Brush With Fame??

Today I was totally dissed by Ben Folds.

For those of you also addicted to MySpace.com, you can only imagine my absolute glee when I discovered that Mr. Ben, my long time music-crush, had signed up for a MySpace page only yesterday. As I am a true fan, I followed basic MySpace etiquette and sent a message to Mr. Ben and asked to be added to his friend list.

My email read:

“Hi Ben- happy to find you on myspace! (just joined myself a week ago and have found it totally addictive.)
I'm a long time fan of your songwriting- thank you so much for sharing your skills!

- kat”

So as you can see, nothing scary.

Now for those of you unfamiliar with the way this site works, you need to be accepted as someone’s friend. So until they accept or decline you, their icon lives in your “pending request” file. If they accept you, they suddenly show up under your friend list. If they decline you, they just disappear out of your pending cue.

Ben Folds declined me.

Let the over-analization begin….

1. Could be that because I’m a “band” I was automatically rejected. I doubt this, because A) that would suck and B) there are other bands listed as friends on his page.
2. Mr. Ben could have gone to my page to see who the crap I was and decided that I suck.
3. Could be that only bands he knows are accepted as friends.
4. Mr. Ben could have listened to my tunes and been so intimidated by my elite skills, that he is going to try and forget that I exist.
5. Or he decided that since we’re going on tour together in the future that me being on his MySpace list wasn’t important.

In all reality it’s probably not Mr. Ben actually updating or taking care of that site. So whoever is, is a jackass. (if it actually is Mr. Ben- BEN- WTF BUDDY??!!) I don’t suck that bad- and just because I’m a “band” doesn’t mean I’m not a real fan. I stick my tongue out at you.

That’s fine Mr. Ben- you can deny me all you want. I still love your tunes. You’re a big mean boy, but I love your tunes. Just to get back at you I went and finished that song I’ve been working on. It is the best song I’ve written yet, so take THAT.

When we go on tour you are never going to hear the end of this.

Sick-as-a-dog....

And everything seemed fine until the universe stepped in and said "Reality check- Bitch!" and wango.

I'm stuck in a schedule i can't get out of and I'm sick as a dog. No one can cover for me, so I can't take any time off- and deadlines loom and days fly by and i get further and further behind- so how can my lesson be that I need to slow down? I assume that's the lesson mainly because that's what my mom always said.

"Getting sick is life's way of telling you to slow down."

But in all reality how can that be the case when getting sick is going to throw my whole schedule out of wack for about two weeks? I've been avoiding Sick like the plague for at least three weeks (no pun intended) and I guess i zagged when I should have zigged.

Which of course makes me flashback (what doesn't) to when I had nothing scheduled ever. Right after I moved to California - no job, no local friends. I joined a songwriter group that met about once a month. I remember I would go to the meeting and at the end everyone would pull out their calendars and we would figure out what day worked for everyone. I never needed a calendar then- I just pretty much had to remember what day it was. So I would write it in my empty empty calendar and think to myself "yay, i have something to look forward to next month" - hehehe....

If i don't look in my calendar now I would miss something. I have to write notes in my calendar to remind myself to CALL people to schedule other stuff. If i have an afternoon to myself now-a-days I barely know what to do! Maybe that is the lesson. Need more time? But how? It's not as if i can suddenly force the day to have more hours, or scam myself out of a few more hours of sleep. (I need my sleep- i crave it. If it's taken away from me i get extreemly crabby.) And I know I'm not the only one out here like this- we are all busy busy people. Busy enough that we have to schedule time to hangout with our friends, and in my opinion that is just SAD.

I think back to the days when E. and I had phone conversations like this:

*ring-ring*
K: "Hey."
E: "Hey. What'cha doing?"
K: "Nothing, you?"
E: "Nothing."
K: "Coffee shop, 15 minutes?"
E: "Yup. Bye."
K: "Bye"
*click*

Oh holy crap those were the days. (what was that, 2 years ago?) When i think of how much of my life passed deliciously away at that coffee shop between endlessly good conversations and peach iced tea it puts a huge smile on my face. Ah, if only we could all be independantly wealthy. But I digress....

**TIME**

Time is the issue, and it's of the essence, and it keeps on slippin'-slippin'-slippin' into the fu-ture. So how do we make the most of it, and appreciate it, and milk it for all it's worth? I never EVER wanted to be one of those people who needed to SCHEDULE alone time, or personal time, or quiet time. But here I am, and that's exactly what I have to do. And I stick to it as much as I can. Multitasking helps immensly as well, being at one place at one time taking care of four things at once is great. Hiring other people to do work for you also rocks, but is not always affordable. But all of this is just so - i dunno... un-romantic, so ... grown-up and depressing that honestly I do most of it with my eyes closed waiting for the next moment when i can forget all about all that crap and just be my floaty-daydreamy self again. (which is normally during the pre-scheduled rehearsal slots- so sad)

But then I look at the band. The angels they are. And they have the same problems I do. They've had their turns with colds and flu this season as well- and I've seen it work havoc on their lives also. And i've watched them balance day job/family/music - sometimes with grace, sometimes not, and sometimes it falls apart horribly. And I realize that if I sing pretty enough, then we can remove "day job" from the equation and you know what that leaves us with?

Time.

So really, the lesson is just get healthy. And keep on singing........:) Universal advice for everyone, don't you think?