2020: Hindsight's a Bitch

I get it, it's now July 2021, it's been a hot minute since I last posted, or did anything in public. Covid happened, the band breaking up happened (which I realize was never really formally announced either to my knowledge), life happened (and shit did life hit hard). So let's talk about it?

The band. First, well, there's a saying that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. So the good parts, I got sober (against my will, once, the second time was at will), met my best friend. I have a boyfriend now too, a different one from last year when this all started. Long story, but he wishes to remain very much away from the public eye, and the preying eyes of the pap. Gabe and I more or less mutually decided around the same time last year in early February that being members of V-nen really wasn't working for either of us. We were both miserable, both trying to avoid work. He went on a month-long camping trip in the middle of winter with his dog (whom I admit was a gift to him so he'd have to return back to civilization), and for awhile after we quit, life was bliss. I was engaged again, he and I built a house while staying with Gabe, Gabe even found someone and they stayed with us too while their home was also being rebuilt. But life happened.

Do you ever realize something once you're out of a difficult situation that you're more than what you thought you were? And not just surviving shit, but like, you're a different person than when you started on that journey? I know, it's hard to talk about it without being 100% cliché, but I've also learned to enjoy some of the anonymity that has snuck into my life in the last year. I live in a national park, it's remote, and I can go days without seeing people I don't know, if not weeks, and it's actually become a good thing. I'm an introvert, not an extravert, that kind of a thing. Problem is, that was the exact kind of thing that led to the breakup with the fiancé. I won't lie, I do miss him, but the more we're apart, the more I realize we were both in love with the idea of us more than we were in love with each other, and that's okay. We realized it, and said our goodbyes.

Which led to the actual third thing, sobriety. Yay. Sobriety. Can you tell I'm being sarcastic? First off, some drugs are easier to withdraw from than others. And when you've left one life to make room for another life that then also gets lost, and you're already an addict, well there's not much keeping you from not going back to old and comforting habits. That is until you realize why it won't be a viable way of living more than a few months total. Or if you need to take care of

someone other than yourself. Then inebriation is a really bad and really fucked up way to survive. It's not surviving even, it's numbing to a point where all of your attention is on the relief and not the life you're trying to live. At least I'm sober now. We didn't keep track of the day I stopped doing drugs, and I'm not publicly saying which one it was, or who all constitutes "we," but alcohol took longer to fully stop. Even then, my new beau says that those habits were from the people I used to keep around me, and now that they are gone, those habits have also left. And I believe him (and trust him, it's been awhile since I could trust anyone this much).

This could be my backyard! Really, it could be!

Covid, we didn't really get hit out here, we're that remote, but we all got vaccinated anyway, so yay vaccines! Gabe lives next door with his SO and his dog (who sneaks in almost daily for a morning cuddle, the dog, not Gabe or the SO), I live here with my SO and our cat. Gabe's SO owns the property next door where our studio is, Appleshack Studios. It's registered and all as an actual business and we are subcontractors for a studio in Paris, France. Max, the guy that filled in for me on V-nen's final tour, was the one to get us signed in the first place. He's a great guy, straight, otherwise I probably would have tried to get in his pants, and a good enough head on his shoulder to say "No" when I asked how to make him my permanent replacement in there. But Gabe and I are going by the pen name of Gabriel Beauford, though after some family drama, the last name may change. We're like the musician version of the UK's Nicci French, a good duo using a pseudonym to write and publish under. And the studio got us our green cards and everything, we're on a flexible schedule with a couple other composers so we all take turns as video comes to us. It's mostly scoring for documentaries and other lower budget films on French TV, but we enjoy it. Gabe's working on another album, which we'll be working on more as he gets more into it. I admit that I've tried to write for myself, but everything sounds like V-nen's last album, which mostly was written by me, with some help from Gabe and a little help from Ryu, whom I haven't seen since everything broke up.

Really in all honesty this is more or less an attempt to see if I even really have the guts to press "Publish" or not, as well as trying to see if I can link images from other sites (okay, that was the real reason, Gabe was trying something), or if I pretend to just suddenly not have all this outer part of my life attached to me anymore. I know it's there, it's weird that it's there. Once you've lived the life of having paparazzi following you, you don't want that life anymore. If I had any regrets though, it's that I did willingly divulge so much before in an effort in my mind to gain the acceptance of those around me. There are plenty of celebrities in the world with a private life. Look at Keanu Reeves, everyone loves Keanu Reeves!

Anyway, like others, I still have a life. My cat is staring at me with that look that I forgot to feed her even though she ate all the tuna I gave her earlier. Or is that the look for giving her the canned tuna and not the fresh stuff? I'd better go check.

Next up, at some point, I still will write that post about why exposure is NOT an acceptable form of payment for artists. At some point. Oh no, she's doing the hairball cough, gotta go!