france – JACLAND

GIVING UP IN 2020

Happy 2020. It’s a new decade in history. It’s a new decade in my life (just turned 30, sup). If you’re like me and feel bright eyed about the future, and also like me, seem to slide into overwhelming dread over all the things you want to do and things you want to change – hey. How are you. Are you okay.

BEING HUMAN IS HARD.

It’s hard because I want to listen to Miles Davis. I want to read books, and memoirs and histories and watch documentaries. I want to know everything about Miles Davis.

I also want to make money blogging about nothing so I can keep traveling and doing nothing but eating. I want to learn French and Spanish, I want to read poetry, and learn to cook and publish a book, and quit self sabotage, and negative thinking and meet new people who challenge me and keep adding new cool things onto my plate so I can keep learning, and seeing and experiencing and doing and and and and.

2020.

I don’t have answers. I’m no good at human-ing either. But I do know that if you’ve been fighting something for a long time and it’s still winning, it’s time to come at it from a different approach.

Happy to announce I’m giving up the juice. I’m off the sauce. I quit drinking. Bye binging because I’m sad, uncomfortable, overwhelmed. See you never always having six drinks, spending more money than I have. Get lost being so hungover I waste a whole entire day in bed. I don’t need it. It brings me nothing but pain. I’m not much for moderation, and I know it from 10 years of failing at it. Time to just stop literally suffering. Time to stop trying to hold onto something that I straight up don’t even need. Not even a little.

*Me double fisting after a weekend of telling myself I was going to quit*

I’m ready to learn French and Spanish. I’m ready to sell a book I wrote finally, I’m ready to make money doing shit I like so I can keep doing shit I like. I’m ready to not wake up feeling like shit, then being disappointed in myself so much so that I just repeat the cycle. I’m ready to learn so much about Miles Davis that I’m the law on Miles Davis.

I HAVE SHIT TO DO, OKAY?!

But I can’t be the only one ready to move up.

Please. PLEASE. Tell me what you’re happy to say good bye to this year. Comment below, hit me up on Instagram, send it in the mail. However you need to get rid of habits that have been holding you back, lemme hear it. Put it into the universe.

And after you write that down, tell me what you’re replacing it with. What’s something you’ve always wanted to do? What’s something you’re going to hustle for this year?

The truth is, for a lot of us, we are entirely too capable of having everything we want. The things we want are hard to achieve, but that doesn’t mean we’re incapable. Many of us have people who love and support us. We’re smart, capable, strong and determined people.

If you have a dream to [insert literally anything], just do the thing. Figure out what it takes, break down the steps. Do the thing. That’s all it takes. Why not now? Why not at the beginning and the end of a pretty big moment in time (in my life. Do it for me).

Need help? I’m not a therapist or a doctor, but I am happy to be a solid support system. Sometimes it’s easier to overcome hurdles when you know someone is rooting for you.

Let’s stop adding our scared, angry, bored, tired, hungover, unhappy energy to the world, okay? If the least you can do to contribute is make yourself proud, then please, please do it. We will all benefit.

*Ok wait it was actually kinda good though*

I’m not doing a project this week because I need time off. I’m still working on eating healthy, drinking more water, editing my book, traveling through Madrid and then London. I’m still learning to cook, practicing my French, listening to Miles. I’m certainly not slacking this week, but I’m hella gonna give myself a chance to catch up on all the really dope things I’ve decided to add to my life over the last several months of blogging.

I’m also prepping for Volume Three which is actual madness. She was an ambitious Jac, Volume Three. If I pull off even some of this stuff my entire life will be different.

Or, more different, I guess, than it is right now… never mind my life has actually always been really exciting chaos. Wow, that’s an unsettling but slightly sexy realisation.

I will say, Tiny Jac wanted to give up fries and muffins which is fine. I haven’t been able to digest those in at least two years anyway.

Thanks for being here. If you’ve been here once, if you’ve read three posts, if you’re my mom and have read them all. Thanks for even clicking the link if you don’t read. I’m gonna keep going because this makes me happy. And you guys deserve that as much as I do. <3<3<3

Listen to Miles Davis. The smoother stuff like on the album Young Man with a Horn (skip “Chance It” if you need that sleepy rainy day feeling).

