Wade

So, I just moved back to Atlanta from Germany. Germany has been my home off and on for about the last 5 years. I have come back to graduate and get some of my other affairs in order. I am graduating with a degree in International business. I also have a few rental properties, investments, and an Atlanta based production company. As for my day-job, I play around on the foreign exchange market trading currencies. It is a pretty slacker activity that only requires me pushing the mouse and a few keystrokes during the week. I needed some motivation. That is why I am helping one of my friends open a business where we restore older boats during the day. I used to manage a woodshop. I really liked working with wood. It is a media all to itself. There will also be a bit of fiberglass involved in the boat aspect. However, being able to do something with your own hands towards creating something that you can be proud of has always attracted me. I need more of those zen activities in my life. I will be building a new rental unit soon. Besides this I am kind of at a crossroads in my life. I have finished doing the college thing. I am juggling doing the normal young professional corporate american thing or doing my own thing. My own thing consist of opening a clothing wholesale business in Germany and continuing doing what I have been doing. I think it is the way that I want to go. I have always been kind of a poster child for the counter culture. I think that in a way I have probably even isolated myself with it. First of all I am a night owl. Waking up before 10am is pretty much out of the question unless there are convincing grounds to do so. Electronic music is my favorite genre. Techno, electroclash, gabber, house, deephouse, vocalhouse, progressive house, tribal house, hardcore, speedcore, terrorcore, happy hardcore, drum and bass, jungle, triphop, trance, progressive trance, breakbeat, intelligent breaks,and tech house, eurodance, lounge, ambient, experimental, groove, liquid, and astral sound are just a lot of nomenclature to segment the genre and are usually used by people that want others to believe that they know something about the music by some sort of vicarious association. I have never been some spaced out raver kid. I just like good music. I have done the Dj thing for about 6 years now. I am not so much of an elitist as I am burnt out on the mainstream. That and the fact that most of the stuff on the radio is what a marketing exec. wants to push this quarter. I also did the radio Dj thing before moving into production. This left a bad taste in my mouth in regards to the top 40 hype. Well, that and the fact that in most of the non-rock variety of music an ape could be placed in front of a keyboard plus Akai M.P.C. midi processing system and come up wit a passable song in about half an hour. Just decide what face or voice you want to put with it and you are good to go. The only other thing that I am at all picky about is drinking. I believe that life is to short to drink cheap beer. I can probably tell you more about the brewing process and the history of the brew than most people that make it. Go ahead and get the picture of the beer swilling alcoholic southern boy out of your head. I am far from it. The last time I drank until I vomited or passed out was around the first year of the college era. However, from time to time I have been know to enjoy that sweet nectar of life until I have a nice buzz to ride on out into the evening. While I am here I guess I should cover my other vices and bad habits. First of all, I smoke. I made a promise along time ago that I would quit within a year of getting my degree. This means that I only have around 300 something days to savor my delectable carcinogen inhalants. My second vice is that I bite my fingernails. I think that is about it. I am glad that I am at least conscious of my weaknesses. As I said earlier I feel a bit isolated from the status quo most of the time. Living outside the US changes you quite a bit. I feel a stronger pull toward my german culturo-centrism then some of the american ideals. I would like to call myself politically liberal. However, many of my beliefs do not sync up with the democrats or the liberals in this country. I have gotten used to the germanic approach to life. In certain ways it is a bit more inhibited here. I really hate the false smiles and facades that some people hide behind here. I feel that if someone does not initially like you because you have been more yourself than they are quite comfortable with, you have lost nothing. In fact, I believe that you gain more time to spend on the people that are worthy of friendships and relationships with you. I have further pigeon-holed myself with the bilingual bi-cultural thing. I have roommates. I own the production company with two of them. Somehow we also let a couple employees move in. We are all connected to the business. This means many late evenings. Because of this we seem to be on western time, but living on the east coast. Most of the time our work day does not begin until after 6 or 7 PM. Night owl would be a fair description. After trying to live in a house and have a separate warehouse for our equipment, we decided to move into a warehouse. It came up as a bad joke at first. Eventually we found a suitable space. That was about 5 years ago. It took a lot of work, but we converted the office space in the front into a living space and put in bathrooms. With all that said, I do not know of anyone living on the perimeter paying less than 300$ per month for a clever 3500 square foot solution to modern living. Apartment life is OK, but it is nice not to have neighbors. Our friends always come over to our place because of the size,we can sleep as many people as the bottom floor of a roach motel, and the probability that we might plug up a speaker or two in the back to do some music or intoxicated karaoke is quite high. The warehouse life is the last contributing factor to placing myself in an inconceivably small niche of demographic variables. Somehow it seems to work out. Getting out of the warehouse would do me good. Io have gotten a little lazy about that as we always have people over to the place. There is usually always something to do as well. I am not the kind of person that has a million acquaintances. I prefer a few true friends any day. I could always use a few more of those though. On to activities! As I just mentioned good friends, it is as good of a place to start as any. My favorite time of day is the twilight. There is nothing quite like sitting around a table of good friends, surrounded by their warm laughter, while celebrating the passing of another day and allowing it to just slip right out into zero. You will never smell anything resembling patchouli oil on me, but I love nature. My family is from Florida. We had a huge orange grove on a lake there. I was lucky enough to grow up in a national forest. I miss that from time to time in the city. Many people simply do not "get" nature. I feel bad about that. I like to go walking, hiking, climbing, caving, tubing, rafting, and just generally exploring when the opportunity presents itself. If you look hard enough, you will find that every place has its own little treasures. It does not matter if it is the Matterhorn in the Alps, a crystal clear spring fed river in central Florida, or a waterfall by an old grain mill up by Roswell. I think that life is pretty much like that. The difference between a humdrum existence and near Utopia has much to do with perception and the company you keep. Oh, by the way, I have a dog. He is in the pictures. We are pretty close (dog snoring while twitching legs in background). As far a sports go, I am into fencing, boxing, swimming, and soccer. I already named a few other earlier. I also do the art thing. I try to stay away from the black tie events. I like the open studio underground scene much better. Where there is no dress code and the doorman will probably want one of your beers instead of turning you away with the whole case. I have long since abandoned the Buckhead-Midtown club scene. Now I am more of an East Atlanta and Cabbagetown kind of guy. I had more here, but my roommate closed the page before I could load it up. You might just have to wait until my next motivational phase. Mit Freundlichen Grüße Wade