Horses of courses

This happens approximately every six months. Or perhaps every spring. Either or both.

I fall in love with horses.

You'd think I would just go through a little phase, but naw... it comes back time and time again. I don't own a horse. But I know plenty of people who do. Is it abusing our friendship if I ask to come over regularly next summer just so I can ride their horses?

Oh poop. They won't mind...

Sitting on this desk is a half a cup of cold coffee, a textbook opened with the best intentions and ignored with the greatest success, and a notebook with a long, scribbly list featuring, precisely, one thing crossed off.

Sitting on my mind is "It's scary how easy it is to worship people", "I wish work was done", and "Gosh I miss New Zealand".

One tab at a time

Nope. Not talking about bar tabs. Although...I should probably cut those down too. ;)

Today I hopped on the computer to pull up my blog, and immediately after opening a new browser and typing in my blog address I opened a new tab for Facebook, a new tab for Gmail, and a new tab for Twitter.

I then had four tabs up and I clicked back and forth between them for about 5 minutes; waiting for one thing to load as I looked at another for 30 seconds. After those 5 minutes passed I paused and lifted my fingers off the keyboard. I couldn't remember why I had got on the computer. Oh - right! My blog. I quickly scanned my tabs for the title, clicked on it, then paused again.

What the heck, I thought...why do I have so many tabs open? This is so distracting. I can't focus on my blog like this.

So I closed each tab until I had my blog open on one page. And then I focused.

-

If you think I'm going to turn this little story into a life lesson, you would be right.

Too many tabs open  - nothing gets done. Or, more specifically, nothing gets done well. At some point what I thought was excellent multitasking become just poor concentration skills.

I'm for damn sure that I don't want to be mediocre good at lots of things and super-duper good at nothing. I don't want lots of little friendships and no few great ones.

At a gradual rate I began allowing myself to believe that more at once was better than one at once. No more of that.

One tab at a time, young'n. One tab.

Significant Other Season

You know it's true. Everyone knows it's true. Holiday season practically requires you have someone you can snuggle up and drink hot cocoa and read a book with, wink at and share inside jokes across the Thanksgiving table with, go ice skating with, build snowmen and have semi-serious snowball fights with, wander around a look at Christmas lights with. All that with-y stuff. Because this time of year is all about that warm, cuddly, loving and sharing sort of feeling. What can I say, I have bought into it; people really make that significant other accessory look like like a must have.

Alright, Santa. The pressure's on, bro.

A boyfriend for Christmas.

Oh snap, is that a Hallmark movie title?

Of Death and Love and Grampa

Laugh if you want, but the last two nights in a row I have ended them sobbing - and I mean, snotty, hiccuping-type sobbing - over movies. No I won't tell you which ones. Fine, I will. Little Women and The Last Song.

Shut up.

My point in even mentioning that semi-embarrassing fact is that, for some reason or another, recently I have become aware that death is very, very close. And come uncomfortably close to those that I love in the last few years; like my dad, and my grandparents.

In my Intro To Music Therapy class this last week we talked about the older adult population - the Elderly. The group, with whom, for many of them, you mostly focus on quality of life versus improvement in Music Therapy sessions.

It's a strange thing to think about death, to read the chapter on aging; how your body starts to decay, and your very brain begins to deteriorate, and all the while your soul remains young and watches as the body it inhabits slowly falls away, eventually to return the dust from which it came.

My professor gave us the assignment to ask an older adult above the age of 75 to answer five questions we came up with about how it felt to age. I asked my grandparents. This evening my grandma emailed me my grandpa's response and - perhaps because I just got done watching The Last Song in which the father of the family dies of cancer - as I read the answers, I cried and cried and cried.

It hurt so much to hear. It scared me so much to read; to think about, to feel; to even imagine feeling.

But death is coming. It will arrive. And there is no way of stopping it.

So do I figure out how to deal with it before it comes? CAN I figure out how to deal with it before it comes? Is there some sort of class I can take on coping with terrible deaths before they occur so that when they happen, I have already mostly dealt with it and can move on? I guess not. Don't know if I even wish that.

One thing my grandpa kept hitting on: Love. You love and you love and you love, and as you grow older you begin to understand that that is all that is important: loving.

You can build empires, and invent the next iPhone app, win Dancing With the Stars and the biggest court case in the history of the 21st century. But love will beat all. You love: you cannot lose.

Don't let yourself get behind - it sucks less to do it now than to do it and 3 other things later.

I should really, really, really be reading my Intro to Music Therapy book and taking a test... but it has been such a long time since I've written on this blog that I feel the urge to hear a flurry of clicks on the keyboard.

Classes are three weeks in now. How that happened absolutely beats me. Suddenly I know people; we're joking around, walking to class without thinking about what building/room/class we're going to. I'm no longer guessing on which streets to turn on to get to class; that's in the BAG.

Music Therapy is cool, guys. I'm not just saying that because it's what I'm currently pursuing, I really mean it. It's awesome. Sometimes for class what we do is sit around in a circle with a bunch of random instruments, and for half an hour we improve; switching out instruments when we feel it, singing, leaving the beat and melody up to the group as a whole. It is possibly the most fun I have ever had in a class. There are other parts to the class - equally as interesting, if you can believe that - that have already challenged me on a sort of human, exposing, vulnerable level. Woo! That's the kind of learning I'm talkin' about, people!

Within these last couple of weeks I have learned a little bit of something I want to share with you:

if you work hard

and you keep the procrastinating at a minimum

and you don't watch too much tv or stay on facebook

if you sleep

and spend time in nature without your phone

drink water

and just generally wake up in the morning determined to find things you love about life:

YOU WILL SUCCEED.

I'm not talking about acing every test, or becoming top dog. I am talking about quality of life; learning to do things right, to not take short cuts, to love things because they are beautiful even when they are hard.

Write that on your sheet music and play it.

Please Just Be Nice

Today I just want to say:

You don't have to be

Cynical
Sarcastic
Pessimistic
or
Harsh

to be a cool person.

I think people are cool when they are kind. And loyal. And you know what? Gentle.

Yes, there is something to being candid and forthright, but when you start adding sarcastic tones to cynical, biting statements they lose their oomph.

Please stop being mean to each other and trying to out-wit, out-swear, out-badass everyone else. No one truly enjoys that.