As events have lately followed their course, I wouldn’t have expected myself to be where I am sitting now every day from 10 to 8. It’s been a long journey, but things have more and more seemed to fall in the right place as time goes by.

I wasn’t expecting this much out of life, I wasn’t expecting any of this only a few months ago. Through a conversation today I realized that even though several months have passed from the last time I had taken a walk through Tetracenter, showed a badge or even had to wear some “business-casual” pants; it doesn’t really seem that long ago when I was still answering the phones at the latest hour of the night. Lucky, I might call myself. If you are familiar with the circumstances you might understand why. But here I am again in what seems to be the last step to get everything back on track after thinking every single little thing that made sense was gone.

Things change, they change fast. But they are expected to somehow make you grow, even after facing the worst-case scenario …over and over again. Now this chair I sit at is where I thought I was going back then, and I took off this road (even though with what some have called “valid reasons”) but I have come to vindicate myself from all the ghosts that haunted every wrong decision made before. Leave the past behind, enjoy today.

In a few days the “Fight off your demons” tattoo on my thigh will be complete. As if planned, my actual first Technical Writer check will pay for it. Now this is not even close to be the end. Now this is not even close to be the last time I don’t give up. The last time I rearrange a mess made (what some of you might know, has been a familiar circumstance lately). Now this is only one adding piece of proof to the already large roster of evidence I had to come up with to realize that you can do anything you set yourself for. No matter how badly you have failed before; if you honestly believe in yourself, you can make amends and make things right again.

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It seems everybody is only interested in free stuff now days. I just read a Mike Shea’s blog post (his only real blog post, in fact) in the Alternative Press blog section. It made me think about how sustainable is the world we’re shaping…

I’ve always heard it from my dad, “how sustainable your project is?”. It never made much sense since he was always my income; well, he and my mom. Always paying my bills and always keeping the food in the fridge, and… well, you get the deal.

So we have all these free blogs with cheap pseudo-journalism, and of course gallons of footage at YouTube and free images via Google, of course is nice to have everything so accessible. At a click, we can download our all-time favorite songs, and it’s all free.

But if everyone is taking everything for free, where will we creatives fit in the economical world? Will creativity be a dream from the past? An extinct profession? Will the everything-for-free culture ruin designers, journalists, photographers, musicians and such devoted workers since now everybody, in appearance can do their work?

Not all of those with a CyberShot camera can have Annie Leivobitz photographic quality of course. Not every flyer is a Brian Ewing and not every blogger is a Mike Shea.

Think about it next time you download. For every cheap flyer you post, for every low quality video you upload, for every unprofessional layout you steal, you get a step closer to lose all of the creativity in the world as it becomes unsustainable, as it becomes unappreciated, as it becomes cheap and misrepresented.

Give it a thought.

Driving down Liberación Boulevard there is this thing if you’re heading east. First, you must go in the middle lane, when you pass by the zoo, then after the Reloj de Flores you must start finding a way to your left, otherwise you’ll be left in the wrong way. If you’re looking for good home-made sushi, you can go to that Taiwanese place behind Pradera, but if you’re looking for a fancy impressive Californian/Japanese dinner, Sushi-Itto is way better.

These are two facts of the many, many more through twenty-two years I’ve learned by living here. I’m not patriotic or anything close to that, I just love this city. The way the sun sets by the western mountains and how when you’re coming back from the south there is a moment when you see a kind of skyline drawn above Roosevelt Street. How a red light does not necessarily means “stop” and the distance that in other countries will mean only crossing the city, here will take you to a completely different town with a completely different look.

Hell, even if you’re getting robbed, you know exactly how it will happen.

So, there’s a vague idea that’s been around ever since I can recall having a slot of memory that somewhere else life gets better and things are safer and… yeah, many more things of the sort. But I wonder: How would these guys adapt when they get there? Besides the language barrier, which I guess some of us would have already surpassed, there are way too many things to take in consideration.

For example, let’s pretend you move to Japan. And after several months you’ve finally adapted to the fast lifestyle of Tokyo, gotten a few tattoos and know the true story about Hello Kitty, not to mention the gazillion rising sun souvenirs you’ve mailed back home to your friends. But, you mailed those souvenirs back “home”. Can you call your Tokyo loft “home” or do you still need that typical two-story three-bedroom condominium house we usually call “home” around here? Did you get used to the sci-fi customer service of top-notch high-tech fast food? Or do you still need those home-made eggs, beans and bread for breakfast?

