The summer of 2003 was a hard one. I know this mostly because I just went back to read my dead journal to make sure. I started driving, which was awesome. I spent a lot of time with my friend Jennifer in Downey. Also, I got to spend a lot of time with the guys.
The bummer was that Justin was leaving to San Francisco for college, and that depressed everyone. Also, it was just an odd time between high school and college and I felt like a lot was changing all around me. This was very confusing for me since nothing was really changing and I was still living at home and having to deal with that.
I played a lot of music that summer and actually started my Choice Hat project which would end up with me writing a song a day for about three months from October to December in 2003. Most of the songs weren’t very good and only about 5 still exist today, but it was a great experience especially because I did it all by myself.
I think overall, that summer really taught me a lot about my friends and how much they mean to me. While Justin leaving to SF really tripped stuff up, I got to spend a lot of time getting closer to Max and Lenny and Anthony. Getting to know Anthony was a real blast because he wasn’t like any of my other friends and when I spent time with him I really had no idea what to expect. But we did build a really powerful friendship that I still treasure very much. And honestly, to this day, I have no idea what to expect when I meet up with that guy.
Oh, one other thing that happened that summer was my hanging out with a lot of people before they left for college. These people were never really that close to me, but we’d talk online and then go do something. There was this urgency that really made people want to see everyone they could before they left. I ended up going on a few dates with girls who were WAY out of my league because of this, and that boosted my confidence for college where I’d date some of the strangest women I’d ever meet.
But that’s a review for another time…