As I sit here refreshing my email inbox (yes, I know, if an email actually came, I wouldn't need to refresh the browser to see it--I guess I'm just obsessive-compulsive like that*), it occurs to me how unexpected this was but a couple of months ago.
Every time I get over someone I think I'll never fall for someone again. In some cases, I promise myself I won't let myself fall for someone again. And every single time it happens again and it isn't until months after that I wonder how did I get here.
It would be easy to repeat the arguments. After all, they're usually the same. "You don't know her very well." Which is true, but does it seem to make a difference? "You're not right for her." Am I right for anyone? "If she knew all the horrible things you've done she'd never love you." Quite possibly true, but don't I have to take that chance?
And so I find myself once again hopelessly wishing for someone. Will it go the same as the last twenty times? Quite possibly. Am I tricking myself into loving her because I finally found someone who likes to spend time with me? It wouldn't be the first time.
So in the event you are reading this (and I'm pretty sure "you" know who you are), and you're not interested in me that way, you can probably talk me into just being friends. The timing can be at your discretion. You wouldn't be the first to have this conversation with me--most of my best friends are people I had a crush on at one point or other. I would understand.
But if you are interested, we need to hang out sometime. I am keeping my eyes open looking for something that would fit the bill, but if you find something first don't hold back. Oh, and send that email--I miss you. And I'm still hitting that refresh button.
*Oh my goodness, I just read the wikipedia article, it describes me so well :-O I didn't know I was OCD! (Involuntary shiver. Okay, now repeat that a few more times. Oh wait, now my back itches. Don't scratch it don't scratch it scratch scratch scratch)
Friday, June 24, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Do Something
I have spent the past eight months wasting away my life doing absolutely nothing.
Obviously I don't mean I've sat in a chair facing a wall for eight months. Because even then you could say, technically speaking, I have been doing something, I've been staring at a wall.
No, you understand that to mean I've been doing nothing worth noting, nothing of value, nothing important.
Which is good, because that's the way I understand that.
My baby Priest hit level 72 today. I've spent about four weeks on that Priest. I suppose asking yourself such questions as "when are you ever going to do anything?" are natural after such events.
Asking yourself the question is one thing, but answering it is quite another.
The last couple of days I spent an hour trying to play some Debussy piece, Garden in the Rain or something like that. That came about because I was tired of playing my old standard, the Sarabande from Pour le Piano, which was the last piece my piano teacher taught me that I was really good at playing. He taught me that piece about five years ago now. Playing the piece doesn't make me any better at it, I just play it because I can.
I started playing that piece because I was tired of practicing the Chopin Piano Sonata I had thrown 20 hours at and still could barely do anything. I mean I got the first page down, but just when it started to get hard at the bottom of the page is where it would all fall apart and I'd have to slow it way down and practicing it slow for a few hours wouldn't do anything.
All of which comes to the point, would practicing the piano be considered "doing something?" When you come right down to it I could probably practice that song for 100 hours and still not have it down due to lack of natural ability. And then even if I got it down, what's the point? I wouldn't be able to play it in church, and it's not like I get any other opportunities to perform anywhere. And even if I did play it for church, what would be the reason for playing such a challenging piece in church? So people could point and ooh and aah over my skills? (Wait, am I supposed to use the term MAD SKILLZ here?)
Is it just a performance? A hollow, empty performance on a stage? Would that be accomplish anything more than sitting at home playing computer games?
Of course, you could get that same feeling anywhere. Back when I used to work in Traffic Studies, I distinctly remember the feeling that I was just sitting there trading my time for money. I was giving away pieces of my life I could never get back just so I could afford to do something with the pieces I had left. (All of which made me resolve to be very careful with that money. For example: is that fancy new mouse worth five hours of vacuuming floors? You know what, I think I can make do with what I have.)
I even got that feeling in college sometimes. Great, guys, so I can tell you the defendants in a major court case from 32 years ago. And the reason I spent an hour learning about this is... what, exactly? Is this valuable information?
