Posts tagged with "growth"

Musical Context

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suit­ed for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spit­ting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was most­ly elec­tron­ic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I need­ed to move. One for the par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of sto­ic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fan­cy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and nev­er stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cov­er while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, near­ly chaot­ic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­re­al, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ced­ed and suc­ceed­ed by two equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song does­n’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ing­ly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with grow­ing old­er, came the loss of emo­tion­al highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is hard­er.

And this has become my musi­cal con­text.

What Can I Say?

Things have changed.

I don’t write the same any­more, or about the same things. I’ve lost my fer­vent ver­bosi­ty. Every time I sit at my com­put­er, my mind blanks. Writing has become a chore. Even this entry has tak­en me days to think through. I find myself writ­ing and rewrit­ing every point, every para­graph.

In the begin­ning, blog­ging was a form of cathar­sis. Developing cog­ni­tive­ly beyond my ado­les­cence was an emo­tion­al peri­od, filled with con­fu­sion and grow­ing pains. The only way I could make sense of it all was to write out my thoughts, forc­ing myself to reflect and learn from every chal­lenge.

It was also a use­ful tool in fig­ur­ing myself out, as a part of my life where I could approach things with the con­vic­tion that I lacked in the rest of my life. Now that I’ve gained enough con­fi­dence, it does­n’t seem so nec­es­sary to prove myself with words any­more. It would seem that I’ve become a vic­tim of my own self-assured­ness.

I could fill this blog with entries, find­ing solace in the writ­ten word, when I was going through some­thing as sim­ple as a bad day. As time has passed, I’ve elim­i­nat­ed most of the things that both­er me enough to turn to this medi­um. It was a slow and sys­tem­at­ic process, both inter­nal and exter­nal. My new-found seren­i­ty has left me with lit­tle rage. I’m hap­pi­er now, and hap­pi­ness is too hard to write.

It would seem that I’ve run out of things to say.

There have been few epipha­nies, and even less inspi­ra­tion, in the last while. Maybe it’s because I’m in the mid­dle of a tran­si­tion. It takes a foun­da­tion of sta­bil­i­ty, some­thing I haven’t had in months, to grow. My life has­n’t quite set­tled yet.

Writer’s block is a sign that I’ve stopped grow­ing, a tes­ta­ment to what and how much I’ve been through.

But more impor­tant­ly, it’s a sign that I’m approach­ing where I want to go in my life.

Transitway Six

Thumbnail: Transitway

On days like this, it’s bet­ter to wear light cloth­ing, and throw on a hood­ed wind­break­er. The rain out­side is just a driz­zle, so it’s com­fort­ably cool. Pay no atten­tion to the hydraulic hiss of the wind­shield wipers, or you won’t be able to help hear­ing them through the qui­et parts of every song. Window seats are prime. There are few­er dis­trac­tions from peo­ple walk­ing down the aisle.

The 95 goes from one end of the city to the oth­er, straight through the heart of Ottawa. Every stop is a mem­o­ry. Old haunts. Past lives.

Here was your first apart­ment. Sometimes you’d find Christie wait­ing for you here on the bench­es between class­es. How long ago those days seem, how imma­ture and rel­a­tive­ly inno­cent. The next two stops are on the edge of the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, four years of scat­tered tru­an­cy. Two stops lat­er is where you use to buy a medi­um caramel cor­ret­to every morn­ing after an exhaust­ing night with Louise. Your old gov­ern­ment office is anoth­er two on. The con­crete build­ing looks so for­eign now, and you won­der if the same peo­ple are still inside. Another few stops is your last apart­ment, before buy­ing the house, the end of bus rides home every day.

Music nev­er meant so much.

You pass by con­struc­tion sites, fin­ished build­ings, see the evo­lu­tion of the city.

Every stop can be traced to a dif­fer­ent point, a dif­fer­ent girl­friend, a dif­fer­ent path in your life.

Six years of expe­ri­ence, six years of shift­ing, ever-chang­ing ani­ma.

Six years passed.

Six years lived.

Six years grown.

Trinary Maturity: The House

In the last year of high school, I was called into the guid­ance office for some direc­tion in choos­ing a post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tion. The coun­cilor, a very, very Caucasian man, went through the fea­tures of each uni­ver­si­ty, not­ing espe­cial­ly the ones with nice cam­pus­es. In an effort to save his time, I explained that the esthet­ics of a uni­ver­si­ty were of no con­se­quence to me, because they would­n’t affect my life. Apparently this was a dif­fer­ent approach from oth­er stu­dents, whom he believed decid­ed on the direc­tion of their edu­ca­tion through a desire for lush lawns and big dorm rooms.

