Living for the Night vs. Living for the Morning

 Sometime in the last few days, I took a departure from my steady diet of alt country and indie Christian music, and pulled up Niall Horan.  It started with "On the Loose" because I had all the windows down and was feeling pretty dang good, and continued from there.  I'm not big into pop, and every time I listen to it the charm wears off quick, so I knew I had to make the most of this time.  I tried to queue up "You and Me," but I guess what I actually added was "On My Own."  And that was a fascinating listen.

I know I've heard it before, but as much of a lyric listener as I am, I had never actually taken note of the words that he sings.  It starts:

Everybody's got somebody
I just wanna be alone
Well I don't need no one
Have too much fun
Out here on my own

And that's it.  That's what the song's about.  There's no big character arc, no moment of realization that he needs people around him.  He gets drunk, kisses girls, gets in fights, and goes to sleep.  It's a dream life.  The song doesn't even mention friends, he seemingly remains socially alone all the time.  Here's the beginning of the chorus:

I'll drink 'til it's empty
Stay out 'til it's late
I'll wake up at midday and marry my bed

Now, I'm not trying to say that this is Niall Horan's actual story.  It took five writers to bring this thing into existence, after all.  And the fact that the character has a shallow and short-sighted viewpoint doesn't mean that it's a bad song either; after all, the best songs don't try to teach us a lesson, they just tell the truth.  I think of "Head Case" by Cody Jinks, where he questions his sanity as he grapples with thoughts of artistry, mortality, and faith in God' (it's a solo write, by the way).  It doesn't give us a solution, it just captures a tortured moment honestly.

And I do find "On My Own" relatable.  Maybe a little too comfortably relatable, and maybe that's what bothers me about it.  I find the message expressed to be one that leads to misery in the long term.  But nothing in the song indicates that it's a bad thing.

So, maybe that's being nit-picky.  Maybe I should just let the song be a song, and not criticize it based on things like that.  After all, didn't I just say the best songs don't try to teach a lesson?

Fine.  What else do I have to say about it?  Well, it's too one-note, content-wise.  Not very dynamic in terms of what it has to say.  So then.

Now let's compare this to a song I heard again today (technically yesterday), when I was listening to Flatland Cavalary's Wandering Star album.  As you can see, I was back on the country, and good thing too.  Otherwise I wouldn't have heard "Mornings With You," Cleto Cordero's duet with his wife, Kaitlin Butts.  Three writers worked on this song, and Kaitlin was not one of them, which makes sense because I actually found it surprisingly impersonal given its nature.  But impersonal or not, it's a solid song about Cleto finding his joy in the simple things in life now, like getting to enjoy coffee with his wife in the morning.  Here's the chorus:

I used to think the good life was burnin' up the night
But runnin' with the devil is a dark and lonely ride
Sometimes it takes an angel to change your point of view
Now I live for mornings with you

Still not a perfect song, but boy does that hit the spot better than "Your company is fine, but I get on better with mine."

One is mature, one is not.  One is self-concerned, one is not.

I don't really have a lesson.  It's just an interesting juxtaposition.  That's all.

On Productivity: A Ramble

 I have always lived in community, intimately and integrally.  Now that I've moved out, I find the hardest part is the lack of that community.

Some would simply adapt, and their world would shrink without too much trouble.  I hope that I do not do this.  I long for another community, to feel the joys and sorrows with, to identify with and support and be supported by.  I long for a family to live life alongside.  Now that I am moved out, I seek not further independence, but an appropriate codependence.

As I was sitting on my bed this morning, letting YouTube shorts suck my soul dry for two hours, I came to ask myself why I was doing this.  I had thought that once I was out and fully responsible for myself, it would make me feel more motivated, not less.  But without my family, it all just feels so empty.  So meaningless.

When I was at home, I cared about my own happiness, but that happiness was connected to the status of the home and family.  Now, my own individual happiness feels pointless.  Shallow.

It draws me back to the catechism question: What is the chief end of man?

The answer: To glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

For as long as I can remember, I have known this catechism question and answer.  I have considered it, but I have considered it mostly theoretically, because I have never seriously had to grapple with what this means on a day by day basis.  It was all laid out for me as a child.  Glorifying God means obeying my parents and loving my siblings and following God's commandments.  That's hard enough, isn't it?

But as a single woman living apart from her family, learning how to glorify God is a new challenge.  It's no longer about not spending all my time watching TV because my parents wouldn't like it, or keeping my room clean to serve my sister, or staying joyful so I don't bring the mood down for the others.  It's just me and God.

---

I began this post on May 31st, and haven't come back to it until now, a month and a half later.  It feels much longer than a month and a half.

