a little bit about me......
birth high school parents guitar and montana state univeristy nashville, pipe dreams and the music bussiness $$ indianapolis, UPS, spansih and german italy, portugal and spain colombia psycho ex-boyfriend and buddhism graz, austria cuba principe azul peru germany graduation mexico and scuba diving lay off currently the future
birth
I was born 6 weeks early and it was the only time in my life that I have ever been early for anything. I blame it on my Irish-Spanish heritage but it is really because I am a geek. I get so involved in what I am doing that I don't notice the time passing. If time is relative per Einstein's theory, then it is less relative to me as opposed to everyone else. There is just not enough time to get all the neat things that I want to do done.
high school
I attended a small public high school. There were only 200 people in my graduating class. I was not popular nor was I the target of ridicule. I was in the middle where I could blend in. I mostly wanted to be invisible and I never wanted to talk in class. I was not always this way.
My father says that when he first dropped me off at pre-school, I saw all those other kids and I just ran over to them and started playing. He said I did not even look back. I just left him standing at the door.
After careful introspection, I have decided that I became introverted due to 1. attending a small undiversified school full of people who thought they were rich and that made them better 2. having parents that only pointed out errors 3. upon stepping out and expressing myself being told that I was being over sensative. Basically I was allowing myself to be affected by other people's insecurity. I was just a kid then I did not know any better.
parents
On the note about my parents; I never want to say I had horrible parents. I just want to explain that since they only mentioned critisisms I was affected by this. I remember one semester in high school I got all A's. I was so excited and proud of myself. Normally I would get mostly A's and a few B's but this semester I got straight A's. I brought my report card out to show them and I was so excited. This was it. This was the time that they didn't have anything to criticize. Instead of making a big deal about my errors they will make a big deal about how proud they are of me and what a great job I did. So I showed them my report card, and they barely noticed.
guitar and montana state university
Throughout my childhood I repeatedly asked my parents for a guitar. They would never get me one. They always encouraged my involvment in sports. I secretly think it was because my mom always wanted to do that sort of stuff when she waas a kid but wasn't allowed to. So when I turned 18 and no longer lived in my parents house I bought a guitar. I was attendingMontana State University and living in a tiny dorm room. They were about 1,600 miles away so it was a good time to start figuring out what I wanted for myself. The black ovation celebrity to the right was the one I bought. It can be play acoustically or electric. I would not describe myself as good even though I have been playing almost 10 years, but I get to play now.
nashville, pipe dreams and the music business $$$
I had a total pipe dreams of being in a band or a musician or a producer in the music industry. When I was 19 after having served my freshman year at Montana State University I decided I would move to Nashville TN and look into this music business. When the semester ended in May I carried all my belongings with plastic grocery bags and threw it in my very old buick lesabre and made the very long drive from Bozeman, Montana to Nashville, Tennessee. On the way I stopped at my friend Tera's house in Minneapolis. I lived in Nashville in a tiny studio apartment, worked at a coffee shop and investigated the music business. While investigating the financial aspect of the business I realized how difficult it was for the artist, muscian and producer to make money. The only entity that really earns the money from the created music is the record company. So I decided just to do music on my own and not have it be my profession.
indianapolis, UPS, spanish and german
My father had hernia surgery scheduled and my lease in Nashville ended right before his surgery so I decided to move home and help out a little. I thought also that I could work on the relationship with my parents. Maybe we could start communicating more as adults and there would be a lot less critisisms. I also decided that I needed to get back in University. I had not established residency in any other state so moving back to Indianapolis and attending Indiana University was the cheapest option. I did not want to pay out of state tuition. So there I was taking a few university classes and Indiana University, living with the parents and hating the job I had.
Someone told me about a job at UPS and the hourly rate was more than I was making at the job that I was hating. I thought I could work somewhere else that I might hate for more money. I had tuition to pay. I started as an unloader and then I learned the sort and became a sorter and earned more money. After working on the sort for a few months a supervisor position became available. I went for it and got it. The only catch was that I would be running an area where everyone was from South America and spoke Spanish. Now, I spoke Spanish just Spain Spanish and all these co-workers spoke a totally different dialect. You have no idea how different dialects of the same language are until you hear it all. I had a lot of fun will all of my South American co-workers. I learned a lot about all of the different dialects.