I’d always believed that I’d feel the same way about a house as a cam­pus. Give me enough room for my com­put­er with walls thick enough to crank my music and I’ll be hap­py, I used to say. While this may still hold true, I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m even hap­pi­er with a nice place. I final­ly under­stood that coun­cilor, four years lat­er, after chang­ing uni­ver­si­ties for a brief post-grad­u­ate stint. The new cam­pus was big, mod­ern, and inspir­ing; quite a dif­fer­ence from my pre­vi­ous uni­ver­si­ty with its brown build­ings and con­stant con­struc­tion.

It’s the same when com­par­ing a rent­ed place of res­i­dence and an actu­al house. A house begets secu­ri­ty, and in turn, a sense of con­fi­dence. There’s a dis­tinct feel­ing, every day, wak­ing up in one’s own home. Knowing that every pay­cheque is going towards some equi­ty, a lit­tle piece of prop­er­ty I call my own. Having a com­fort zone, a place that I don’t have to deal with any­one I don’t want to. A place where I make the rules, not hav­ing to answer to land­lords or secu­ri­ty.

It was the process too, that helped me grow. Aside from the com­mon sense of own­ing a house as a long-term invest­ment, I was inspired (or should I say “dri­ven”) to move because of a room­mate. After one par­tic­u­lar­ly child­ish con­flict, I decid­ed more than four months before I actu­al­ly had time to look, to buy a house and take Trolley with me. We moved in before the lease was up on the apart­ment.

I went through the entire process myself, know­ing noth­ing at the start. I had nev­er done any­thing on this scale before, and while it may seem triv­ial to those who have been ini­tia­tors their entire lives, this was a big step for me. It let me know that I could actu­al­ly accom­plish the things I want.

And that cast aside all the doubt that was hold­ing me back.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion

Trinary Maturity: The Job

The first cat­a­lyst involved in my “trans­for­ma­tion” was my job. It could be said that the only rea­son this job was so sig­nif­i­cant is because I had nev­er had such a job before. Perhaps things would be dif­fer­ent if I start­ed my cur­rent career at a dif­fer­ent time, although the same could be said about the oth­er two fac­tors.

I was hired to work close­ly with one of two own­ers, a man with the dri­ve, mind, wit, and per­son­al­i­ty to run one of the top com­pa­nies in the indus­try. I see myself as a tool, an exten­sion of his per­son, respon­si­ble for things that he does­n’t have time to do. By free­ing his time, the com­pa­ny is able to grow faster, because his resources can then be put to bet­ter use.

My role is as a sort of sub­mis­sive. This works out well, because in (most of) the rest of my life I’m dom­i­nant. Like me, many sub­mis­sives at work are also dom­i­nants at home, and vice-ver­sa. People want change from the every­day life of their career, and in fact, my sub­mis­sion in this role is what makes me a bet­ter dom­i­nant in oth­ers (more on this extreme­ly sig­nif­i­cant point in the forth­com­ing part of this series).

I don’t have the per­son­al­i­ty to run a busi­ness, the way my boss does­n’t have the per­son­al­i­ty to work for some­one else. Our roles are clear­ly defined, and I’m much more pro­duc­tive as a sub­mis­sive in this sit­u­a­tion. It’s this pro­duc­tive­ness that has giv­en me so much con­fi­dence. I know how good a work­er I am, how inte­gral my role is in the com­pa­ny, and how dif­fi­cult I would be to replace.

Relational roles aside, how­ev­er, there are sev­er­al oth­er fac­tors of my job that con­tributed to what I con­sid­er explo­sive growth. The respon­si­bil­i­ty I have was a big thing. As the only IT per­son there, I have to make sure that all our hard­ware and soft­ware is suf­fi­cient for what we’re doing. When the nature of the busi­ness changes, the upper ech­e­lon comes to me for a solu­tion, whether it’s upcom­ing VOIP imple­men­ta­tion to save on long dis­tance, wire­less track­ing of our pick-ups and deliv­er­ies, or some­thing as sim­ple as a serv­er upgrade to han­dle the mar­ket growth.

Even things like mak­ing phone calls have changed me. I was nev­er com­fort­able on the phone. Only a year ago, order­ing piz­za was a dif­fi­cult thing to do, and Trolley can attest to this after get­ting him to call for me sev­er­al times. The only expla­na­tion I could come up with for this behav­iour is that there are peo­ple on the oth­er end, but I still can’t real­ly make sense of this aside from poor self-con­fi­dence. All I knew was that my tele­phone shy­ness was a prob­lem. I got over it by forc­ing myself to make phone calls at work. After all, one does not stop a project at a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion when one’s boss wants some­thing done. I still have my off-days, of course, when I avoid mak­ing calls alto­geth­er, but those are few and far between.

Not only has my job sparked a change in me, it’s paved a way for oth­er growth as well. Even finan­cial­ly speak­ing, I now have the free­dom to pur­sue my oth­er goals and hob­bies.

Every day I work, I’m thank­ful.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion