I don't know what to do. I haven't felt this depressed in a long time. I try and try and can't seem to find a new job. I'm worried I won't be able to buy anyone Christmas presents. I wish someone would just take pity on me and give me something--anything. Dylan is my guardian angel and buys me food prettymuch on a daily basis without being asked and sometimes even when I ask him not to. But he makes minimum wage and doesn't get enough hours, and I just don't want him to need to help me anymore. Same for my mom who wants to retire in a year and can't keep paying my rent.

I remember when this city was beautiful to me. Now I see the lights fading, and I don't think as much about the boats in the harbor anymore. I remember when songs and stories fell out of me uncontrolably. I remember when I felt industrious, or when finagling my way onto tour buses and into art schools was easy and something I lived for. Now I just don't know what anymore. Something is wrong, and I don't know what. Someone is growing, and I don't know who.

I need to just make up my fucking mind. Am I going to be conventional or am I going to not be? Time after time after time I kid myself into thinking both is possible, and its not.
And this apartment was a mistake. When my lease is up, I'm just going to find some big crappy group-living situation, because I can't afford this.
The one bright spot in all of this is that I'm in the most lovely relationship of my life.

I've felt weird about music stuff lately... kind of listless. It just makes me wonder. It makes me confused. I have a really hard time separating super-indie-pop-persona Rachel from Rachel who is a real girl who works with kids and has a boyfriend and goes to the waterfront in Seattle with him. It all needs some sorting out. Was all that love I felt just a substitute for the human, interpersonal love I I thought I couldn't ever have? Was it safer because a band or an instrument or a record can't leave me? Could it have been? It all felt so real. And if I'm not what I was, what am I? Its all I know how to do. I stopped doing everything else because of it. Its what I'm good at.

Sometimes, I want to make my life into something incredible but don't know where to start.

Love means more to me than fame.

Today I have a job interview on Capitol Hill. It is a nanny job for 18-month-old twins. (Regarding the job here in Olympia that I was considering, one of the parents decided to just stay home and do it.) They are interviewing one other person (they did yesterday, I believe) and I know they want to decided rather quickly. If I got this, I could get an apartment on Capitol Hill ASAP and I'd make roughly $1400-$1500 a month. At this point in my life, I can live quite comfortably on that.

It would make my life pretty easy if I got this. Of course, if I don't, I'll just keep looking on craigslist and sending out resumes to childcare jobs until I get something. Its not hard for me to get hired in childcare with my resume. But I do have a few special ins in terms of this job, I think--one of the twins has some physical issues (a feeding tube, and blind in one eye--its not as bad as it sounds, but it does make the job a little different), and I have extensive experience working with special-needs kids of all levels, both physical and mental. And I know that the other person interviewing has a schedule that needs to be worked around, whereas I have totally open availability.

So... we shall see. Hope hope hope! I'm also seeing Dylan and his band play tonight, which will be fun. I have confidence in myself that I can have a successful relationship. I'm pretty easygoing. Anyway, it will be nice to see him. Two nights alone and I'd like some physical comfort, hehe.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God! (I'm capitalising "God" out of respect for who this post is about, he'd probably want it that way.) Effing SUFJAN is FINALLY going on tour again! I need to find some way to be in either the Midwest or the East coast for one of those dates come fall. That's one tour bus I wouldn't mind seeing the back room of!

Seriously, though, I was wondering when it would ever happen.

So, I recently got a job offer from the friend of a doctor my mom works for. The job would be as a nanny for their five-month-old boy. I would be making FIFTEEN dollars an hour. The catch is, I'd only be working one week a month--but for seven days, twelve hours a day. Its this way because the baby's parents are doctors who work in the ER one week a month.

I know it would be hard and tiring, as much as I love babies. BUT... I know I could handle it, and that's three weeks a month where I have all my time to myself, because I'd make enough money in that one week to live off of. I could easily get a cheap apartment or a room in a house in Seattle, on roughly $1200 dollars a month, and have no problem paying rent and feeding myself. If I do this, my mom already told me that I could stay in my old room here in Olympia during my work week. The family lives on the West side right off of Harrison, just like she does.

Three weeks a month to do nothing but work on music and have fun (mainly work on music, but you know what I mean.) Three weeks a month dedicated to exactly what I want to do. In Seattle, with no real money problems. (I know to some of you, living off of $1200 dollars a month sounds like famine, but I'm so young and so used to having no money that I'll feel downright wealthy.) Plus, working only one week a month, its the best I could ask for.

So, I told her to go ahead and give them my number. Its not a definite, but I know this couple has been having a very hard time finding someone who can work such odd hours, and the woman who reccomended me said they'd be "delighted" to have heard about someone who's okay with it. I feel really proud that people think to reccomend me for such important jobs. The fact that if i do this job, I'll be making literally twice what I made an hour at my first job when I was 18, makes me feel as if I'm doing something right professionally and progressing in some way as an adult, since often I wonder. Its ironic that I have, inadventantly, found something to "fall back on" so to speak, since I know I have a natural talent as a nanny and there is very good money in that feild.

So, we'll see. I sure hope it works out!

I'm house-sitting right now, and being out on Steamboat Island makes me remember the Swamp Castle days. Something in this house keeps making me sneeze, I think they use a weird air freshener. Either that or I'm getting a cold, but I hope not.

Okay, shower time. We're finishing up the record for sure on the 17th. I need some help with booking, which I'm awful at, so I'm reaching out for some and its working.

My mom forced me to eat. So today I put a shine treatment on my hair and painted my nails the color of a tropical sea and I'm wanting to play the most wonderful show ever the day after tomorrow. But an alright show will be great, too.

I've decided that it can't be an accident. My ridiculous lack of luck with the opposite sex, usually found only in either the ridiculously unattractive or in comedy movies, has to correlate with something else I'm supposed to be.

