It's the end of the year

It's the end of the year almost, which is when the "end of the year top whatevers" lists come out.

I'm not going to do that here. What I am going to do is recount some of the songs that define 2010 for me. I may not post every day, but this was quite a year for me and I have a lot of memories centered around music.

Back in January of this year I was quite aware that my life was completely different than it had been in years previous. My taste in music changed in part because of where I worked, where I hung out, who I hung out with and in part because rock music was kind of dead to me at that time last year. Nothing spoke to me.

I was also kind of sad and for some reason hearing this bad ass bad girl anthem from a girl who had gone through a really rough time in the public eye, I don't know it was inspiring and fun and for awhile this song was my theme song. I know I must have spun it on the air a million times, but I listened to it in my car, or on my iPod when I was running. It was the beat, it was the lyrics, it was the toughness, it was Rihanna who I love... Anyway I will always think of the early part of 2010 when I hear this song, driving home from the radio station in the dark, wondering if anything was ever going to change.

we'll be young forever

A year ago I was in a really really weird place.

Deeply unhappy at home but no idea how to express that I was feeling that way. It seemed impossible after all, how could I be unhappy? I'd just gone back to work, had started getting my body back, had a cute house, great friends, I wasn't single and I thought I was in love.

That sounds shitty when I say it that way. I was in love with him. That's true.

When I wasn't working, I didn't long for much but work. That year "off" was really hard on me both emotionally and physically. I guess I just stopped wanting anything but to go back to work and every failed job interview or resume I sent out without getting an answer was devastating. I was pretty sure I was never going to work again actually. I'd just about given up. The week I went in to interview to work at Wild, I had also applied at Starbucks, a jewelry store, a personal assistant, a receptionist... I'd even taken a job I thought was going to be rad at a "publicists" agency, which turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of spoiled rich kids playing "office." (Yeah I said it, wanna fight?) I left after two days.

Under all of this stress, this depression, this rudderlessness, I didn't notice that back at the ranch things were going sour in my love life. Because I didn't have the energy to worry. It was there. He hadn't left in the middle of the night and taken the cat. I was so focused on getting a job again and getting "me" back, that it was almost all I had energy for. Beyond the crying jags and the three or four trips I took to do things I never had time for while working just to do SOMETHING.

So I got the job at Wild. And the fog lifted and I started... I don't know mingling with my kind again. I didn't know how STARVED I was to talk about radio, to talk about music, to just talk about bitchy office bull-ish until there was one day I was at work and I made my boss laugh or something. We had started telling radio stories. In a weird way me and the boys in the back became the Three Amigos or something, because there we were in our little pirate ship doing what we love at any means neccesary. I don't know who did what first but by the time I went home for Thanksgiving, I knew I had a solid foundation back home. Friends. Brothers. People that opened my eyes to two things: I am not that bad and I am alive.

By Christmas, I knew... things weren't ever going to be the way they were again at home, no matter how hard I tried. Because I was someone else again. I was me, and not this defeated little thing. I'll tell you right now I walked into my last job not knowing shit. I knew how to talk on the radio and how to boss my boss around (ha ha, kinda) but not really how to do my actual job. I learned on the fly, on fire, with a team of cheerleaders and from one of the coolest mofo's I've ever known. It was very SoCal touchy feely but they let me in, they held me up and taught me everything they knew. Changed my life really. By Christmas I knew that my heart had changed it's mind and I had to do something with myself.

I didn't know last Thanksgiving, that a year later I'd be here, in Chico, hundreds of miles from everyone who made this possible, doing something I had always said I could do (and did do for awhile) and doing it better than a lot of people will ever let on. I have the professional gig I always wanted more or less. I made friends with lightening fast speed, I am seriously shocked myself, I'm a goober, I don't even want to hang out with me. I tried so many new things and met so many great people and formed my own little radio family up here as well.

And then there's the happiest accident of all, Ben. Last year I wouldn't see myself here, getting ready to go out to tacos with my boyfriend on a random Thursday night because we've been so good living off of boxed meals and staying home (or homes I guess, we don't live together) for over a week! There's a lot to be said for this boy, but the most important part of it is, he sees me for exactly who I am. He knows when I'm broke or simply too overwhelmed to function and he just fixes it. Brings me groceries because he knows I'll just not eat before trying to figure out how to go to the grocery store on 10 bucks, helps me with the dishes, brought me a vaccuum cleaner when I couldn't get mine back from the coast... I don't ask, he just does. I never thought of myself as the girlfriend of a grad student, a teacher, a hydrologist, a scientist, a beer snob who loves to eat Ethnic meals, a lover of music and movies who gives the best hugs in Chico? Forget it, I never would've imagined it.

Doesn't mean it's not awesome. Doesn't mean I'm not happy.

A year ago I was lost and a group of people took me in and gave me the tools to find my own way home. I may still be traveling, in fact I know I am, but I'm closer than I was before.

Musica

I've been listening to Taio Cruz a lot lately. No one knows why.

me and love

My job has always been an issue in my relationships. I can't remember one that it wasn't. There is always the threat of my needing to move to another city for an opportunity or the long hours or the fact that I spend 90% of my time surrounded by men only, because there aren't a lot of girls in my business. It's always caused friction in my life as I am sure no one likes feeling like they come second to something else, even if they don't actually come second, it sometimes feels like it I'm sure.

I relate to this Gaga quote because I've done it a million times. Been sitting there looking at that decision. That ultimatum. Me or that. Us or radio. Us or the next adventure. Be with me or go be "famous" (I don't think I'm famous but I've had this load of shit thrown at my face before.) I've always chosen work. I've always chosen me. I'm selfish that way.

