long time, no jake

Hello boys and girls,

It has been a while, hasn't it?  I think I should getta beer before starting in on this.  brb.

yes, so I got to thinking today.  I left Florida for a reason.. that reason being an overwhelming feeling of destiny that had embraced me and moved me in this life-changing direction.  I felt as if I was being pushed here from every direction from a multitude of positive and logical sources.

So here I am.  I was on such a positive upswing, everything was falling into place, my tide was flowing.  But shortly after arriving, I fell into the ebb and a sort of nasty downward spiral of emotional crapola.  Maria told me it would happen, that I'd become depressed, and at the time, I knew she was right but I didn't care.  The past few months have been low, and lower.  I write now because I feel that the tide is changing once again, and it starts with the remembrance of that original feeling of purpose.  I moved out here for a reason.

While I was visiting Orlando over the holidays, my apartment was "burglarized".  I always say "robbed", as it sounds much more accurate to my ears, but for technical purposes, I use the B word.  I lost many, many, many, things.  Most of them I don't really miss, but few of them I miss very much.  I think most of all would be my Army of Darkness "Ash VS. Evil Ash" 2-pack that I had personally signed by the chin himself, Mr. Bruce Campbell.  When I was a boy, I had a birthday at the failed Florida theme park flavor of the year, Boardwalk & Baseball.  They had some bitchin' rollercoasters, but the coolest was that you could have your very own personal baseball card made.  You could pick your stats, your team, fucking everything.  That's gone, along with the rest of the baseball and various other trading cards I collected as a kid.  Both of my fucking guitars, POD2.0, and amp.. gone.  Now I just look around and say, "why the fuck didn't they take this?" or "thank God they didn't take this".

It puts things in perspective, somewhat.  Kind of like after "Jack" has his apartment blown up in Fight Club.. most of the shit I honestly won't miss.. some of it I probably won't even realize is missing for a few years.  The worst part is knowing that someone was in my fucking place, going through my shit, and all of that.  I want to catch the person who did it really fucking bad.  It kind of makes you paranoid, too.  You start wondering who did it, everyone becomes suspect.  It's pretty lame.

But back to the general "how's it going?" thing.  The answer is a mediocre okay.  It's not fucking spectacularly awesome out here, the people aren't measurably cooler, the women definitely don't stack up against what Orlando had to offer, although.. I'm very biased in that category thanks to a certain girl whom I wish on a daily basis that I was still with.  It's basically the exact same to me, except I'm about 100x more lonely, work with old Russian guys instead of crazy Orlando teenagers, and pay about twice as much for rent.  Oh, but one enormous perk/difference is the amount of great bands that tour through here.  Since I've moved here, I've seen:  Massive Attack, TV on the Radio, Beck, Blackalicious, Blonde Redhead, Basement Jaxx, Peeping Tom, The Prodigy, MSI, Shiny Toy Guns, Tenacious D, Primus, Reverend Horton Heat, and Rob Zombie.  This week I'm seeing Garbage and Joey Santiago & David Lovering (of the Pixies) play with The Martinis at the same show.  Next month, it's Sebadoh and in April it's RATM, AIR, Bjork, and RHCP among many others at Coachella.

I miss you, guys.. and as odd as it is to admit it, I miss the town.  Two nights ago, I had a dream that I moved back to Orlando.. and for some reason my Mom was so upset.. she was crying.  I was moving back to take over my old store because I recently found out that my old Store Manager quit and my old District Manager is leaving, too.  I think subconciously, my inner manager wants to take control of my old store, (which they'd never let me do in reality).  But that was the first dream that I had that specifically entailed me moving back.. most of the time I just dream about specific people or places from my past.  I -always- dream about the house I grew up in.

anyway, to make a long post short, (too late!), I'm alive and well, but not too terribly happy.. not for the moment, anyway.  I hope to change all that in the not-to-distant future.  and again, I do miss you all.  I know I never call and never write, but that's classic jake, for you.  If you do ever wanna talk, I'm here.

goodnight.