For Auld Lang Syne

It's New Years Eve, December 31'st 2014.  In just roughly 24 hours time, we will start the new 2015 year.

I'm going over in my head what I was doing the last 20 years on this of all nights.

Twenty years ago, December 31'st 1994, I was in Springfield celebrating New Years with the woman I wanted to make my wife. We'd been living together for six months, we just announced our plans to get married (before there was even a Myspace to do it) and had made plans to get married in June of 1995.  June this year would be our 20th wedding anniversary.

Less than a year and a half later, she had run off with someone she met from work. A real man, a "Godly Man", who she could spend her life with.  That lasted about two weeks...

On this night, Fifteen years ago, 1999; I was both Drunk and Stoned believing that the world would end at the stroke of midnight due to the "Y2K" bug.  I believed the world would end... I had hoped the pain of my divorce would end too.

Instead I spent the rest of the evening from 12:05 A.M. till almost 5 in the morning vomiting. My last real experiment with drugs.

On this night, ten years ago, 2004, I was celebrating being with my amazingly darling cute daughter. I wasn't prepared for being a dad. She was one and a half at this point and thankfully beyond the "random vomit" stage.  I can remember falling asleep with her on our rocking recliner. 

I love that kidlet. I always will. 

(Not quite one and a half, but still cute)

On this night in 2009, I was celebrating new years with my Fiance of two years. We had planned on getting married on International Talk Like a Pirate Day but finances from the crashing economy and the downsizing from my place of employment left planning a wedding off the table until we both got new jobs. However, something in that time had soured our relationship.  I could tell by the fake smile and the flashing the ring to everyone sarcastically that it was... Just about over.

To add, I was just about to start on my college career going back to school to get a Paralegal degree.  She apparently had her financial aid and classes denied and here the state was giving me a free ride. 

Whether it was that, or something else entirely different, less than two weeks after the new year and we were done. 

That brings me to today...  

It's been two and a half years since I graduated from college.  In fact with better grades than I had in High School.  I've had a pretty big run of ups and downs.  

(HAY MAH!  I GADIATED!)

I was the Master of Ceremonies for nine Tattoo Expos. The first one I only worked the gate. (I'm looking forward to more.)

(Photo used by kind permission from Ismael Gonzalez Photography)

I've continued to be a full time dad to my daughter and watched her Graduate the fifth grade and go into the sixth.  I've watched her play her Cello amazingly well before a crowd, before the Hult Center, and sing solo parts in a junior production of Annie.  I am so very proud of my daughter. 

I got a new Girlfriend.  We've been together for about eight months. She lasted with me through the whole Portland Tattoo Expo. Every year I've done the Portland Expo, I've been dumped either right at the event or right afterwards.  It seemed to me a bit of a curse. But she broke it. I can't help but love her for that. 

( I was actually about two steps from collapsing at this point)

I don't know what 2015 will hold for the future.  I know this, I don't need to let the past tragedies define my future roll. 

As the old song goes; "Should Auld Aquantence Be Fergot, and Ne'er braught to mind?"

Here is what I choosing for 2015.  At what promises to be my 40th circle on this mudball planet, I am choosing to forget and forgive and go forward with brighter hopes. 

I post this version of the song every year.  It is perhaps the most beautiful version of For Auld Lang Syne that I've ever heard.  

I challenge you... Forget what was.  Move forward to what could be. 

Music in my head: 

For Auld Lang Syne (Traditional Scottish)

By... I dunno...

http://youtu.be/wPnhaGWBnys

A boy and his leather jacket.

Yeah... It was only a matter of time given the issues with the blogs I had created that I would need to can the prior work and start over from scratch.  The Greaser Goth Revival has been composted permanently, having already been eaten up with worms as it stands. 

In its place, I present a new and fresh attempt at trying to keep an online journal.  One I hope that I can update a little more regularly without (shudder) unsettling side issues. 

I present to you... 

This new revised online journal will capture the madcap events of me and my trusty Harley Davidson classic bomber style leather jacket as we romp around the Pacific Northwest. Sort of a Brotherhood of the Travelling Leathers but more music, more horror themes, and plenty of fart jokes.  That's right... Fart Jokes!

If you can't handle that sort of high brow humor as told through the sweet folded words of a leather clad aging Gothabilly boy, then this blog isn't for you. 

So... Who is this Boy and why does he have a Leather Jacket? 

