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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Why I Do What I Do

After all my ranting and moping and such, I got on with my day. Over the past month or so, I had gotten into the Amazon Cloud Player, which holds some 250,000 tracks. I have no where near that many, but I figured after dragging through my collection of CDs and backups and everything else I have that resembles music, I would go ahead and back that whole thing up to my hard drive. The cloud player is my primary source of music, and I mostly download a few albums to play them on my iPod and cycle through them that way. So far, I'm up through the letter M. 32,000+ tracks takes a very long time to download.

Anyway, today when I logged into my home computer to make sure it was still going (it times out after about 12 hours), I paused before closing the connection to look at my desktop background. It is a picture of the three princesses that my brother-in-law and his wife took over the summer. As I looked into their smiling faces and eyes, I realized that despite my moping, I am quite blessed in my life, and it is for them that I work so hard at something I don't want to do. It is my responsibility to provide for them the best way I can, and should my ship come in, then it would only get better.

Another song I've been toying with also kept going through my head today. Probably been going through my head or a few days since I endeavored to arrange it and such. I wrote the music and lyrics for it, and in other times of distress, I have read through these words and found them very comforting. It is one of those where I was definitely inspired in its writing.

Blessed

Leaning upon your arms, Lord
I find the comfort I need
With less of me, there’s more of you
I will follow where you lead

Your love, it wraps around me
Everything drives me closer to you
Like a purpose where all seems wrong

When my spirit’s lost all hope, I am  blessed
When I bring peace to all those I know, I am  blessed
When a hole has been torn in my heart, I am  blessed
When for Your name they tear me apart, I am  blessed
I don’t need to be afraid ‘Cause you love me every day,
I am blessed              

Help me to find peace, Lord
Quiet my restless soul
Within you there is no loss
And your spirit makes me whole

Your love, it wraps around me
Everything drives me closer to you
Like a purpose where all seems wrong

When my mind and heart are finally right, I am  blessed
When I’m content with my lot in life, I am  blessed
When God is all the food I need, I am  blessed
When I care too much for all those I see, I am blessed
I don’t need to be afraid ‘Cause you love me every day,
I am blessed

Not Normal

You know, there are thing that annoy me out there, and here's another one. I'm guessing that the majority of the world follows sports of some kind, and they all have their favorite teams. I'm not a sports fan at all. No team favorites. I have no memorabilia or jerseys or preferences. I just don't follow it. however, on more than one occasion, my workplace has had a event for jeans and your favorite team jerseys. I'm not opposed to people having fun, but it sort of further isolates those of us who don't do sports at all. We might be a minority, but you know, all this diversity nonsense seeks to include every minority in the world...except for us mid-range white guys who are not into sports. Those people can just shove off, I guess.

Pretty funny in a workplace full of geeks. I guess the rest of them are sports geeks as well. I'm more of a music geek who is into writing. Gotta pick your life, and I apparently chose wrong again. I am further outcast. Thanks spirit committee!

Spiral

So I cannot say that since last week things have gotten much better. Life has its ups and downs, of course, but you have to look at it from a big picture standpoint to see where you stand. After Tuesday, things improved here and there, but then Sunday hit, and as the band at church tends to go, I'm reminded, in subtle ways, of my musical failures. I spent most of the afternoon hunched over my keyboard programming music hoping to improve my musical standing by making a few recordings. Well, the outcome of those attempts have been lackluster at best as I cannot, by any means, make the recordings sound remotely professional. It sounds like it is. Like I recorded them in my house under less than ideal conditions.

I got this helicopter for Christmas from my brother, and I've gotten probably 5 minutes of actual flight time with an abundance of crash time. The reason for the minimal time is because I had some very significant crashes that screwed up the connection between the gears and the props on top. Therefore, I have to keep fixing it after a crash to make it work again. This is not due to a cheap design. It's all my fault. On Saturday, it was really good. I figured out how to fly it in a wide open gym room, and I had it down. So when I got home, I recharged and tried to control it in my living room. Got a perfect hover going on before a nice landing. It was exciting. I took of again, and it inexplicably dove into my exercise bike and broke that blasted gear again. I was livid, but after my outburst on Tuesday, I try to keep it under control.

Add this to Sunday, and I'm not much better. I was also informed on Friday that my snarky attitude came across in spades with someone at work. I wasn't warned or anything. My manager just wanted to let me know someone said something, and while in his opinion, they should just grow up and deal with the odd humor we have going on, within me, I think I know who it was, and yeah, I was quite unkind and condescending at the time.

At church, the preacher spoke of a love God/love others topic, which is their theme at the moment. He referenced Keith Green, who is one of my favorite artists of all time, and so yesterday, I listened to every Keith Green song I have. I'm trying to understand that people are not trying to be stupid or trying to get to me. They're just doing their jobs the best way they know how. Just like the best villains in stories aren't true villains; they're just people doing what they think is right to achieve their goals.

The Queen and I are presently out of sync. Life always sucks when we're out of sync. I don't know how to explain that adequately, but there are time when we are completely on the same page and understand each other perfectly. There are other times when we are soberly reminded that we are different people and it is hard. So when you couple a rough week with a momentary out-of-syncness with the Queen, and you have me on a sort of depressive downward spiral. I generally don't get depressed at all. I know how to overcome it, but at the moment, I just don't care to.

I suppose part of me hopes that writing about it will help. I actually wrote a couple of songs yesterday, one of which I did music and harmony and everything. But when you balance that with the fact that I can't get a recording of anything to sound decent, it ultimately did not help too much. All of this, of course, reminds me of the other life long failures, blah, blah, blah that no one understands. No one. No one really understands me at all, and it makes it all the more difficult in times like this because I can't talk to anyone about it. I've talked to the Queen about my lifelong failures, and anymore, she doesn't know what to do or say, and it frustrates her to hear it.

So in times like these, I am actually completely alone. There are times I like to be alone, but other times, I need to talk to someone. I have no real friends, though. If I use Facebook, all I'm doing is whining for attention. I'm not going for attention. I just need ... I don't know. Something.

My life is 50/50. My personal life is perfection. I am happily married with three wonderful, healthy children. My health is really good, and I have tons of energy. I don't get sick, nor does the rest of my immediate family. Don't know what that flu epidemic was, cause none of us got anything.

My professional life is a disaster. I started out with goals and dreams, and while I strive ever towards those ends, I am shut down hard at every turn. No one cares. One break. That's it. That's all I need, One person to look at one thing I've done and see the potential. But none of those people want to see anything. At all. I'm a failure. I almost don't care anymore, but that would waste fifteen years of trying.

I don't know what to do anymore, though. I just don't.