It's been almost a whole year (I'm ONE day off, thank you very much) - time to update the DA journal.

Mmm, yes. Let's see. I think the biggest thing since last entry is the fact that I graduated from high school. I'm not in post-secondary right now - I'm on the year off, although sometimes I feel more as if it's the "year to pass by". I've been good recently, though. Not sure what I'll take when it comes time to come back to school ... I've been leaning towards something journalism related, since it'd be interesting enough to me as well as practical enough to hopefully find some use for. Of course, I've got months of time to figure it out.

Art pieces? Nothin'. It's not for me. My creative urges come in the form of either music or writing. Not saying I'll never make visual art again - it's just not an impulse.

Most of what I write will never make it onto here. I have a pad full of poems that I've been nursing for a bit - roughly sixty of them, I'd say - all of varying quality. I'd like to think I'm getting better, but at the same time, my emotional well-being has been doing nothing but rising for the last month or two - when the well of self-pity has dried up, so to speak, so goes some of the ideas. No, I'll be okay. I've just been busy.

November brings along National Novel Writing Month. As of this post, I have just reached 40k words of the target 50k. It's turning out alright, I'd like to think. Lots of musical commentary - a couple main characters who each pull aspects of myself into them (it's slightly cathartic, actually) - there isn't really any underlying plot at all, so much as it's just an observation into their lives and how they live with music and post-high school wonder. In addition to numerous musical subjects, it touches upon all your favourite good things - wondering about the future, figuring out what to do with oneself, love frustration, your good friends(and their moving away), relying a bit too heavily on alcohol (and irony, if you're John K. Samson) - those things. More of a character study with commentary and musings that I think anyone in the 18-early-20's demographic would find worthwhile.

Tentative title: "Ecstatic Sidelines". Subject to change at any moment.

I've been doing lots of volunteer work up at the university's radio station. It's a hell of a lot of fun, with great people as well. I'm really glad I'm doing that.

Musically, I find myself more and more intrigued with noise. I've gotten to a point where I will actually record random things onto my cassette player, and then plug it into my guitar amp and mess around with the distortion levels (sometimes I'll hook it into a fuzzbox and really mess with it), tape noises, the like. It's almost as if every sound is becoming interesting. On the more listenable side of things, my pop senses haven't really been honed yet - that's the next thing to work on. I think my musical calling is to create noise-pop.

Not reading as much as I used to, but I'm still keeping with it. I'm currently working at a book store, so that might feed it.

Musically in regards to my listening habits ... I'm seriously liking Caribou's new album, Andorra. I've actually heard so many goddamn albums this year that I shouldn't bother going into it, but that ones a clear frontrunner for "favourite of the year". Other mentionables would probably be Parts & Labor's Mapmaker, Cuff the Duke's Sidelines of the City, Liar's selftitled, the Ergs! Upstairs/Downstairs, Battles' Mirrored, Thurston Moore's new solo album, Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam ... and like twenty others. It was a damn fine year for music, I'd say.

I think that's about it. Right on. Let's see this thing get updated next year.