Posts tagged with "nervousness"

Goodbye Karaoke Party

Frédéric, Misun, and the boys are mov­ing to France to explore a new busi­ness ven­ture. To say good­bye to every­one, they rent­ed out a karaoke bar and had a par­ty. The night was a cacoph­o­ny of sound, for the kids were giv­en free reign of the dance floor and ran around in cir­cles, while the adults took turns singing and eat­ing.

This is my first “5x5”; a video of five vignettes at five sec­onds each. It’s a help­ful guide­line for putting togeth­er footage that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have a con­sis­tent theme. It’s also very restric­tive, as five sec­onds is bare­ly enough to see what’s going on in a par­tic­u­lar clip, and that means you real­ly have to find the essence of action. I gen­er­al­ly don’t make 5x5s because I always have a sto­ry to tell, but in this case, it’s fun just to see how peo­ple sing. This is very dif­fer­ent from the Chinese karaoke par­ties I was wit­ness to as a kid, where the adults take their singing very seri­ous­ly, so every­one is very qui­et, atten­tive, and quite rehearsed.

The one who stole the show was Akio, who had heard Frédéric, Misun start­ing a duet of Ne Me Quitte Pas, took the micro­phone from Misun, and start­ed repeat­ing the line he had just learned.

I told Frédéric, “It’s amaz­ing that you’re not ner­vous up there”, and he told me, “I just said to myself that I want to have fun, and it would­n’t be fun if I did­n’t sing, so I was­n’t ner­vous.” I wish I could do that.

Privy To All The New Shit

I’ve been in the strangest mood late­ly. Killing my Top Rated playlist every­where I go, yet I skip through 90% of the songs, try­ing to find the right one. Talking to myself. Replaying con­ver­sa­tions in my head.

I don’t quite feel at one with the Tao. I’ve been let­ting small things get to me. It’s as if I’m falling back into my old destruc­tive habits, but upon real­iz­ing this, I fight against it. The strug­gle, when observed objec­tive­ly, is quite amus­ing.

These are excit­ing times. Along with the excite­ment comes ner­vous­ness. It’s turned me into a jum­ble of emo­tions, bit­ter­sweet, and unlike any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced before.

Wish I could do some­thing with this feel­ing.

Lederhosen Lucil is Coming to Town

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I just found out that Krista Muir, who’s alter-ego Lederhosen Lucil I fell in love with two years ago, is play­ing in a small stu­dio in town on Friday. Entrance dona­tion is $5. As much as I want to go to hear her new album (released today, fea­tur­ing ukule­les over Yamaha syn­the­siz­ers), my main rea­son would be to get some pic­tures of her. I nev­er get a chance to do con­cert pho­tog­ra­phy, and she has a play­ful per­son­al­i­ty with the cos­tumes she wears.

I’ll prob­a­bly bring my 15mm and 24–70mm lens­es, and be shoot­ing at f/2.8 and 1600 ISO the whole time. I would con­sid­er my 50mm f/1.8 prime just for that extra stop of light, but I lent it to Pat and primes are much less ver­sa­tile in such sit­u­a­tions.

Two years ago, I missed her only stop of her tour in this city, when I had to “coach” my team in lad­der match­es at the table ten­nis league. That made me a sad pan­da.

Just think­ing about going is mak­ing my stom­ach flut­ter. I may go to movies by myself, but I nev­er go to con­certs alone. The noise and crowds of con­certs make me espe­cial­ly uncom­fort­able (and over­stim­u­lat­ed), but a friend always helps me get over it. Unfortunately, no one else I know enjoys her music (which I would describe as fair­ly eso­teric), and I would­n’t put some­one through music they did­n’t enjoy. Added to this, I’ll be tak­ing pic­tures, which always makes me feel very self-con­scious.

Normally, I take a few weeks to men­tal­ly pre­pare myself for some­thing like this, but since it’s such short notice and the oppor­tu­ni­ty does­n’t come around often, I’m forc­ing myself to go.

I’m scared, and ner­vous, and excit­ed all at once.

Edit: I just noticed that my “sim­i­lar terms” cus­tom field, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly enters key­words from the entry to match words in the data­base and pull “relat­ed entries” on the left, includes the word “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”. Hilarity.

Embracing My Emotional Reactions

I laugh when I’m ner­vous. Especially around girls I’m attract­ed to — total gig­gle­fest. I also laugh uncon­trol­lably around peo­ple I meet for the first time. People low­er their guard when there’s laugh­ter, and I sus­pect my mind sub­con­scious­ly finds humour in every­thing to put peo­ple at ease around me.

Around peo­ple I hate, I’m dead silent. That’s how you know I don’t like you: if I don’t talk. The mere pres­ence of one of these peo­ple forces me to ful­ly con­cen­trate on not drilling a 4‑inch hole in my tem­ple with a cord­less DeWalt.

Pat’s dif­fer­ent. He told me once that if you ever see him shake his head and shrug his shoul­ders, you’re in his black­list. In an act of faith, he’ll give every­one respect and will even go so far as to stab you in the front, but he gives up if you cross his line of ethics. He’ll nev­er be involved with any­thing relat­ed to you after that. It’s not that he hates these peo­ple, like me, he los­es all inter­est. This is prob­a­bly even worse than my reac­tion which, because his is cold. You mean noth­ing to him. I try to let go as well, but I can’t. In the back of my head I cling to the hope that these peo­ple can change. Sometimes I also won­der if these peo­ple ever lis­ten to them­selves and can under­stand exact­ly why I hate them, because it’s so obvi­ous to me.

I also cry in emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions. It does­n’t have to be any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly sad or hap­py, just a time when emo­tions are high. Intense sports games, Tim Horton’s com­mer­cials, some­times just because some­one else is cry­ing. I can hide it pret­ty well though; peo­ple don’t under­stand if you start cry­ing in a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous sit­u­a­tion.

As frus­trat­ing as these emo­tion­al reac­tions can be, I know they make me who I am.

I used to try des­per­ate­ly to remain cere­bral and log­i­cal — like Pat — but my emo­tions would always get the bet­ter of me. Now I’ve learned to embrace them. I could only do this after accept­ing myself and becom­ing con­tent with who I am. They give me some­thing Pat does­n’t have: intense inspi­ra­tion. That rush, when your stom­ach churns, when your head is burns, when you heart flut­ters.

They’re a part of me, and they make me who I am.

Poignant

Promised myself I’d be in bed by nine, but my ner­vous­ness has made me too jit­tery to sleep.

“Poignant”, he said, just as I was think­ing the word, and it made me real­ize that if there’s one thing I do try to be, it’s poignant. I don’t know why. Perhaps it shows good com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Perhaps there’s men­tal relief in know­ing that one is not alone, that oth­ers can under­stand and may feel the same way.