Maybe after I've already become that, I could finally have someone?

Whew! A really nice guy from England made my blog look cool:

hotkidsfromcoldstates.blogspot.com

Okay, I am going to go to the music store and get my live setup figured out today. I am going to do it before the extreme heat comes.

I am going to practice my set list for the 8th. I am going to get all my background music figured out and made. I am not going to sound that bad on songs where I play guitar (of which there are only two on this particular set list. Its a big step for me to play guitar in public at all, but I've been playing like a year and a half now and I finally feel okay enough at it to do it).

I am going to arrange the songs I haven't arranged yet for the record, send Matt that demo I really need to send him, get all my backup singers figured out, practice the parts I need to practice for recording on the 4th and 5th.

Whew! Being a band is hard work! Good thing I love it.

My new thing is never wearing makeup, straightening my hair only when someone happens to have a hair straightener laying around (and even then in a kind of half-assed way), and putting on clothes that my friends' roommates give me from off of their floor. You get some kind of cool clothes that way (actually, I spent all day in a floral-print shirt and polka dot leggings, it probably didn't match. Oh well.) My new thing is also going swimming in my underwear and bra. Getting sunburned seems to be my new thing, but I wish it weren't.

Swimming at Madison Lake, hiking, playing guitar and singing with friends in Seattle.

I always enjoy Kimya Dawson shows so much. There's always this huge sense of unity at them, of acceptance and oneness. Seeing her in tiny little venues like the Northern where I can sit down on the floor ten minutes before she goes on and be in the front row is weird when I remember that I've also seen her open for Bright Eyes at the Capitol Theater. There's never any "us and you" sense, there are no rock stars there. Sometimes I enjoy shows where my favorites are elusive rock stars a little bit (but not overly). Its nice to have variety.

I could have gone to What the heck fest, but I didn't want to miss Lakefair and I can't really take a weekend away right now, I have too much work to do music-wise. Hm.

I'm playing a show in Seattle on August 8, if anyone is interested. Message me if you need details, or just check out the show section on my music page (myspace.com/mattycries). There will be more up soon, since in mid-to-late August myself and a friend from Portland will be playing a few Northwest shows.

I need a new drug of choice that doesn't make me cry. Except then maybe I need a new personality.

Except now its never like "Oh I'm ugly, no one likes me, waa" sort of crying, its like "Oh everyone's so awkward but no one can talk about it, everything makes everyone feel so much" crying, which is quite possibly just the grown-up version of the former. And thinking about the fact that there is a Kimya Dawson show tomorrow (today) and how moved and okay with being awkward I'll feel when/if I go to it also made me want to cry.

I should really, really just not drink.

I spent most of yesterday in the studio. It was a really great day. I find I usually hit a small slump and start feeling mentally exhausted after the three hour mark, but then shortly after that I get a new burst of energy and a weird elation.

The album closer, a song called "songs in basements" (apparently Matt had thought it was called "songs in baselines" until yesterday)is going to be really, really great-sounding when its finished, I think. Recording vocals is a little bit like an acting job, and in this particular song, I sort of needed to get pissed, which isn't the easiest thing for me to express. But I came out of the vocal booth and it was just kind of one of those "oh my God, that's it" moments in the studio. I'm ridiculously in love with what I do. Its this great big incredible love that wraps around me and makes me safe everywhere that I go. I've felt it at the hands of the musicians I love and now I feel it at my own hands. There's no turning back.

So... My next (and hopefully last, because I'm anxious to release this thing) studio dates are August 4, 5, and 10. Between then, I am going to try to get all the graphic design stuff worked out, as well as the mastering scheduled and the printing house lined up. I have a lot of contacts for each.

I've never been so happy in life.

http://metaphysicalthinking.blogspot.com/2009/07/ryan-manning-v-rachel-horton.html

Its surreal that there's an interview floating around out there in the world with MY little awkward name on it. Its surreal some some semi-internet celebrity a la Ryan Manning would care at all to ask me anything. Its surreal that anyone might care who I am.

Some of you know how middle school and high school were for me. One thing that always stuck with me was that my picture or name was never anywhere in the yearbook that it didn't HAVE to be--as in, my school photo and maybe choir or gymnastics because those were activities I did. But there weren't random photos of me in the halls or silly little quotes. I know that seems trivial, but it stuck with me. I tried so hard to exist, and I felt like I never did. Its stuck with me into adulthood.

And all I wanted, ever, after that, was to see my name somewhere that I didn't put it. And well... there it is.

Everywhere else online I can keep the act up that this was a given, but here I can let my guard down and be the squealy, ridiculously excited little kid I really am re: all of this.

Well gang, its been a long and interesting day. I got famous! I spent 22 year, 4 months, 3 weeks and 3 days not being famous, so this might take some getting used to. But its really really cool.

Disclaimer: This is mostly a joke, don't kill me.

Double disclaimer: Except for the part about me getting famous, that really happened.

Guess who got her first interview today??! (Not the job sort, the posted-online-people-asking-about-you sort.)

I'd kind of like to stop, and I'm wondering if that's okay.

In case anyone thought I'd been replaced by a robot, here are some photos I got bored and took of what I look like now, more or less.








I have seen the top of the mountain, and it was good. (Black and white is nifty when you haven't put on makeup yet.)



Think I'm smiling remembering how four years ago, all I had to do was lie around eating otter pops and going nuts over this?:


I remember my mom coming in and being like, "Is that that Bright Eyes guy? He's pretty normal-looking." Oh 2005.

The dorks at Best Buy told me today (seriously, they did) when they meant the 7th. Annoying. So I have to wait. Oh well.

Mentally exhausting myself with friend requests for half an hour or so a day is totally worth it. I will continue.