I told a friend that I wished he would get back into playing violin again, after a several-year hiatus.
Since he is stuck at home, it feels like the perfect time for him to do it.
After hearing what I had to say, why I was saying my wish in the first place, he said he definitely would do it: Challenge accepted!
My mom said that you were working from home right now. I said, “I wish he would start playing violin again.” She replied, “You should tell him that. He’s probably still up.”
I just really, really loved the experience of you playing violin. I mean no uncomfortable pressure by the sharing. I just have missed that part of you these past several years – you have this really amazing part of you that shows up when you play, and I always have loved it. 😉
To which he replied:
OMGoodness. What a wonderful thing to say
And he then proceeded to tell of his recent considerations of playing, and his acceptance of the challenge!
And then, when I mentioned that I had somehow started writing songs, he said that he would get to work on violin, and then we could play/sing for one another one day in the near future.
!!!
So, basically, I have a music date with one of my dearest family friends at some point in the undetermined near future!!!
I can hardly wait(!).
And I will have to figure out what to sing and play for him for this…, which is actually really exciting and inspiring me.
Awesome. 😀
I am so ready for this fun (by which I mean to include the preparation as well as the actual music date)!
I felt a need to do something tangible… as though the list of today’s accomplishments weren’t already long enough (Trust me: It is long enough already.).
It is called an anti-stress coloring book.
Just like the rest of its kind, though, it stressed me out with all the details.
So, I went for how I really felt.
And I actually like it a lot better this way…
Sigh…
Do you ever feel tired of being productive? Like stressed out about it, I mean…
I have been so productive the past couple weeks or so, I feel that I now have the pressure of a standard I have set to be very high…
For example, this past week, I discovered song-writing, right?
I wrote three songs, one right after the other, spending about two days on each, beginning last Friday.
By this Friday, I felt sick about writing songs, because I felt this huge standard weighing on me suddenly, in the form of ‘another week means another two or three songs’.
And I just felt like I would fail, which has made the pressure even worse…
(Plus, on that topic in particular, when I even begin to revisit writing a song now, I grow instantly annoyed with the fact that nothing feels real – feelings and emotions from within myself – except my worried, upset, annoyed, and longing-for thoughts in relation to this guy I DON’T EVEN KNOW…. [Like seriously, I barely know him, and getting to know him better has not been going very well… he seems way less interested in getting to know me now than he did at the start…] Can I get over this already, please, so that I can return to my regular set of absurd emotions?… I can totally handle crazy, but it needs to be my crazy, not whatever these past three weeks or whatever have been… exhausting is what they have been, and I’m tired of it…)
So, I feel all this pressure continuously popping up to hang around for a while – maybe even a long while – and to make me feel like snuggling up and crying into a large stuffed animal in my bed – because we all know that I have no person with whom to do this – and sleeping the world away for a while…, I love being productive, but it has somehow become more like a contest against myself, and I very much dislike it – it is not empowering for me… just stressful, and it makes me want to give up and run away…
So, yeah… that’s about where I stand tonight… sigh… and I don’t particularly want to do anything to turn the emotions positive right this minute – I just want to be heard (because, again, we all know there is no one out there calling to see how my day went, and to wish me a lovely night’s sleep tonight).
What is this life I’m living (right now, anyway)???
The world is going crazy having to stay home, and I am here being extremely productive, and somehow still napping as needed, or just lying on the floor for a bit, multiple times throughout the day…, and eating a lot and often… and still getting my job done…
This has been rather good for me, I think, having to stay home and all.
It was rough at first, especially since I really want to get to know this guy I kind of just met, but I think I approached the whole ‘stay-at-home’ situation with a genuine and thorough consideration for my health and well-being, and I have acted accordingly with my self-given guidelines and encouragements, thereby helping me to be extremely sane and comfortable and confident, and also, somewhat surprisingly, very productive (more so than usual, even).
And it was really good for me to have to sit with so much discomfort around that guy for the first while – I needed to be able to get through any panic and just chill out, approach the situation as myself, and not as the crazy person that sometimes won’t shut up in my head… she’s funny, but can get way out of hand, if I indulge her.
