I was going to spend the weekend writing *the* post, but then I took a nap and oh look how time flies. I do feel a little bad about missing out on hardly strictly, but maybe spending the Sunday afternoon collecting my thoughts after the rather rough two weeks I’ve had at work was the right thing to do, even if the voices inside my head will drive me crazy at some point.
As unpleasant as it is trying to sustain 14-hour workdays for around 10 days straight, I still feel like complete shit when projects get completed. It’s like I have all this momentum and adrenaline piled up, and now there’s nowhere to divert this energy. Sometimes, it’s stressful to not be stressed out. The good news, I guess, is that work never ends and will pick up shortly.
Life has been so incredibly frustrating on so many fronts this year. This despite it being a year with many memorable moments as well.
Point one: I’ve been absolutely stymied by the books I’ve been trying to read the past half year or so. I’m beginning to doubt I will ever be able to get through Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, to say nothing of the Rabbit tetralogy (halfway through Rabbit is Rich, averaging under a page a day). And why did I use my airline miles on subscriptions to Time and Scientific American when I just don’t have the time or desire to read them? I’ve tossed the last few months’ issues away.
Point two: work. I don’t really know what I’m doing wrong, but I feel like I’m stagnating at work. It’s not so much that I’m not learning anymore because I still am, but there’s just this nagging philosophical doubt that I can’t quite shake loose. Also, knowing that there are all these cool and interesting projects that other people are working on and that I seem to never have the time to contribute to just makes me a little sad.
Point three: that will be in the aforementioned post, if it ever sees the light of day.
Point four: the maddening love-hate relationship I have with ballet. I’m not even sure I can explain the level of cognitive dissonance this surfaces. If a real relationship is this hard, maybe it’s better to be unattached. But at least I’ve stuck with it, right? Please don’t ever leave me.
So I went to the Florence and the Machine concert on Friday night because my friend had an extra ticket, and we all left after 3 songs. Not so much because it wasn’t a good performance (it was), but maybe more because the experience was so detached (at least in my mind; the others might have just wanted to skip traffic). It’s weird when you can appreciate a show for what it is, yet not feel attached to it at all — I think this is kind of the tragedy about going to a concert where you’re unfamiliar with the music. When everyone else in the crowd seems so really into it, and in the back of your mind you’re kind of wondering why. I think a lot of people were high, which might have enhanced the experience.
I saw some post that lead me to this Richard Dawkins piece about the stupefying odds of just being alive.
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/91-to-live-at-all-is-miracle-enough
A small musical strand: there’s probably more music out there right now than anyone can listen to in a lifetime. And if humanity is lucky, there will be so much new music created, that at some point in the distant future, so many seminal artists will be forgotten due to the sheer weight of good music in the future. That there will be a day when people won’t remember hip hop anymore, or the Beatles, or maybe even Bach. And that maybe that future wouldn’t necessarily be some dystopia, but one where everything is so much more amazing than we can imagine today.