we haven't lost it all yet.

I really just need to get back to school, I think. I'm having a blast over break, and I've still got a lot of fun stuff to do, but I'd just sort of like to...get on with it already.

I don't even know what so expect out of this semester. One more semester and then I'm done. I'm just worried that like, none of it is real. I'm not even sure what I mean by that. It's like, it's only five and a half months, and then I'm going to have to go through this all over again. Or that's what it feels like. I just don't see the point of investing in a whole slew of new things since I'll be leaving for good (no seriously this time...) again so soon.

The only things I'm really focused on this semester are doing really good school work to show that I'm not a total fuck up, being a really good friend and brother, and making music with Matt.

I'm tired of waiting around. Come on second semester, hurry UP!

Lady Gaga - Viva La Vida (Coldplay Cover)

This is from a couple of months ago, but I still love it.

Syndicate

Don't know what you're made of,
'til the one thing that you want
Is coming with the dawn,
and suddenly changes.
Monday's syndicate
means everyone's the same,
And all we've lost
to the flame
listen to me now...

Baby close your eyes,
don't open till the morning light.
Don't ever forget,
we haven't lost it all yet.
All we know for sure,
is all that we are fighting for
Baby don't forget,
we haven't lost it all yet.

Winter Song.

I found this song about a week too late last year and have waited an entire year for it to be relevant again. It's so beautiful.

Roadtrip in the USA: Day 3

So today was the third and final day of the cross country roadtrip.

We left Springfield Missouri at about 7am and made it home around four. Today's ride was pretty boring, but we did end up going right through St. Louis which was really cool. And, from the time we left to when we got home, there was more and more snow, which was kind of fun. And then i realized how cold it was. Not so fun anymore, ha.

It was really good to get home, kind of like I could finally exhale. But not really. This whole situation is getting wierder and wierder by the minute. From the time it happened, I've been trying to focus on the positives so I don't go crazy, but now it's all really starting to sink in. I kind of feel some anger and bitterness coming on, but I'm doing my best to shake them off, because they're not going to help anything. No matter what, there is still a lot of good coming out of this.

Monday night is my parent's annual Shortest Day of the Year Party which I'm really looking forward too. It's my favorite part of the year! I'm helping my Mom set up for that tomorrow, which will be fun.

I think one of the things that this whole experience has really made me realize is how truly awesome my friends are. I'm so lucky to have people like them.

P.S. It's so cold. Welcome back to the midwest.

P.P.S. Maybe now that my LA thrill ride is over, I can use this blog for what I had origionally intended to, hyping things at school and stuff like that. Yay!

Roadtrip in the USA: Day 2

Another day on the road, done! We went from Albequerque New Mexico and stopped in Springfield Misourri. LONG Drive. But like I said, spending an entire day in the car isn't horrible if you're expecting to do so.

We made a stop off in Tulsa to visit my cousin, his girlfriend and their new baby. That was so much fun, and a nice surprise because I wasn't sure if we'd actually be able to make it.

I guess going into this, I neglected to realize how SOUTH we were going. So everytime my Dad and I stopped for lunch at a little roadside diner, I really got slapped in the face with it. Definitely not in LA anymore, that's for sure. All of the accents and cowboy hats are totally authentic. I die.

I'm glad I'm going to be home tomorrow. I'm not ready for the cold, but other than that, it will be nice. I feel like this winter break thing I'm on might possibly be really wierd and get me all crazy in the head thinking about everything, but I'm hoping it will just give me a chance to calm down about lots of things, my past and future.

Eight more hours on the road and then I'm home!!!

Roadtrip in the USA: Day 1.

Another BlackBerry hotel bed blog! My fav.

My Dad and I left LA at 6:30am this morning, and after a quick detour to West Coast Choppers in Long Beach (what a way to start the morning), we were off.

Driving for an entire day wasn't as monsterous as I'd imagined. But then again, I've got two more days of this so we'll see how I hold up.

It was crazy, first we drove through the desert, and then a couple of hours later, we were in the snowy mountians. Fun! And wierd! We ate at a diner called "Wagon Wheel" from which I died of excitement because of the song Matt and I love.

