Good News: I accomplished my goal in high school. Bad News: I'm paying the consequences now.
The biggest goal I had in high school was not typical. I didn't care if I fit in or not, didn't care about my grades too much (I just wanted to compete with and be better than the rich honors white kids), didn't care if I made many friends (or enemies, but I made quite a few), or cared about popularity. My biggest goal in high school was this: be different from everyone else as much as possible. I think I did it so well that it led to a comment dropped by one of the most fake people I know told to me by my best friend: "we were never close with Nick in high school."
While everyone was listening to Panic! At the Disco, Motion City Soundtrack, and "indie" Fall Out Boy and other "punk," I delved into the most obscure and most beautiful music in the world. My favorite band at 14 years old was the Canadian indie pop band the New Pornographers. I was playing Bach's "little" suites on the organ by my sophomore year. I taught myself the guitar and the bass. I cried myself to sleep with the Smiths, the Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, Pink Floyd, and the Beach Boys. I had hair down to my shoulders by 13. I bonded with 30-something Generation X-ers over post-punk, goth pop, garage rock, and politics when I was a senior at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Everyone's favorite groups in 6th grade were Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, and Nelly. Mine were The Beatles, Nirvana, and Immortal Technique. Later, everyone was listening (and cried) to Dashboard Confessional while I did with Bright Eyes.
I became submerged with music that I read Pitchfork Media more than I studied schoolwork, practiced music, and especially more than I read the Bible. I was completely in awe that there was a whole music scene and culture beneath the mainstream. Beneath the average nose. And thanks to the Internet, I had complete access to this. I read interviews, discussions, reviews, news, listened online, and had a creative flow with a completely different pallet from everyone I knew outside this subculture. I was only 15. It was the year I discovered the Shins, New Pornographers, The Faint, Arcade Fire, Eisley, Bright Eyes, and these were the bands that people discovered in post-high school life. People had a mindframe that the outside world was just like high school. A lot of people I know who had high ranks in high school never moved outside their boundaries. Free thinking was considered being a fag, you weren't cool if you didn't like Panic!, and Fall Out Boy "sold out," even thought every single band they loved and cherished "sold out" anyway. For me, I avoided radio bands in the Billboard 200. It all sounded alike...
And it made me assimilate with everyone else. I wasn't accomplishing my goal...I didn't want that...
After Julie told me that, it was the first time I've cried in my car since last March when I found out about my grandfather's death. I was crying because of two things. One is that I never had any really close friends in high school until Julie. Mike came close, but it was hard because we never spent a lot of independent time together. I put myself apart so much that no one knew who I was. They generalized me as a "punk kid like Mike, Jesse, Ryan, and Dave." They didn't know what I was. Two is that I accomplished a four year long goal, and I'm paying for it now since I'm beginning to realise who was really my friend in high school and who wasn't.
"Oh, you took Latin." No I didn't; I was forced to take Spanish.
"You love video games." I fucking hate video games except for Pokemon.
"You, Mike, Jesse, Ryan, and Dave. You guys were such a funny group." I was never the funniest (I was the one who was the most rational), I never considered us to be in a group, and out of the four I really only loved Mike and thought Ryan was ok.
"You're a penguin." I cried myself to sleep one night when everyone wouldn't stop calling me that.
"You Mexican." I will sue and sever ties if anyone makes a racial slur in front of me again.
"I can't believe you dated Britt Johnson." Is that a crime? I once loved her very much.
All in all, as you can tell, my biggest pet peeve in the world is to be generalized. Just because I'm involved with so-and-so-this, I am so-and-so-that. That really makes me angry, and there are people that still do it. I don't live my life like that anymore. I don't think I made close friends with anyone until much later because I had a different upbringing and background. I wasn't from Mt. Greenwood, Beverly, or the southwest suburbs, nor was I white. I had a natural tolerance of blacks and Hispanics because I grew up with them, no one else did. I had to dig deep for my music because while everyone was trading their mall pop punk CD's with their neighborhood friends, I had already refused to listen to the poppy "gansta" rap my own neighborhood friends were listening to. I think that had a lot to do with it.
I think it's time to move on. I'm planning to sever ties with a few selected people I have in mind. People who have let me down many times and that remind me too much of high school. I do have to move on. There are a lot of things that bothered me in high school. I can't have all that depressing weight on my shoulders. I tried to live in two worlds in high school: the white southside one and my own ghetto one. I couldn't pull it off then, so why am I trying to do it now?
Barack Obama, an African-American man who grew up minutes away from where I'm typing this entry, just won the Iowa Caucus and has a very high chance of becoming the next president of the United States. He was a southside kid just like I am who had huge dreams in this dark medieval shit hole. I really do hope he wins. I think it's completely amazing that he's a minority, someone who didn't grow up in Beverly and who didn't go to amazing middle or high schools, and become a president. I think it's time for that to happen. It made me think as I was driving down Kedzie between Marquette Road and 55th Street, past the graffiti of 61st, the hobos on 59th, and the single mothers coming home from work on 56th. When will it be my turn to shine? I realise that if I want to be big, I have to dream big and work hard. I know I will be someone famous some day. Famous in what? I don't know, but my ideologies and philosophies will shake the world. No more "stupid Mexican" or "nonchalant Nick" anymore.
