I want to be an emotional basket case

For an extended period this year, I was feeling hyper emotional, in a good way. I wrote about it here but the jist of it is that during this time, I was easily moved to the verge of tears with joy by some of the simplest things.

Prior to this year, running emotionally hot had been rare for me. I’m generally a pretty even keel, but something was clearly going on, and I liked it. It felt good to feel good, to be moved by stuff.

But over the last few months, that hyper emotional state kind of dried up. I only realized it a few weeks ago, and I don’t know why I returned to my emotional flatline state, but I wish the peaks would come back.

So I’ve been actively trying to be more emotional for the last week or so, encouraging that strange feeling I get in my head when something stirs it. I have had a small amount of success — today while watching highlights of Valenta Shevchenko’s fights, I felt a great joy wash over my brain, and tears welled up at the backs of my eyes. Her skills, movements, power, and personality are all so beautiful. She’s really something special.

Back on topic — I was pleased to feel the emotional surge again but there is still much progress I need to make. I want more of this feeling. I want it consistently. I don’t want to get complacent about it, to forget about it, to get wrapped up in mundane daily life bullshit. I want to

Well, that was interesting. I stepped away from writing this to put away some recycling and take a piss, and while sitting on the toilet (I prefer to piss sitting down, I find it more relaxing) and staring at the garbage can, the very feeling I’m talking about sneaked right up on me, and I started crying right then and there. It was amazing. I don’t think I summoned the feeling, I think it is more that I have been making myself consciously open to receiving it and it just happened to present itself then, but regardless — wow, that felt good. And the timing was funny (for happening while on the toilet) and amazing (for happening while I was writing this).

I’ve really turned into some kind of touchy feely, hippie dippie weirdo these days, it seems. Oh well, at least I’m a touchy feely, hippie dippie weirdo that is accessing some seriously good vibes and feeling groovy for it. Fucking eh.

do things that give you joy, but don’t do them too much.

I’ve been playing in a Misfits cover band for a while now, and I love it. We don’t practice very often, only once every two weeks or so, and I think that’s part of why it continues to be so fun even after many months — if we were practicing like a serious band, for hours on end a few times a week, we’d be sick of the songs, sick of each other, sick of the time commitment. It would ruin the whole thing. But by only doing it every now and then, it stays fresh to us. It’s a dandy thing.

What’s even dandier is that there is a double whammy effect to this project staying fun: when people love what they do, that thing they are doing is injected with an energy and vibrancy that is difficult to quantify yet is easily felt by anyone who isn’t a complete clod. This element is actually one of the primary things I look for in art: does it feel like the artist is being honest? Does it feel like they are truly passionate about this thing they created? Does this art convey a joy that the artist experienced during its creation? That’s the shit I seek.

And I think our cover band has that — we don’t practice a lot, so it’s fun, and because it’s fun, our performances are infused with this intangible yet critical element. A good example is that there was a song that we played in a previous incarnation of the band but we axed it from the set because it didn’t feel good at the time. It felt limp, it lacked conviction. But then the band changed a few members and one of the new members really wanted to perform that song so we gave it another shot, and guess what. Now that song works — it has the conviction and energy that it was missing before. One guy loved the song, his enthusiasm infected the rest of us and affected our individual performances, and then those individual performances combined to create a unified, inspired thing. All the song needed to kick ass was some good vibes infused into it. Crazy.

The lesson here is clear: do what you love and don’t overdo it.