July 10, 1992. I emerge from my mother as any other human does, sopping wet with fluid and wailing like a banshee. Back then my parents still resided in Dallas, Texas; and so they remained until I had turned three years old. We lived in the typical Texas neighborhood; low, one-story brick houses along a tree-lined avenue in suburbia, with the blacktop sweeping through a cul-de-sac full of friendly neighbors. I most vividly remember my friends, two sisters who were older than me, and this old man who was a fervent Longhorns fan. I remember walking into the old man's home, a dimly lit, cozy house, that always had a jar of sour lemon candies on top of his old wooden TV set. He taught me how to "hook-em-horns" with my hands, and how to fix a bike. We moved away to Reno, Nevada when I was three years old. I don't remember any of the move, but I do remember meeting my best friends.
A wood-sided house, painted yellow, planted on top of a square lot of dirt. It didn't look like much but it was my new home. On the first day we moved I met the people who would become my best friends. Robert, Sean and Shayla would be there for me for the next 9 years, and are still my very good friends to this day. As a kid I loved the outdoors, extreme sports mostly, and I spent almost all of my time outside. I rode my bike down trails in the mountains with my dad, I went running through the woods in the ranch with Sean and Tony, we dug a 4 ft x 4 ft hole out in the sagebrush. Most of all, I had a passion for the mountains. I learned how to ski when I was 5 years old, and how to snowboard when I was 8. I joined the ski team when I was 10 and I went to the mountain every weekend. I loved my friends, and I loved the outdoors. But alas, the day came when I was told that we were moving. My dad is a pilot, and as a pilot he was based in San Francisco where he owned a houseboat. My dad would drive or fly or whatever to his houseboat and then leave on his trips, but then he got based in Miami. Once he was based in Miami, he would have to take a 4 hour flight to Dallas, and then a 3 hr flight to Miami, arriving late in the day and completely exhausted. So he decided that we would move closer, not only to work, but to relatives and his home as well.
Well I was heartbroken to leave my Utopia that was Reno, but unfortunately I had to go with my parents. Once arriving in Keller, I vainly searched for some way to replicate the entertainments I enjoyed in Reno. I scoured the land for bike trails, anything bumpy and twisting would do. I pined for mountains, to gaze upon their mighty forested slopes in awe and wonder, to feel the cool kiss of snow upon my face. I mourned for the loss of my friends, my boon companions of my childhood. They were gone, everything was gone. I was left in this flat, boring landscape alone and forgotten.
I fell into depression, I would spend hours inside my closet. Reading, building models, gazing at the ceiling and wishing that I could gain powers of teleportation to whisk myself away from this humid hell became my past-times. I didn't even have a friend until I met Wes in middle school.
Middle School was pretty good actually. I had quite a large, diverse group of friends and I spent quite a bit of time with them. I also had pretty good grades. Unfortunately, at the end of 8th grade I bought WoW; huge fucking mistake. WoW quickly became the obsession of my life during summer, seeing as I didn't ave anything else to do. I pretty much woke up, sat around and played WoW, ate a hotpocket for lunch, played WoW, ate a pizza for dinner, played WoW, drank monsters and redbulls, played WoW. I sometimes changed it up and went to the Black Hole and played WoW while spending wayyy too much money. It was a self-destructive lifestyle that started a spiral into even greater depression. I actually had a girlfriend back then, and I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever met. We hung out alot, in some cases every day for like a week. However, this ended up completely draining my funds, and I would have to work all day in the yard just to get enough money to see her again the next day. It was quickly wearing me out, and also I wanted more time to play WoW, so I did the stupidest thing of my life and broke up with her. This breakup freed up more time for me to play WoW, so I was happy for a while. Then I realized I was miserable.
I was fat, lazy, and single. I was entering high school for the first time and it dawned on me that I was quickly becoming the fat nerdy kid that everyone loves to hate. It had to change, but didn't until the summer after my first year in high school.
I started running, working out, eating healthy. I quit fats and sweets and bad things cold turkey, it was one of the hardest things I had done in my life but i was well worth it. I also started playing guitar more often, something I had started in middle school but never really gotten interested in. Music was quickly becoming on my passions, behind fitness of course.
My sophomore year was fairly uneventful. I did merely okay in school, mostly focusing my efforts towards running and just having fun after school. I got back into WoW for a long time, but I maintained my level of fitness and it wasn't so bad.
The summer I tried marijuana for the first time. It was life-changing. I knew from the first instant I felt the effects that this was "my" drug. However we couldn't even obtain the drug the entirety of the summer, although we did get our hands on salvia. Salvia was interesting, it is said to have effects similar to acid, and it totally blew my mind man. I had made a bong from various things around my house (I'm really good at rigging up smokable items) and we were sitting in my friend's guest house. It was dark, I was sitting on a bed, there was a bench next to me on my left where my friends were sitting, and a treadmill directly in front of me. I took a hit, held it in for 30 seconds, and released.

