Happiness Vs. Change

The other day at one of my shows someone asked me if I was happy.  I said yes, but I felt like I was lying.  However, I don’t mean this as I am unhappy.  It’s just that I feel happiness is a moment to moment feeling.  In general, I feel happy, but even on a good day there are moments when you might feel a twinge of sadness, a flash of anger, or a moment of regret.  I’ve said before that I view happiness, in the way we think of it in America, as overrated.

To me it is much more important that you live a life of authenticity than it is to be happy every moment.  One should always push themselves to try and do new things.  Often taking risks and trying new things can be stressful.  I could be happy just reading a book on my couch sitting next to my dog.  It doesn’t take much to make me happy.  But an entire life of that wouldn’t really be living would it?

My last post was me promoting a solo show.  In order to get ready for that show I will have to do a lot of work this week.  I will also be stressed trying to make sure that it is promoted properly, that I am prepared musically, etc.  If it all goes well I will feel some sense of achievement.  However, no matter how well it goes, I will be thinking about what I could be doing better next time and so on.

My point is that playing that show will be the thing I will remember a few months down the road, even though getting ready for it will cause me moments of stress.   Meanwhile, the time that I allow myself to relax and unwind and enjoy myself will be largely forgotten.

Last year my girlfriend and I presented a paper at an environmental conference in Costa Rica.  We had to speak to a full room of people who were experts in the field.  We had the fewest credentials out of anyone else that was speaking, although she has a degree in Environmental Science and Policy, and I was going to school for the same thing at the time.  It required a ridiculous amount of work and there were definitely moments of stress as we realized what we were getting ourselves into.  The thing is, I will always remember that day with pride, but I can’t say that until it was over that it made me happy.

Meanwhile a thousand moments of happiness since that day have been forgotten.  I mentioned earlier this week that I got a Playstation 3 for my birthday.  I was looking up games and I found one that I really enjoyed playing before.  Until the moment that I saw it I had absolutely no recollection of ever having played it, and it was one of those Japanese games that takes like 80 hours to beat.

I’m not saying that one shouldn’t do things that make them happy.  The brain needs times to relax.  I feel that one is able to take on larger more stressful tasks if one also has moments of relaxation and enjoyment.  But it is far more important to take chances and try new things.  Change and risk can be really stressful.  But it just might lead to a life worth living.

Teacher as Dictator

This blog is not about me.  It is definitely a list of my thoughts and views.  It is biased and judgmental.  What I mean is that I have no desire to go over my personal life unless I can tie it into some larger theme.  I will occasionally give over to shameless self promotion, but such is the modern order of things.  I can be a very private person at times.  I don’t like people knowing where I am at all times.  When I speak to someone I like it to be for those that I intend it for.  If I’m in a restaurant I prefer the darkly lit quiet ones where the booths are high.  I tend to like to bypass small talk and get right to the heart of matters if possible.  Small talk wears me out.  Although there is a perverse side of me that occasionally likes to make people uncomfortable with my thoughts and ideas, in person I generally like to make people feel comfortable.  I have no desire to impose my thoughts on diners and staff that are not looking for it, and I have no desire to have theirs be imposed upon me.  So I want to have a real conversation with the people to whom I’m talking, but I don’t want to trouble those who aren’t looking for it.  Live and let live if possible.

I say this because I definitely have some of the tendencies of an introvert.  The reason I just talked about myself was so I could jump topics and talk about school.  It seems like college these days, I am going back for my second degree, is more about group work and projects and student speeches than it was the first time around.  Because of my nature and because of my thoughts as a student, this drives me absolutely batshit!

First of all, I am going into ridiculous debt for school.  If I am paying this money I personally want to learn from a really great teacher that can impart their knowledge to me.  It seems often in college classrooms that the blind are leading the blind.  Despite having introvert tendencies I have no fear of giving speeches or being in front of people.  I have spent too much time on stage for that.  But while a speech may teach the person giving the speech something, more times than not it leaves the class bored and uniformed.  Each class is probably costing me at least a couple hundred dollars.  I’d much rather hear the professor talk than other students.  Still, if a class spends one or two periods giving speeches, there is at least the chance for knowledge.