Wish me luck this week, and good luck to you.

January 6, 2020 by jacrmax Tags: 2020, france, madrid, newyear, paris, personal growth, sobriety, Spain, travel 4 Comments

Am I Finally Living?

I remember being a kid and having these intense feelings of needing to run. Fast. I just wanted to fly through the trees, wind in my hair, to get to a place where I could scream at the top of my lungs and not have to explain myself to anyone.

I wanted to be wild.

That sentiment stayed with me as I searched for the feeling in every move I made. In every person I met. In every “yes” to a situation I wasn’t entirely sold on.

Being out here like this, completely free to come and go, able to leave when I’m ready, to stay when I want, to say no, to say yes, to learn, to be afraid… it’s the most wild I’ve ever felt and I feel wide open. I feel like the wind is rushing through my chest and I’m flying so fast.

That monotony of seeing the same faces, the same walls, riding the same routes, shopping in the same sections, it’s never present.

Last week I was drinking cheap beer from the bar at my hostel with a Slovenian girl, an Australian guy and his German girlfriend in Frankfurt, Germany. This week I’m drinking red wine and eating French pizza my friends from New York in Paris, France.

THIS. IS. LIVING. I feel alive. I’m learning more about myself than I’ve ever done, more about the world, more about what it means to be a good person, more about what it means to accept the proper love and care I deem necessary for myself. And it’s always changing. Maybe I’m addicted to change, in which case it’s not so healthy. Maybe I love freedom to come and go. Someday I’ll get tired of sharing rooms with strangers, tired of the snore-symphony, tired of the backpack or the lack of privacy, or the cigarette smoke.

But at this moment, this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and it feels insane. I’ve had these feelings of being in the right place at the right time before. I’ve felt the sense of belonging before, and maybe that’s what I’ve been searching for all this time. That same sensation of just feeling right. Feeling like I exist properly. It’s here in these coffee shops, in the freezing cold parks because I can’t afford museums, it’s here in the bookstores with foreign titles. I belong out here like this right now.

AND IT RULESSSSSS!!!!!!! I want always to be a boy and to have fun.

The strikes have been an issue, but we’re resilient. Fran and Sharon went to Luxembourg for a night and couldn’t get home for a whole day. It was scary but they survived and I got two nights alone. I cannot express to you what it means to be alone in a nice place, where I’m not sharing space with anyone. I’m rejuvenated.

On another note, I MADE IT. I finally made it. I’ve finished my last Christian album (at least of this journal). I couldn’t be more thrilled, and want to thank my mom for reading through each, painful experience. You’re a trooper and a good woman.

Kevin Max’s album Stereotype Be can best be described as that person in your required poetry class in college who takes it way too seriously and comments the worst shit about your poems when you’re just trying to get a passing grade so you can move onto the shit you actually care about (I loved poetry class in college. I also hated that girl who even corrected the way I pronounced my words).

He pulls influences from a lot of popular artists (U2, the Beatles, Peter Gabriel) but it all kinda feels like coffee shop bands, the guys who love music so much – too much – so they kinda just rip off what they’re hearing.

It has “world music” influences, as every review says, and also includes spoken word poetry. The last song on the album is the dreaded 2 minute song, then a 2 minute brick of silence, and then a whole other song.

Least favorite. His book was better than his album.

Next week I’ll be in Madrid, Spain having spent three nights with Sharon and Francisco at a friend’s house. By Monday I’ll have already checked into a hostel for five nights in Madrid. Excited to be back in Spain, excited to see how it differs from Barcelona. Excited for more and more and more new shit all the time.

The world doesn’t run out of new shit to see and do, right?!

Which leads me to my last project of Volume Two for now. I’ve got loads of other things to do from this volume, but they aren’t entirely accessible at this time. So, as a parting gift to myself, after weeks of bad music, I’ve left this for last. With no context whatsoever, I wanted to know who Miles Davis was. So I’m gonna get to know Miles Davis over the next couple months.

Next week we’ll be launching into the Twilight Zone Volume Three. The first quarter of it was written in 2004 as a 14 year old creep. Then it picks back up at the angsty, Danny-obsessed 16 year old we leave behind in Volume Two. Good bye weeks and weeks of sickness, good bye mostly Christian influence (don’t get too comfy, I practiced Christianity pretty much until I was 18).

