Posts tagged with "self-improvement"

la petite mort

I’ve been spend­ing too much time around friends and fall­en heroes, stay­ing up too late, run­ning away from my thoughts, pun­ish­ing my body, killing myself one day at a time. The exhaus­tion is numb­ing — exact­ly what I need — but I know I can’t keep this up for­ev­er. I used to lose a day here and there, think it’s Wednesday on a Thursday. Now I lose entire weeks. I’ve decid­ed that it’s all okay as long as shit gets done.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been feel­ing trapped. I’m too busy to see past things as they are right now, a vic­tim of my own self-dis­trac­tion, so it feels like I’ll be here for­ev­er, stuck in this end­less loop of heal­ing and heart­break.

I’m still try­ing to find that del­i­cate bal­ance between accept­ing myself (which risks com­pla­cen­cy) and striv­ing to improve (and the con­stant dis­sat­is­fac­tion). At the very least, I’ve come to the real­iza­tion that there’s a dif­fer­ence between the things that hap­pen to us and the way we react or deal with them, and since you have no say in the for­mer, all you can do is improve the lat­ter.

Sometimes you have to die a lit­tle inside to fig­ure that out.

i know i found the recipe for me

All I do nowa­days is dance. Not in any coor­di­nat­ed man­ner, mind you, and cer­tain­ly not in the pres­ence of any­one else.

I’m only now start­ing to real­ize how nec­es­sary it was for me to sur­vive that cru­cible last year, and how impor­tant it was for me to save myself. It has­n’t tem­pered the extremes, but they don’t last as long any­more.

Blue Mountain village at night

 

It’s com­fort­ing to know I’ve been through this before. It was­n’t all for noth­ing. I’m a lit­tle wis­er now, and I’m not going to make the same mis­takes again.

This win­ter hit us heavy once more, and like it I refuse to die.

Famous Blue Raincoat (ukulele cover)

Almost three months ago, I walked into a music store and bought a ukulele. I did­n’t even know the frets on the ukulele (or gui­tar, for that mat­ter) were raised; I thought they were just lines paint­ed on the neck used as guide­lines for fin­ger posi­tions. Ever since, it’s filled a void in me. A void I did­n’t even know exist­ed until I found myself feel­ing emp­ty when I did­n’t get a chance to play.

Famous Blue Raincoat is one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. I wish I could write let­ters like this.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out what kind of style or genre I want to apply to the ukulele, but I think my singing abil­i­ty (or lack there­of) will lim­it me to the soft Sam Beam folk sound unless I start­ed tak­ing singing lessons. Borrowed in my inter­pre­ta­tion is a vari­a­tion of the pick­ing pat­tern Cohen uses in a lot of his ear­li­er songs, such as Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, adapt­ed for the sopra­no ukulele.

While my brain picks out the mis­takes and details I need to work on when I see myself play, I try to keep in mind the words of my Tai Chi teacher, “We’re nev­er as bad as we fear nor as good as we would like”. I don’t think I’ll ever be sat­is­fied with my musi­cal abil­i­ty unless I could com­mit a lot more time to it. Unfortunately, that would mean less time for anoth­er hob­by, so I have to accept that this will prob­a­bly be close to the lim­it of my abil­i­ty. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean things up in anoth­er few years. Patience will come from learn­ing to be sat­is­fied from the act of play­ing itself, and not the mas­tery of it. For now, this’ll serve as record of my progress.

Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by

While I’ve always been very appre­cia­tive of what we did have, some­times I won­der about what we nev­er had the chance to do.

Sure, I bared my soul. I sur­ren­dered. I gave her the songs I don’t share with just any­one. I told her how pro­found­ly impor­tant, won­der­ful, and remark­able she was to me. I let her in like no one else before.

But there were parts of myself I nev­er gave up.

It was­n’t because we had­n’t reached that lev­el of trust. It was a way for me to pro­tect myself. To feel as though she did­n’t have all of me, so I would­n’t be left as open and vul­ner­a­ble when the end final­ly came.

I regret it now. Not because I think it would have changed any­thing1, but because I won­der what it would have been like for some­one to know me com­plete­ly. To feel vul­ner­a­ble and safe, all at once. Even know­ing I’d be heart­bro­ken even­tu­al­ly, it would have been worth it to share what I’ve always saved.

I’ve been keep­ing all my girl­friends at arms length to pro­tect myself. I can’t go through life hold­ing things back any­more, con­stant­ly wor­ried some­one’s going to hurt me. That’s always a risk, no mat­ter how sta­ble a rela­tion­ship is.

I have to put myself out there. I have to make the first step, even if it means feel­ing uncom­fort­able, because the more you share, the more com­fort­able you become, the more you share, and so on.

I can only go for­ward now, as a wis­er per­son, a stronger soul, a bet­ter lover.

I sup­pose I’m feel­ing nos­tal­gic, or miss­ing her, as is my wont when the sea­sons change.

  1. Cause it would­n’t have. [↩]