A YouTube pet peeve of mine is when I post a cover of a song and someone asks me whose “version” I’m doing. I always feel a little insulted as an artist–asking that question makes me think that the person asking thinks I have no artistic voice, and my music is only an echo of someone better.
But it sure sounds pretentious to answer
“Whose version?”
with
“Mine”
Question:
How many times have I relocated/moved since September 2007?
Answer:
As of tomorrow, EIGHT.
O, let me count the ways:
1. Home to dorm at Marymount Manhattan College in New York. Stay: four months
2. Dorm to home. Stay: three months
3. Home to sublet in New York. Stay: one month
4. Sublet #1 to sublet #2. Stay: one and a half months
5. Sublet #2 to home. Stay: four months
6. Home to campus-hosted townhome at college. Stay: three months
7. Townhome to campus apartment. Stay: five months (this is the longest I’ve stayed in one place in the last one and a half years. Five. Months.)
8. Apartment to home. Stay: indefinite
Each of those times, I moved. Can you imagine moving the majority of your personal possessions, on average, once every two to three months? Several of those times by yourself. Try that in New York City, where, to get your things, you have to take two trains and walk fifteen minutes, then walk back with heavy, awkward objects, and lug them crosstown, all by yourself.
Okay, now I’m just complaining.
My point is: I am so ready to be able to settle down someplace. I can’t wait to get my own apartment, put some stuff on the walls, and buy some Goo Gone.
As I get older, I add more and more items to my “I’m going to tell this to young people when I get older” list. Here are a few:
When I was your age, there were NINE planets
When I was little, the word program was a blue screen with white text. And to open programs, we had to type in commands like C://… I don’t even remember
I didn’t get my first cell phone until the SEVENTH GRADE! And that was early for my age!
We didn’t have internet when I was little
Back in my day, television stopped at 11 PM and started around 7 AM
When I was your age, people thought global warming wasn’t real!
Back in my day, if we wanted to watch a movie at home, we had to go rent one from a movie rental place
I remember when the Compact Disc and the Digital Video Disk came around! Before that, we had these strange contraptions called TAPES, and if we wanted to watch a certain part, we had to fast-forward and rewind the tape. That’s where the term “rewind” comes from, anyway!
Way back, people used to learn about current world events from these things called “newspapers”. They were delivered to your door every morning.
I remember when texting was invented!
When I was young, we took pictures on cameras that used this wonderful thing called FILM, and we couldn’t see our pictures right after we took them; we had to drop them off at a special place that would develop the film, and give the pictures back to us… on PAPER
I know there are a lot of good ones I’m forgetting. Chances are, there will be a sequel to this. What are you looking forward to telling your kids/grandkids/unwilling young people about when you get older?
