"Interesting" would be the term I would use to describe my life. I lived with my Mom & Aunt when I was little. My parents were already divorced by the time I became cognizant enough to remember. Then, when I was five, coming home from Kindergarten, a drunk driver plowed into our car. I was sitting on my Mom's lap in the passenger seat, and my Aunt was driving. They were both killed, and I had my entire forehead smashed open on the dash. It took a complete reconstruction of my frontal skull and a couple hundred stitches to keep me alive. Amazingly I didn't suffer any brain damage or horrible physical side effects, but the psychological effects of having ones mother die while holding you in her arms has definitely affected me mentally. Being 5-6 years old and realizing that you can die at anytime, in the blink of an eye, made me live much more in the "now" than most people. It made me realize that I had to do what I wanted to do, because it might be the last time I get to do what I want to do.
So, even though I was put into advanced placement classes when I was 8, I basically refused to do anything that I considered "busy" work. And when I was a teenager, when most of my family was pushing me to be a lawyer, or doctor, or, in my Grandfather's case, join the military, I said "fuck all of you, I'm going to college for music".
Since then I've been at the top of the world, and the very bottom, and nearly everywhere in between. I've gone from living in a 3 bedroom house in a great neighborhood with wood floors, my own personal bar, a moderately successful band, and a hot girlfriend, to living in a shed behind my Dad's place with no running water, a 50 yard walk across a field to the nearest toilet, not having (literally) a cent to my name, and not touching a woman for a couple years at a time.
I've made money from music, but have also worked at Gamestop, an arcade, telemarketing(uggghhh), construction and general contracting(slinging shingles in August in Central Texas is shitty), and was even a door to door vacuum salesman(never buy a Kirby, they are $2500 pieces of shit). So I've had a good and bad life, probably like most people. There are ups and downs, but even at my highest highs, and lowest lows, I've still done what I wanted to do. If that means sitting at the computer for days on end playing games, or spending 2 weeks in a row playing guitar all day long and writing songs, so be it. Bottom line, everybody has shitty things happen, the past is the past, and you have to make yourself at least content, if not happy, with your current situation.
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