I got an email from my boss that said I didn't train the temp that's taking my position to do something that's very important, but I did. That kind of threw off my whole day, I was not expecting that. Like, I DID teach her, period. And also, I really cared about that job and took it seriously, so when someone accuses me of not doing something correctly, I tend to take it really personally. I beat myself up about that stuff. And I'm sorry, like, I only found out I was leaving (slash getting fucked by the company) last Thursday, and not more than a week later, I'm moving back home, going back to school, and doing it all in the middle of finals week. All things considered, I think I covered all my bases pretty well. God, it just frustrated me. AND, I had no one to train me to do all of the important things that I helped her out with, thank you very much. If I, of all people, can figure it out, she can too.

Sorry, I don't mean to vent. It's just I left on such good terms and did my best to make sure everything was taken care of before I left despite everything else I had going on. I'd kind of just like to live my life in peace for a minute or two.

This roadtripping thing is pretty cool actually. I'm not hating it nearly as much as expected, yet. Tomorrow we're shooting to hit Tulsa, at least, and then home by Saturday.

I'm sort of disenchanted with a lot of things right now. I hope I can just go back to school and immerse myself in the second semester of my senior year and just CHILL OUT for a while. It's been a long five months. I'm reevaluating some things too. Who knows. Everything is still so fresh, I think I just need to...stop thinking.

I'm excited for roadtrip day 2!!!

My last night in LA.

I'm so exausted.

People keep asking me if I'm going to come back to LA and MTV once I graduate, and it's like, I'm not leaving on bad terms, but so much of the last two years of my life have been dedicated to get me to MTV that, I've been there, I've done it, and right now, I just need to get it off my radar. I need to take a breath.

I'm roadtripping from LA back to Illinois with my Dad starting tomorrow morning. Cross your fingers for a safe trip for us.

What a ride this has been. But a lot of me feels like the ride is just starting.

Kassi.

I just feel bad about this whole thing. Like, I’ve dragged her along this entire time. We’re SO excited to be able to, well, be us again. But first I tell her I’m leaving school with absolutely no warning, and sort of just leave her to deal. Don’t get me wrong, nothing changed, we handled it and are still best friends. But I know it was really hard for her, I mean I know how hard it was for me. And now I’m just dropping back in and it expecting her to just rearrange her life again to accommodate mine. I just feel guilty. I feel a lot of things, ha. I just think I make it so hard to be my best friend sometimes.


This picture is so cute. If you only knew how drunk we were.

You Don't Know How Lovely You Are...

Nobody said it was easy,
It's such a shame for us to part.
Nobody said it was easy,
No one ever said it would be this hard.

Oh take me back to the start.
-Coldplay

...


Ok NOW I'm just getting melodramatic, ha. Sorry, that song is playing right now and that part of it just seemed perfect. So there you have it.

This is all so crazy. And yet again it's all happening so fast. I'm surprisingly ok with all of it though. I think I am just forcing myself to focus on the positives, because if I don't, the negatives will swallow me whole.

Part of me, well, most of me, is so excited to go back. I mean, I'm super bummed about leaving MTV, but like I said...positives. It's just going to be weird telling people what happened, how it happened. Like, I don't owe anybody a fucking explanation, but at the same time, the situation does warrant questions. I'm leaving on good terms, and that's what I want to get across to everyone. That this is my decision, and if I went with the alternative, it wouldn't be a gamble, it'd be a suicide mission. And I can't do that, not while I'm still in school. If I already had my degree, this would be an entirely different conversation. But right now, I HAVE GOT to look out for myself.

One of my bosses put it best when he said "The only person who is gonna look out for Tynan, is Tynan." I mean, this was the same boss who cross-dressed as Lindsey Lohan for Halloween. At the office.

This is all just so frustrating. A lot of it sort of hit me while I was out last night, bad timing.

But really, if this had to happen, it's happening in the absolute best way possible. I am so lucky in that respect. I can get right back into school like I never left.

