Journal entries in 'Ruminations' for January, 2005

I've been hearing about how bad the weather is in Clemson. People mention how jealous they are of my 90 degree weather, and yet I sort of miss the ice and snow :) It was always such an adventure venturing out into the abandoned, snow-covered roads. Evokes strong memories of last winter, when I was still there.

I was just listening to Rust In Peace and was reminded of how utterly inadequate I felt that night in New Orleans we did Open Mic Night. And it's not like I'm any stranger to the feeling of inadequacy or anything; you'd think I'd be used to it. I think the reason this time it seemed to affect me more that night was just because music has always sort of been my last refuge; I may suck at lots of things, but music was the one thing I was actually good at. At least, it was the one thing I was usually better than the people around me at. Cat pointed out how much I was comparing myself to others that night, and talking about wanting to be better than them, and it's true. That's not something I normally do, and I usually don't feel particularly competitive (again, since I'm not very good at most things :), but for some reason that night I had those irresistible feelings of egotism, like my little sheltering cove had been brushed away and I had to scurry and find something I could still hide behind.

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Crap, there are things I'll miss about PR when I return to the US. Pan sobao and the great sandwiches they sell at panaderías (jamón queso y huevo)... The Donas Aymat donuts they sell at stoplights in the morning... Strange how they are all food-related. Oh yeah, the peaceful silence in my car; my radar detector has sat quietly in a box since I moved here nine months ago. Of course, any serenity gained through the elimination of the annoying beeping of the radar detector is more than negated by the annoyed cursing of the driver.

I can feel my humility draining away. Today I got indignant when my beeper for the urbanization didn't work and I had to wait for the guard to open the gate. Man, I was so much less presumptuous when I lived in a $20,000 house.

Let's define n as the number of deaths that occur in a disaster. I have a theory that there is a number, x, such that if n is greater than x, humanity will be so awed that people will unanimously agree not to make jokes about it (disregarding the trivial case where n is the population of the world). Apparently, though, x is greater than 150,000.

I really want to experiment with photography more. I always complain that there's nothing to take pics of here, but the fact is there is plenty; I just don't know how to find it. This seems to be a problem for me in general. I think there's three general types of people - some are technical, some artistic, and some are business-minded. It seems I'm more of a technical person, and yet I have this strong desire to be artistic. I really want to write cool music or take creative pictures or write things that are thought-provoking and enjoyable to read, but nothing comes. I've talked about this here before, and I titled the post "the artistic dry heaves", and that's really a perfect description of how it feels. I really want to create, and it's incredibly frustrating that I can't.

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