So, as I get back to thinking about my completely useless computer game, that feeling still persists--I need to start doing something with my life. But what out there would define something?
There was something, once, that left me feeling fulfilled every time I went. It was going to the soup kitchen to feed the homeless people. Gave me energy that would last the rest of the month, until the next time I went back.
But community service, unfortunately, isn't something you can just pick up and do, like you would a computer game. Plus, people want background checks now and volunteer registration. Surely there's something of value you can just pick up and do, no?
Perhaps something to do with people? Oh, but I barely know anyone around here. And I'm too shy to go ask those few people if they want to do anything. And I'd be afraid of telling them about how lonely I am and how I just want to be around someone all the time who understands me--or at least someone who would listen--and they'd end up feeling like I was following them around like a leech. I mean many people are lonely--perhaps I could say most people are lonely--but that doesn't make it any easier to walk up to someone and say "hey, I'm lonely, you're lonely, let's hang out." "Well, wait, what would we do?" "Ha, that's a funny question, I just wrote an entire post about that."
Obviously I don't mean I've sat in a chair facing a wall for eight months. Because even then you could say, technically speaking, I have been doing something, I've been staring at a wall.
No, you understand that to mean I've been doing nothing worth noting, nothing of value, nothing important.
Which is good, because that's the way I understand that.
My baby Priest hit level 72 today. I've spent about four weeks on that Priest. I suppose asking yourself such questions as "when are you ever going to do anything?" are natural after such events.
Asking yourself the question is one thing, but answering it is quite another.
The last couple of days I spent an hour trying to play some Debussy piece, Garden in the Rain or something like that. That came about because I was tired of playing my old standard, the Sarabande from Pour le Piano, which was the last piece my piano teacher taught me that I was really good at playing. He taught me that piece about five years ago now. Playing the piece doesn't make me any better at it, I just play it because I can.
I started playing that piece because I was tired of practicing the Chopin Piano Sonata I had thrown 20 hours at and still could barely do anything. I mean I got the first page down, but just when it started to get hard at the bottom of the page is where it would all fall apart and I'd have to slow it way down and practicing it slow for a few hours wouldn't do anything.
All of which comes to the point, would practicing the piano be considered "doing something?" When you come right down to it I could probably practice that song for 100 hours and still not have it down due to lack of natural ability. And then even if I got it down, what's the point? I wouldn't be able to play it in church, and it's not like I get any other opportunities to perform anywhere. And even if I did play it for church, what would be the reason for playing such a challenging piece in church? So people could point and ooh and aah over my skills? (Wait, am I supposed to use the term MAD SKILLZ here?)
Is it just a performance? A hollow, empty performance on a stage? Would that be accomplish anything more than sitting at home playing computer games?
Of course, you could get that same feeling anywhere. Back when I used to work in Traffic Studies, I distinctly remember the feeling that I was just sitting there trading my time for money. I was giving away pieces of my life I could never get back just so I could afford to do something with the pieces I had left. (All of which made me resolve to be very careful with that money. For example: is that fancy new mouse worth five hours of vacuuming floors? You know what, I think I can make do with what I have.)
I even got that feeling in college sometimes. Great, guys, so I can tell you the defendants in a major court case from 32 years ago. And the reason I spent an hour learning about this is... what, exactly? Is this valuable information?
So, as I get back to thinking about my completely useless computer game, that feeling still persists--I need to start doing something with my life. But what out there would define something?
There was something, once, that left me feeling fulfilled every time I went. It was going to the soup kitchen to feed the homeless people. Gave me energy that would last the rest of the month, until the next time I went back.
But community service, unfortunately, isn't something you can just pick up and do, like you would a computer game. Plus, people want background checks now and volunteer registration. Surely there's something of value you can just pick up and do, no?
