Self-congratulatory? Perhaps. AWESOME? YES!
I would like you all to meet the newest member of the Newman family. He does not have a name yet, but he is here, in all his infantile glory. He is, by the way, the guitar I posted about earlier.
I came home with my new guitar and got annoyed with my dad, because he was questioning my ability to make a good decision, even questioning my opinion and assessment of the guitar, calling me out for damaging this or risking that when he knows nothing about guitars. And I was really upset about it, and I started to try and think of why it had bothered me so much. I realized that he had been treating the new guitar as an investment of HIS money and so he had to make sure it had been invested well. I did remind him, as he took the guitar away from me and wouldn't let me play my own new guitar, that this guitar was bought entirely with my money, money that I earned with my own blood, sweat, and tears. I reminded him that I worked hard to get this guitar and I earned it, and that he should stop treating it as if it belonged to him and he was merely permitting me to touch it--because it was 100% mine. So then I thought about this act of getting the new guitar. And yes, it wasn't an incredibly expensive guitar. I could have bought this guitar after my first summer working as a CIT at Harker, and still had money for all sorts of accessories and other various things. But to me, this guitar is a summation of the work I have done for the last five years as a musician. I started out with a guitar my dad bought for me, a supportive gesture saying that he accepted my musical ambitions and that he supported my interests and passions. I took lessons that my parents paid for, hoping to give me the tools to make the most of a great love of mine. But here, with this guitar and at this point in my life, I feel as if this guitar is finally me rewarding myself and taking my musical life entirely in my own hands. I studied hard and practiced a lot and wrote lots of bad songs to get to the point where I needed a better guitar to play concerts with. And then to take that further, I kind of felt like this guitar was a self-congratulatory gift for everything I am proud of myself for having accomplished. I graduated high school and I'm going to the university of my dreams. I accomplished all of the silly goals I set out for myself at the age of 14, the "do these by graduation" goals that covered things like writing and performing my own songs, sharing my music (I don't think I ever dreamed I would have put out a CD, but thank you internet and wizard rock for making that skip the dream phase and go straight to reality), going on a first date before graduation (I may have cut it close but i made the deadline), get into a college that i could be happy at, loving my friends every second of every day and never taking them for granted, and loving life no matter what was going on. Graduation should perhaps have been that poitn where I stopped and realized what I accomplished over the four years of high school, but today with my new guitar (and hey my ap scores came! finally!) i was able to think all this through and be very proud of myself.
So this guitar is a little baby step in that direction of independence. I bought the guitar. I will bring it with me to college. From there on, I will fund my musical endeavors; I will be paid for gigs, I will pay for new equipment and gas and the endless demand for picks because i lose them so often. And in these little tiny ways, I'm slowing starting to walk on my own a little bit. Picking my own classes, living away from home, making all new friends for the first time in 7 years, and so much stuff. I'm glad it's gradual, for sure. I'm still supported by the parental wallet and the phone that will connect me to the friends and relatives I leave. But I like the way this is feeling at this moment.
I hope you enjoyed my little kernel of teenage self-indulgence, of cliched notions of fleeting youth and the departure from adolescene.