I Made It!

I just came out of the most nasty, gray winter ever. We're starting to ease into our spring pattern of weather- rainy mornings and sunny afternoons. Wildflowers are sprouting and the moss is greening up. My attitude and my feelings about music, and everything else, have changed so dramatically in one year.
I feel like I shook off the 7 years of poverty and anxiety pretty quickly. It's been a huge positive change for me to move from some place that didn't like me, that took active measures to keep me out, into a place where I'm wanted. I spent 7 years begging bumbling PhDs to permit me to sacrifice more money on their altar. Begging $9/hr jobs to allow me to leave my trailer for an extra water break. I did all that only to find that teaching was the most abusive profession on earth. Abuse from administrators, abuse from students, politicians, parents... Faculty who refused to recommend me because I'm not religious, administrators who sent mispelled emails in all caps- it was a nightmare. Now when I go to a meeting at work, I'm among friends. I work with people who keep me on my toes, and to whom my skeptical and critical nature is an enormous asset.
I'm still getting my head around just how different my life got in 1 year.
Before 2007 I had never even been West of the Mississippi, I made one trip to PDX. I had never seen mountains in North America, let alone all of the things I saw in a one week trip across the country: prairie dogs, antelope, sagebrush, nazi biker gangs, the rainforest, coyotes, seals, bald eagles, gigantic water beetles, salmon(they actually jump), himalayan blackberry brambles the line my roads now like strip malls used to. All the modern furniture and electronics I could never find in Nashville is popping up left and right around me. In short, Seattle is exactly what my adolescent fantasy of Seattle hoped for. I had almost convinced myself that every place was as miserable for me as Nashville.
My situation now is far from perfect, but when I look back at the dystopia I left, this is heaven. If I could, I would take a gigantic skil saw and cut the southeast off of the US and let it sink into the ocean. I can't even stand to hear the accent on TV sometimes. The only thing I miss is the immigrant population that I enjoyed the benefit of, and the sunshine. It's impossible to find anything in the way of a Seattle equivalent of Nolensville Road here. I miss my international markets.
I was in the wrong place. Sometimes I meet some poor lost southerner wandering around the northwest, and most of them are so unhappy here.
So now that the dust has settled, I need to keep an eye on craigslist for some of the great 60s japanese guitars that go for peanuts out here, and decide what kind of music I'll make when I live in a place where I can breathe, and where there's no pressure, and maybe even an audience.

Stupid song I made to test out the totally amazing acoustic guitar that my Dad was nice enough to lend me.