I'm nothing special, really.

6-3-12

Last night, after the show, we went to a near-by Wal-Mart to get food. We then drove for a couple hours until we got to West Memphis, AR where we slept in a WM parking lot. I did not know this until today, but the West Memphis AR Three were freed. Pretty awesome…

We got up around 9:30 this morning. At night when we go to sleep, the temperature is pretty nice, usually not too hot. But, we usually wake up drenched in sweat… it’s not too fun, but you get used to it I guess.

We then drove a couple hours to Tupelo, MS where our show was tonight. On our way, it rained really hard so we had to pull over for a while. Luckily there weren’t any tornados or anything crazy.. We had several hours to spare before load-in so we went to the mall. We ate at the food court. Most of us got Sbarro pizza. We then went to Barnes & Noble, which was attached to the mall, to get wifi and look around. Josh asked an employee if that has a section on ‘Satanism’ so we had some good laughs at those books. We found the book called Necronomicon which was freakin hilarious to read… full of ‘evil spells’ and what-not.

Our friends in a band called Mouth Of The South met up with us at the mall after a while. They’re all super cool dudes. They also had gotten free pizza from CiCi’s which they brought to the mall to share with us.

The show was in a big park on a stage. It was a really nice park with soccer fields and a disc golf course. We played with M.O.T.S. and two other local bands. MOTS played great and so did the locals. Our set was pretty good. People were definitely into it. I’m still freakin stoked on our Korn intro. All of our gear has sounded amazing and we’ve had no problems so far. It’s only been three days though, so we’ll see hah.

After the show we ended up getting free pizza again, this time from Little Ceasar’s.

We are staying the night at the promoter’s apartment. It’s so nice when people let us stay with them…and shower…and let us use their internet. 

Fun facts:

- I’ve eaten pizza three separate times today.

- I’m sleeping on a couch tonight.

Music I’ve been listening to:

- Lots of really fast death metal.

- Korn

- Set Your Goals

- Jon Hopkins

Goodnight

- Will

6-2-12

Today is Saturday, June 2nd 2012.

Yesterday was our first show of tour. We played in a garage/house in Lyons, KS with our friends in Call Your Own and an awesome band called Lighthouses. There were surprisingly a lot of people there. It was a lot of fun. We stayed and hung out with everyone until about 11 or so then left.

We then went to eat at Sonic. I got two breakfast burritos off the value meal. They were pretty gross, but filling.

Our show today is in Beebe AR, so we drove through the night to Tulsa, OK and slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Nothing new. Nathan and I slept in The Shire (the bottom bunk/fort in the van). It was awesome. I didn’t sleep too well though. I’m blaming that on the terrible Oklahoma roads… We woke up, got gas, changed the oil in the van, then went to Guitar Center to get some strings…and of course play all the 7 and 8-string guitars. Then we drove to Beebe.

I’m currently sitting in the venue that is also a coffee shop with free wifi. There are three bands on the show tonight and we play last.

Fun Facts:

- I miss Hailey.

- I urinated in a water bottle today.

- We went to a McDonalds gas station…weird.

- I started reading Save Me From Myself by Brian ‘Head’ Welch.

Music I’ve been listening to:

- Korn

- Limp Bizkit

- Beneath The Massacre

- The Swellers

Until next time,

Will

“And I remember thinking to myself, God if you’re out there, send me down someone who gives a fuck.”

Kublai Khan

About me, recently.

- I’m really bored and pretty tired, but I don’t want to go to bed yet. - I moved out of my parents house a little over a month ago. - I live with my lovely girlfriend, Hailey and my good friends Nathan Holthus and Joe Fisher. So far, everything has been going great. - I rely on sleeping pills most nights to be able to get to sleep. - “Left & Leaving” by The Weakerthans has become one of my all time favorite albums. - I was asked to fill in on bass for Skies recently. - I left the pop-punk band that I was in called Call Your Own. I love those guys so much, but I felt that I needed to move on. - I will be touring with Skies most of June and July. - I am extremely introverted. - I have some anxiety problems. - I am blessed with a job that pays me well and lets me have time off to tour. - I miss living at home, but I like living elsewhere. - I am on season 5 of House. - All of the things that I really want to do in life require stepping out of my comfort zone. And that scares me a lot sometimes. - I bought a charcoal grill about a month ago, and it’s been one of the best purchases ever. - Hailey has been one of the biggest blessings in my entire life and I am so undeserving. Words can’t describe how happy I am with our relationship. - I’m scared, for several reasons, to leave my home town for long periods of time. - I hate hot weather so much. anything about 80 degrees sucks… - I want to stretch my ear lobes back out to like 3/4in. but I honestly get so sick of hearing customer’s reactions to them at work. - The battery on the watch that I wear every day has been dead for over a year. Stuck at 7:00. - I’m scared that I’ll grow up too fast. - I hope and pray that I never look back on my life and think I should’ve done everything different. I don’t want to waste my youth… - I turn 21 on August 26th. - I wish I had hair like Ryan Gosling. - I got a hair cut today. - I love sad, emo, depressing music. I’m not sure why really. I’m typically a pretty happy guy. - I’m gonna go to bed now. Goodnight and thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far haha. If you have anything you’d like to share with me about anything or if you have anything encouraging for me, I’d love to talk.

I need to get this off my chest.

This is written sort of sporadically…but whatever…

Three years ago, if you asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I had a very thought out, quick answer to give you. I knew exactly what I wanted and where I wanted to be. I even thought I had the next 5-10 years of my life planned out pretty well.  I don’t know what happened, but I guess a lot can change in three years time.

If you would’ve asked me, three years ago, where I wanted to be in 5 years, I would’ve answered something close to: Living out of a 15 passenger van and trailer, traveling the country and playing shows every night with my best friends. 

And that was my main focus of my life for a good three years. I wanted that more than anything in the world and I had the stop-at-nothing mindset to get there. I did several small tours with Skies here and there - some of the best times of my life. I never wanted to go home.

Then, last summer, we were planning a longer set of tour dates. We were going to be gone for about a month. There was something different about it all. I still, to this day, can’t put my finger on it. But something did not feel right at all. Maybe it was a combination of a lot of things…I don’t know. 

Last summer I honestly just wanted to be home. I didn’t want to be on the road, I felt really depressed the whole time and it would keep me up at night… I was so homesick. And it’s weird to me how, I got what I asked for (being on the road, away from home), and yet I thought I didn’t want it anymore for whatever reasons. Call it quitting, call it doing what I thought was right at the time, call it chickening out when times got hard.. What happened, happened. I left Skies. I felt so liberated and better about everything. I felt so relieved of stress. It was like a huge weight was lifted from me.

I started working full-time again at my job and got to save money, which was nice being financially stable and all that. I got to be with Hailey every day, which I have enjoyed every second of. It was like I just jumped back into my comfort zone. And I was okay with it.

2012..

I absolutely hate admitting that I made a mistake or that I was wrong about something. Especially when it’s something I feel/felt very strong about. I’m not sure if leaving Skies was the right decision….. I mean if something is on your mind 24/7 and you literally dream about it every night… wouldn’t you think that’s something that should be in your life?  

I don’t know. I do understand that what’s done is done and I shouldn’t dwell in the past, but it’s like I can’t shake this off. It’s not like I really have a choice though. But I think that, if I could, I’d take it all back. It might just take a long time for me to really get over it. 

This is just something that’s really been bothering me recently and I think I just needed to talk about it a little..maybe get it off my chest. Maybe this will help. 

If you have any encouraging advice for me, please feel free to message me about it.

Life goes on.

- Will