I’m still on my break, but this is a break from that, a break from my break. Sort of. The entire idea of a break was, and still is, for it to be a learning exercise, an opportunity to reflect on what I would like to be doing and how that might be possible, or not, given my current situation.
So… what have I learned so far?
Reading & Writing
I’ve found I like to write, and miss it when I don’t. I started reading one of my many unread books, but I started rewriting it instead of enjoying it. I had to put it down because I started arguing with the author over word choice. I’ll be giving the book another try at some point—though if its chapters are as awkwardly written as its introduction perhaps that will motivate me to write my own books rather than lament the reading of someone else’s.
The Problem With AWD
Weeks ago I recorded a music mix, and I was quite pleased with it. Perhaps too pleased. I recently listened to it again and was aware of things I hadn’t heard before, mostly that most of the first ten minutes are, uh, problematic. Way too loud and way too busy is how I hear it now. I checked the original source files, and yes, at a few points, I had two tracks playing at the same time with no gain adjustments, so I wasn’t just hearing things: that’s going to be loud, with business quickly building—oh, wait, I suppose I mean busyness. Wow. I’ve never noticed that before. Amazing. Business can’t be busy’s noun because it’s already doing that for business…
I’m fixing AWD. It will be uploaded again with the introduction remixed into something that’s a little bit less like ear sandpaper. Less appears to be more with the music I enjoy. I’ll figure out how to quantify this, but I have a theory what I enjoy listening to is more silence than sound.
Snow Day
I got a chance to finish another music mix during a huge snow storm a couple of weeks ago. I’m quite pleased with this one as well, but to avoid the mistake I made with AWD, I’ve been listening to this mix every few days to check for glaring errors. I’ve heard stylistic choices I could make differently if I decided to, but nothing suggesting the makings of a train wreck.
If I were to pick a direction for the music I would like to mix and, perhaps one day, make, it would be what’s on the album I titled snjódagur—Icelandic for snow day.
At the time I’d recently finished posting my visit to the mountains in Reykjanesskagi, so themes of different places, altered perceptions, tired minds, and falling snow took form. The name fit.
Change vs. Improve
I’ve found limited success with self‐improvement in some cases. I’ve never appreciated the foundational concept, one which presumes there’s something wrong with me and there is a better me in there somewhere—if only I could muster the courage or strength or whatever I was lacking within to be better, whatever better is. Failed attempts at self‐improvement collected as confirmation: there’s something wrong with me.
But the presumption changes if the exercise becomes an experiment. What if I stopped smoking to see what happens when I do? There’s no immediate need for me to decide if my smoking is wrong—all I have to do is observe the results of me not. What happens if I stop drinking for a month? There’s only one way to find out. What if I stop using a vape for a day? For a week? For two weeks? Again, there’s only one way to find out.
I have never found success like I have over the past few months. My experiments in personal change continue as I approach a quarter of a year out from the start of most of them. The current long term goal is to see what happens after a year, but I’ll have to get to half a year first. In the meantime, shame has been superseded by curiosity.
Everything Can Go
While working on another project, I realized there were far more things in my apartment hidden away than I previously thought. I’d say almost of these things hadn’t been touched since I either unpacked them or moved them from one hidden place to another under the guise of tidying up. Some of these things had only ever been touched so they could be previously packed up, moved, and then unpacked in some other place to await the same tactile fate. A few of these things had been through at least seven iterations of being moved to some new place to never be seen or used. The realization felt heavy and wasteful. There was a brittle quality to it as well: how these things I never see had grown in part to define me.
Later that night, Luna misjudged a jump and knocked over one of my many insane decorations made of mostly rocks and glass. It smashed in the most incredible way, an explosion of pebbles and shards at 1AM. Having never been in its path, Luna was unharmed by the falling item. I sat in disbelief at the ferocity of its own destruction.
It was a sentimental object, something I’d created out of yet another sentimental object. As single form it was no more—its glass container was in pieces, and its rocks were spread out over the floor. There was also the original object, a solar powered LED light, a plastic butterfly, one which would change colours at night, or used to. It stopped working years ago. Though still intact, the case containing its electronics had popped apart, and I saw for the first time how it all actually worked. It used a standard AA battery holder and a perfectly ordinary though now slightly obscure NiCad rechargeable battery. I can’t get them at the dollar store, but they can be ordered online. A slight battery hack for the moment means the colourful butterfly is bright at night again, and perhaps brighter than its ever been, but certainly brighter than the not at all I’d grown accustomed to. Its lightness had returned.
What Now
There is a duality to change, something which creates as it destroys, something which can be interpreted and experienced objectively and subjectively. I understand why change can be resisted by some, but I’ve always counted myself among those who embrace change. Yet, during my time off, during my time spent looking through all the same objects I continually bring to new places, I wondered if my embrace of change has been more or less at arm’s length for longer than I’d thought. Like the LED butterfly, I wondered if my own existence had become anchored with heavy and brittle things. I wondered what resilience such an existence would offer if it ever started falling—or if it already had. Sometimes I wondered if it was already in pieces. And if was honest with myself, I wondered why it occasionally felt like I was tightening my grip on familiar shards—a feeling easily accompanied by a smoke at the start of the day, a drink at the end of the night, or any number of manufactured tasks in between, where moving the same things around the same place is disguised as something I already know.
So now I wonder what would happen if I pulled change toward me instead, if I tugged at change while letting go at the same time. Now I wonder what what happen if I actually made room for something different in my existence instead of just pushing stuff around in it. And now I wonder what new lightness would develop if stepped away from heavier things.
…there’s only one way to find out.