So, yeah…, this has been very good for me.
And, as mentioned, I have written now a third song… that’s three songs in a week’s time… crazy… and in a good way… a very good way.
Which, I guess, means that there’s no time like one in the morning! 😛
I had just completed a few hours of meditative work both for myself and for a friend – making a mala, and being very intentional about the whole thing and its entire process, thus taking hours to do it all, to meditate first on what to do, and then meditating by doing it – and, as I was packing up things, I acknowledged that the pull I had felt the past hour or so to play my second song (with the hopes of getting it recorded to share) was worth it… bed could wait a little longer – it wasn’t like I had to be anywhere early tomorrow, nor that I couldn’t nap as needed throughout the day (though I do have to start work at 9am, it is from home, and I don’t exactly have to talk to anyone first thing, possibly at all, so I’m okay to be a bit short on sleep…, even though I struggled with sleep last night…, but I’ll get back to that in a sec…).
Plus, this pull was more than just one to record a video or audio recording… there was something emotional pulling at me through it…
All these emotions that had gone into the song, they were ready to release, to be expressed, and to start to move onward… I had sat in them consciously for long enough – it was time.
Just to be sure, I played once just for myself, just to see how it went.
It was practically flawless.
So, then, yes, it was time.
I pulled up my computer, tested the sound and video and all, and then recorded…
And it was perfect.
And it was 1:12 in the morning, and that was perfect, somehow, too.
And now, without sharing the video, I will go get ready for bed and go to sleep, with hopes that, with these emotions out of me like this, I will find rest tonight, and can wake up refreshed tomorrow… unlike today.
And yet, even with these thoughts and feelings waking me while it was still dark outside, and not allowing but another short bit of respite – although, can we call it respite when we just end up inside stressy dreams with all the same thoughts and feelings that kept us up in the first place? – I still seem to be functioning at, now, almost two in the morning… I trust that I will be okay tomorrow, especially after resting for real… yes… I will sleep well tonight.
Thank you, God, for the music and the words… they are invaluable to me right now, and I am immensely grateful.
Well, another song has come into being by my hands.
And I like this one, too.
No, it is not so love-overflowing and happy and hopeful as the first, but it is still honest, and, while it hurts some, it is releasing…, cathartic, in a way…, and it offers hope.
Tomorrow morning, I will do my first of two workouts for the day, then I will start work on yet another song as part of my homework (due at 4:30pm tomorrow), then do another workout for lunch, and be delighted in the accomplishment of my one-year relationship – the only anniversary I’ve ever had – with the gym.
I am excited for tomorrow, and I am grateful for today.
God, help me to be true to myself and thereby share and create true love in the World.
I lay in bed, exhausted, for an extra hour and a half, after already having woken up almost two hours later than usual (!) (and I went to bed earlier than most nights); danced around my living room to the test recording of my song, to grow accustomed to it before recording it properly; stood in my open doorway, enjoying the weather, and watching people pass without even noticing me; I walked in the sun and shade on my own; I heard French(!) from some neighbors; I practiced, finalized, and recorded my song (only a video and simple audio version [versus with a good microphone, as for a CD or something], but still a finalized one!); played it for my mom (she almost teared up a bit, and really complimented it with her words along the way and afterward); painted a whole painting (from a fun and loosely-guided tutorial) on the porch, with my mom painting alongside me for a good while; I made another mala; I ate a lot of home-cooked food; I shared my song online (eek!), carefully excluding certain relevant individuals from seeing the post (okay, well, it was really just one person, but that’s beside the point); I listened to a lot of music from musicals that I hadn’t known until this weekend (Hadestown [stellar music!], 36 Questions, Heathers, Co-Op, and one whose name I am not currently recalling [only got one song so far from it and Co-Op and Heathers, but I’m liking them all so far!]); and I started to figure out the chords to a set of songs I want to learn to play on guitar.
Suffice it to say, today was a good day… emotions are very real and honest, yet very light… it is a beautiful feeling.
So, yeah… this was one of the best standard Sundays of my life… and I also stuck to my regular goal of having Sundays include painting, without even originally realizing that I was planning this particular paining event for Sunday.
