This is fucked. My brain is fucked. I wish I could just shake my head really hard like an etch a sketch and erase all the bad ideas and the shit that's stuck in there so I can start clean with a whole bunch of new ideas.

I have been sitting here listening to metal, like I mentioned I would like to do. It hasn't been fruitful though. I thought I'd be creative, but that didn't happen. I tried. Didn't work. But let me talk for a moment about metal. It was nice to relive for a moment my past, back when I was a total long haired headbanging loser. Jesus, though, some of that shit sucks. The lyrics suck, Dave Mustaines voice sucks. Like yeah, Megadeath rocks on a certain level, but his voice is so horrible. And Pantera's lyrics are mostly white trash bullshit. I guess this is the shit I used to dig. Right now I'm listening to System of a Down. Good metal. It's nice to listen to aggressive music once in a while, I don't do it enough, but that old shit just don't do it for me anymore. The shit thing is that some people like my mom and Jennore and probably a couple others think I still listen to this stuff just because they don't know me anymore or have this idea that I'm just the same pinhead I was a few years ago. I'm an entirely different pinhead.

So trying to be creative just doesn't work, and I really don't know what will work anymore. I just don't have any ideas anymore, and I honestly don't know why I care, to tell you the truth. It's like I'm haunted by it. I think it would be nice to just put all the paint and all the paintings and the easel and all that shit away, just hide it somewhere, maybe just for a while. Don't really get it out until it calls to me, until I'm going to do something that has some value. Because that's the thing, I just have nothing these days. For a while back in the day I had my style, the thing I do most, and anyone who has seen most of my art knows what I'm talking about here. So I had that, but then no ideas were coming and I was blank for a while. Then I did the fingerpainting thing for a bit, which was a serious good time and I had a lot of fun with it and it was the focus of several drunken nights.

Lately though, and especially since I started trying to do First Thursday I can't seem to get away from thinking about what will sell. Back when I was in Utah I knew there was no chance of selling my art, no chance in the world, so I painted whatever I wanted and I painted it because I wanted to. I did whatever I did simply because I wanted to, there was no marketing involved. Just something to hang on the wall, and maybe to show my friends. But now it's all fucked up. I feel desperate I guess. I'm in the same desperate position that I've been in forever, a job that isn't going anywhere and no skills or education to get me anywhere I'm clinging to that one thing I have that I've been convinced all my life is the thing I'm good at: art. So I can't be an artist, I can only be a guy who is trying to come up with something marketable. Even if I try to throw the whole marketing thing off to the side and just paint something it's still in my brain because I know I'm not painting for me, I'm painting because I feel like I have to. I'm still waiting for that idea, the one that is going to be my salvation, the thing that will keep me from becoming a thirty year old pizza man in two short years.

I need something else and guess what? Art isn't doing it! I've got nothing! And I can never be content and happy and just enjoy my life. I can't enjoy portland and I can't enjoy my new convertible and I can't enjoy just being with the girl I love and I can't enjoy the way the clouds get all swollen and fluffy and glowy as they drift over downtown, that image that makes me want to cry because I love this city, or at least the idea of this city, so much every time I think of it, because to stop and enjoy any of those things for any extended period of time would mean I'm accepting my position in life and I'm not moving forward, I'm not finding that great idea that will make me rich and make my mom proud. The one that will keep everyone from saying, "You better do something, you could have delivered pizzas in Utah!" Something that will shut up all my well meaning friends who are so goddamn supportive it kills me to let them down and say, "I have no art! I have nothing! What do you want from me?" Be an artist? What do you think that means? Do you have any idea? Because I don't.

I think about this shit all the time. Fucking constantly. It haunts me. I'm so far away from home and from all the people I want to impress that I don't have to care anymore, but I can't not care. I don't know how to live my own life just for me. I don't know how to enjoy the fact that a couple of years ago I couldn't pay any of my bills on time and I was basically a complete fuck up and now I've got my shit together and I'm responsible about everything. My life is sort of together, in a way, at least more than it has ever been since I was sixteen or so, and that's not good enough. It's not good at all! It's all fucked up and I'm a total mess. And I can't believe I'm still typing. This has to stop.

Just a quick note though: Now that all the metal has ended I had to put on some Mingus. Must be a sure sign I'm getting old.