Oh, How I Want To Sing

In my heart, I can hear so much music. I feel like there is some part of me that wants, NEEDS to share it. From time to time, it rises up and plays for me, but when I try to grasp it, it fades and I can't hold on. I don't know how to represent what I am hearing, and all my attempts fumble and fail. My life never directed me to it, my strengths have always been elsewhere.

But when I hear the sweetest strains, and feel the power of them, I feel that part of me that knows the music. I know it like I know my own heart.

I just finished watching August Rush again, and it reminded me just how much music means to me. This kid is such a space cadet, and everyone but the audience and his parents is mystified by the way he talks about music, the way he hears it all around him. But I know what he hears, because I've heard it, too. It's maddening that I can't do anything about it, but I can't help feeling it.

There is nothing in this world that hits me like music does, and I sometimes feel like I should be doing something about it but I don't really know what. It cuts me to the core, sends a thrill through every part of me. When I fell in love, I walked home singing in my heart a song to her, a song I still haven't been able to write.

What am I supposed to do with the music in my soul?

A Bright, Brassy Secret

So it's time I stopped hiding it.
I confess: I am a steampunk fan.
No, I don't own any brass goggles.
No, I don't have any Victorian clothing.
No, I haven't a modded laptop, phone or TV.

But I wish I did.

Aside from a stash of digital paraphernalia, all I really have so far is this small assortment:

A leather-bound notebook

My leather-bound journal

A brass lantern (of all the things my Grandmother left behind, this is what I wanted most)

Steampunk cufflinks, a wedding gift from my sister

I tell myself I haven't the money, the time or the will to delve deeper into steampunk, but really, who am I kidding? It's time I stopped trying to hide from myself, and let the world know:

I love Steampunk!

A Eulogy, for the game I can never play again

This evening my brother in law, sister and cousin conversed about World of Warcraft, and I participated in the conversation briefly. It quickly became clear, however, that my ability to contribute was severely limited by the 9 months of freedom I've enjoyed from that game. I may be free of the addiction, but memories of the good times I had playing that game came back, and I allowed my self some reminiscence.

I decided that I would like to lay my days of playing WoW to rest with a proper eulogy . . . or rather, by recounting a couple of the good memories and then burying them.

First, I remember in the old days before my mission, playing in the battlegrounds with my little gnome mage. The game was capture the flag, and I had elected to guard the flag room. I was alone, and I waited. Then, on the other side of the room, a Tauren warrior rushes into the room. This brute was decked out in the very best armor, wielding the massive Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. Sulfuras was a legendary weapon, a hammer that any warrior would salivate over. Here I was, a dinky little munchkin in mismatched robes about to square off against a massive, fully decked minotaur wielding an immense flaming hammer. He charged. I teleported. I turned him into a sheep, backed to a safe distance and started casting a fireball. I launched one then triggered a second, and began to run. It was like a textbook fight. I had fought this fight dozens of times against warriors in duels in front of Ironforge. This time, however, the few hits he got off hurt a LOT more than those warriors playing around. I froze him, he broke out. We danced, as I struggled to keep out of range and still deal damage, him fighting to catch up and smash me into a pixelated pulp. As I hopped around frantically setting off arcane explosions, suddenly he fell. I had maybe 5% of my health left, and he dropped. I had won. I busted into my guild's voicechat with a massive shout of triumph. That day encapsulates the joy I had playing a mage in World of Warcraft.

Shortly before I quit the game, there was a massive world event in WoW. In preparation for the coming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, a massive undead invasion of the WoW world began. The first stage of the invasion was an undead plague. Ghouls would randomly pop in and attack cities, and those they hit would contract this plague. If left untreated for a couple minutes, the infected character would become such a ghoul. Being a ghoul was an interesting experience. The non-player characters in most major cities would attack you on sight, and generally that meant death for you. You were slow, but could occasionally break into a burst of speed. You could attack other people, hopefully spreading the undead plague. If you continued to hit them, the timer before they became a ghoul would shorten. You could belch out a cloud of gas that would both infect others, and heal other ghouls. It was fun to play around. The real fun had barely begun, however.

At some point, the invasion got to the point where a bunch of players realized that if you got enough players to go undead at once, you could invade major cities by converting all the residents into ghouls.

So we did so. Other players would come and try to fight us off, usually with some success (ghouls were pretty weak individually). However, we discovered that in the portal room in the Mage's Guild in Stormwind, we could crowd in the middle and ambush incoming players. With enough zombies, they wouldn't get a chance to act before being turned into zombies with us. Our cries of “one of us! One of us!” and “Brrraaaaaainnnnsssss!” were usually enough to convince the newly converted zombie to join us in our unholy crusade. Once we had accumulated enough undead troops, we embarked on a massive invasion of the city. We brought the fight all the way to the market district, where we did battle with NPCs and player characters a like. We squared off with our zombie followers against priests and paladins using their holy might to strike us down. The chaos was magnificent. Never before or since had we had the opportunity to wreak such havoc in this manufactured world we had inhabited for so much time. It was one of the most fun experiences I had had in any game. I will miss it, despite my decision to never return.