Well, that's a little hard to define sometimes. I am... An aging tattooed Christian Goth boy from the old school Goth revival of the 90's.  Back when Bauhaus was being rediscovered by Grunge toting and flannel wearing Seattle types. It was the "Alternative" boom of the 90's and everything that wasn't "Metal" or "Pop" and couldn't easily be pigeon holed into a neat little label was given center stage.  We call it all "Post Punk" in some sense now.  The term "Alternative" seems to be so loosely applied that any crap band can get a label.  "Indie"... That's what the trendy folk today call it. 

In those halcyon days of long hair and and lipstick and clove cigarettes and sex in the graveyard (yeah I did that), the one thing I always had with me as a signature piece was the bomber leather jacket.  It was my battle armor, my catch all for items I needed to hold on to, my blanket, my warmth, my treasure. It was like a little Goth version of Peanuts with Linus holding onto a Harley jacket. 

Now that I'm almost in my 40's, I think I have about as much hair. 

In every moment I have spent, no matter which alternative community I have been with, that signature leather jacket has been with me through thick and thin.  My most current battle armor was purchased at the closing of a prior engagement I had about five years ago now.  Most have lasted me at least three years, this current one shows no sign of wearing out. 

This is my story I'm penning to paper.  I hope you enjoy reading it. 

Recently, I wanted to put it down form what my goals where for the upcoming year. I posted the following to my Facebook Page.

"My resolutions for 2015:

I will no longer enable other peoples bad behaviour: If you need help to hide your problems from someone or you need me to bail you out after you consistently make the same mistake I already bailed you out from before, I will not do it again. I'm too old for this!

I will no longer enable my own bad behaviours: see above.

If I do not have any place in the discussion or knowledge about the situation, I will shut my trap about it: Too often, I've overstepped my boundaries through some feeling of "power" or "clout" that I may have accumulated and spoken in a place or a situation where I need not speak. This goes mostly for the state tattoo community but also my personal life. I DO NOT have the clout to speak on behalf of a shop, a festival, or an event. I can only speak for my experiences.

I will trust my gut: I have never listened to or trusted my gut feelings. I get them often but choose to ignore them. The result is always disaster. Had I listened, I would have avoided heartache and pain.

I will find ways to make my life happy and joyous despite circumstances: Often I let life circumstances of others rule my emotions. I'm too old for this and I've missed out on too much life for me to let this happen anymore.

I will get out of my apartment and LIVE! Too often I wallow in loneliness and misery in my four walls. It's time to live a life again.

I WILL forgive the people who wronged me, or who I felt wronged me: It is not worth my time to hold a grudge or hate someone, it only poisons my life and they've long since happily moved on. I will bless them and pray they are given all they need.

By initial only, "K","M", "R", "M", I forgive you! Be blessed in the coming year! (I really wanted to try and make this right. I don't want to hold grudges anymore.)? 

I will write again! I need to write and create.

If I go back on any single one of these, I ask you my friends to hold me to it.

I declare 2015 the proper and refined "Year of Bill"! It's my life and I need to live it. God bless you for helping me through 2015."

While I know the process of setting goals is important, it's the actual "putting it into practice" that I lack the patience to do.

You see... I tend to make the best plans, but I seldom follow them through. Perhaps, this is why 2014 seemed like such a stagnant year. 

Well, lets change that. Let's make it something different and amazing. 

If you are familiar with my blogs and my writings, you know that for the better part of 12 years that I end each one with a little something I call "The Music in my head."  Each time, its a diddy I have playing throughout the writing of a particular passage.  Some people might call it ADHD, some might call it "Insane", I call it my life.  Here I present the musical diddy that popped into my head.  My 90's Goth exploration anthem...

Music in my head:

To Wish Impossible Things by The Cure

http://youtu.be/aenP5OlQKfI

Just one person

Well, lets try this one more time ladies and gentlemen.  Let's try putting my thoughts into an online journal form again and see if I can generate followers.

The Good Days of the Greaser Goth I retired a while ago.  When my blog ceased to be about my good days and became more about my struggles, it had to put it away.

The Greaser Goth Revival ended up by the wayside.

Both of them had one subscriber I couldn't delete.  I could block them, which in this sense meant they couldn't comment on the blog.  But each post still sent them an e-mail update of what I was writing and what was going on in my life.  The fact is, I had moved past this person.  I no longer wanted them in my life, but I couldn't get rid of them without deleting everything else. So into the ether it goes.

When your possessions can't be let go, they own you.  You don't own them. One person wouldn't hold me back from pursuing my creative dream.

I forgive you "K".  This year I'm moving on from last years horror and disappointment. If you are reading this, then I pray that you and "B" have a good long and happy life with everything you need showered on you both daily.

I am moving forward with my future.

One person will no longer hold me back...