It’s a whirlwind. I have some big goals for V3. Like, actually possibly unattainably big. That, or I’ll be going back to college, giving modeling another go, and learning Portuguese.

Wish me luck this week and see you in Spain ❤

December 30, 2019 by jacrmax Tags: france, jacland, milesdavis, paris, travel, volumetwo 1 Comment

You Know Nothing.

If you’re here thinking this is a Game of Thrones reference, go away. I never watched it.

I had a whole long post about my birthday and what each year was like for me in my 20s. I wrote about being alone, traveling on your birthday and how hard it is. How expectation vs. reality is brutal sometimes.

The truth is, it is hard. It’s hard because not only is it the same as trying to make friends as an adult anywhere, add in not speaking the language, add in not knowing where I am, add in basically camping because you have no privacy. Add in walking 9 miles a day because that’s all you know how to do, add in permanent money stress and future stress.

But then, after being pushed so hard by life to get the point, I finally got the point. And as if life sighed an eternal sigh, all my expectations met my reality right in the middle. Which I write about here.

Anyway, moments like these it makes me realise that I cannot fucking believe I survived my 20s.

I decade of illness, discomfort, insecurity and general indifference. (Of course, also growth, happiness, overcoming fears and carving out a more realistic version of myself. A good foundation for continuing into my next decade).

Well I’m here to tell you now, I’m over it. No more identity crises, no more financial stupidity, no more putting stuff off for me to deal with when I’m 30. No more working jobs that make me miserable, no more putting my passions and goals off. No more ignoring the signs, the symptoms, the surroundings. Nuh uh. No more.

This is me. Traveling through Europe, getting a gd spa treatment in a French spa, stupid as can be and embracing all the cute things that make me up.

Okay?! (talking to myself, sorry, also taking resumes for a hype-man)

Anyway, Lyon is nice. I love the cold here. The Saône and Rhône rivers cradle the downtown city of Lyon. They’re so cold and beautiful and allow for a sort of indulgent emptiness. You know the kind when you’re thousands of miles away from everything you’ve ever known and it’s both so amazing and so overwhelming? A good feeling.

The whole reason I chose Lyon was for the Festival of Lights, which happened this past weekend. I was expecting some cool stuff, but what they do with the city is actually magical. Everyone (literally everyone on the planet) is there, and there are vendors and little French children and me (and vin chaud, which I’ll be having again in Frankfurt under the guise glühwein).

Okay. Rebecca St. James. Of all the albums I listened to, this was the hardest. It’s the most classically Christian in that she sings her love and praise of Jesus in every song. One of her songs is literally about waiting to have sex until you’re married. It’s the sounds of the late 90s and has also the values of the the late 90s. Narrowly choked it down, and honestly didn’t try very hard. PASS.

I’m just (really slowly, over the course of four weeks) ripping the bandaid off with these albums. There’s pretty much nothing else that can be done from Volume Two (things like go to your brother’s favorite place with him, knit a blanket for someone in need, grow in playing the piano aren’t super accessible at the moment, so I’ll circle back around when it’s possible).

This week is Almost There by Nashville based MercyMe. I’m not pumped. So, there’s that.

If you follow my Instagram you may have seen that I purchased a website to update this blog and make it cuter. Well, they promptly banned my account because it was purchased in Spain with an American credit card. They required that I send photo ID and a bank statement to prove I am who I am. Which I wasn’t willing to do, because that’s a weird hoop to have to jump through for a blog pretty much only my mom reads. So for now, this is it, though the bug is in me now, and I imagine, at some point this year, I’ll be making some changes.

Next week I’ll be writing from Frankfurt, Germany. Christmas markets and pretzels galore (hopefully? Expectation vs. reality)!

Wish me luck this week and do me a favor; try and accept the things that stress you out about yourself. Like, the ugly bits. You don’t have to love it, but it might reward you to know that it’s the foundation with which you can build your pyramid.

December 9, 2019 by jacrmax Tags: birthday, france, jacland, travel, volumetwo 3 Comments