A Quote by Mike Ness

I think I'm probably going to have more luck on tour, on the road, than I am at home, because as hectic as traveling can be, I have a little bit more control, for life situations out there on the road. It's the one aspect of my life I feel like I do have some control of. I can wake up in my hotel room, I'm alone and I can ease into the day and do what I need to do. It's not like I've got to get up and drive the kids to school, feed the dog, get to the gym, go to practice, go pay a bill, you know what I mean?
My eighth-grade year, I was home-schooled. I'd basically wake up, go to the gym in the morning, do a little bit of school, go to practice, do a little more school, then go back to practice. My mom had a crockpot and a mini traveling oven, so we'd be cooking and eating dinners at the gym.
When I was on the road full-time, there was about an eight, nine year stretch where I averaged, conservatively, 250 days a year out on the road. That's basically you fly into a town, you get a Rent-A-Car, find a hotel, go to the gym, you eat, you go to the arena, go back to the hotel, you wake up, go to the airport and go somewhere else.
My colleagues think I'm crazy but my motto is, never miss a day. If we're taping in L.A., I'll get up at 2 a.m. to go run. If I'm on the road and the hotel doesn't have a gym, I'll find a 24-hour gym. I don't know how to exist without my workouts.
I discovered on school days, when they've got to get up at 6:30, they won't get out of bed. But on the weekends, they were up at 6 a.m. I was like, "Why do you guys wake up so early on the weekends?" It's like, "Because I wake up and I think, Is it a TV day? And if it is..." So we had to change that rule. I'm like, "Thank you for telling me what I need to do."
I don't wake up in the morning and say, 'Jeez, I feel great today. I think I'll write a song.' I mean, anything is more interesting to me than writing a song. It's like, 'I think I'd like to write a song... No, I guess I better go feed the cat first.' You know what I mean? It's like pulling teeth. I don't enjoy it a bit.
Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you—just a tad—off the road. The wheels kick up some dirt, but you're able to pull it back. Yet no matter how hard you try to drive straight, something keeps jerking you to the side. You have so little control over anything anymore. And at some point, the struggle becomes too much—too tiring—and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy... or whatever... to happen.
I think sharks are beautiful creatures, and I don't think we should stop going in the ocean because of them. You drive down the road and you get in an accident, but most people end up driving down the road again. Surfing is you're going into their home and it's just a natural part of life.
All I need is to wake up in the morning, go to the gym, feel healthy, get to work, be creative, come back home to the kids.
You know, it's people's lives, so as you get a little older, your own life narrative, I guess, invades a little more. It's not like we're traveling in separate buses to each show. It's a labor of love, so we just do it because we like it. Maybe someone's gonna move, or not want to go on a tour for some reason - that could happen, I guess.
I think traveling made me who I am. When I was 16, I was an exchange student in England, and that was the year that I kind of feel like I was on the road going one direction in life, and it just kind of shifted me over, and I finished high school, and I went traveling for three more years instead of going to college.
I'd like to have kids and a wife, and you know, drop them off at school and like, do normal things rather that constantly being on tour. Because I'm young now and I haven't really got a social life. This is all I do. It's the best job in the world, but I'll get to the point where there's more to life than work.
Whenever I am not traveling during the winter, I am pushing hard in the gym. Even when I am traveling, I try to fit a workout in at the hotel. And if the hotel doesn't have a gym? You can get a good workout in your room with an exercise band and some imagination.
If your gig is not in an office for eight hours a day, its going to be somewhere. If you're a truck driver, you get on a road. If you're a musician, you go to where the people are going to show up and you take the gig. I enjoy it, so I don't and I'm not complaining. Its just the traveling can get to be a bit much.
I'm pretty down to earth, I always have been and though I am on a much different path than most 25 year olds, I feel like I have a bit of a double life. We will go on tour for weeks at a time, but when I come home, I feel like I am picking up where I left off.
The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand.
When everything does seem out of control, writing fiction is a way I can order that chaos and restore some sort of meaning. I like the playful aspect of writing fiction. You know how it is when we are kids and we make up our worlds: You be this guy, and I am going to be this guy, and we are going to go slay dragons.
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