Restored (at least, a little)

Freshly back from the acupuncturist's; yes, I was blocked, now I'm not. We'll see how long the functional state lasts...

My right leg below the knee is simply radiating cold. I'm playing timpani tomorrow for a Christmas Eve service, and I don't think I've ever been more grateful that I own crank-tuned drums (which tune by turning a hand crank), rather than the usually-more-useful/desirable pedal-tuned drums. I had to pedal-tune some drums a few years ago, and I absolutely hated the experience.

And, for my convenience, my herb-cooking pot appears to have given up. I can cook them in ordinary pots, but since I have already ruined a couple of pots by letting the herbs over-cook to concrete, the pot that does everything for you is a real blessing. That is, as long as it's working, which this one no longer seems to be. Oh well, I'll get another one soon enough. Life will go on if I have to manually cook my herbs for a couple of days.

Some interesting thoughts last night, as I was in my nightly staring-at-the-ceiling-for-hours ritual, buffeted between my usual MS-doesn't-let-me-sleep and cat-crying-for-something-but-who-knows-what... I don't think I care about anything, any more. I care about and for my students, but that's about it. My magician friends are simply driven to perform, and to perfect, their magic. My musician friends live to practice and perform. My writer friends live to write, my artist friends to create art. I don't really "live to" anything.

Pretty much everything I have felt passionate about has been external; I never do anything simply for me. The last time I wrote some music simply for my own enjoyment was over a year ago--a "soundtrack" for some Japanese comics, a series that I loved and that has now ended, so that particular "spark" has gone out. (The soundtrack might have been just for me, but the seed for it was external, and so were the people on the BBS that I shared it with, doing my best to get things out within a week so they could be heard before the next scanlation was released.) I used to write incidental music for three shows a year at Caltech, creating an hour and a half of music over the course of a year, composed and electronically realized; then, the director retired. So that flame went out. I used to write music for a Presbyterian church that had enough money to regularly mount 50-piece orchestras... boy, that was fun. Then, the conductor retired, so that flame went out. I get asked on occasion to write things by my current employers, but something about the process makes it difficult (haven't quite figured out what it is, yet), and what spark there is, when it is there, is low.

Now, you'd think, as a creative person (as which I've always liked to think of myself), that I'd want to create things, period. But somehow, I need someone to create them for, and if that's not there, I got nothing.

So, the bottom line is... I do nothing simply for myself. Somehow, I must find the pain of "not creating things" to be preferable to the pain of "get out of your chair and do something." Don't know how, certainly don't know why.

"Well, just do something for yourself." Yeah, seems straightforward enough. Somehow, I just don't want to. And if you tell me to just get up and do something, I want to push back... often, angrily.

So what's this all about? Beats me.

But getting out of this particular rut may be part of what will break my current (multi-year) cycle of self-sustaining depletion.

I'm sure, at the bottom line, the answer is simple (most are), and the answer is probably easy as well. And, it's probably right in front of me, and revoltingly easy to see--or at least, it will have been revoltingly easy to see, once I've seen it.

But I'm not seeing. Probably, I'm not looking correctly, either, but I'm definitely not seeing.

Separation from the problem will reveal its solution. Over-analyzing will not catalyze detachment, and being an over-thinker, that's the place I go first. I need to go somewhere completely different.

But where?

I don't know.

Yet.

And the corker is... it'll probably be MS that somehow catalyzes finding the way.

Go figure.