-> got married.
i've never spoken of this in any public forum, ever. it's personal. but let me tell you, it wasn't in the original plan for august and i to get married in february - we were waiting until september. then one day, when we were in vancouver to see my older brother play hockey in the olympics, i woke up and it was raining. i always heard it was good luck to get married in the rain, so after a talk, we decided to go for it. there wasn't anyone around. just us, and an old couple we pulled from our hotel lobby to be witnesses. best day of the year, and i had a lot of good days this year. i've, honest to god, been in love with my husband since i was nineteen years old, and thus, marrying him was the best decision i've ever made. even if he's a cranky old man in the mornings, and can't really stand it when i talk too much first thing.
-> went on tour with my best friends.
in march we decided to tour across canada, our home, the way we started out in the beginning. we loaded up the van, asked some of our best friends to come out with us, and off we went with our acoustic guitars. we played in a lot of really small bars and played a lot of new songs. we also played a beautiful church that held about 1000 people, which was my favourite show of the tour. i think if your band has a chance, then you should play in a church. the acoustics are generally pretty amazing. our fans were also amazing on this tour. ticket prices were a little bit up because the venues were small and we made a lot of donations to local food banks and thing, so i was super happy that people were willing to pay to see us play. i think every room was sold out, and we got to see so many familiar faces that we hadn't seen in awhile. it was so nice to be able to talk to a lot of our old friends that we got to see along the way, too.
-> ending, end of summer flowers.
you know. sometimes you have ideas and sometimes they don't work out. i wrote a lot of songs when i was a teenager that didn't make it onto barclay albums because they either, weren't as insightful as i liked/as our producers thought i could be, or they just didn't sound like barclay as a band. but i thought, somewhere in the midst of having a broken heart at the end of 2008, that i needed to get these songs out of my system. it felt really good at first. the record came out in 2009 and we toured it into 2010 and eventually, it just started to feel like i was so far removed from the songs. it didn't feel like me and it ended up draining me to the point that i nearly couldn't function. we played a show in st. louis (or we were supposed to) and that was when the bottle burst. i tend to bottle up my feelings and let them out in song form. i've never been good at emotions. so that was when i decided end of summer flowers was over, and that i would take a break from music. my sanity is a lot better for it, and so is my life in general.
-> learned to play the ukulele.
august, my husband, bought me a uke sometime in the summer. i've been playing ever since. music is in my blood. it runs through my veins and there will never be a time when i don't play something. i might not always play for money, or crowds, but i will always play. in a sense, i didn't pick music, music picked me. it's not something i want to do, but something i need to. the ukulele has refreshed me in that sense. it took months before i felt comfortable enough to let the world in on this secret. i'm proud of the songs i've written, and i don't plan to sell them. they're mine. they don't belong to a label (because i'm currently not signed to one, at all.) and no one has the rights to them except me. and you know what? that feels really fucking good.
-> started personally answering fan mail, etc.
barclay fans, and end of summer flowers fans, are really interesting people. i've had a lot of free time on my hands and i've started answering emails personally. i can't answer them all with lengthy messages, but i do read them all and i do answer a lot more of them than what i used to. so if you're emailing jayda@barclayband.com then i promise, i'm getting them. twitter's a bit harder since replies come in so fast but i try to answer those sometimes too. i'm kind of an internet addict. anyway, it's really inspiring to have real in-depth conversations with people as opposed to the fast ones that sometimes happen when i meet people face to face. people are less shy from behind these screens, i think.
-> quit caffiene.
i think i still get it hidden in places like chocolate but for the most part, i've kicked it. no more energy drinks, coffee, or pop. it was not easy, let me tell you. i literally had to ween myself off of the stuff. bad morning headaches, be gone!
-> switched servers.
after the shattering of azeroth (actually, after the huge patch that changed everything, the one before the shattering!) i stopped logging into world of warcraft and felt a lot like curling up in a ball in the corner of the room. initially, i made a lot of gold porting people from dalaran to org (what up, mageports!) but after that, i was kind of tired of my server. i didn't feel like levelling from 80 to 85 so i rerolled an undead hunter on a different server and world of warcraft has never been more fun. that said, look for an undead hunter called vyllain (like villian, sorta, get it? i'm lame. jayda lame.) and you may have just found me.
-> play small shows in coffee shops.
-> spend a day busking for charity.
-> learn to cook.
-> learn how to knit in circles better.
-> paint a space mural on one of the walls in the spare bedroom.
-> learn how to stretch my own canvas, since that's what august got me for christmas.
-> redo the bathroom the way i've always wanted to, like you've walked in to go pee or poo in a comic book.
-> keep in better touch with all of the people that i love, since i'm kind of bad at that as it is.
happy new year, my loves. please be safe. don't get too wasted; take care of those livers!