Scheduled Thoughts whatever number it is now.

Playing my flute, like writing in this blog, is something that's really really good for me, but I don't do as often as I should. Every time I spend an hour I don't have making music, I say to myself afterwards, that was amazing, and I should do it more often. But then I don't actually do it more often. The flute becomes expendable. I convince myself I can live without it, which is actually pretty ridiculous. So right now, I'm in the sweet, exhausted foggy afterglow of a nice long time spent with my flute, and I'm writing this post to remind myself that I really should practice more. I can make time. And it is so worth it.

Change

It seems everyone in the blogging world is talking about change lately, how much they're secretly afraid of it, and how much they wish they weren't. Seems like it's time I did a post amounting to much the same thing, but I can't, because I don't feel that way about change at all. Part of the point of change is that it frightens people, so I guess I am a little scared of things like leaving behind everything I know and going out into a world where I may not even have a support system, but I'm not a person who needs everything to stay familiar. To me, that's the definition of a conservative. The idea behind being politically progressive is to support change, because the world won't stay the same even if you'd like it to. Things do change and nothing can come of resisting that. It's survival of the fittest, too. If you don't adapt, you die. So I live my life with fluidity, handle the changes the world brings to me without fear, and sometimes am the origin of that change myself.

That's not to say I'm good at trying new things, but that's mostly fear of exposing myself to ridicule from other people. I'm trying to change how motivated I am by that fear, but it proves to be a slow change.

In fact, I'm more afraid of rididity than of change. If I define myself, I immediately feel the need to prove that definition inacurate by changing whatever part of myself I defined. That's part of why I started using the name Riva in person. I was tired of living under a defined personality, and it was limiting my ability to change.

Change to me is beautiful. It's miraculous and wonderous to realize that I don't have to be in the same patterns for the rest of my life, that I can escape from them with usually no more than a day's worth of thought. I wouldn't say God is change, or anything like that, but I'm certainly not as bothered by the idea of people and things changing as I see that people around me are.

Scheduled Thoughts 4

If I wear all my green early this week, I can accidentally have nothing green left to wear on the 17th... eheh, right. I don't own any orange.

It's not that I support the Irish Protestants, or that I'm making any kind of judgement of who was in the right originally. I'd just like it if people knew that there were people out there who didn't wear green. I'd like it if most people knew why they were getting stupid drunk (ah, stereotypes...) and dyeing their pubic hair green. I actually met a part-Irish guy recently who thought I should wear green and get really drunk even though I told him I'm part Irish Protestant. This, incidentally, was the same guy who landed on my ankle. I'm sure he'd be pleased to know that my ankle will probably be quite green even by Saturday.

Scheduled Thoughts 3

I have an ankle that seems to have been pretty weakened. I've been spraining it about once a month for a while now, only lately it's been closer to every two weeks. Yesterday, a large, heavy, wrestler dropped a lot of his weight onto it suddenly. I actually took painkillers/anti-inflamitary pills for it last night, but it was still impressively swollen and painful all last night, and would not support weight this morning. I've been icing and elevating it all day, pretty much, and it's still swollen in pain. Also, the inside of it hurts, which is one of the warnings I was supposed to look for as a sign that it needs to be x-rayed.

I also bruised a rib and a cheekbone, and have many many sore muscles from lap tag, which involves a sort of wrestling (ask if you really wanna know how it's played). So why does all of this make me happy?

I think it comes down to the same reason I can't consider myself entirely female, ever. I'm fucking macho. Sad, I know. But I enjoy being in pain so I can shrug it off, pretend to ignore it and smile when it hurts because I'm not caring.

Indicators

An indicator, in the language of specialized connotations I use when I want to think in words, is basically a sign of the state of my mind. The logical question to follow that would be why I would need a sign to tell what's going on in my own mind. Sometimes, I get preoccupied with what's going on in the outside world, though, and can't tell until I notice the indicator. Things that seem like accidents or coincidences are indicators, and also things that seem like choices but lack normal logic. If I find myself doing something that fits a pattern and don't know why, I'll figure out what it's indicating.

A basic example is weeks when I find myself dressing or talking in a particular mode, when I don't think I feel like that mode. When that happens, I figure I actually am in the mode, and just haven't noticed, or been paying enough attention. That particular sign is a general indicator that I should spend more time alone or thinking about myself.

The reason I tell all this is that last night I had an existential crisis for no apparent reason. I should be enjoying life and so on, but I just couldn't figure out why I was alive. I got rid of the existentialism without analyzing it much, so it only just occured to me what that was indicating. That was a message to spend more time doing simple things that bring me great joy, instead of complicated things that bring me some happiness. I need to be writing and creating more. And it's wonderful to know that, but I find myself wondering where the message is coming from.

I generally figure it's my subconscious, which is more self-aware than my conscious mind, but it's not like I can tell. It could be God for all I know, and that's an interesting thought. I'm sure many people out there would say with certainty that it's God, and many more would say it isn't. It doesn't matter too much, who-or-whatever it is certainly is a reliable and accurate source.

In other news, I've been playing with the idea that God is the space where things are neither one thing nor the other, and also both.