiana and Texas are putting the Ten Commandments in every classroom. What a slippery slope that seems to be.

I just put a deposit down to have a show and vendor festival at St. Mary’s Center in Scranton. Kayla Grezch has been helping me a lot as she is more familiar with the diy scene in Scranton than I am. She’s got the knack for making nice things to look as well. Dimmer just got our housing situation settled for our Penn State show July 13th. We’re playing Penn State Fest. I’m excited to play with our friend Bennett. Also Benji and Mike and Prim (Chicago Fire) are playing with Sun Organ and Fib at Cousin Danny’s. There’s also some Asheville bands on the bill I’m excited to hear as well. I’m excited for that show so I hope it’s swag money. I saw Sun Organ not too long ago at Love City Brewing, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to Tim. I’m a big fan of Sun Organ, and I love its production. Fib too. If you’re signed to Jwar, there is a good chance I’m a fan.

6/24/24 Windy Website Work #

It was windy today. Like windy as a curse word. I’m still back in Scranton. I finally started real work on my website today. It uses Hugo and I am slowly starting to learn how to use it. Hugo is a static website generator that uses Go to be lightning fast. My friend Jay Rush uses it for Trueblocks.io and Jeff used it for the Philly Scene site.

I’m hoping to finally get all these blogs onto my website. I think the other stuff will change overtime but the blog will be consistent and I’ll have tags so you the reader can parse through my nonsense a little bit. I have a lot to read but I am excited to go through all my posts and see how different my headspace and daily activities looked compared to now.

In therapy today I talked about how I want to be held more accountable. So I decided to take more of a life coach approach with them. I have clearly defined tasks that I need to complete between our sessions. If I don’t complete them we’re going to analyze why. It’s almost like I’m making my therapist my teacher and I have homework due. Might as well use the brainwashed pathways I have installed in my head to my own advantage here. The brainwashing of academia I mean. Of school and studying and assignment due dates. I got all my work done in school and it made me stressed out, but this time I’m assigning my own homework. No one’s grading me except myself. And there’s no actual punishment for missing deadlines, but here I can trick myself into thinking that. I may be oversharing here but dear reader, maybe you can try the same strategy some day. I don’t have any results yet, but I do have high hopes about a productivity idea for once.

On a final note I’m finally escaping Scranton this Wednesday. I got a boxy and sharp SUV. Let’s get it. Time to build credit.

6/28/24 Shady’s back #

Yo check it out I can insert code markup right onto the blog! Here’s the Hugo command I use to generate a new blog post:

hugo new blog/2023/julie-work/index.md

I’m back in the wonderful city of Philadelphia and I’ll admit that things felt right almost instantly. Back home feels so slow compared to my life here and I’m not saying one is better than the other, but I feel so much more right to be in the city. I’m a city slicker.

I went to Philamoca two days ago to see Teethe, People I Love, and 22° Halo. These bands fit really well together on this bill. There were no mosh pits. Which was very surprising. I want to try and talk about bands after I see them live. This show was one of those shows where I like to stand in a good spot in the venue so I can hear the sound the best. I then close my eyes and let the music take me aways. All of these bands are perfect for that. I recommend all of that if you’re trying to get into more somber, melancholy, and thematic music.

The influence that came to mind when I listened to Teethe for the first time was the band Duster. The way they ride out the melodies and add vocal harmonies with it are magical. God, I feel like Fantano. If you connect with it, its fantastic. I reccommend their self-titled.

People I Love is creatively steered the most I believe by Dan from the acts Waveform* and Lola Star. There seems to be a pace of musicians from these three bands (Waveform*, People I Love, and Lola Star) who collaborate together. To the extent I don’t know, but I think it’s fair to say given their drummer Avery plays for all three bands. I binged as many People I Love songs as I could before the show. And they were great to hear live. I think the songs are a bit zany, in a good way, but I personally like the lyrics and unique production the most.

22° Halo is a band I was put onto a while ago, and their soft music was just what I needed at the time. Its soft and nice. Listening them to me live brought me to a happy quiet place. This band is a vibe in their own right and I hope Will Kennedy and the rest of them can keep making stuff and stay in the Philly scene as time goes on. I saw them before at Mini Mart, standing on the balcony above them, but this time on the ground level it felt more intimate.

That Mini Mart show was also where I believed to have met Sebastian from Bedridden, who was also at this show at Philamoca. We complained about back pain from standing too long, which may be the topic of a future blog post.

“Back pain at shows and why its worth the suffering.”

Also, did you try out the light mode for the website? Click the little sun icon below.