spirit or irrational obsession?

I had two bad days in a row, which doesn't often happen to me. They had me melancholy, retracted, confused, and frustrated enough that I have spent some small amount of time trying to figure out the root cause rather than just waiting for the feeling of gloom to pass. Typically my psychological makeup is such that things just roll off my back and I can move on with life, but when things stick I know there's something up. There's also the fact that a stupor of thought typically leaves me with similar feelings of confusion and frustration, so there's the possibility that there's something the Spirit wants me to do differently.

Salad has talked to me before about the bone-deep desire she has to teach, and how frustrating it is that she can't find a teaching job. Some measure of that desire blindsided me on Wednesday, except that my passion and my desire lie in singing. I have been taking voice lessons for quite a while, I've been in choirs since high school, and it's typically been enough for me. All of a sudden I have this ache to do something with my singing, though. I don't know that being in choir will be enough to fill it. It's like...I want to be in a musical, or working on writing music specific to me, that I could sing and that would be mine.

Part of my frustration is that I buried my dreams of musical grandeur a while back. Music is not a logical career path, so I convinced myself that I wasn't going to pursue it as anything more than a side hobby. Part of that was reasoning that choir was okay, because it was a joint commitment between all the members of the choir, but that any solo pursuits were essentially pointless. Two days of frustration have thrown all of that out of whack in my mind. Why not do more with what I have? Would it have to be to the exclusion of more logical pursuits, or could they be done at the same time? Would it be wrong or selfish of me to want to pursue music with a bit more gusto? And if I did decide to do more with music right now, how would I go about it? I don't know the first thing about the things that would probably satiate this feeling.

And then I have to wonder if this is really Spirit spurring me on, like it mostly feels like, or if it's my own obsessive nature shining through randomly. And is there a whole lot more to my melancholy and overall feeling of BLAH, or is this the root of the problem? Am I spinning my wheels even thinking about it?

Meh.

In other news, Hairspray was fantastic, fabulous, and amazing.

relationship progression: kissing

It makes me sad that my busy-ness has overtaken my blogging. I can't wait for all my papers to be written and my finals to be done - the stress that plagues my mind and the minds of those close to me leave us all on-edge and near the breaking point. Salad and I went to a concert on Friday night, and I was moved to tears. Twice. That doesn't generally happen (except with Whitacre's When David Heard, which is arguably the most soul-wrenching song in existence), but my emotions were so close to the surface, and the feelings were so acute that I couldn't help it. While I don't much enjoy crying in public, it was worth the experience.

I was also going to opine on another subject, but what I have has become so lengthy that I'm going to hold off until tonight or tomorrow. It's something that's weighed about as heavily on my mind recently, so it's important for me to blogbarf on it.

So. Some of you in the know and close to us have been very interested in this aspect of our situation. I'll catch everyone up, because though it's pretty personal, it's not so personal that I won't divulge to inquiring minds. I have a hangup with kissing. First of all, I just don't get it. What's so great about kissing? Maybe I'm just not wired right. Another way for me to be defective. ;) Second, my mind works in odd ways, and I'm fairly certain that progressing to the kissing stage when my mind isn't prepared would be a bad idea, and a psychological setback for me. I know it's supposed to be 'just kissing,' but for some reason I've got great importance attached to it - probably because everyone else likes it so much, and I don't think I understand it. I've done stage kisses for a high school musical, and film kisses for a movie I was in. I've also been smooched by a semi-trashy smoker girl backstage at that same musical, but I've never been in a situation where I've kissed someone romantically. People tell me I'll just 'get it,' but I have my doubts. I think I understand myself better than most people realize.

And that was actually a small point of contention last night. Enough people know about my hangups on this, and want my 'best interests' that they've been trying to get it to just happen, because they think that's best. I had told Salad that without doubt, I wanted to feel like I had overcome my mental blocks and gotten to a point where I was at least comfortable with trying before we did it. She almost got swayed otherwise talking with other people, and it was only my frantic pleadings that talked her out of it. She even prefaced with "You're going to hate me for this, but...." That didn't offend me, but it set the stage for later on in the day, when yet another person made an innocent comment about how she should just lay one on me right then. For some reason that just set me off inside, and I had to isolate myself so I could examine what made me so mad about it. I decided it's because I felt cornered, and that no one was listening to what I was saying - despite telling many people that I needed to overcome this mental hurdle before taking the next step, they were deciding what was in my 'best interests' without regard for my opinion. I know they meant well, but I understand me. My self-analysis is in-depth, very probing, very honest, and typically quite accurate. The mounting pressures to live up to everyone else's expectations for a relationship of which I am a half became to much to want to deal with.

