I had another interesting day. I met a friend in the city. We went to a used bookstore. I’m not sure why, but whenever I go to a bookstore with used or discounted books my inner hoarder comes out and I just keep buying more and more books. The thing is, I don’t even read regularly right now. I’m going through this phase where I’m just not really reading books. I ended up buying seven new books, but I got a good price on them and a nice variety so I plan on reading them soon. I also wandered through the aisles thinking about how much fun writing is and how great it would be to support myself writing. It would really solve a million different problems – mainly my inability to deal with a boss along with my extremely low tolerance for doing things that don’t interest me. I’ve never tried to write a book, but I think I will soon. I’ll just keep in mind that it’s hard and requires a lot of practice. Certainly I won’t be great at it right away, but if I work at it I’d at least have the knowledge I’m improving. That in itself would be great. I’ve got to start reading a lot more with the eye of a writer – trying to determine what works and why. That sort of thing.

I had what I guess I would qualify as an “aha” moment on the train home this evening. Lately I’ve been thinking about music and how it affects the brain. I mean from a longevity standpoint I’d say that listening to sad, mopey songs all the time probably changes your outlook on life. Or perhaps you already have that outlook and the music you listen to perpetuates rather than changes it. I’ve used music, very successfully, for the past few years to amplify emotion. I used to have a playlist titled “I want to cut myself” that I’d listen to whenever I felt like life sucked. It was basically a compilation of songs that came from different periods of my life. The one thing they all had in common is that I used to listen to them a lot when things were really bad. So every time I hear whatever particular song it makes me feel sad for a whole slew of reasons. I don’t really use music to change my emotions – like listening to happy things when I’m feeling sad. It’s generally always used to amplify sad emotions or on occasion happy emotions. Lately I’ve been thinking I need to do a better job of listening to uplifting music. I find myself with the desire much more often these days than in the past to be happy and amplify that feeling, but I don’t have that much music on my phone that I can do that with. Part of the problem is that a lot of the music that makes me feel sad could also make me feel happy, but since I’ve been sad so much in the past I’ve claimed it more for that use. Hmm, I guess I’ve never really thought about it like that. Anyway, I’ve got to find some more music that I can use to feel happy. Or reclaim some old music to use for that.

Ok, so back to the “aha” moment. About a decade ago at the height of my second manic episode I got trapped in a song. It was the strangest situation ever. I’ve been thinking about it on occasion lately and haven’t quite been able to figure out why. On the train on the way home it dawned on me. When I got trapped I was listening to this super emotional Sarah Mclachlan song. What I realized was that when I got trapped I was basically feeling all of these emotions – the ones she was expressing down to the core of my being. Like I was finally not filtering them through my head, but rather just feeling them in my body. I didn’t have to think about how I felt, I just felt. Unfortunately it was also a Sarah Mclachlan song so everything I felt was very, very sad. By the time the song, which is a few minutes long, ended I was emotionally fried and threw the cd out the window. It was like I wasn’t even able to think or figure out what was going on throughout the entire song. I just felt. I’d never had something happen to that degree before. It felt like such a significant realization earlier, but now I’m having a hard time figuring out why exactly I felt that way, except for the fact that I felt the emotions in my body- like down to my core. I also don’t remember having much visual imagery from the song’s words or anything. It was really just feeling emotion. The emotion she was singing. I was wondering on the walk home if this didn’t represent a regression of sorts back to a more primal way of living. I was very stoned at the time. It’s also quite possible that before we as humans were able to communicate with words and fully formed sentences that we communicated emotion with inflection and pitch more than anything. Perhaps I was reacting to that on a very basic, fundamental level. In my opinion you can always tell a lot about a person by how they sound when they talk. It’s generally a dead give away to their underlying mood even when they are trying really hard to hide something.

I guess I’ll have to sleep on it.

Gratitude List:
Cute guys and the possibility of dating one
Friends to explore the city with
New books to read