It hit me almost immediately, hilarious laughter erupted from within me and rang out eerily in the darkness. I was laughing so hard, but from nothing. Then I felt strange protrusions upon my side, almost as if it were words. I felt like I had become the SoBe bottle that I was holding in my hand. I peered out from my lofty position in the fridge, glancing at my friend, wondering why I hadn't been chosen as his beverage of choice. I felt the rough lettering upon my smooth side in wonder. What was going on??

Then I looked forward.

The treadmill in front of my morphed into an etheral black road stretching into the vast expanse of space. The road wound through the stars and empty void and eventually reached into the hard of a black hole, ringed with strange, green fire. Coronas of fire leaped from the surface of the black hole, creating a twisted, endless hole in eternity. This void beckoned me.

I glanced over at my friends. They were seated upon a rail station, I was in the car. I felt the pressure building behind my knees, I was about to take off any second. I braced myself for the transition into the ethereal realm, but it never came. I was denied access. I was mortified. I knew that by embarking upon the journey into space I would have been shown the secrets of mankind, the meaning of life. Yet the omnipotent being residing behind the shadowy void determined that I was not ready. I was driven to the verge of tears, I was so disappointed.

Yet for all my disappointment, the experience was life-changing. Merely to know that out there somewhere, the meaning of life and everything is available for the taking is pretty weird.

Seeing as we couldn't find weed, and salvia was really, really expensive, we turned to a more conventional mode of entertainment, DnD. We played dnd ALOT, deep into the night, and it was really fun. My group of friends was really solidified during this period, and they are all reliable, great people.

And then finally, FINALLY, we got a reliable source of the holy herb, marijuana. I quickly transitioned to the stoner lifestyle, vaporizing weed at least once a day, sometimes even twice. Even though I was still in cross country, I was a rabid weed-user. Amazingly I was on varsity, and if I wasn't on varsity I was 1st in JV. In your face, anti-weed-ites. Marijuana vastly increased my interest in music and biology, prompting me to greatly vamp up my efforts on guitar and to start fish keeping. My marijuana use continued up until the New Year, when a series of busts and getting caught has forced me to slow, and even discontinue my use. This could probably be a blessing in disguise, allowing me to regain full use of my lungs, seeing as I had drifted into smoking more than vaporizing, since smoking is so much faster and less likely to get me caught. I weep now for the music that I can no longer experience, as well as all the other little things and niceties of life that are so enhanced and bettered by weed. But I will make the best out of my life, and continue to try and be the best I can be (pardon the cliche). However, it would be greatly appreciated if those of you who so adamantly insist upon cutting me down and undermining my gradual attempts at the restoration of my ego and self-esteem would desist. For even now, I am still traumatized by moving away from my childhood home and friends, and depression is surprisingly easy to relapse into.

"Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul." - Joe Satriani

Joe Satriani
Satch's personality and sheer brilliance on the guitar makes him my hero. Although he is undoubtably one of the greatest guitarists in the world, he doesn't let it go to his head and he is always having fun with things. Plus hes bald and wears cool hats.

I can't imagine where I would be without having Satriani as motivation. If I could have one thing in the world, it would be his guitar skills; thusly I work hard at guitar every day in hopes that maybe one day I will have even a fraction of his expertise.