I've never regretted it though. And I honestly think it's impossible for me to meet someone who understands 100% how my business works. Because if I meet someone like that, they probably work in the same business and they're just as driven as I am. Just as ambitious. Just as focused. Just as much of a geek. I know there are more of "me" out there, I've worked with them. I've admired them. But I also know that given the choice: a relationship or work, they'd chose work, just like me. Work is always there, there is always something to be done, you can always go drown yourself in it when you're lonely.

To be fair, nothing is wrong now. I'm not terribly lonely or having issues really, just saw this today and it really struck me. Kinda weird to know one of the most famous women in the world has the same world view as me....

home

So right now I'm trying to play my trip back to Bakersfield for Thanksgiving. Hell, I'm TRYING to go home for Thanksgiving. The way things have been going and the sheer distance involved, I am almost not sure I can. I don't get the day before Thanksgiving off. I basically can not drive at night and it's supposedly six hours to Bako from here, although it took me 10 hours last time I did the drive.

Ben may come with me, which would be cool because then he could drive us down the night before Thanksgiving after I get off work. That'd be great, yeah we'd get into town hella late, but it beats me dragging into town at like Noon on Thanksgiving day. We could stay until Saturday and then swing through SLO for a night if any of my friends are going to be in town (I'm looking at you Teresa!) because he's never been to San Luis Obispo and drive home Sunday morning EARLY. It's gonna depend on his school schedule and his work schedule and if of course he actually decides to come.

If I don't go home, this would be the first holiday in my life I didn't spend with my family. I have no idea what I'd do here. Maybe have an orphans Thanksgiving of my own... I guess I could take the train but I don't even know what that would cost, when it would leave, etc.

I have moved to the damn moon.

Been chatting with some of my people back home at the old stations and maaaaan I miss them. I forgot to mention that when I was home last month, Wild sounds as amazing as ever. I stopped in there twice over the weekend and was shocked at how much I missed it. When I was there on Saturday visiting someone I kept feeling like I should get up and do something. I may have even offered to voice track. It's silly but I felt more at home there at the end than ever did running my own station over across the street. Could've been the people I worked with. Could've been that whole thing where you have to bond when there are like three of you. Could've been working with my best friends. I don't know. I know we were "miserable" there a lot but it was a really special time and place for me and I'll never ever regret it.

Anyway I have radio of my own to make. We're in the middle of planning another huge event and I'm exhausted. Go figure.

glimpses of a life

"The worst that could happen? I could go home and kiss people. I DO THAT!"

"You kiss everyone, and tell everyone you love them. That's just you."

"You're okay with that?"

"I am strangely okay with that."

In 30 hours I'll be back in San Luis Obispo.

More music I like that no one else does

Run this town...

This song came out about a year ago.



About a year ago I worked somewhere that played this song constantly. It's one of the first songs I remember really liking that we played. Every time I hear it I think of how weird it was to go back into the business after a year off. And how alien it was to go back into it, in a format I hadn't done in over 10 years.

I remember one night driving down the 101 to meet Teresa at a party because I was going to DJ a wedding for some friends of her parents that weekend, I was hustlin' pretty hard there for cash at that time. I was listening to our station, because I fell in love with it after about five minutes and I remember hearing this song. It might have been September by that point, and feeling kind of excited... I can't explain it but even then, I knew that going to work in that building was just the start of the next phase, that something was on it's way for me. And maybe it was going to be in SLO, maybe something else would come along, but thanks to a few people who constantly had my back, especially then when everything was new and scary, I knew things were going to get better.

It's funny because here I am in a new situation again. And those same people? Man they have my back still and regularly talk me off of whatever mental ledge I throw myself on. And some of them, I've known forever and some of them I wouldn't know on sight a year ago but now I can't imagine not knowing them and having them in the familia as it were...

This song sounds best cranked up loud in a car, windows down,driving. Doesn't matter where you're going... you'll get there baby.

one little email

Made my entire day. Just putting that out there. Even all the way up here, on the moon, one little line of text...

It's that easy sometimes to make someone happy. Take that information with you, use it. Make someone's day in a non-Dirty Harry kind of way.

365 days later...

This is me on the last day of being 30 years old. Tomorrow I turn 31, if I like it or not. Oddly enough although I dreaded my 30th birthday like I was going to the gallows, being 30 ended up being kind of a roller coaster ride of sorts...

365 days ago I wasn't working. I didn't think I'd ever work again to be honest, I was ready to get a job (shudder) outside of radio and just do what I had to do. I wasn't particularly happy with my weight, my situation in life and I just sort of felt like... well like being 30 was going to just suck.

Then about a month into it, my friend Teresa called me. She'd been working at some radio group in town and they had an opening. And I applied and through some miracle of miracles I got that job and went to work with a bunch of people I've come to think of as my family. I made new friends, I became closer with friends I already had (hello Teresa is my SISTER these days, yo) I tried new things and started running, for my health, not because a big damn bear was chasing me.

And then another job came along. And it was like job Christmas, this was the job I'd been waiting for my whole life and suddenly there it was. Waiting for me to come take it and take a big scary leap. Which I did, because hey, what's life but a series of big scary leaps, one right after the next? So off I went.

So here I am. 30 for just a few more hours. It's a trip to think about how much has changed in just one year and to think how many people became so important to me in that short time and really touched my life. I just feel blessed. And oddly enough calm about turning 31. I have a feeling everything is just getting started for me...