i slept more than 5 hours [12] for the first time in a long time last night. a dream about a text somehow brought me out of my long sleep rather than an earlier dream that was some sort of a hostage scenario.

i have ocd 7.3.2026

updates:

• there is now a guestbook linked in my about page! ...which i already mentioned in my last update at the very bottom, but i thought i would mention it somewhere more prominent.... please say hello! :-)
• fixed a minor typo in my last blog post,
• and added a nifty random-site-inator on my outlinks page! curated by me :-)

now onto the blog...

it's early morning as i write this, though the lamp has been on long enough for me not to tell. that the sun is up, that the day has begun, but soon i will get some rest and recharge before some afternoon plans. yesterday was maybe the hottest day we've had all year, and today should be even hotter. i was planning on hitting up a local rail trail in the morning, but i guess it couldn't be helped, seeing as i'm still up.

this of montreal demo i'm listening to feels like the most beautiful thing. it's this song called "it's only fear". finding songs like this feels really special after what feels like years, lifetimes, of searching. it feels stupid to admit, though i think that i am starting to get a little more comfortable with that feeling. if you know anything about me, then you know that i am (?) a radio dj. the past 2 or 3 years of my life have had this perpetual soundtrack going on in the background of them, most days, because i am constantly looking for music. and yet through it all it feels like no matter how hard i work to make shows cohesive for archival purposes, or by proxy of playing my personal crowd pleasers, i am conscious of the fact that the search was never about filling in gaps of radio silence. it was always about finding the 10 songs in their respective season of my life that would bring me closer to myself, to my living.

save for a couple themed exceptions, there is no better descriptor for my early shows than sad. melancholic. moody, heartbreaking, heartbreak. it was like for the first time in my life i did not have to listen to my sad playlist in a shoebox, or a dorm room, or somewhere that didn't have to exist for anyone but me and my shame. it was a beautiful feeling to dance in the empty studio every midnight i was broadcasting, and though i did not yet know myself, it was a step towards it as i crossed that bridge between the entirely personal and the creative, the social being.

the teenage girl bedroom rock i was into before all the deep cuts and soul searching were someone else's to hold onto now, though i often doubted anyone was staring at their ceiling waiting on every careful transition, every emotional climax. it'd take me a while to realize that though it may not have been for the listener, it was certainly for a reason beyond selfishness and certainly not pretentiousness that i put every bit of me into my shows. every bad mood, every letdown, my moments of clarity, joy, hope, all seemed to manifest in some way or another within my shows.

in time, i would end up pivoting completely in terms of direction musically, though it's certainly hard for me to see it that way. the more i branched out, the more cohesive my personal favorites seemed to become. suddenly, i had something for everyone, and everyone something for me to relate to. and yet i felt as though my taste in music hadn't changed nearly as much as did the way it was manifesting itself, does that make sense? i think that's just how it goes when you are chasing a feeling! and i suppose then that it was the feeling, too, changing, and asking for something else of me than it did my teenage self.

i suppose me saying that is either redundant or ironic, i haven't yet decided which, when i look at my taste in music now. really, i'm still chasing sad! but i think that's not giving myself enough credit, especially after all these years. what distinguishes the emotional catharsis of my favorite tracks, from the perspectives of listener and creator, is something i don't think i was really ever looking for the answers to, until recently as i've begun asking myself what it takes to make a song, and how lucky we get, period, to be able to produce something that impacts others in that personal a way. at times i've had moments like that with my writing and as flattering as it is, it makes me wonder what it takes then to evoke that feeling, and to feel it myself as someone consuming music or other media.

anyway, the whole thing has me in a mood to curate music again, but for the reasons i'm sure i've enumerated above, it's also clear i am becoming increasingly careful about putting cohesive collections of music out there in the world. it's not even strictly out of a fear of not being able to meet my own standards. i haven't made any playlists even for myself in the last few months, save for the occasional genre playlist meant for upbeat moods and sounds, something to keep me from the bulk majority of my music: emotional. the later stages of this constant curating have seen me take up a practice incredibly common in radio, ultimately embracing the notion of consuming egregious amounts of new music with little discernment between what will be a deeply personal favorite for me and songs practically made for radio. and yet, i think i am okay right now with yet again listening to the same 10 things over and over. i think that where i'm at now, i am okay with giving a moment of my time.