I had my wisdom teeth taken out on Monday (it's Thursday now) and so I sort of temporarily moved back in with my parents so that my mother can care for me in my convalescence.  I've been on several meds, taking either Ibuprofen or Tylenol every four hours, a steroid for swelling several times a day, an antibiotic every 8 hours, a strong mouth rinse twice a day... I've been pretty out of it.

Monday I slept, did some work, watched two movies, cried when the pain got too bad, and generally spent almost the whole day on the sofa, which I don't think was a bad use of my time considering the circumstances.

Tuesday I spent a lot of the day on the sofa, working some, but also watching political commentary on YouTube, and then went to see Sound of Freedom with my parents in the afternoon.  And then I think I just watched more YouTube.  Honestly, I have no recollection of that evening, but I feel like my week has been inundated with YouTube.

Wednesday (yesterday), I watched Sound of Music in the morning, and then went to see a buddy fly an airplane for the first time, got taken to Cookout by my parents for milkshakes, video called Sister #3 in the afternoon and got to talk to her and my nephews, one of whom referred to me by the exact sound he uses to say "banana" and the other of whom just barked at me like a dog, and then some friends came over and we watched High School Musical together.  Phenomenal movie.  Then I stayed up until 2:30AM watching YouTube videos.  Like a chump.

Today I watched some YouTube videos (I know, shocking), and then me and my dad went to my apartment to pick up my bathing suit, I came home, lazed around, made some tapioca pudding, and then something happened.

Maybe it's because I'm largely going without pain meds today for the first time since the surgery, or maybe it's just because I've developed more discipline since moving out and am used to being more active now, but sometime around 3 o'clock, things shifted.

I told my mother, "I'm going for a walk.  I'm not bringing my phone, so just holler if you need me."

"You're not bringing your phone?" she asked in obvious surprise.

"Nope," I said firmly.  "Just holla."

And off I went, down to the pond, and then back up to the shop where my dad was working on a project for Sister #1.  I helped him move a piece of plexiglass, and then told him I was going to continue my walk.  He said, "You know, you could bring the four wheeler on your walk."

Obviously, I scoffed at this and said it wouldn't make for a very good walk.  But when I started to pass the four wheeler, I thought, "Why not?"

I changed out of my little sandals into my thrift store Vans that are literally falling apart because I played soccer in them after my cleats fell apart, and spent a while zooming around.  I went up the driveway and down to the pond, and back in the woods and around again.  It was freeing and invigorating.  

I came inside.  I stretched for forty minutes while listening to Ben Shapiro.

Let me use the next few paragraphs to lay out my theory for you.  

When I was living at home, I was never bored, but I wasn't exactly productive.  I spent my time, but I didn't really redeem my time.  I never quite had the energy or, frankly, the need to.  And as much as I would love to claim that I was self-motivated, the evidence says that I was not.

Living on my own (you know, for the long month and a half), I've had to learn to enjoy doing the things that are productive rather than comfortable.  Cooking, grocery shopping, doing laundry, budgeting, etc.  And now that that part of my brain has been activated, I can't exactly turn it off.  So, I want to be productive...but I've learned what that means when I'm at the War Groover Hermitage (my apartment).  I haven't yet fully learned what that means when I'm living at the Ancestral Hall, especially not when I started this stay as an invalid.

My subconscious answer to this dilemma has been to pour my attention into something that feels important - politics.  That's why I've been consuming all the YouTube commentary.  Because even though it's not actually the most helpful thing I could be doing, it still feels productive because I'm thinking about things that call for action.  Not that I'm actually providing that action.

I don't really know what the takeaway is here.  Yet again, I'm up late at night finishing a blog post that I didn't really think through all the way.

I don't have a neat ending to tie it up.  But I'm tired.  So I'm going to do the productive thing, and go to bed rather than spend more time on this.

The Darkness of the Cave

 There is a wealth of discouragement flooding my mind right now.  I feel...well, I feel too much, and all of the wrong things.

And yet, even as I burn with frustration and disappointment, I am conscious that it could be much worse.  That even though I feel overwhelmed and broken and a bit hopeless, I am not, in a true sense of the word, depressed.  The light does feel as if it has been choked out, but I know it is still there, just behind the branches and the thorns.  I know that in the morning, the wind may shift and blow those obstructions to the side, and I will soak the sunlight up again.

And so, I have only to survive tonight.

When I was in my LACE year of camp, the hardest year, meant to test me and prepare me for staff should I return, I had to crawl through a winding section of cave that was maybe two feet high and three feet wide.  Being far down in the cave, the only light was from our headlamps.  I don't know how long we had to crawl, but it seemed nearly unbearable at first.  

