SOOOOOO - I thought I'd give this "blog" thing a go (off of a suggestion from a friend who thinks I'm "funny" - yes, I'm worried as well). As I understand it, you write your thoughts down for all the world to see and they read about you and your foibles and then feel a helluva lot better about themselves because they don't have to deal with the utter craziness that you do.
I wanted the title to my blog to be: "AL'S WORLD! (and for safety reasons, please refrain from visiting for any extended amount of time)", but APPARENTLY that was too long. I love the thought that somewhere out there someone may read my rants and raves and experience a little bit of my sordid life... Plus, I'm a complete voyeur, so trust me, I GET IT.
Where I'm at right now:
After working 11 years for the same employer (in the recording industry), I decided to stop working for other people and get back to pursuing my dream, which is writing and composing music. I've always been good at it, always had luck with it, and yet I made the strange decision to put that all aside and help someone else do the exact same thing.
"Why did you do that?", friends will ask me as they scratch their heads in puzzlement. Well, the easiest response would be that I have grown quite fond of eating and wanted to continue the nasty habit. The deeper answer is that I grew frustrated that I didn't seem to be progressing further than I thought I would and even more frustrated when I learned the reason why.
Writing projects came and went, came and went, as they always tend to do in "the biz". Some showed incredible promise, others I knew were absolutely pointless - but you do them, anyway, for the connection or the quick buck. And through all of this I seemed to have reached a plateau in my career. The gig that would let me say that I'd finally made it kept eluding me. Everyone knows there is nothing unusual about that - people go their whole lives doing the same thing and they learn to accept it.
HOWEVER - I just kept getting such stellar reviews for my writing and composition, even my singing (which is pretty incredible). People oohed, they aahhed, and they praised me all over the place, further swelling what has often been called a rather big head. And then...nothing.
After a few years of this, and some heartbreaking "almosts, but not quites" I finally got fed up and asked one of the people who was turning me down (yet again) why I always seemed to be incredible but not the person for the job. And amazingly enough, he answered me. Truthfully.
He pointed out the fact that I was Asian. At first, I thought there would be more, but then I realized what he was saying. Of course, I was indignant and called him an Asian (it was the best I could come up with at the moment) and threw my cel phone into a wall.
It has been an eye opener. All it takes is a moment like that to make you actually start to notice things. At that moment in time there were NO Asians on any television show aside from Connie Chung (God bless her). There were no Asians who were recording artists (of course there are people in bands or groups, but they're never the lead/frontman). And no Asian writers had hit songs on the radio or scripts that were selling in Hollywood. Once I researched all of this (the old way, because the world wide web was just in it's early stages) I sank into a blue funk which caused me to ingest a vast amount of baked goods...
I ended up putting everything aside and getting "a real job" so that I could pay my bills and eat. For a while, I could do the writing/composing thing on the weekends. But then the job turned to even longer hours than I thought humanly possible and it was fun and exciting and there was a lot of travel involved, even to foreign countries...and I started to forget all about who I even was anymore.
It took my class reunion last year to yank my happy ass back to reality. Wasn't I a writer and a composer? Didn't I leave my tiny, little hometown in Hawaii to become a writer/composer? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did!
SO - having had much more experience behind the scenes in the music industry than I did before, I decided to ditch the 9 to 5 (or in my case 24/7) and jump right back into being creative!!!
And I'm not regretting it, yet.
YES, I'm eating a LOT of Top Ramen and dented canned goods, but I'm happier while I do it.
I will keep you all posted on my rise to the top and I sincerely hope that you wish me luck - an Asian brothah is going to need it!
