LJIM+ wk 4 Happy
Nov. 22nd, 2021 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unmowngrassIt's alarming to realise, sometimes, how deeply things degenerate without attention. Habits of the mind become so entrenched, so difficult to change. Even whilst you're in workshops reminding you that it's possible.
Cry, out of agitation, when all your people are all up in your face, no space to breathe, trying to run your life. How they cut you and try to pour themselves into the gap.
Cry again, with desperation, when they take their own space to avoid you. When they stop letting you cut them in return. (No-one's perfect.)
Cry about this, cry about that, cry about the other thing.
It is alarming to wake up one day and see that you've just been really, really miserable for a long, long time.
Things lose their meaning, and the longer the void stretches on, the deeper it gets.
As the colour runs out of your world, eventually even tv gets boring.
When this happened to me recently, I was all out of everything, no inspiration to be found.
Nothing.
Empty.
And in the emptiness, there is only instinct. Instinct gives you only one option:
make the current run the other way.
Stop consuming; create.
For the first time in a long time, I picked up a musical instrument.
And I'm not very good at playing it yet, and I didn't do it for very long, and nor did I write the tune, but I did play it!
And for ten minutes...
... I was happy.
Cry, out of agitation, when all your people are all up in your face, no space to breathe, trying to run your life. How they cut you and try to pour themselves into the gap.
Cry again, with desperation, when they take their own space to avoid you. When they stop letting you cut them in return. (No-one's perfect.)
Cry about this, cry about that, cry about the other thing.
It is alarming to wake up one day and see that you've just been really, really miserable for a long, long time.
Things lose their meaning, and the longer the void stretches on, the deeper it gets.
As the colour runs out of your world, eventually even tv gets boring.
When this happened to me recently, I was all out of everything, no inspiration to be found.
Nothing.
Empty.
And in the emptiness, there is only instinct. Instinct gives you only one option:
make the current run the other way.
Stop consuming; create.
For the first time in a long time, I picked up a musical instrument.
And I'm not very good at playing it yet, and I didn't do it for very long, and nor did I write the tune, but I did play it!
And for ten minutes...
... I was happy.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-22 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-22 10:19 am (UTC)My mother graduated as a pianist from the Vienna Conservatory, my Dad always wanted to play the violin, but never had the chance until he was over 50 and bought one at a pawn shop.
I was a cellist. I learned piano, but it wasn't my instrument. My cousin, on the other hand, was an excellent pianist, graduated with an MA from the Boston Conservatory, and taught piano her entire life (still does, to the best of my knowledge). I played cello throughout High School and was VERY good at it, but let it drop in college. Carrying a cello to an archaeological dig site was unfeasible.
I miss my music sometimes, I have a portable keyboard, but it's in a closet. I have too many other things taking my time. So I listen - to music and to books, and I think about how different my life might have turned out, and I express gratitude for the way that it did. My choices were the right ones.
- Erulisse (one L)
no subject
Date: 2021-11-22 03:17 pm (UTC)It disheartened me from even trying to continue on with it, but I'm thinking of picking up a new instrument and learning. My husband is getting a guitar for Christmas this year, so it would be a good chance to learn a new instrument together, and maybe start making music again. I hope that you can keep up with your practicing and making music and that it can give you some sustained happiness.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-22 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-22 07:39 pm (UTC)Music always makes me feel better.