Febrewary, life, and what makes me tick.

A lot of people don't realize that they're pronouncing the name of the month wrong. It is, as my title indicates, FEB-Roo-Ary, with an R: Not FEB-You-Ary.

Speaking of which, I noticed that it's also a neat little pun: Fe-BREW-ary. That could be just because I'm hankering for a beer right now.


There's nothing in particular I wanted to blog about. I just realized I haven't posted in a month. So.... hence some random updates and thoughts. Also, it's raining right now, which is awesome. We desperately need rain and snow here in California. And I still want a beer. But... I'm kinda broke right now. Gotta have that money stuff.


So life. Life is interesting. I'm renting (sub-letting, technically) a room in a house with a number of other "friendly strangers," as I've decided to call them. I've met all of them, had short conversations with a couple. They're mostly busy people. I'm at home the most often, along with the guy who is renting the house.

The rest of my time I'm teaching/assisting at Harmony, the after school program teaching violin and choir to kids for free, hanging out with friends, playing the occasional jam or show or event or whatever.

These last few weeks I've remembered that I like math. Odd, I know, and I didn't discover this fact until my first year of college, when, somehow, Algebra finally clicked.
 This new resurgence is thanks to the Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.com), which has this neato little dashboard thingy which allows you to "master" all the math skills. I am now on a mission to master ALL THE SKILLZ. So far I've got 35% of 593 skills mastered. w00t!
Sadly, they're pretty much all just arithmetic. Oddly enough, the skills proceed in a mostly sequential manner. Who woulda thunk.
HOWever, I am getting to refresh some of my trig skills and, since it's been like 4 years since I've done any calculus, I will be pretty much relearning it too.

On a deeper level, my mission right now is to kind of figure out what makes me tick. What I mean by that is, how I can tap into the focus, energy, and motivation that I think I have, but has been mostly lacking over the last 3-4 years. Part of that is sleep. Part of that is what & how I eat. Part of that is exercise (haven't quite gotten there yet) and part of that is also the mind game of the I-don't-want-to's, which in my case have always been heavyweights in my decision-making.

One of the things I've really been trying to develop more is just having space in my day. For instance, when I get up, having a drink of water. And just sitting there. Not checking email or facebook, not even turning my computer on.

It's harder than you'd expect.

But I've discovered something. When I give myself space to think, it gives me energy. It gives me the willpower I need to make more decisions instead of waiting for time and procrastination to make decisions for me.
If I stop the flow of 99.9%-unnecessary information into my brain, it allows my brain to direct its own flow.

I'm not a very driven person. Well, I haven't been. What I'm starting to wonder now is if I really am more driven than I thought. But most of the time I have this weight or anxiety because I like so much to do things perfectly - yes, a definite perfectionist - that I'm afraid to do them at all. It takes too much energy to try to do things because I know I'll fail. I make the choice of not doing, instead of doing and failing, and doing again, and succeeding.

I remember when I was 13 or 14, thinking about making a commitment to do something every day. I thought, "Well that's pointless, I know I'm going to eventually break that commitment. Why make it in the first place?"
What I didn't realize then about commitments like this was that, as the saying goes, I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees. Although I still think making a commitment to do something every day in and of itself is kind of silly, there is a much more important idea behind it. In order to build the habit of doing something every day, or twice a day, or every other day, or how and whenever it is to be done, a commitment MUST be made. That commitment is to Keep On Trying until the habit is established. The commitment is to Keep On Going no matter how many times failure happens.

There have been some things I've been wanting to do every day for a while. Right now, I'm not doing them every day. Sometimes I'm not even doing them every other day. But every week, I keep trying. I think about what is hindering and helping me meet my goal. I have days that suck. I have days that are kind of almost there. I wish I could say that I have days that are awesome and that happen exactly how I plan and want them to. But I'm going to keep on working, because I know I will have those days. I know I will reach the ideal I'm working towards.

I also know that it's ok that I'm nowhere near it right now.

I'm learning how to be committed.

Still, every day, there's part of me that holds back. Morning and evening, sometimes in the middle of the day too. But the more time and space I give myself, away from information, distraction, internet, TV, facebook, etc. etc. etc., the more that fades away, and the part of me that wants to do things like practice and work on math and write a blog and read a book, takes over and can begin to experience the joy and freedom of forward motion, learning, and success.