I’m sure a few would say: “I don’t even eat that”, or “I don’t live in a condominium house”. Well, find your own definitions of what you call “home” and analyze if there is a chance you could find those little details somewhere else. I’m pretty sure it would be hard, if not impossible.

These are the reasons I call this my town, where I raise my pride, where I’ve made my friends and where I’ll live my life. Not because of whatever patriotic statements they may try to brainwash you with every now and then. I couldn’t care less about a blue and white flag or a quetzal; but this is “home” for me. I cannot think of a fulfilled life made anywhere else. Yeah, the paycheck may be fatter and the glory might be brighter somewhere else; but I “only do this for the scars and stories, not the fame”.

Not often in life you find that something worth hours of your time and dedication; the ability to devote days towards “it” seems uncommon, as if it was impossible to dedicate years revolving around “it”… yet, it happens.

As said a gazillion times before, my life has revolved around the music industry throughout the past 9 years. Whether being a guitar student, or the controversial idealist of an almost-forbidden word that starts with an “s” and ends with a “cene”, from the quintessential stereotype, all the way to the unmotivated smart-ass behind a potentially revolutionary project; All these 108 months it has been verses, bridges and choruses the motivation to wake up every morning.

But as entitled by A Change of Pace’s debuting record, “Change is the only constant”. Everything grows old and everybody finds something new to wake up to; because we all need something, from girlfriends to religions, to wake up to. And once we’re through one of them we find something new.

It’s hard to say “I’m not walking away” or “I’m not giving up” when it certainly feels like turning my back on the reason I, literally, still breathe today. (While facing the worst sides of my teenage years, one of Osker’s choruses kept me strong; it reads: “grab the wrist, pull away, I don’t want to die today… and so I won’t”). But I can assure you that, with Math as my witness, I am not bailing.

The friends I’ve made, those still here today and the few that have gone, along with the almost-never-ending list of things I’ve learned is kept in my heart for now and forever. And I would never take back any of these things. Why? Because all of these things made me who I am today.

So here’s how it goes:

9 years after first realizing that through sounds and words life can be danced, sung or even screamed into a much more pleasant way, I’ve achieved as much and even more than I could have expected when I grabbed my first guitar and roughly learned some basic chords. From getting my ass beaten to the radio, television and newspaper interviews; from the home-recorded demos to the internationally-distributed compilations, I’ve already gotten so much I no longer think the music industry owes me anything at all.

I hold no grudge towards such industry; as always, I’ll be as helpful as I can with anybody who requests for a hand with anything that I can help them with. The only difference is that I no longer want to “race”. I’m setting my new goals in a completely different world, a world where I’m already achieving some results; and there I am ready to “race” because it is a world that is almost completely unexplored to me, but that’s another tale.

My new relationship with music, then, brings me back to 1999; back to when music was not something I was trying to make a living out of, but it was something I lived with, a friend who was there through thick and thin and who, with lyrics and chords, gave me advice and brought memories back.

“Ideals are like opinions, believes just like traditions; sometimes both are not enough” (Less Than Jake). Music is still pretty much my life. It is not giving up, it is not walking away; it is walking along again instead of racing for a prize; because I’ve already earned the highest prize available here and now it seems to be time to look around for one more golden medal to earn.

Setting a goal is nothing complex. Achieving it is a matter of persistence, of knowing where you want to be and how you are going to get there. I once read if you set your mind to something, the whole world would conspire for you to get it. Thousands of times I have proved this line true.

The process may be pleasant, like sex; painful, like tattoos and piercings; sometimes even excruciatingly confusing, like love; but all in all, are these situations which make us feel. And feeling is what keeps us alive.

Living is complex. Is a combination of seconds spent through different experiences and a sequence of minutes and days you may remember forever or may wish you could forget. You see, the complexity of having developed such a big mass of grey matter through evolution has brought us to the grade of complexity where life is not basic. Life is complex. We think we live for something but is that something really worth living for? We tell ourselves it is for our own good. Otherwise, it would stop being worth living.

It’s been 7 years approximately from the moment I realized I would spend the rest of my life through chords and sounds, rhymes and beats. Through out such journey there has been many changes. From a rough close-minded punk-rock-ish kid to the stopped-at-the-mall-for-pictures rock-star-like to the behind-the-scenes sort-of-guy that lately seems to be the one who has taken over my shoes. Yes, it’s been that much. The point of this paragraph? Goals have been achieved.