I have the greatest girlfriend a guy could ever ask for. I have an amazingly supportive family (insane, conflictive, and hurtful, but still supportive). I have the will to succeed. I think it is time to move on.
While everyone was listening to Panic! At the Disco, Motion City Soundtrack, and "indie" Fall Out Boy and other "punk," I delved into the most obscure and most beautiful music in the world. My favorite band at 14 years old was the Canadian indie pop band the New Pornographers. I was playing Bach's "little" suites on the organ by my sophomore year. I taught myself the guitar and the bass. I cried myself to sleep with the Smiths, the Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, Pink Floyd, and the Beach Boys. I had hair down to my shoulders by 13. I bonded with 30-something Generation X-ers over post-punk, goth pop, garage rock, and politics when I was a senior at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Everyone's favorite groups in 6th grade were Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, and Nelly. Mine were The Beatles, Nirvana, and Immortal Technique. Later, everyone was listening (and cried) to Dashboard Confessional while I did with Bright Eyes.
I became submerged with music that I read Pitchfork Media more than I studied schoolwork, practiced music, and especially more than I read the Bible. I was completely in awe that there was a whole music scene and culture beneath the mainstream. Beneath the average nose. And thanks to the Internet, I had complete access to this. I read interviews, discussions, reviews, news, listened online, and had a creative flow with a completely different pallet from everyone I knew outside this subculture. I was only 15. It was the year I discovered the Shins, New Pornographers, The Faint, Arcade Fire, Eisley, Bright Eyes, and these were the bands that people discovered in post-high school life. People had a mindframe that the outside world was just like high school. A lot of people I know who had high ranks in high school never moved outside their boundaries. Free thinking was considered being a fag, you weren't cool if you didn't like Panic!, and Fall Out Boy "sold out," even thought every single band they loved and cherished "sold out" anyway. For me, I avoided radio bands in the Billboard 200. It all sounded alike...
And it made me assimilate with everyone else. I wasn't accomplishing my goal...I didn't want that...
After Julie told me that, it was the first time I've cried in my car since last March when I found out about my grandfather's death. I was crying because of two things. One is that I never had any really close friends in high school until Julie. Mike came close, but it was hard because we never spent a lot of independent time together. I put myself apart so much that no one knew who I was. They generalized me as a "punk kid like Mike, Jesse, Ryan, and Dave." They didn't know what I was. Two is that I accomplished a four year long goal, and I'm paying for it now since I'm beginning to realise who was really my friend in high school and who wasn't.
"Oh, you took Latin." No I didn't; I was forced to take Spanish.
"You love video games." I fucking hate video games except for Pokemon.
"You, Mike, Jesse, Ryan, and Dave. You guys were such a funny group." I was never the funniest (I was the one who was the most rational), I never considered us to be in a group, and out of the four I really only loved Mike and thought Ryan was ok.
"You're a penguin." I cried myself to sleep one night when everyone wouldn't stop calling me that.
"You Mexican." I will sue and sever ties if anyone makes a racial slur in front of me again.
"I can't believe you dated Britt Johnson." Is that a crime? I once loved her very much.
All in all, as you can tell, my biggest pet peeve in the world is to be generalized. Just because I'm involved with so-and-so-this, I am so-and-so-that. That really makes me angry, and there are people that still do it. I don't live my life like that anymore. I don't think I made close friends with anyone until much later because I had a different upbringing and background. I wasn't from Mt. Greenwood, Beverly, or the southwest suburbs, nor was I white. I had a natural tolerance of blacks and Hispanics because I grew up with them, no one else did. I had to dig deep for my music because while everyone was trading their mall pop punk CD's with their neighborhood friends, I had already refused to listen to the poppy "gansta" rap my own neighborhood friends were listening to. I think that had a lot to do with it.
I think it's time to move on. I'm planning to sever ties with a few selected people I have in mind. People who have let me down many times and that remind me too much of high school. I do have to move on. There are a lot of things that bothered me in high school. I can't have all that depressing weight on my shoulders. I tried to live in two worlds in high school: the white southside one and my own ghetto one. I couldn't pull it off then, so why am I trying to do it now?
Barack Obama, an African-American man who grew up minutes away from where I'm typing this entry, just won the Iowa Caucus and has a very high chance of becoming the next president of the United States. He was a southside kid just like I am who had huge dreams in this dark medieval shit hole. I really do hope he wins. I think it's completely amazing that he's a minority, someone who didn't grow up in Beverly and who didn't go to amazing middle or high schools, and become a president. I think it's time for that to happen. It made me think as I was driving down Kedzie between Marquette Road and 55th Street, past the graffiti of 61st, the hobos on 59th, and the single mothers coming home from work on 56th. When will it be my turn to shine? I realise that if I want to be big, I have to dream big and work hard. I know I will be someone famous some day. Famous in what? I don't know, but my ideologies and philosophies will shake the world. No more "stupid Mexican" or "nonchalant Nick" anymore.
I have the greatest girlfriend a guy could ever ask for. I have an amazingly supportive family (insane, conflictive, and hurtful, but still supportive). I have the will to succeed. I think it is time to move on.