Play on...

 Insomnia --  my head is a busy intersection of thoughts and worry. Worry seems to be something I'm good at --  perhaps it's in the DNA or perhaps it's a learned behaviour that I've cultivated over many years.  I have to wonder why some people are compelled to feel anxious and to fear the worst case scenario all the time?  Is it because we have somehow overdeveloped the part of our brain that responds to fight or flight?  Do we instinctively sense the negative outcome as a perverse form of self-protection?
  I tend towards negative and defeatist thinking and have all my life, it has become so entrenched in my personality that I no longer consciously notice it but I have been trying to recognize it and head it off when it comes up more and more of late.
  It is an accepted fact that a negative mindset is not a sure formula for success in life, yet on the other hand, I've always thought that by expecting the worst outcome, I am psychologically buffering myself against it.  The problem with being overly negative is that it is used as a "crutch" to justify inaction and when things don't work then my bleak, despairing worldview is reaffirmed.  So, it's a nasty spiral that one can become quickly lost in.   I have allowed the fear of  failure to keep me in a state of complacent inertia all my life and it's become so reflexive that I really have to be alert in order to avoid falling into that trap.
    Being overly optimistic can have its perils as well -- often it comes from a place of denial. It is equally annoying to be around "joy addicts" -- people who feel the need to demonstrate their prolonged and easy cheery-ness. It's particularly off-putting if their hyper-positivity comes across as a shallow and vain facade rather than a more considered and authentic expression of one's being. However, happy-go-lucky individuals have "hope" and I believe it's healthier to be around that kind of personality than being around those who prefer to live under a permanent cloud of nihilism.
  I have a birthday coming up this week and it offers me another opportunity to take stock. The worry and negativity formula hasn't been working for years now yet it is a comfortable place I return to. How does one break this chain?
     I've dabbled in yoga which is supposed to realign your energy and it has had a soothing effect for me.  I've also thought more and more about meditation but it's something that one has to be more purposeful about making time for and my time, like most others', gets filled up quickly with the distractions of the quotidian.  Not to sound too "New Agey" but I've heard that meditation is very effective in calming the mind and putting you in touch with your "higher self."
   In a sense, I feel that I already practice a form of meditation when I play music.  As a musician, I sit down at my piano or play the guitar and get absorbed in a space where the chatter in my brain drops off and I am singularly enclosed in that moment when I'm connecting to the universal through tones and melodies. Music is a very satisfying therapeutic territory for me and helps me to access a higher plain while creating something very immediate and temporary  -- the impermanence of a musical note -- it's sustain and decay -- forces you to inhabit the moment.
   Recordings can't really do justice to live music because there is an energy to a musical performance in a specific time and  ambience. In listening to live recordings you can anticipate the idiosyncratic hi-lights of that given performance, but despite the quality of the recording and the repeated pleasure one gets from listening, it still lacks that vital sense of immediacy -- where you as an audience member -- are giving the performance your undivided attention and are part of something bigger.  It's not the same  as listening to a live recording at home on a Sunday morning over breakfast, despite the pleasure you might derive from the audio.
    I diverted into music to illustrate a wider point and that is that we have forgotten to live in the "now" -- especially those of us who are incessant worriers. I am anxious because I prone to existential panic. A fear of the future because the future ultimately leads to our finality and I have a struggle accepting that there an afterlife.
   Playing music with friends, for me, is like a sacred ritual that allows me to escape into the moment. What could be more about being present in the now than making music that is a filter for joy and camaraderie? or riding your bike along a sunlit path? or being physically active or having a creative interest?  I think that, we, as humans, need to have some passion or outlet that animates our senses and nurtures us outside of our routines.  I find that my life is more complete with hobbies, they help me to elevate my sense of being alive, now.