This lead to an epiphay. All the while I was trying to decide what to major in at University and there it was staring me in the face. All the time I spent outside of work and school studying Spanish dialects, duh, that should be my major. About the same time a friend invited me to take a German class with her. I so wanted to know someone in one of my classes so I went for it. After that class I had decided that I would do a double major of Spanish and German. Eventaully due to the night schedule of UPS I had to leave that job. It was no longer compatible with my University classes schedule.
italy, portugal and spain
Right after I left the position with UPS I called a friend of mine and he said hey we are going to Spain do you want to come. It was right after the attack on September 11th and tickets were really cheap. I told him that I was in. The ticket only cost 400 dollars. This was the first trip that I took out of the country without any other family memebers. It was liberating. We traveled through Italy, Portual and Spain without reservations and with just a small bag. I absolutely loved it. There were no plans. We woke up everyday and just started doing fun stuff. I really did not want to return. I seriously contemplated just staying in Spain. But, I decided to return to my university classes at IU. I got a job working as a bilingual phone rep for student loans. Daily I would talk to clients in Puerto Rico and we would talk a little about the weather and their student loan all the while birds were chirping in the background.
psycho ex-boyfriend and buddhism
Sometime after I left UPS I met a young man from Honduras. He was nice and fun at first. At one point after about 4 months and after I had really gotten involved in University he apparently started getting jelous. He started giving me a hard time if I did not answer my cell phone the moment he called. I started to see more and more flashes of anger. I was wonder what the hell was going on.
colombia
One Christmas season a "boyfriend"invited me to visit him in Colombia. I use the quotes around the term boyfriend because I really didn't know what to classify him as. The story is that we meet at UPS. He had just arrived in the USA from Colombia. He wanted to start a life in the USA as an engineer because he had just spent the last year in Colombia working to get his business partner back from being kidnapped by guerillas. At the beginning he was all about being together and talked about marriage and the future. When he did not get his engineering job as quickly as he thought he should he started not liking it in the USA. He said he was too good to do physicall labor jobs. He then started saying he didn't know if he ever wanted to get married and then he started talking about returning to Colombia. At this time I told him it was better that we just be friends because while he didn't know how he felt about marriage I did know that one day I wanted to get married. I told him that this difference would pull our relationship apart so it was best to just end it and be friends and see what happened. He did not understand what I was trying to say and just interpreted it as rejection. We did not speak for a few months. The day before he was to return to Colombia he called me and told me that he really had to see me. I had other plans and I really didn't see the point. He returned to Colombia.
Sometime later he started emailing me and we started communicating by email and instant messenger. He told me how it was a mistake to end our relationship. My questions started; how would this work? I am here and he was down there? how could we have a relationship? I went along with it. I still liked him but I really didn't think it would work. When he invited me to visit him, while I was skeptical, I went for it. He said I would understand everything when I came to see him. I loved Colombia. We traveled to Cartagena, Bogota, Tunja, Villa de Levia, and Moniquilla. His family was really nice. His friends were great. His sister and I really got along. But he did not speand as much time with me as I had expected. Sometimes he practically ignored me. I remember looking back at him before I went through the security line at the Bogota airport and thinking, "this is the last time I will see him". I was sad but he had just confirmed what I already suspected. Besides I really had enjoyed the trip in Colombia. We had some emails back and forth after that. He would say he wanted to be together, start a family. I would ask logistics like where would we live, how would I legally stay in Colombia, how would he come to the USA. He would then say he needed time to think. Distance would be established. He would close the distance. I would go along with it and then the distance would be established again. After the 2003 trip to Colombia the "relationship" became more of an experiment. Sometimes I think I just wanted to "be with him" so that I could live in Colombia until I had decided that it was no longer fun. At the time I was working full time and going to school full time. I had no time for boys in my zip code.
graz, austria
cuba