With that, I go to sleep, exhausted on the other end of the day, and deeply satiated… for now. 😛
We had a lovely retirement party for my uncle this evening… 35 years working for the same company, doing, essentially, the same work, day after day… completed.
Of course, we are not exactly permitted to be together for a party, so we did a Zoom video conference party – which, actually, allowed even more people to come than would have been able to make it even if we had been allowed to have the party in person, and saved All of us loads of time in driving, and even allowed for last-minute (literally) guests to join the party – and made it a total surprise for my uncle.
I ended up organizing the call, since I was the most apt to figure such computer-y things out, as well to manage a group of people and make things happen the way we want them to happen, and so I arranged with everyone (via a liaison I enlisted – aka my cousin who was originally put in charge of organizing things, but who quickly handed them to me, when we discovered his lack of and my having experience in such a thing) when to meet and how, explained the goal of the quick conference and how it would run, offered up and accepted my mother’s ridiculous idea of our all singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow”, after the initial surprise – yes, we had discussed how we would be all out of synch, but that that merely would add to the enjoyment of my aunt and uncle, who would be the recipients of our group singing – and informed my aunt that we were all ready.
The surprise was lovely, the singing hilarious; the photo I was asked to share was a hit; the ‘quick five, max ten minutes’ for the call turned into 45 minutes; as arranged, my aunt went through and had each of us say something individually, and lots of tears happened, even from those who avoid tears, especially for such occasions as this public one; and we all had a lovely time from all across the country, and even down to El Salvador.
Also, fun fact: the grandparents (my grand, that is) couldn’t quite get the technology to work for video conferencing, due to their having older phones, and so they each were Skyped or telephoned in and held up to the computer screens of others, so that they, too could be part of the celebration, despite their lack of technology or technological skills. 😛
It was adorable.
In short, it was a spectacular 21st century retirement party, in more ways than one.
Our family is no stranger to long-distance and cross-country calling and video calling (and jut working with what we’ve got and making it work wonderfully) – we have had our fair share of people living here or there around the country and world – but this was the first entirely digital event we have had…
And it was actually really quite cool.
Technology is quite spectacular, when we allow it to do its best and we use it well.
I express tonight extreme gratitude to all those who have played a role in the development in technology connected to what our family used today – thank you, all.
Let’s talk for a minute about how we live into the future…
You know, on any given weekend, Sunday is kind of the sucky day of the weekend, because we are acutely aware of having to go back to business Monday morning… and then, if we have a vacation coming up, we’re overjoyed and excited all the time, all throughout the day, even if it is Monday morning, and we have work to do…, because our vacation is soon(!)… The boring meeting right now has no power over our cruise that starts Saturday morning…
In that sense, we live into our future, right?
Right.
So, for me, I need to be around people – I need to have my solo time, but I also need to be with people, really be with them… a friend(?) recently mentioned the term “ambivert” to me, and I like it… it very well describes my situation with all of this being extroverted and introverted…, which people almost never seem to understand, by the way…
Anyway, I need people in my life.
For the past two weeks, I have been living with very few people in my daily life… it was enough to get me by last week and the start of this week, but then the working from home this week has crushed all interactions with people in my daily life now…
However, I had work to get me through the week, e-mails to exchange, interactions (though cyber) guaranteed to be had throughout the day…
But tomorrow is Saturday… I have no work, no e-mails, no semblance of human interaction…
And I am miserable… I almost – scratch the almost, I feel like weeping, I am filled with such an experience of stress and of being unloved…
There is that beautiful quote of, “I have called you by name; you are mine,” and, though it is used initially as defining a part of the relationship between God and humanity, I feel it applies to how we interact with all things and beings in our life… when I have called you by name, given you a name of my own, I have given you a place in my heart, and you are dear to me – in some way or other, you are mine.
When people interact with me, call me by name, I often am filled with the love that is present in our relationship, whatever that relationship may be… essentially, when people interact so directly with me, I feel and experience their love for me.
