Not too much to report

A few small things though. In about a week and a half, Nick and I will be ready to start looking for better jobs. I'll be applying all over the Cherry Creek shopping center and up and down Colorado Blvd at higher end retail places. With four years of experience and good customer service skills, I'm confident I can find something better.  In the meantime, I started writing a piano part to a Disney song that I'm going to cover and put on Sound Cloud. I need to get my music out there. It's my dream and I need to start acting like it. I haven't been working on my OCD very much lately, since I've been dealing with my dad's death, so I need to get going with that as well. Luckily I'm almost done watching "Lost", so that and the fact that we've quit smoking again will help motivate me. The past few days I have practices my violin though, and I'm already sounding better, but I still need lots of practice. I may also start collaborating with Jeff, my mom's fiance, and do some keyboard parts for him, which means I need to practice that more as well. So, here goes nothin!

Today's the daaaaaaaaaaaaay

The sun shine is shining, the tank is clean, and we are getting out of - the tank is clean. THE TANK IS CLEAN! Lol sorry, had to get that out of the way. But yes, today is the day! The day we officially start packing and cleaning up! We're having our wake n bake right now so we can eat some breakfast, and then it'll be time to be productive.

The Mission

To get over fears. Fears of things that don't exist, usually. Here's the list:
-the dark
-spiders
-things from movies
-showers
-bathrooms
-mirrors
-Opened medicine cabinets
-washer/dryer
-Closing my eyes in the bathroom
-public restrooms
-zombies
-dead bugs
Open doors I'm not facing
Long hallways

List of compulsions
-rocking back and forth
-tapping fingers
-rubbing feet together
-holding breath
-counting
-thinking out loud
-turning on lights
-checking medicine cabinet
-closing washer/dryer doors
-Closing the bathroom door
-looking behind me

I've been working on stopping my compulsions for about a week now, maybe a week and a half. So far I've been able to find myself rocking, tapping and rubbing my feet together and stop, but making myself aware of it makes me feel like doing it more, which is really hard not to do at this point, but I think I'm doing really well for the short amount of time I've been trying this. The weird thing is realizing all of a sudden that I've been doing it for a least a few seconds without being aware of it. It's annoying, but I'm glad I've been doing so well. I've also been refraining from turning on the hallway light when I go to the bathroom, and leaving the washer/dryer doors and medicine cabinet open while I take a shower, and trying not to look behind me while I shower. I think I'm doing pretty well, but we'll see if it helps.

Beginning a journey

I've been watching a lot of tv shows lately, the latest of which being "Obsessed," which deals with the treatment of people with anxiety disorders, mainly OCD. I've been learning a lot about how the whole therapy process goes and I think I might be able to design my own plan of exercises and exposures to get over all of my... issues.... I made a list on a piece of paper yesterday of things I need to get over. It's fairly extensive, I'll have to add it as a separate entry. I also want to get more into my hobbies and playing music and not watching as much tv, as I think that might actually, at this point, be causing major problems.

Floating down the lazy river

I think today's the last day the boy and I well be letting ourselves be lazy and unproductive. Tomorrow we're gonna get started and see how much we get done. I think, if we start relatively early and keep working the whole day through we can get everything sorted and packed. Then we just need to find a truck or van to rent that'll fit at least almost everything. I'm getting so excited! We picked up our keys yesterday and hung out in the new place for a little bit, walked over to Barnes & Noble and Rubio's after a nice smoke. It was a good day. :) I'm looking foreward to going through everything and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. I want the new place to be neat and look good. So looking forward to the future!

Note to self:

Pay the bills from now on. Side note: I need to see the first Sherlock Holmes movie, because I saw the second one last night and it was awesome. Today, I'm going through old clothes (both mine and Nick's) to decide what's moving with us to Denver (and I have to keep it to stuff I'll actually wear, which is tough). I have old prom dresses and I don't know what to do with... My mom asked if I could pick out some things that I don't want to send down to the girls, too, but I feel kinda bad because I'm not sure they'll fit them and a lot of them are kinda ratty. So I'm not sure how much I'll end up sending.
I also have to consult my brother as to the whereabouts of the Christmas gifts I gave him to take down to them -_-. I keep putting it off because I'm not sure whether he'll say he did take them down, which he didn't, or that he just forgot them, in which case I'll have to see if he's going down there again any time soon, because I can't afford it atm. So... maybe I'll do that.. this weekend... Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Lunch is almost done in the oven! :)

Where I stand

I read somewhere recently that you should keep a diary and write in it only good things, so that's what I've decided to do. I guess I'll start with where I'm at writing music. So far, I've got one song with just a piano part written, but I'm still working on how to record it. We have to connect the mic to something else and then put that in the mic jack on Nick's computer so we can get all the clarity it's supposed to have, and tomorrow I'll be home alone for a few hours before work so I can take over his computer and do some experimenting with it.

I'm hoping to have that one recorded soon, as well as beginning the vocal part for my second song, which I wrote the intro for earlier (or at least something like what I want it to be, I'm not sure if I'll leave it as it is yet). I've got the piano part almost completely worked out, but I'm not sure if I'll want to add additional elements to it yet. I've still got a lot of experimenting to do.
That's all the music news, so what else is good. Hmm.. Well, here in the next few days I'll probably start cleaning up the apartment so I can start kitty-proofing (not to be confused with kiddie-proofing, which is what a coworker thought I said the other day). We should be able to bring Spectre home at the end of May or beginning of April, depending on how he's doing. I'm really grateful to my sister for letting me have him after she's raised him since he was a day old, I've been wanting to have a cat again for such a long time.
Also, I suppose here pretty soon we're going to be apartment searching in Denver and trying to set up transfers to the store down there. I keep going back and forth over whether or not I want to try to get a team lead position down there, if any are open. I don't want the responsibility, but I have the experience. Or maybe I should look at working in the bakery or deli, I think they get paid more too... We'll see, I guess.
Really excited to start getting this second song put together and getting stuff recorded. I'd like to be able to put my music up where my family and friends can hear it. I hope they'll like it, anyway. Well I guess that's about all I've got for now, til next time!