The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: April

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

April

And suddenly I’m in Asbury Park, New Jersey, with one of my best buddies, Marty. It’s a bit of a mish-mash, musically. Asbury Park is the Bruce Springsteen hub of the universe. It’s where he got his start. It’s where most of his first three albums take place. Places like The Stone Pony and the boardwalk are legendary. But we’re not there to see Bruce Springsteen. I played Marty non-stop Drive-By Truckers on the way down to the shore, but we’re not there to see Drive-By Truckers, either. We’re there to see “our” band, Blue October, in the midst of their Any Man In America tour. We finagled our way to the front, and the band is on, and we have a lot of fun by the sea.

The next day, we headed into New York City and ate brunch with my friends Kristen and Mark and Duncan. On the eve of Easter, Marty and Duncan and I decided to check out Rocky Horror in Chelsea. Even though I’d known Duncan for years and we’ve been friends, we’ve never really hung out for an extended period of time. This was a chance to change that. He’s an old-school Rocky fan, I’m newish school, and Marty was just happy to giggle along. Plus, the emcee is a chubby goth in bunny ears, so it’s pretty much awesome.

The first meetings of Sketch Avengers began. We ran through scripts. We brought in more actors. I gave some suggestions and everyone seemed interested in listening to me. By the third rehearsal, one of the actors got there late, and said she’d been pulled over for driving too fast. “I blamed it on my director,” she laughed. I asked, “Who’s your director?” She looked at me blankly and said, “You are.” That’s when I realized that I’ve been the Sketch Avengers director for weeks and didn’t know it. On my way.

Drive-By Truckers had become so big to me in such a short amount of time that it was almost overwhelming. I tried to get my friends into the band, to little avail (though my friend Jeff, who lived in New York City and who I’d met at Disney the year before, confirmed that he liked them). I kept returning to the song “World of Hurt,” and that line, “It’s great to be alive.” Already 2012 was shaping up to be leagues better than 2011, and I thought it was important to reflect that, permanently. On

April 14th, I met up with my first tattooer post-Kelly. His name was John and he was talented as hell. Within two hours, he got the band’s symbol (the Cooley bird) and that legend, It’s Great To Be Alive, tattooed on my arm.

My boss at my temp job officially extended my position to August, meaning I didn’t have to worry about finding a new job till then. Hooray!

I pitched an idea to my editor at Cemetery Dance: Stephen King Limited, a chapterbook that would take a narrative look at the world of Stephen King limited editions. He immediately approved the idea and I got to work, dividing my day between writing and researching that and working on I’m On Fire.

Mid-month, my Kickstarter money came in. I immediately marched to the Apple store and got myself an iPad, which I named Tug. That day, I transferred the I’m On Fire file to it and began editing and re-writing work there.

I also started listening to my friend Marty and began doing cardio in the morning, before work. Just 15 minutes on the elliptical to complement my muscle workouts in the afternoon. It was cool – I had audiobooks.

On April 21, I flew down to Atlanta, Georgia to see the Drive-By Truckers in concert for the first time. It was also Record Store Day, and my buddy Joe accompanied me to Criminal Records to see lead singer Patterson Hood play a solo acoustic set. It was the closest I’d ever come to this new icon in my life. That night, we headed to the Tabernacle in Downtown Atlanta; I got right up front, and the music blasted me so hard and so thoroughly it felt like I was being reborn. It was one of the best nights of my entire life.

I wrote one column on FEARnet, the first on my iPad, and I wrote three poems: “Nosebleed,” “Blood Orange,” and “Tinnitus.” That last one was about the rock show.

Books read: Juliet, Naked, by Nick Hornby; The Fourth Hand, by John Irving; The Professional, by Robert Parker; and The Wind Through the Keyhole (again), on audiobook, read by Stephen King.