Mmm...I don't know. I have good feelings about this, I really do. This is not going back to square one. This is not a giant step back. This is me making sure I can move forward. And I guess in a way, this is me moving forward.

And still I can shake this feeling that I'm letting everyone down. My parents. Ugh. They were so amazing when I told them, but now they're going to have to answer the "Wait, doesn't your kid work at MTV? Not anymore? Why?!" questions. I've put them through so much this year, and they're willing to look past it all like it's nothing. And my friends. I feel like a lot of them had so much faith in me, and somehow this sort of looks like a failure. And my professors. My god, my professors. The same professors who fought so hard for me to be able to get out here and do all of this. I feel terrible. It seems so ungrateful.

Some things are just bigger than a really cool job title, than an amazing job. There comes a point where you can't be ashamed of what you're worth, when you have to be okay with admitting that you're worth more than the nations biggest cable network. Out here, you really have to know who the fuck you are, because if you don't people will try and tell you. And they'll be wrong, but you might not know it.

I'm just thankful that I'm realizing that this is the time for me to go. I could so see myself holding on to it, and losing everything a few months down the line.

I leave Thursday morning. My Dad is flying out to LA and we're DRIVING back. Oh my god.

:-)

You can't always get what you want.
But if you try sometimes,
you might find...
You get what you need.

Again...

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse.

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Fix You
Coldplay

Tynan's Room

"Andy is only renting."

I love it. You have no idea how much I love this.

Monster.

This job is turning me into a monster.



:-)

My car.

My car is finally being shipped out here today. This gives me a horrible sense of permanence and I don’t know why. Not permanence in a sense of 'oh I don't want to be here forever,' but more in a sense of 'what if things get screwed up?'

Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was great. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and I was lucky enough to have people to spend it with. On Thanksgiving night, I went over to my friends The Metzger’s apartment and ate with them. I met them my first summer in LA, when I lived in that circus of an apartment with recovering addicts and Russian girls. Remember that? They somehow took a liking to me and we’ve kept in touch. Luckily, I wasn’t the only non-family member there. There were a bunch, it was sort of like a halfway house for LA transplants, ha. It was great. I said to Kassi a couple of days later, “You know, it’s fine for me to not have a family’s place to go to on Thanksgiving now when I’m 22, but I can NOT be that 40 year old queen who still has no family later on down the road.” Just a thought.

After dinner wrapped up, I said my thank yous and goodbyes and drove down to Playa Del Rey for some post-Thanksgiving festivities. A good friend from high school, Brant lives out here (less than a mile away from me, no less) and his sister and a bunch of their friends have a place in Playa that’s right on the ocean, so we all went there that night. It was a ton of fun. There was a bon fire (sort of think, I guess. I don’t know, what constitutes a bonfire?) more food, and lots of beer pong. As the night wore on, we ended up putting a new spin on an old rule. Old Rule: “The Troll Roll” is when a partner doesn’t make any cups for an entire game, they have to sit under the table for the entirety of the next round. Well, we started coming up with funny names and rules for other interpretations of The Troll Roll, all jokingly of course. Until we came to The Gargoyle. Behind the beer pong table was a book case about seven feet high, so before long, instead of getting under the table, you had to…well, observe.



Totally amazing/pathetic.

Anyway, Gargoyled or not, it couldn’t have been a better Thanksgiving.

I realized last night that...

The problem is, I can’t ever tell if I’m fucking everything up or doing a really good job. Whichever the case, I’m working really hard at doing it.

Lately.

You’ll have to forgive me for falling a little behind on this, things have started to get really crazy with work and school. Ugh. The semester is over December 16th, which can’t come soon enough. In the meantime, no sleeping or eating for me. Too much to get done. The upside is, being so busy isn’t new to me. I guess booking myself from 9am to 1am when I was in school really paid off. The only difference is, the stakes are much higher this time around. I’m not complaining though. I go home for a little over a week on December 18th. I can’t wait to see everyone, seriously I CAN’T WAIT. It will be nice to be home for a week instead of a hot 32 hours like last time. Yay.