My claustrophobia rises if my socks are too tight, and this was a deal more constricting.  If I at some point got hit with a panic attack, I would need to crawl backwards as far as I had come forwards before getting to a place where I could stand up, and it was still quite a long way to the surface.  But ye olde human resiliency revealed itself (thank you, Lord!), and I found that I was capable of more than I had thought.  As I army-crawled through that small space, going first left around a corner, then right, then back again, like I was crawling through a giant snake, I told myself that just around the corner was a big room.  I knew that this was most likely not the case, but I had to trick that raw, instinctual part of my brain into not fighting and not fleeing.  So every turn, I said to myself, "It's okay, there's a big room right around the bend."  And when there wasn't, I just said, "Oh right, it's around the NEXT bend."  It worked.

I could say that's a good metaphor for where I am right now in life, but it's not.  The truth is, right now I'm crawling slower because I don't know what's around the bend.  A big part of me wants to just go back up to the top, even though I know I'm supposed to keep going forward.

But tonight.  Let's talk about tonight.

I was struck with a giant wave of insecurities this evening, right around snacktime.  I did not have a snack at snack time.  Perhaps if I had, I would have carried on quite at ease.

But alas, three o'clock passed, and with it my peace of mind.  I felt rather productive at first, because I was getting some good baking done.  I made cranberry coffee cake AND Fragilite (I can't figure out how to put an accent over the "e", so just imagine it).  But then I tried to watch Hamilton, and it was buffering about every ten seconds, and it basically wrecked the feeling of productivity I had tentatively captured.

It is humbling to think not only about just how frustrated this experience made me, but also how easy it is to normalize it.  Entertainment is such a seductive, addictive thing, and it has strong effects on the mind.  I use entertainment to escape.  That's something that I realized through therapy.  It doesn't do a whole lot for my feelings, but it's a wonder for shutting the door on pesky thoughts.  And I'm so used to using it in this way that it's often the first place my mind goes when I'm stressed about something.  I don't even think about it, I just grab my phone and go to YouTube.  Take a mental sedative.

It used to be that when I finally came out of my stupor, I felt quite ashamed, but also oblivious as to why.  In my mind, I was too tired and stressed to actually do anything useful, so why not enjoy something?  I had tricked myself rather effectively.

When I got back from my recent Europe trip, I was shocked by how many things I found myself wanting to do, and able to do.  I realized how sick it made me feel to bury my stress in my phone, and how much I wanted to be involved in the physical things around me.  I realized that I really did want to be responsible with how I used my time, and that I'm much less miserable when I am responsible.

The question was - would I allow my feelings about work to drive me away from the progress I'd made?  And unfortunately today, the answer was yes.

I don't believe this was a complete relapse.  At some point, I realized that I was wasting time waiting for Hamilton to load, and I just needed to try again later.  I was actually able to turn it off and do something else.  But I still had that awful self-loathing, and it began to pick on insecurities that I had been doing a pretty decent job holding off.

My weight for instance.  I'm short and squat in my opinion, and my weight has definitely begun to grow more within the last year.

Another lesson from camp: one of the questions in our private devotional time that we were supposed to work through was, "Can I stand in front of a full-length mirror in just a bathing suit and say, 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made.'?"  I struggled with that question then, and there has never been a time since when I have had a satisfactory answer.  I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, but it somehow doesn't sound very convincing when I look at myself without any clothes to hide behind.

Additionally, since I came back from Europe, my checking account has been pretty dry.  Now, I haven't been paid since returning, and there were many expenses on this trip, so this is to be expected.  But I hate the feeling of not having a safety net (although I really do have a financial safety net still), and it makes me feel like I've done something terribly wrong.  It even has me questioning whether I should have gone to Europe in the first place.  And I definitely should have.

Here's the really important part though.

Sure, I could be more frugal financially.  Sure, I could eat smaller portions and healthier food and exercise more.  Sure, I could get more sleep and treat my friends better and spend less time on my phone.  And these are all things I should do even.  But when I fail at them, I cannot allow myself to think that defines me.  I am not earning my way to heaven.  I am not bribing God to love me.  I am not trying to prove I'm worthy of being his child.

I've already failed.  Horribly, too.  I fail every day.  Yet God never looks at me and says, "She's three pounds heavier than last Tuesday, and she just had a bowl of ice cream instead of going on a walk.  She's hopeless."

I am just as precious in God's eyes as I would be I was a perfectly fit neurosurgeon.  I dishonor him by seeing my worth in those things instead of in Christ.

There's plenty more I could say, but it's late and I'm tired.  The Lord is with me.  He has made me and keeps me even now.  Bad days are just that - bad days.  The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.