Perhaps something to do with people? Oh, but I barely know anyone around here. And I'm too shy to go ask those few people if they want to do anything. And I'd be afraid of telling them about how lonely I am and how I just want to be around someone all the time who understands me--or at least someone who would listen--and they'd end up feeling like I was following them around like a leech. I mean many people are lonely--perhaps I could say most people are lonely--but that doesn't make it any easier to walk up to someone and say "hey, I'm lonely, you're lonely, let's hang out." "Well, wait, what would we do?" "Ha, that's a funny question, I just wrote an entire post about that."
The Things We Hide
People have a fascination with the unknown. That should be relatively obvious to anyone who is alive, but in case it isn't I could bring up such evidence as the fanciful stories written in the 16th century about far away lands.
To get to the actual point of this post, what a culture hides from its people is inevitably what that people become fascinated with. One could easily point out how countries that banned religion upon opening up experienced massive religious revivals that slowly died out a few years later as religion became something permissible.
What do North Americans hide? We censor sex and violence from our young people. Is it any wonder then how sex-crazed this society is? Is it any wonder how popular violent video games are? Death is something we hide in a corner, that same corner we hide our dying old people in. Is it any wonder then how much music focuses on the subject?
Which brings us to the question, is censorship the right approach? If you're trying to raise a good, Christian kid, is hiding sex and violence going to work?
The body of evidence would suggest no. But what then do you do? Surely deliberately exposing them to sex and violence isn't the right approach?
Well, I can't speak to the latter, because my parents didn't raise me that way. You could take the train of thought that no person has a sense of the true value of innocence and the cross until they've sinned, so you might as well go all in. But on the other hand people speak about the memory of that home they remember, and wanting to get back to that, and they wouldn't have that if home was where they met the world.
There's also the problem that when a society makes something hard to get, people have a hard time telling if something is real or fake. Note how when I described a sex-crazed and violent crazed society, you didn't understand me as saying there are prostitutes on every street corner and street gangs having shootouts in the street every night (though both of those things are probably true in places).
No, you understood "sex-crazed" to refer to all the sex in movies, all the internet porn, and heck, even all the advertising. And video games aren't anything like real violence--there's no trauma involved, and the gore magically cleans itself up.
So to sum up the questions. Does a society become fascinated with/defined by what it tries to hide? Does censorship have an effect opposite to what is intended, or is it better than the alternative? And by making something hard to get do you make it easier for people to fall for fakes?
To get to the actual point of this post, what a culture hides from its people is inevitably what that people become fascinated with. One could easily point out how countries that banned religion upon opening up experienced massive religious revivals that slowly died out a few years later as religion became something permissible.
What do North Americans hide? We censor sex and violence from our young people. Is it any wonder then how sex-crazed this society is? Is it any wonder how popular violent video games are? Death is something we hide in a corner, that same corner we hide our dying old people in. Is it any wonder then how much music focuses on the subject?
Which brings us to the question, is censorship the right approach? If you're trying to raise a good, Christian kid, is hiding sex and violence going to work?
The body of evidence would suggest no. But what then do you do? Surely deliberately exposing them to sex and violence isn't the right approach?
Well, I can't speak to the latter, because my parents didn't raise me that way. You could take the train of thought that no person has a sense of the true value of innocence and the cross until they've sinned, so you might as well go all in. But on the other hand people speak about the memory of that home they remember, and wanting to get back to that, and they wouldn't have that if home was where they met the world.
There's also the problem that when a society makes something hard to get, people have a hard time telling if something is real or fake. Note how when I described a sex-crazed and violent crazed society, you didn't understand me as saying there are prostitutes on every street corner and street gangs having shootouts in the street every night (though both of those things are probably true in places).
No, you understood "sex-crazed" to refer to all the sex in movies, all the internet porn, and heck, even all the advertising. And video games aren't anything like real violence--there's no trauma involved, and the gore magically cleans itself up.
So to sum up the questions. Does a society become fascinated with/defined by what it tries to hide? Does censorship have an effect opposite to what is intended, or is it better than the alternative? And by making something hard to get do you make it easier for people to fall for fakes?
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