My worst pet peeve is group work.  I can’t tell you how many times, in the few classes I have taken, when the professor tells us to get into groups while they sit up at their desk and work on god knows what.  Usually after about five minutes of working on whatever topic, the group usually descends into, “What are you doing this Friday?”  I don’t necessarily blame the professors.  It seems that education is generally going this way.  More hands-on group learning.

What I am finding is a lack of critical thinking through this kind of learning.  Students will find the quickest, easiest path, to getting something done.  I can’t help but feel that if the class is going to participate, a deep discussion moderated and led by the professor is going to be more informative.  They are the ones that have spent years studying their field.  Usually college professors spent years in a field, not only because they want a job, but because they are passionate about their area of study.  I want a person like that teaching me.  Not someone that is taking the class to satisfy some elective and maybe or maybe not bonged eight beers last night.

Also, because of my personality I would rather observe, unless I had something meaningful and insightful to add to the conversation.  If I don’t feel I have anything smart to say I would rather not speak.  I feel like this form of learning almost forces ignorance to arise.

Everyone learns differently.  There are some that might excel in this kind of learning environment.  I could be wrong.  Maybe the majority of people like this.  I do not.  I can’t help but wish there was at least a little more balance in the classroom.  In the real world I want democracy in which everyone’s voice can be heard.  In the classroom I want a dictator, that is carrying knowledge down to the uniformed masses, from the mountaintop.

Strange Success and Epic Failure

The last blog that I wrote, Where Does the Time Go?, wasn’t very good.  It wasn’t Joel Stein or Rob Sheffield bad, but it was headed in that direction.  It was a little too cute.  I meant well, but I failed.

In the past two weeks I’ve put up 90 something posts.  There are bound to be some duds along the way.  It’s just sheer numbers working against me.  As a working musician I know all about mistakes, embarrassment, and epic failures.  The only thing that separates the professional from the amateur is that we keep going.  A mistake is a mere speed bump.  To the amateur a mistake is a train wreck.  I remember one Christmas show where Shinyribs played The 12 Days of Christmas.  Kev, Winfield, and myself were all playing different chords at the same time!   Enthusiasm thankfully won out the day.

Luckily there weren’t many people in the venue last night when I got there for sound check.  I tried to jump on stage, and my foot caught the edge, and I just about did a face plant.  These things happen folks.  I remember one time on my birthday I put my foot on a monitor, there may or may not have been many drinks involved, and I fell straight out into the crowd.  I kept playing though.  I wasn’t a working musician yet, but it showed that I had the ability to one day become one.

I gave my first big speech in years this year.  I am going to school for Environmental Science and Policy.  I gave a speech in Costa Rica at an Environmental conference.  I was easily the least qualified person there concerning credentials.  Other than one five minute speech in college last year I haven’t had to give a speech in 10 years.  The speech was a success.  However, it’s something I wouldn’t have even done if I had not had people to encourage me.   If I had anything going for me personally it was just that I have read a good amount, I practiced a lot, and I have spent a lot of time on stage learning how other people watch you.  But had my girlfriend not been there to help me with the stuff that I didn’t know, and if my dad hadn’t encouraged me, I might not have done it.

Most people don’t notice the mistakes that you make in any kind of performance.  If they do, a mistake is a passing thing.  It’s transient.  It’s there one minute and then gone the next.  If you are performing in front of other people that are also performing or giving speeches, they are so worried about their own speech or performance that they are probably only half paying attention to you anyway.

I really feel like the most important thing is just not being afraid to walk through a door.  If you just try, you might find yourself in some strange new place doing something you have never done before.  You will fail on occasion, but that will just be a passing thing.

Every time I talk to someone that is successful at something or other, they have some elaborate story about all of the right moves they made.  I think most of the time this is historical revisionism of their life story.  Kurt Vonnegut always uses the line from a Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always depended on the kindness of others.”  I think most people are being disingenuous if they claim that they did it all on their own.   The only thing they did was walk through the door.

Here is the thing.  There is no such thing as magic and there are very few geniuses.  You will sooner find a lottery winner than you will a true genius.  Most people that are successful are like the Wizard of Oz.  They are putting on an elaborate show to trick you into thinking that they are something other than what they are; another human just like you.