A place for my stuff

Heath sent me this, and I think it articulates some things that might be helpful for others to read:

I thought I’d write to tell you that I’m glad[1] you’re moving to New York. I’ve thought for some time that you would come to regret it if you talked yourself out of moving. Measured against your obviously strong desire to go, the “practical” concerns you were allowing to keep you in Little Rock were paper tigers at best.

I was reluctant to state my position before you made up your mind[2]. I’m leery of giving advice unbidden, and I wouldn’t have desired to do so even if you’d asked me. The giving of advice is fraught with pitfalls, when you think about it. It seems to me that the only time we can take advice is when the decision isn’t self-interested, and then what does it matter? When decisions are ego-involved is when we need an outsider’s perspective, but it’s also the time when we’re least likely to view it with clear eyes. And so the asking of advice is reduced to fishing for encouragement, confirmation, or validation. You ignore advisers who dissent, or else you turn them into a “bad guy.” I mean, what’s the point?

Still, there’s one thing I would like to address, and that’s the question of what happens if things don’t work out in New York. I’ve had several conversations with you where you’ve expressed concern about failing; that is, you seem to think that if you move somewhere and it doesn’t work out, then you’ve failed somehow. I don’t really think this is true. I know that this is a fluffy position to take, but I think that you never really fail without thinking it so. Put differently, there’s no such thing as failure, though there is success. If you have a good time and learn some things, that’s success, no matter what others might think. If you have to move back to Little Rock (or just somewhere else; there’s no reason it has to be Little Rock), the only way that can be taken as slinking back in failure is if you act like you failed[3].

Then again, this last paragraph doesn’t really look like advice to me, which lets me off the hook, I guess.

The topic of a favorite rant (one I’m sure Mary Beth has grown very tired of) is the conservative assumption that change can only make things worse. “Sure, you’re not likely to lose by keeping things the same,” I argue, “but you’ll never *win* that way.” The fun thing about this rant is that fear of change is something I’m guilty of too, so I come off like a total hypocrite. So anyway, I’m happy[1] you’re making the leap.

Heath

1) This is a strange usage. I’m not really glad you’re moving per se; I’m vaguely intellectually satisfied. That’s not really the same as being glad. My feelings actually lie somewhere in between not caring at all and slightly annoyed that it will be inconvenient to visit you. But that’s language for you — when accuracy is needed, it inevitably lets you down.

2) I started thinking about writing you an encouraging email weeks ago. I was still gathering up the gumption to write it when I saw the blog entry announcing you had made up your mind.

3) Spiteful folks would say you were fooling yourself, but fuck ’em.

The details of my road trip plan mentioned below are to venture forth to these destinations and persons west:

Dallas: Owenses, Odegards, Allison/Rodney
Austin: Rixes
Dalhart: To witness and photograph John Todd Drive, named for my grandfather
San Diego: Meredith
Los Angeles: David, Mary, Nikki, Erin
San Francisco: Erika, Amy
Seattle: Matthewses, Eberts
UPDATE: Roslyn, Washington – aka Cicely, Alaska from TV’s Northern Exposure
Salt Lake City: Matt, Zoe
Laramie, WY: Heather
Oklahoma City: Harrelsons
Kansas City: Kevin, Michelle
St. Louis: Durhams
Blytheville: Molly
Memphis: Chris, Christy and newborn Colter

And then back to Little Rock. On the way out east I’ll probably stop in Memphis a bit, then:

Nashville: Shelley, Glen, Bryan (he may still be on tour with Steve Vai, though!)
Huntsville: Amy/Jeff
Logansport, Indiana: Jamie
Pittsburgh: Nikki
Roanoke: Trina
Washington, D.C.: Tracy

So there you have it. It will all most likely take a month or so if I can afford a leisurely pace.

The trouble with having an eventful space of time in your life is that you’re generally too wrapped up in it to stop and write about it.

Weekend before last I went down to Flora-bama with my mom, sister, brother and their kids. A full day of driving, there and back. Two actual days for me of vacation. During that time, I had the opportunity to talk with my family about…where I am.

Ever since October I’ve been debating the relative merits of moving to New York. I’ve always thought about moving to a major city. The primary impediments were: no network of friends, no money to make the shift, and a reluctance to give up what I have here. Over the last 10 months, each barrier has been slowly peeled away. In October I fell in with a bunch of musicians and made new friends. In February my grandfather passed away, leaving each of us kids a tidy sum of money. And June brings my brother’s divorce and the sale of his house, meaning that he can take over my mortgage and I don’t necessarily have to sell my house, plus I can store my stuff in the garage. I have the option to take it back. In addition, I told my boss about all this last week and he said the door would always be open if I wanted to return. So now I have a substantial safety net, and no reason not to try.

So I’m going. As soon as my office can find and train my replacement.

I’ll delay my actual departure for a few weeks to take a road trip out west, before packing up a few basics and taking a leisurely jaunt to various destinations before landing in the city.

In other news, last weekend we had a yard sale at Heather’s on Saturday, and I went up to Harrison to see my friends Tiffany and Jessie, who were in town from Rhode Island. Pictures here on Flickr.

I’ve been a subscriber to Guitar One since 2000 or 2001. I always appreciated its dedication to lessons and learning, where Guitar World is more of a rock rag aimed at guitarists, and Guitar Player until recently skewed toward an older demographic. Guitar One in many ways took the place of my favorite magazine, Guitar (formerly Guitar for the Practicing Musician, which died around 1997). And so now Guitar One is dead. I learned this when I received a copy of Guitar World in the mail. The second page insert informed me of the demise of my preferred magazine, and that the two magazines, owned by the same publisher, have been fused to some degree.

But it’s just not the same, and now I have a subscription through November 2008 to the crappiest guitar magazine in the world. This is a rag that regularly hosts beer chugging contests between its staff and famous guitarists. This is a magazine that I subscribed to up until 1993 when Frank Zappa died, and they put Dimebag Darrell on the cover. Dime’s cover article featured a list of his tour-bus supplies in which he listed “acid – for long bus trips.” That so incensed me that I tore off the cover.

Granted, I was 17 and prone to melodrama. Now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ll probably test drive a few issues. There’s an offer for a refund, so maybe I’ll look into that.