Ramblings

Thoughts from today:

1) Moody people unnerve me with their general unpredictability.

2) Practiced Barber. Sounding terrible. I don't really like the third movement yet.

3) Thought of Calvin today and missed him. His crazy curly-headed-ness. The way he'd sight-read things with me sometimes, just for fun. The way he'd always compliment me and pretend I was some great violinist, which of course I wasn't, but still, it was nice. The way that one evening I cried in my practice room, and he saw me and came in and rubbed my back and sat with me in the practice room for a long time. We were going to play a trio this year, with Mei-Shen. I hope the violinist who's doing it instead of me is good, and I hope things are working out well. Then again, I also hope things aren't working out *too* well, because some selfish part of me is hoping that people think of me and miss me sometimes.

4) In spite of my great respect for reason and rationality, it seems that I'm just like everyone else when it comes right down to it. Even though I know that what I intellectually know to be true should then rule over my emotions and feelings, I feel like my feelings end up controlling me instead. Feelings are not a good basis for action. Or, not even a good way to live even if you're not acting on them. So why can't I change the way I feel about things? It must be because at the root of this, I don't desire the end result (being the kind of person I should be) enough to exert the effort and do the work it takes to be virtuous. Um, this is bad. I should be practicing, praying, reading, spending the appropriate amount of time in the right kind of contemplation, and loving God and those around me. Instead I daydream in a self-centered way about how I might like my life to be. This is absurd. Self, you are going to do better tomorrow. That is all there is to it. You are not going to oversleep and then lie in bed imagining yourself and your life differently, like you did all weekend. You are going to change yourself and your life in the ways that you can.