Went to an art gallery exhibit opening in the lower east side tonight a little earlier. I was shocked how out of place I felt there. all the punks with their piercings all over their bodies and the graffiti all over everyfuckingthing. Hung out for a while and spent my time in the cab wondering if I had just gotten too old for the lower east side artist thing, but from what I could remember I never felt comfortable in those seedy kind of struggling artist environments. Even when I was one of those struggling artists myself. was it just that it brings up money issues for me? am I that much of a snob now? I'm a singer in a rock band and I swear to God I have always had a fucking hard time in the east village. I don't know. maybe its not the lower east side as much as its just dirt and grime and poverty and graffiti that turns me off. I just like when shit is going on. Real shit. not beginning shit. and the vibe I get there is that people are just starting out in their careers rather than kicking ass in them. even though all the clubs we play are there, so who the fuck am I to say anything.

Anyway I cruised uptown where I instantly feel more comfortable. Upper east side. The polar opposite of the lower east side.  it is 10 pm on a Friday night. I am in a place called merchants. A New York landmark restaurant, that has a wood paneled bar and cigar lounge downstairs with a fireplace. Nice scene. There are only five effing places in the entire city where cigar smokers can smoke now since some character called mayor Bloomberg took over, and manhattanites are pissed. This place is packed. Must be a hundred people packed into a four hundred square foot bar. Everyone is screaming about Bloomberg like he's a Nazi.

For me I could care less; I'm here, out of the cold, in front of the fire, smoking a delicious cigar and drinking a brandy, God is there anything better than cognac and a cigar? and amongst all of these Friday night parties and revelers I have the fucking laptop on my lap madly typing at ten o'clock at night. hilarious. People must think I am such a freak. But there is just so much work that I can never keep up! I am really freaking out. I think actually what I am feeling is that I am having a nervous breakdown from the pressure of trying to get it all done and keep up. but I only need one thing to break and then I'm home-free.

Trying to wake up earlier everyday. Forcing myself. Having been used to waking up between 10 and noon for the last ten years or so, I have just found it so hard here with all the work there is to do now. in the middle of so many different projects, never feeling as though I have enough time to accomplish everything that I need to in order to achieve my goals. I have taken it upon myself to force myself awake by eight-thirty no matter what. No matter what time I go to sleep. Which is difficult because I am still on a very late schedule. My body doesn’t fall asleep till 3 or 4.

But this is ridiculous. This is just too much work for any one person. Right now I am trying to juggle five major projects: running the bands record company – and at this I am every department right now, pres, shipping, secretary, thank God I am not in graphics or web design or press, for those departments we have other people, but everything else I run, then of course there is the TV show that came out of nowhere, then there is this infomercial project for the vitamin company, which could lead to huge money, still trading stocks in my “spare time” to get more cash coming in, also trying to record the two new albums with the band – and saying two new albums is just me falling into the limited reality that seems so real to me at this time when in reality it is more like four that I have been working on, full complete albums with songs and titles etc, but again just always so used to working within these limitations.... of what people say you can and cannot do and what is possible and what is not possible and what is normal and what is not normal; still doing the real estate investment project with Sam, Boo, and Raphael – if I don't do the real estate investment I am going to wake up and find myself still renting here a year later and quite frankly to go from owning five homes to none is fucking driving me crazy --- every month that you write a rent check to someone else it sends shivers right through your whole body – the most maddening part is that I have spent every cent of my profit on all these different artistic projects and none of them have paid off as big as if I would have just reinvested the money into other areas like more real estate or what have you.