In contrast, when people do not interact with me directly…, I sometimes lose sight of that love…, I sometimes begin to convince myself that the love has faded, and that I am left to myself, to be loved by no one else…
And the experience of that always sucks.
Just saying, it does.
And I know that my love is enough, and I know that the pieces of God that reside within me are enough to sustain me and fill me in every way…
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to feel unloved by the rest of the world.
I know I will be okay… I will be far more than okay…
I’m just letting myself experience this overwhelming feeling of sick right now, so that, in acknowledging it, in allowing the intense, hiding yet ebbing emotions to express, I am able to let it all go, to release it all in a cathartic convulsing of body and searing tears…
It is already late tonight, but I know that I will go to bed in an intentionally much improved state…, and I will get out of bed in the morning and take care of myself – I will play music and make art and work my body as hard as it needs to release anything else that might remain in the morning… if I cannot focus my love on others, perhaps there is something missing in my love for myself, something on which I would do well to improve… I am worth loving, and I know that and experience that with my whole being… even when I stray to wonder at its being true…
Nonetheless, I will take care of myself… I will do what I wish others would do to show their love for me, because I love me, and I am worth being loved (and even lavished), and being all alone for so long and for so much foreseeable future is scary right now…
But perhaps it is this problem exactly that has me in this situation… perhaps I need to grow more comfortable with providing all the love on my own, so that I become fully clear and comfortable in the fact that I do not need the others’ love – I merely want it.
As I was thinking in a dreamed conversation just today, do you really want to be with someone who needs you?… Would you really choose that over being with someone who wants to be with you?
I have said it before, and it still holds true entirely, I want to be with someone – in all my relationships, really – who doesn’t need me, but who wants to be with me nonetheless… who wants not to be without me, and so chooses to be with me.
It is in times of these feelings of isolation that I wonder where the people in my life stand on this spectrum, to what degrees they want me in their lives…
I have yet to find the far edge of the spectrum of wanting me…, but perhaps it will come some day… soon…
Anyway, I’m off to clean up and get ready for bed, now that I’ve finished this whole cry fest… who would have thought that Friday night and an entirely open weekend ahead could be so upsetting??
Haha
Anyway, this was how I spent my evening: eating fancy stew straight from the pot, while watching the first half of one of my favorite films, which was just recently gifted to me for my birthday, all while detachedly wondering about something that won’t seem to leave me alone lately… (I mean, what are you gonna do, right?… it’s like when a song gets stuck in my head… just let it ride, and it eventually will be replaced by something [hopefully] better, you know?)
When I was around eight years old, a group of neighborhood kids and I were wandering around the streets – because that was the norm back then – and we came across a garage sale at a house across the creek.
It was not often that I was allowed to venture across the creek, so this was already an especially exciting day for me.
But then, this garage sale made it even more exciting… and something in the garage sale just set me on fire(!)…
It was… a gigantic stop sign…
A true and genuine, very large stop sign…
And I wanted it so badly..
We all looked around a bit, one person, I believe, buying something on the spot, due to his or her having a dollar in her pocket, but the rest of us had no money on us – that just wasn’t the thing to carry around then…
And so, we all calculated the amount of money we would need to gather from our respective moneys, and headed back across the creek together, dispersing to the various houses.
Now, I didn’t actually live on this street, due to a somewhat complicated scenario, so I didn’t have any money waiting in a house for me per se…, but my brothers and their dad lived there, and I was spending time at their house, as was usual for me, and they had money at home.
I raced to the house, and I went to my oldest brother as fast as I could… I asked him if I could have some money… I think it was ten or fifteen dollars (not a lot, but not nothing either for the time)… he asked me why, and I quickly explained everything to him, practically begging for the money at this point…
He said we would have to go check it out, and so grabbed about twenty dollars, and we were about to head out, when it was suddenly time for me to leave – my mother was there to pick me up.
My brother said he might still go check it out, but my mom said she and I could drive over to see it, because she likes things like garage sales, anyway, just to look at things.
When she and I arrived, everyone was already back, my brother among them this time, and some of the kids were already heading back home, new treasures in hand.
