September 2008 - I was laid off from my job as an electrician. No more apprenticeship school. No more cell phone. No more health insurance. And no more waking up to go do something I was no longer happy with anyway. I had been living with my friends at Wallride Manor for approximately a year. This was my first place after living with my Mom and Stepdad - Harry. Wallride provided me with a lot of inspiration and support - seeing my peers write, record, practice, and perform original music all in the same place I lived. Since I was feeling so liberated from employment, I decided to use my time wisely and bust out some projects. 
One of those projects was making a real album, one with a cohesive musical layout, not just a bunch of demos on a cd-r. I had been sitting on the name "Mitochondria" since the summer time, and knew that it was a title bound for something musical - so I started there. Then I began to comb through my recordings and select what songs were to be apart of this conceptual album. I knew 10 songs was my goal, as influenced by some of my favorite whole-albums. I ended up with a mix of some tracks recorded at my moms house and some fresher stuff I wrote while at Wallride. Most of the songs didn't have lyrics, a few only had mumbles - recorded to remember a possible vocal melody for the song(s). After deciding what songs to use, I continued on by figuring out song structure and giving the songs all the instruments of a full band - like bass parts, guitar leads and some percussion. (The original tracks were a mix of live drums and sequenced drums - along with acoustic and electric rhythm guitars.) Lastly, and most grueling, came lyrics. 
My preferred method for lyrics is writing what I hear melodically fitting the music. I never had much luck trying to force established poems to music. I would just listen to the song on repeat and find inspiration with the overall tone. I used my notebooks for source material. The notebooks contained all kinds of writings in them - notes, ideas, poems, and other thoughts that streamed from my head. The lyrics were mostly about lust, heartache, and drug experimentation. I finished the lyrics sometime in the beginning of 2009. 
During the Spring, I began recording the tracks that would be my best effort at a serious recording. I started with drums, which I followed tabs that I wrote from the original demos. Then I laid down the guitar tracks using a vintage blue Kustom Tuck and Roll 100 guitar amplifier (R.I.P.) Unfortunately, I started working again - seasonal part-time at LOWE'S. I had also enrolled back at Carroll Community College so I could finish my AA that I started in 2003. I had also began dj-ing with my friends as the BOSS DJs. All of this kind of sludged up my time and focus on Mitochondria. 
Cut-smash to February of 2011- I quit LOWE'S and transitioned to working at a screenprinting company: The New Spider Web. This job has been great! The tasks involved are non-soul robbing. I am able to work with my buddy that I used to live with at Wallride Manor, Jason Nicholls, and my schedule is extremely flexible. The new job definitely gave me a new motivation, and the time I would need to knock-out Mitochondria. My Spring semester at the college unfortunately consumed most of my energy, so the momentum with finishing the album didn't really start until Summer.  During those hot days, I stayed inside with the a/c and I worked on bass, keys, percussion and vocals. Once I finished those tracks up, I decided to experiment with mixing and mastering. I spent several weeks and made about four different mixes before I was happy with everything. I finally finished it. Then I recorded the album onto a cassette tape and used a 4-track recorder to playback the songs at a faster speed. That special mix that was fuzzed out and I recorded layers of different pitched vocals on top of it, I think like 3 or 4 people heard it. It made me want to make the next album faster than Mitochondria's overall speed. 
Now its almost Christmas and my plan has settled to handing this project (at normal speed) out as gifts to my friends and family. I know that it isn't everyones style, but I just want to share something I've been working on for a long time. It's been fun, and really developmental for my musical endeavors. Now I am playing drums with Misuser, and bass guitar in a band with Jesse D., Mike S., and Eric O. I also still play drums with The Plastics, but our practices are about as often as Halley's Comet.