But so much “success” in so many fields has lately become a realization of something I’ve been hiding. I’m afraid of my social self. so I put myself in a podium where I can be seen and I can be looked up to, but never approached. I suck at one-on-one interaction. I have no idea of how (and somehow very little desire as well) to improve this side of me. I am that guy, the quiet one, the awkward silenced dude who you feel weird around and never get his commentary about whatever the topic is.

A light at the end of the tunnel has been these past weeks, probably actually a couple of months. I move slow into whatever I move into. And somehow my slow-motion action has been not considered that slow at all. Apparently. Apparently this is going somewhere and it’s somewhere I’m looking forward to be, no matter how long it takes. No matter where it gets, no matter how it goes, I like today and I’ve been liking everyday.

Towards the end and quoting wise words from Set Your Goals’ first full-lenght opening song: “life is about doing the process and not the result”. Don’t lose your mind on getting “there” and instead, enjoy every second of it. Because if you’re smiling every five seconds, you might already be there.

I’m not sure about many things in life, but I’d have to say my insecurities play a major roll on whatever it is that I pursue and even every now and then get to fight for. At twenty-one and a month and so from twenty-two, I’m scared of going on the instincts.

Now you see, for some it is easy to just go and do things the way they’re meant to. We robots, have a different approach. Our over-researched behavior patterns tend to bring us to uncomfortable situations. We are those who seem to be the perfect hunters of awkward silences, those you can barely understand their working/eating/living/sleeping/talking habbits.

When we robots meet, is just like heaven. But at the same time, hell. We realize we’re not made out of stainless steel and circuits but instead of flesh, bone and pheromones. Being the latter the responsible for the afloating insticts that will only deny our self-imposed non-human existence. Catalizing an urge in us to research and over-analize the situation as a whole and in very (and sometimes extremely) particular ocassions.

Hidden messages may not be there, but might as well they be. When a robot tells a robot something, it is condemed to be a coded message. So if male-robot wants to tell female-robot “you are everything i’ve ever looked for”; he might say something like “i’m amazed by the way your RAM memory process data so fast”. In return, female-robot would mean to say “i’m so glad i’ve found you and i’m looking forward to so much more” when she displays on her 17″ LCD screen low-resolution 12fps online imagery.

But then again, female-robot may not be a robot. And 12fps may only be random online imagery. And if she’s not a robot, male-robot will only be sending binary coded messages in vein and missrepresenting casual ammounts of 1’s and 0’s he’s convinced he’s getting in return. The paradox is in how finding another robot makes male-robot feel more human, like he still has a need for companion, yet is so affraid to feel; and how if female-robot is not a robot but a human, male-robot will only feel condemed to speak in html to no other but himself for an everlasting eternity.

When I was 5 years old teachers were upset because I already knew all what they were trying to teach me, leading me to a state of mind where school became useless. By the time I turned 13 evaluations decided my intelligence crossed the border of a 20 year old man and if well developed, I’d eventually become a brilliant and succesful man. None of this facts took in consideration the social implications of such case.

I’m always alone, ever since I can recall. Always floating across my head from one point to another and over-analizing every single thing that may aware my interests. While gathering tremendous ammounts of knowledge by reading nearly anything written that may cross my path (including signs and even while driving) I’m usually forced to keep most of these facts I know to myself. Reason why? Not everybody (if not nobody) seems to be interested in Edison, Einstein or psicologic dissorders.

“Do it yourself” taught by mother, and even father sometimes; I barely look for support (never meaning I wouldn’t do much better with or even need it most of the times) in others, usually excusing this behavior with an attitude of “if you don’t do it for yourself, no one else will do it for you”, like a man once told me “you gotta do what you gotta do… ’cause nobody else’s gonna do it for you”. Concequences? Lack of social touch, social skills and most mostly-accepted-by-society points of view.

All in all, I will not lie, I am thankful and very aware of most of my skills and talents. Wether towards visual arts or music or even written words. I know I’m an avid speaker (when publically speaking, not one-on-one) and absolutely guided-by-thought man (a dissagreable reason of pride). But don’t think this has no toll on me.

Day after day I’ve jumped closer to the conclusion that I am in fact, a dying breed. Although my outside is the same of any human being, inside I am something completely different. Something your regular human being sometimes is uncapable to understand. Thus bringing me to a destination where neither I understand those surrounding me nor they can understand me.

New Found Glory would follow that line with an in-your-face “just remember they were born that way”, I myself rather write a full blog with inside jokes and little details that may give you a slight idea of how amazing it is to be part of such family.

