Gods it’s been a while.
Okay… I guess I’ll start by saying I’m still friends with the person who’d originally asked me to join his entrepreneurial project (EP). That didn’t work out for me and then we fell out of touch for a few months. I called him today and the conversation went well. He’s still working on the EP, seems optimistic. We were able to talk a bit about that and other things and just connected as two people who care about each other. I feel very blessed.
Speaking of being blessed, my mom paid off one of my student loans. In full. It was at a(n approximately) 6.8% interest rate and the way they wanted me to be paying it (or not, they seemed very happy to put it in deferment as soon as I started classes again) I would’ve been paying it for the rest of my life. But… yeah, my mom was and is fortunate, and worked really hard, and chose to use it to help me. Because she’s awesome!
Right, I’ve complained a lot about my mom on this blog. She’s not perfect (no one is) and she still does stuff that’s annoying, even harmful. I have to work a bit more than I’d like to maintain boundaries sometimes. But overall things are going really well. She’s been working hard and I feel like between both our efforts we’ve developed a good healthy parent – child relationship. I love hanging out with her and talking with her, etc. She’s gotten really into being active – mostly walking, stretching, and chair yoga – and she seems so happy and energetic, it’s very inspiring.
I haven’t technically changed my major (yet), but I’m taking music theory and composition courses; we’re about halfway through the semester. It is… a whirlwind. I’m learning all these new things, apparently the U.S. is way behind the rest of the world when it comes to new developments in music moving away from tonal harmony and exploring other ways of understanding it. So we’re not exposed to a lot of the newer music that’s out there; we barely touched on it when I was in undergrad. Among other things, I get to write a paper about a living composer who makes music and instruments from things she finds in nature, it’s pretty fascinating.
To be honest I don’t think a lot of this new music stuff sounds good, but the ideas behind it fascinate and inspire me. It’s taking me way outside my comfort zone into a world I didn’t even know existed! And challenging me to listen more actively and understand things in new ways. It’s all very overwhelming but also freeing in a way because I don’t feel pressure to be like an expert or anything. I just get to learn. And I’m learning so much, writing weird music I never would’ve thought to otherwise, exploring what music means to me. And hearing my instructors and classmates talk about this stuff is… love, I’m in love. With myself and the world and the people I’m meeting and… everything.
It’s a really great community. I tend to be a bit hesitant in new social situations, so I guess I’m still kinda figuring out if this is for me? I think it would be wise to apply to multiple programs and possibly branch out a bit, learn some computer programming. Then I’ll have more diverse skills because let’s face it, I need to find a job. And I saw a listing for something that combines music composition and AI, it sounds amazing! – but I don’t have the programming skills it requires (yet). So we’ll see. It’s all very exploratory.
… and then the shooting in New Zealand happened. From what I’ve heard the New Zealand government is actually moving in the direction of meaningful gun control that will make it a lot harder for someone to do this again – like banning semi-automatic weapons. That’s a good start. But are they addressing the extremist views that led to this act of terrorism? White supremacy has been devastating the world for centuries, there’s so much inequality, the way Western media portray Arabs is unconscionable, it encourages people to do this (or look away when it happens) and it all seems to be getting worse.
And I… I needed to get away from politics, and to be honest I still question the effectiveness of the activism I was engaging in, but clearly it’s not right for me to be sitting on the sidelines. There has to be something I can do to help stop this – because we all know it’s going to happen again. Maybe a mosque or a church or a movie theater or a nightclub or a school or anywhere people gather, especially if they’re a marginalized community… white men keep terrorizing people and no they’re not “lone wolves” they have an entire global system actively encouraging them. We need to shut it down. The responsibility for that falls on white people (myself included). Because we’re the ones with the privilege and the power and the numbers to hold each other accountable.
I’m just not sure what to do. I’m saddened by what happened and I feel small and powerless, and guilty. Today I found it hard to focus on anything. But I guess a good start might be to see about re-joining a couple of the activist groups I’d gotten involved with. And keep talking about it and keep looking for answers. Because the world is gonna move on, then act surprised the next time it happens. We can’t let that happen.
a day with depression 