I showed my mom the other small something I had wanted, as well as the stop sign… she was not convinced on the stop sign…
I was sad, but not surprised – I had known my true chance of getting it lay in my brother’s letting me get it… kind of the whole, ‘Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission,’ idea, where my mom would have accepted a done deal, but wouldn’t make the deal herself.
And so, I believe we went home, my having a small treasure in hand, and grateful for it, but sad the opportunity that likely was never to present itself again had passed, un-seized…
Sigh……
The next time I was at my brothers’ dad’s house, upon entering my oldest brother’s room, I was struck: there against the wall, behind his speaker system, was a huge and red stop sign… very much like the one I had recently told him about…
Seriously?! I wondered and asked… he openly admitted that he knew I had wanted it, but that that was because it was cool…, and so he got it for himself…, because it really was cool.
….
So unfair, brother… so unfair.
😛
It was actually rather comical for me, as opposed to heartbreaking…, and my brother, I think, knew it would be.
For me, it was just something really cool that suddenly was available to me – it was not something that I had always wanted…, so I would be okay not having it… and I was.
Plus, as he mentioned, I still got to see it all the time, but I didn’t have to figure out how to rearrange my room to put it on the wall somewhere that looked right – for his rather bare walls, it was an easy task.
So, it was totally a cheater move…, but we both were very okay with it and found it quite funny in its irony.
I never meant to hurt you-ou-ou…. I never meant to make you cry, but tonight, I’m cleanin’ out my closet.
So, as usual, when with my mother today, though we agreed that we always get into a struggle whenever I have to cook in her kitchen, and that it was best that my mom do the cooking (she was already planning to do) alone, and that I wanted to leave by 7pm…, she did not even finish cooking until after 7pm, and she fussed at me briefly for not helping her cook.
::face palm
Instead of struggling in the kitchen, however, I ventured to the attic.
It is a tiny space for storage, for whatever reason, but I had verified a few years back with my mom that it was okay for me to leave just a few boxes-o-stuff until further notice, and without it being any kind of struggle or strain on her in any way, so I had a few things up there.
Of course, creatures had wandered through the cardboard boxes, and humidity or rain(?) had touched one of them, but the contents were all still okay.
(All except that one doll, that is, whose long, curly hair had started to disintegrate, first falling off in chucks, and then all eventually falling out when I went ahead and rubbed it just to see what the result would be…)
I went through two of the boxes, threw away unwanted, unusable stuff, washed some clothes and towels that had been keeping things safe, put various items into the donation box, and saved the handful of items I intend to bring to my house next week (assuming I am allowed by society, of course), placing the box itself, folded up, into the recycling bin.
Knowing what is in the final box and a half, I have a feeling I will be taking a few quick photos and then tossing most of the remaining contents… I have simply reached an entirely new place regarding having things – having so much actually stresses me out… it felt so good to go through those guys today, and to handle them already… they have been a pressure on me ever since I stuck them up there, years ago… I can hardly wait to finish them up, and to move forward comfortably and confidently with what I own.
By the time we were ready to eat, I had not only gone through most of the boxes and handled the contents, but I had vacuumed the hall (for what had fallen from the attic upon opening it), and I had raided my favorites of my mom’s old cocktail dresses, tried them on, and requested to take one of them and to have another re-made for me, both due to my desire to have it fit a bit more comfortably (especially considering that my legs are a lot longer than hers) and to have it not be falling apart (sad, I know).
I also had raided my mom’s record albums, and taken the majority of them off her hands… I originally was just checking to see if she had had one of my own albums that I can’t seem to find, post-Japan, but it turned into, ‘Hey, you aren’t using these… can I take them potentially indefinitely?’… and she has no record player anymore, so she agreed easily.
So, basically, I went to hang out with my mom, pick up something important from her that I need for work Monday, – I know, kind of crazy that we even have work Monday, but we still do, as of this moment(!) – and to eat food together.
As usual, things didn’t quite go as intended… however, I cleaned out the attic, and gained a bunch of record albums… thus my quick reference to one of my beloved childhood crushes at the top of this… it was an attic, not a closet, but oh, well… 😛
hannah ananas 