7.2.2026 p.p.s, would really love to do some track by track breakdowns of my recent listening! i have a lot of thoughts i want to share!

i am up late again listening to roman candle by elliott smith, and then i will listen to snail mail's valentine demos, which have inspired me to take up songwriting again. among other recent creative pursuits.

i don't feel good at this, you know. months later, i always seem to find myself editing these back. it's like i know what thought i was trying to express but couldn't seem to get out. i can go in circles trying to draw lines in the sand about what my writing is and is for, but i know that's all just semantics. when all the music i listen to is miserable, when i want to be close to that awful feeling if only to create something with, it becomes hard to just talk about my day.

to say much more than what i had for lunch though is only conjecture, just another assumption about myself or someone else. it's hard to accept that that's how it is when all the writing i do is to some end. just a point of catharsis that often times ends up unfulfilling because i'm always circling back to the same three topics and their same three answers, namely "i don't understand". sometimes it feels like in the process of writing a piece that looks for answers, i instead create a piece about being lost and confused. sounds samey doesn't it? i'm still choosing to make that distinction. :-P

it makes me sort of glad to be getting back into songwriting, though in all honesty i'm not so sure it's a practice i am returning to so much as finally giving a proper go. it's not horn tooting to say that i have been known to make songs on the spot, i've just always had an inclination towards music though i struggle to be consistent with the skills required to make music. i'm no good at the guitar i bought when i was 17 hoping i could get a late start to my songwriting, and that was 4 years ago with not much progress made.

i picked up a casio pt-10 at an estate sale a while back and the thing is my prized possesion (i have many.) it can't play chords and the different synths it comes with all sound dated at best and at times i struggle with the slightly wonky keys they're in, but concept aside the thing has reinvigorated that vision to paper tactile curiousity that makes you want to take on a new skill. i have no trouble at all putting melodies to keys with just about any song i feel the need to want to play, and it's an amazing thing seeing visually how songs are composed without following a hot cross buns youtube tutorial (my go-to's are milk by sweet trip and same to you by jejune, for whatever reason in regards to the latter.)

i am sure someday i will write about the labor day weekend 2026 new york city numero group popup shop and how it rewired my brain chemistry but that is a story for another time. but i will say that poring over all the booklets that came with the box sets i added to my collection has only further exacerbated my recent creative spark, though i'm still taking my time making good on it.

work was real hard today, and yet good too somehow. i'd like to have a little more cash to my name but i am not so sure that i can handle much more than i am already doing. my messy bedroom feels like an exhibit at times, i've never been too good at being normal about my possessions. those fortune cookie stubs i can never seem to find a place for, the nearly finished packs of cigarettes that seem to imply a habit i don't have and never really have. electronic junk i can't seem to part with but need to desperately.

there are never enough pictures on my walls either, and film only seems to be more of an expensive hobby every day that passes. it seems to be all the things that i've got this intense hunger for that seem to be so out of reach nowadays, and lame as it sounds and is, my creativity seems to feed off of it well, and creating things doesn't cost a damn thing, after all.

today the walk home smelled strongly of summer, it made me feel a bit better than i've been. i am sure this mood that i'm in will pass in a few days. is it wrong though that i feel like it's more than that? that the mood may pass but the feeling will stay, i guess that's the problem with certainty. i am certain that it changed.

6.30.26 -- 4amp.s, you should sign my guestbook. it's on my about page, which you should have gone to already...

i made a new friend recently, and caught up with someone i hadn't seen in a while. i wanted to stay out all day long the other day. it was like the summers i grew up with before it started feeling like the sky was just never blue enough the way it used to be, isn't that such a strange way to feel? when i am happy it feels like i am taken from where i was and into the place i am supposed to be, like waking up from a long dream.

it felt like the longest day of the year, just never seeming to end. i suppose i don't really get to come on here and talk about my feelings, do i? i give myself a lot of shit for my inability to be sincere at times, and then again, what good is sincerity with things better off not said?

when the sun is low on the horizon, i am thinking of you. but being with you, it's not really looking at you, is it? at work i look frantically for something to write with and i am taking those paper bag scraps home and maybe someday i will be able to make something i can sell and maybe then all those feelings i can't seem to want or need will have been for something other than listening to sad songs in my room which is a mess and i can't stand it, but then my lows are not so low as they used to be. i wish i could tell you about it, and how it was because of you. but i am not good at that, and i will not be. either way, i know it will be okay. i woke up the other night from a dream about someone i love wishing i could feel that way forever. the notion just made me giggle, though try as i might i feel strongly that no matter what i do there is a place in my heart for the crickets and the fan whirr i fall asleep to and apples and horses and their depictions and my cd shelf and mourning doves and then too the dream among all the other pretty things. i suppose that is how it goes.

i'm working on this site again in hopes it'll give me something to do with my free time. it's already shaping up to be a great succesor to my old site designs :-) i was starting to go into quite a girly cute direction and then again i might but in truth this site was always supposed to be words on a screen and not much more. i've got a lot of work ahead of me but for now this is more than good, i've had a real knack for all things technological these days and it's nice to feel the cogs in my head turning. trying to tie loose ends and put everything in its place, really.

figure that's all i've got for now, so goodnight; count to a thousand.6.29.26