The Internet Isn’t All That Big

Amy IM’d me this evening to tell me about this group she’s been listening to. I checked out their myspace page, and read their amazing bio – two musicians who were fans of each other, met up, and eventually married. What a neat coincidence for them, I thought. Then I scrolled down to their comments section, and the most recent comment was left by none other than my friend Elizabeth!

My other recent coincidence was meeting my new friend Lauren via Flickr. I just happened to add this picture of her to my favorites because I found it on Atticus‘s favorites list. She sent me a message, and it turns out we live in the same neighborhood, work in the same neighborhood, and we both did a semester abroad in London, where we lived on the same street three years apart.

My life is beginning to resemble on episode of Lost. Actually I feel more like Richard Dreyfuss, staring at his mound of mashed potatoes, going, “this means something.”

Guitar to the Rescue

I stayed home from work today because everything below my esophagus is kaput. OK, it’s not that bad, but my digestive system has caught the office bug, in addition to suffering almost 3 weeks of nervous stress. I’ve been on edge every day, not sleeping well, and assuming it will go away as I get a better handle on things. But as I get a better handle on things, I realize how much is in front of me.

I’ve always been the type of worker who has a personal stake in my performance. I want to please people, and when they’re not pleased, I internalize that. But I need to let it go. I need to separate the business from the personal. So today I got some rest, and tried to get my mind off work. I tried meditating, but I’m not good enough at it to completely clear my head. Tonight I was reminded of what works for me: guitar practice. I haven’t really funneled heavy stress into practicing in a long time. I played for about two hours and it really helped. In addition to helping me let go of everything, it also improves my chops. My Eric Johnson strat is a great guitar for practicing like this because it’s not so easy to play. It puts up a fight, and that’s even better.

I can’t say the stress is gone for good, but I can say that I’ve found a workable way to decompress. I don’t know how you regular humans do it without a musical instrument.

October 2006

The seeds of my current shift in residence were planted in October of 2006, when Tara, Joe and I took a trip to New York. I knew that I wanted to see the Zappa Plays Zappa tour, and figured it would come nowhere near Arkansas, so catching them in New York on Halloween seemed like the best idea. Little did I know that the places I would go and people I would meet would eventually cause this massive upheaval in my life.

This morning I realized that the pictures that I took during that trip were never uploaded to Flickr, so I uploaded them just now. If you were here for the travelogue, then you’ve seen the pictures.

It only took me a year and two months since that trip to get here.