Baby Express

By this time next year, if all goes as planned, the future me -- (if he finds the time to read these blogs let alone maintain them,) will probably chuckle incredulously at all of this writing in the 'first' person.  The use of "I" in a sentence, will look unfamiliar and self-indulgent -- that is, assuming that I adapt to my impending parenthood in the typically normal way - with complete devotion to my new offspring. So intense this devotion will be -- others have told me -- that I will simply have no time for my needs or wants and that they'll in fact, cease to be important anymore.  In a way, having a child is really an entry-point into the more universal definition of adulthood because whoever you were before your child was born, in a sense, ceases to be.  We symbolically shed our egocentric husk as the hard-wired mechanism of parental responsibility kicks in.  Everything that we had achieved, hoped to achieve or dreamed of -- ends (or at the very least is shelved) -- and is downshifted onto the next generation to carry, whether it is consciously instilled or not.
   Of course, objectively, this should be an exciting change -- and change is both inevitable and necessary for most of us. I am struggling to welcome this change though, as I feel that in order to embrace the new experience of being a father, I have to take advantage of this window of time, to find my direction, complete unfinished projects and say farewell to a life of relative freedom.
  Financial security remains a big question mark for me, but also a feeling of being unaccomplished.  I do not want to make the mistake of regarding my child as a vehicle for succeeding where I failed.  I hope I can avoid the trap of pressuring my child to overachieve in one area that I deem worthwhile while ignoring his/her personality and talents if they differ from what I expect. Yet, how can a parent avoid projecting onto their own child the dreams that they had to sacrifice in order to become a parent?  I don't want to approach parenting with the psychology of payback -- that my child is an  investment who will one day "owe" me.
    Naturally, I'll have expectations and concerns, but I really hope that the only thing that child will "owe" me is to find personal satisfaction in whatever it is that interests them and not to feel paralyzed  by the thunder above of parental disapproval.  I had well-meaning but very reprimanding parents who like most parents, insisted that we (my sister, brother and I,) pursue safe and respectable careers.  My father was a product of his generation and grew up fatherless, so he had very little first-hand knowledge, time or patience for his role as a father. 
   I hope that I can cultivate a  relationship with my child that is more loving, supportive and less-judgmental in order to give them the self-confidence they'll need to survive and succeed in the world.
    I  spent much of my young adulthood trying to define my own value system against the one I had been raised with. I rejected the conventional path of least resistance, instead opting to go a harder and more unrewarding route.  I ended up destitute, underemployed and resentful of the world. 
    None of this was made any easier by my quixotic desire to be an artist -- a vocation that requires an unbreakable will and ability to drown out the critics, in order to succeed. I have only really been "half" an artist all my life as I have not been able to summon the courage to leap into that world fully.  Clicheed - though not unfounded -  fears of being the "starving artist" prevent me from committing myself to artistic practice and it is a painful realization.  Creativity has always compelled me, and there has always been more validation for it from the outside than from within.
    All of this must sound like trite self-pity to those who might read this and think that I was a typical brat from a privileged upbringing who had been given too many options. And after years of fine-tuned self-loathing, I'd reflexively take your side on that assumption.  It's hard to relate to someone who was given much, feel sorry for themselves.  That was the second part of the self-defeating equation I had.
 The guilt.
   I felt guilty for being born into relative comfort.  I allowed the perception that others had of me  -- of being handed the silver-spoon -- to weigh on my conscience.  I felt a certain, judgment not just from classmates but from adult authority figures  -- teachers, coaches etc. who knew of my father's status and implicitly held us to a separate set of expectations or saw in me and my siblings, an  opportunity to direct their mean-spirited venom towards public figures. I felt guilty and embarrassed and apologetic for being the son of the Senator.  I always felt defensive that others whether envious or otherwise, were waiting for that "gotcha" moment when they could proudly expose the "class enemy" that I was. There has always been a sentiment among Canadian working class culture of "know your station" that distrusts success and ambition, and my father strongly manifested both qualities.  So naturally, to those who were unexceptional, this was intolerable.
    My father, was defined by growing up poor in the Depression and he never forgot it. He was uncomfortable being seen as ostentatious or hobnobbing too much with the upper crust. He believed that we should strive to maintain an ordinary appearance while all the same time demanding from us three children, the same extraordinary drive he had.
   These mixed signals created confusion in us three kids. Hence, we strove for the camouflage of mediocrity. Never excelling in anything for fear of being singled out or attracting attention. With my brother's high school theatre career as the exception, we were never really competitive and driven to achieve -- not standing out was the best way to survive high school.
   Fast forward to the present. A new monumentally important life event is on the horizon for me. It will signify a shift in my entire lifestyle and, consciousness.  Bringing a new life into this world -- a tabla rasa -- pure and unformed, will be both exhilarating and challenging.  I'm pretty sure that birth - like death  -  is something you can prepare for intellectually but that you can only profoundly understand once you've experienced it.   This is an opportunity for me to finally let go of the negativity and self-doubt I have worn as a shell all my life and embrace the unknown.