Farewell forever, World of Warcraft. You were too well made, too consuming. I will be forever free of your grasp, but forever deprived of the fun you offer.

Howdy Ya'll! Vagaries of the Language

So I have a friend who was an acquaintance for some time and only recently have we begun to hang out more.

This evening as we were all having a good time, it occurred to me that while I have adopted the word "ya'll" as an affectation, she hasn't known me when I didn't use it. Further, I don't think I've ever mentioned that I use language like that intentionally rather than naturally.

My real accent is fairly mundane American, the type you find in places all across the country . . . you might call it the generic American dialect. More than that, I have traditionally had a tendency to be very loquacious (hah, I finally had a use for loquacious!), maybe even to the point of sounding pretentious. My use of colloquialisms and simplistic phraseology is part of an active effort I made to be better at relating to people and communicating on a more personal level. I've been working on that so long that my natural inclinations have been suppressed and rarely do I speak as I was originally wont to do. Even my writing has tended toward a more informal tone.
Regardless, the informality is not my first inclination.

But if my friend has never seen that side of me in full expression, nor have I told her of it, how then does my language represent me to her? Does my use of "ya'll" make me appear a Utah bumpkin? If I adopt a slight drawl on occasion for fun (and I do), does that color the perception others have of my intelligence or attitudes?

In my desire to be more personal with people, have I perhaps begun to present an image of myself that conceals an important part of who I am? Is there a balance I can strike, where I can show both sides of my character without appearing inconsistent?

Language is a strange and wonderful thing.

Enough

A bit of venting:

Through my own experiences with God and with life, I have learned an important principle:
The greatest happiness and benefit is gained by doing the right thing before the Lord forces me to do it. It doesn't matter how complicated the issue is. It doesn't matter how much I dread the additional consequences of doing the right thing.
What matters is that the moment I admit that I should do something, the very best course of action is to choose to do it before I no longer have a choice. There is no better way to change and improve than to choose it of my own free will.

It is difficult for a prison inmate to fully repent of his sins, because he does not have the opportunity to choose not to commit them . . . he is forced to abstain from crime. All the prayer in the world will not change the fact that when he is released he will likely have to struggle with the temptation to return to his criminal ways. Change in the soul is accomplished by the full and complete act of turning our will to righteous ends, and taking the action we recognize as God's will.

It is a serious mistake to wait to do what we should until we have to, because we are missing out on much of the benefit that action gives us. Sometimes it is utterly impossible to gain the real benefit of doing what we should do if we wait until it becomes necessary first . . . this is especially true when the action needed is an emotional or spiritual change. Waiting until circumstances force us to act is like refusing to actually change, because we don't internalize it: as soon as the change is no longer necessary, we will cast it aside.

It's frustrating to me how many people don't realize this simple truth. If we wait to be humble until the Lord compels us to be, we will NEVER be like him, we will NEVER be free, we will NEVER overcome the challenges he presents us.

I'm tired of telling people this. I'm tired of seeing people wreck themselves and worry about all the crap they have to go through while refusing to do the things they SHOULD do. If you wait until He MAKES you do it, of COURSE it's going to be harder!

It's time to do what we should, while God is giving us time before he compels us. It's time to understand that what matters first is what is right. It is time to leave all the unnecessary baggage and pessimism behind and strip down the problem to see what the real issues are. It's time to come to term with our sunk costs.

--Jacob

Harnessing waste products

So I've struggled all my life with ADHD, and an accompanying resistance to work.
This apathy is frustrating, like a block that pops up in my mind whenever I need to buckle down and work. At times I have just sat there, paralyzed, as my desire to work battles with the block of apathy. It feels similar to my old social anxiety problems, in a way, the same sort of block that occured when I would contemplate calling someone or talking to someone I didn't know.

At the same time, lately it's been pointed out to me that I have an OCD streak. It's not that I'm mildly OCD, but that occasionally a mood will strike me and I will just start doing something until it's done. This happens most often with dishes. When the mood strikes me to clean dishes, I seem to clean them obsessively until they are done. It may be an element of dormant perfectionism, but most of the time it shows no trace in my personality. Frankly, I'm not sure where it comes from, where it goes to or what triggers it.

