Introduction

When I was in high school and college, I used to recount my every days on the once-hip blogsite Xanga (am I allowed to say that here? Blog gods spare me). That was when every moment seemed like a turn at the street corner, every normally normal event was momentous and symbolic to me, a wide-eyed kid who mostly grew up in Jersey playing my guitar and dreaming of one day meeting some nice man from a nice record label who would hear me playing some of my nice tunes at a quaint Greenwich Village dive.

Well, you dream big in Jersey. I'm still dreaming now, but being 22 and done with college and being forced out the doors of academia into the light outside the cave tells me that strategy, not fantastic hopes, is a better way to reach success. Whatever that is.

Not that I'm against hopes. It's just, things don't happen just because you will it.

So I haven't met that nice man yet, but I've met some wonderful men and women, those years I spent at Greenwich Village and Chinatown cafes, playing my tunes in cute little places, and even big places in colleges far away. I saw that the dream could be better than just a deal and some sort of validation. I saw that there were more hopes and dreams in other areas of my life I hadn't accounted for, in embracing the miraculous hope bubble all those years.

So here I go, back to talking my way into understanding or at least sanity (talking to myself... really), at least in this part of the tunnel out of the cave. Maybe somewhere along the way will be that nice man at the side of the road.