Anyway, I've been working on getting past this for days or even weeks now. It's a logical step in a relationship, even if I don't get it, and I know Salad likes kissing a lot. Last night I finally felt like I'd mentally braced myself enough to take that step. I think my fears were very well founded, and after doing some kissing last night, I can honestly say that I still don't get it. I think I'm just not a kissing kind of guy. It was more enjoyable than any previous stage kiss or whatever that I've had, but it's not something that I'd look forward to all the time, and I certainly don't understand lengthy make-out sessions. Seems like a waste of time for me. Perhaps as I experience it more it'll grow on me, and I hope it does, but for right now I've told Salad that she'll have to initiate anything, and that I won't enjoy it as much as she does, because I just don't understand what's so great about it. I can imagine kissing anyone, girl or guy, and it just really doesn't do anything for me. Oh well. Salad says she's gonna coach me through it. ;)

Although if there are any opinions out there, especially from anyone who's had remotely similar experiences, please share. I'll take everything with a grain of salt, but I will take it. And I'm curious how everyone else falls on the subject.

~drex

let me do the talking.

I'm looking at 10+ days of being sick, and I'm ready for it to be over. Oh well.

We had an intriguing discussion/activity in my philosophy/first-year writing class yesterday (Wednesday). (for the record, taking a first-year writing class is requisite in the psych major, regardless of whether or not you tested out of the course using AP English credit from high school.) It was about walls and barriers in our lives, and how they speak for us much of the time. Essentially my teacher boiled down the walls in our lives to experiences from our past - finding out we're not the center of the universe when we first go to preschool, realizing we're not incredibly brilliant when we get our first low mark on a test, discovering we're not ultra-talented when we get cut from the team by a coach, etc. When we have experiences like that, we react to them, and begin to form a web of belief that defines how we see the world - those other kids in preschool just aren't cool enough to hang out with me, school sucks and my teacher is stupid and I don't need her to learn, and coach just doesn't see my latent talent and potential, etc. As we formulate those opinions and beliefs, often they get in the way of our communication with others - soon it's our walls speaking, and not us. Somehow who we are gets confused and lost in the cacophony of preconceived notions and skewed perspectives we wrap around ourselves.

It all rang very true for me. I think I escaped a lot of the wall-making, because I tend to take things in stride (of course, my view of myself is likely also skewed by my walls of perception and previous notions of my 'self'), but some walls are definitely there. Walls of belief, coping- and safety-mechanisms, psychological abnormalities, etc. filter what I take in and make me see everything the way I want to see it. At the same time, it defines a lot of what I allow people to perceive me as. Though I am a goody-two-shoes at heart (and possibly because of that), I want people to see me that way - part of my perception of myself that I like to project to others is that I'm in some way morally superior to them. I will go to great lengths to perpetuate this perception, and sometimes when I notice I'm doing it (unconsciously, usually) I get quite irate with myself, because honestly...who am I to determine the moral high ground? My walls of shyness, introversion, and insecurity masked by bravado tend to shine out before the real 'me' inside can get more than five words in - I think a lot of people perceive me as aloof, uncaring, or untouchable because of the way I present myself.

So how do we break down our own personal barriers to let the real 'us' shine? Unfortunately I think that journey's unique for everyone, but for me I'm starting with identifying what my barriers are, and then I'm going to figure out what I personally need to do to counteract them. If I can roll with the punches and adapt as well as I think I can, it should be an exciting exercise.

What does anyone else think about the concept, especially of one's walls doing the talking for them? It seems like those of us who deal with SSA tend to be especially adept at creating walls around ourselves to determine what we say and do, especially in social situations and interactions with other people. I guess another question in our case is whether or not we want to bring those barriers down, because honestly we are safer in Mormon society when we've got some of our barriers up. Is safe enough? I'm guessing the depends uniquely on each individual as well. It's a lot to think about.

~drex

insecurity

I'm not a very insecure person. I'm typically quite sure of myself, quite confident in my abilities, quite certain that I can handle whatever life throws my way. There are a few select circumstances under which I tend to buckle more readily. The one of which I am most keenly aware is friends. My friends are few and far between, and I haven't had a guy best friend for since I moved away from New York in 2000. The last time I added a new guy friend to my list of close friends was probably sixth grade, back in 1994-95 or whenever the heck I was in sixth grade. I share this because I thought I had a guy best friend again, and it had been nice. My insecurity comes in the fact that because I hold my friends close, make few of them, and don't like people being mad at me, I'm always afraid that I'll do something to offend a friend or chase them off.

Sorta like I did last night.

I should have been more considerate, or chosen my words more carefully, or kept my mouth shut altogether. At any rate, apparently I've chased off a friend that I think I needed, and it's left me lower than I've felt in a long time. More because I don't know what I can do to patch things up or if it's even patchable than anything else. I want to play the optimist and say that it will all work itself out in the end and we'll be closer for it or some trite drivel like that, but my insecure side won't let me process things that way.

I think that's it. Not really in the mood to say anything more.

~drex