There is one time through the year that reunites every single person that at some point has been important part of all of this. You see, you’re born part of a biological family, and this one will always remain wether is good or bad. But there’s more to life, there are certain people who come and go, and there are certain people you spend years sharing what could easily be tagged as a bond of friendship. You may think they’re not many, only two, luckily three… until Blanca’s birthday bash.

I have to drive a mile to get to her house even when she’s just the most 8 blocks away. So I did, stopped by the gas station to torture myself with never-ending increasing gas prices and get some ciggies from which pack I actually blew one through the short drive. Half cigarrete later there I was parking at the dead-end alley (something i’ve always actually considered very very cool) where she lives and saw Rafa’s car while Blanca at the door was ready to welcome me to the only party of the year I’d never miss.

When Blanca turned 15 years old, we played a show at her etiquete-like party and started the tradition of gathering all of the people around our lives together. Back then we were like 5 kids who listened to radio-ready-pop-punk and had no clue of what life would bring us to. Nowdays we are like 50 has-beens, journalists, band-mates, baristas, x-girlfriends, x-boyfriends, new additions, long-time no-sees… but all in all a massive ammount of friends that have been around and had gone through so many years that it fairly enough seems like forever.

Now those are 50 friends I am talking about, not only two or luckily three; so the reason why I love to celebrate one more year of age from my oldest friend is because it makes me realize I am surrounded by amazing people that forgives, forgets and never regrets a single day of all of this.

Has anybody notice how every five years we get that catchy tune stuck on our head? The kind of tune that has heavy riffs worth the guitar shaking on stage but a chorus that almost anybody can sing along to?

Let’s move back in time. Was it around 1995 when the world heard “Basket case” as an anthem to the ignored kids in high-school? Billy Joe Armstrong is definitvely far from being an underground hero these days, but back then it inspired a whole revolt of radio-ready-pop-punk that gave the middle-taste crowd finally a chance to let them sing out loud.

1999 MTV Video Music Awards had a before-three-tour-buses Blink-182 performing their opening show with “What’s my age again”, the expected-to-be-naked trio nailed it and even played the main VMA’s show the next year on a theatrical and trademark performing of “All the small things”, I mean, anybody who listened to music back in 2000 can remember the little people all over the stage as easy as they remember the Madonna/Christina/Britney incident.

Want more opening shows? Ok, here’s another VMA trademark that half a decade later gave us yet another “little punk band that could”: Fall Out Boy. The underground hardcore scene of Chicago, Illinois brought us four 5′5″ poster boys that would culminate their undeground success in 2005 with their live performance of “Sugar, we’re going down”. A record inspired by pills and major label debut for Pete Wentz and company was only the tip of the iceberg. Personally, i rather recall them from the previous record, “Take this to your grave” which actually had anthems for the highschool has-beens and never-weres such as “Grand theft autumn” or “Dead on arrival” without missing the easy-to-sing-along “Saturday” or despiteful to the x’s perfect opening: ”Tell that mick he just made my list of things to do today”

Today is 2008. Last year’s Warped Tour was lead by a transition. The so-called “scene” thing (which is a laregly arguable definition, we might or might not discuss under other circumstances) seems to be moving out of the screams and solo’s environment towards again a harmonious pop-labelable sound. You need examples? Ok, who were claimed the most succesful bands during the Vans legendary road trip last year? Yes, Paramore, Boys Like Girls and Escape the Fate. I only see one screaming band there and even they have the catchy-tune feel in more than one of their verses, while in 2006 we knew it was all about Underoath, Emery, From First to Last and break-down-beated company.

So, who’s the next on the list of bands that close the cycle bringing our little sacred beloved personal and unstreamed bands to the mass media and selling out to become what we hate and force everything and everyone to star it all over again? All Time Low? Cartel (whom already have a reputation for rockstarism in all of the wrong manners)? Four Year Strong? Set Your Goals? It is often funny to relax, sit back, and just enjoy what goes around. I mean, after over seven years of stages and more than a decade of heart-strong built music appreciation you don’t take “the scene” (oops, again forbidden word said) so seriously and realize there is a way it works and a reason for it to work that way. Too bad for whoever sells out, but looking at the bright side, it will boom a load of bands to pursue either fame or roots or whatever it is that they believe in, they’ll find themselves pursuing what they want to be, their dreams, and god and i know and can tell you how happy one can be when one becomes who they want to be.

Ok, I just decided to start a blog for real (besides my MySpace blog) and post here most of the things I write on daily (or maybe weekly) basis. First off, I’ll import most of the files previously posted over there and yeah, that’s pretty much it.