As I have pondered the first problem, it has occured to me that if I could learn to turn the OCD on or off at will, I could overcome the apathy wall by wielding the OCD at it like a sledgehammer.
The question is, how could I possibly do that?

I think it may be similar to how I learned to wiggle my ears, or whistle, or gleek. In those cases, it was a matter of learning what the relevant muscles felt like when I moved them. Once I isolated the feeling of them, it was possible to learn to move them consciously. Fine-tuning that movement yielded the desired effect: my ears wiggle, my mouth pours out Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and liquid can stream forth from my mouth should I so desire (disgusting yes, but relevant nonetheless).
If I can isolate the feelings that trigger the OCD, and learn to apply them to any activity I choose, I may be able to overcome one personality flaw with another . . . and thus my weaknesses become strengths.

My waste may become a hidden source of power.

Saving the Kobayashi Maru

Lately I've had several friends facing emotional trials. As I'm not normally the most perceptive or even emotionally stable person myself (in my opinion), I'm finding it an unusual position to be in, struggling to support and advise them.
A couple times my friends have found themselves facing a set of choices of which none were satisfactory. In short, they could see no way to win--or even come out happy. I admit, it has been frustrating to discover that I am fairly helpless to help solve these problems. What I bring to the table is generally fairly specific: I am good at thinking through problems systematically, and I have a strong faith in the power of God. Both have served me well when I apply them, and have often been useful to my friends.
Now I find that neither strength is of use, as all I can do is be a supportive presence, muttering the same encouraging words any good friend would. All my scheming and brainstorming can't solve these problems for them, and it frustrates me.

Through this, though, I have learned something important about myself:

I don't believe in the no-win scenario.

Now, that statement requires a bit of background. Forgive me a moment of nerdiness.

In t.v. series and subsequent movies called Star Trek (the original), the hero, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is a swashbuckling, daring, smart captain who originally existed for the sole purpose of solving the numerous problems the crew of the starship Enterprise ran into during their space explorations. Despite his fairly one-dimensional character, one trait emerged that was both highly characteristic of him and actually quite deep.
This trait was best summarized in the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan.
It begins with a Vulcan officer (Vulcans are the superlogical folks, this one is actually played by Kirstie Alley) commanding a ship in a test simulation. They recieve a distress call from a ship called the Kobayashi Maru, which is in the neutral zone between them and a hostile alien empire. To ignore the ship is to allow them to die. To enter is to take their lives into their own hands. They enter, and are ambushed by three alien vessels, who promptly destroy them. After the test, the Vulcan confronts Kirk and complains that it wasn't a fair test of her abilities, because there was no way to win. Kirk gives her the line everyone does: sometimes, you face a scenario you can not win, and how you respond to the situation matters. The test is a test of character and a lesson. Of course, his colleagues inform her that Kirk is actually the only person in Starfleet history who has actually beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario (though he doesn't tell her how).

Later in the movie, Kirk has been outmaneuvered and marooned by an old and brilliant enemy, Khan. Khan is genetically engineered to be the superior being, both through charisma, through intellect, and even physically (played by Ricardo Montalban, who had huge pecks). The straits seem dire, but Kirk seems unworried and content to wait a bit. The same Vulcan is with him and a few others, and she asks him how he beat the Kobayashi Maru test. He tells her that he hacked the program and made it possible to rescue the ship.
"He cheated!"
"I changed the conditions of the test...
I don't believe in the no-win scenario."

Upon which, Kirk contacts his ship and reveals that he has tricked Khan and is in a better position than we thought he was.

Today I saw the new Star Trek movie, and to my delight the Kobayashi Maru and the principles behind it played a large role. They did an amazing job of portraying Kirk, and showing that irrepressible faith of his that there was always a way to win . . . even if victory meant sacrifice.


As I have pondered my friends' problems and the options that seemed to suggest a hopeless future, I found myself rebelling against the notion that these choices were really the only options, rebelling against despair.
Like Kirk, I don't believe in the no-win scenario. When I find choices that contain no way to be happy in the long-run, I feel that simply means I'm defining the problem wrong...or defining success wrong. The solution, when faced with such choices, is to look for a new option, to redefine the problem, or to redefine my objectives. To give in to the idea that I'm caught in a catch-22 is to fall into a trap. Those are the kind of choices Satan loves to throw at us, to make us think that there is no cause for hope.

It's true that I worry a lot. It's true that I often allow my thoughts to cascade down into claims of hopelessness and failure. I always balk, however, at actually accepting that hopelessness. When I am having a crappy day and someone asks me how life is, I give the honest answer: life is wonderful. My day sucked, but God is good, it is good to be alive, and The World is Just Awesome.

The Kobayashi Maru can be rescued. It's just a question of how, and are we willing to do what it takes?