The Lutheran Geek

I found out today it will be “three to four weeks” until I am able to close on my condo. This comes one week after the nominal close date specified in the contract I signed back in June, a date the selling agent had agreed to in advance. This whole situation is frustrating beyond belief. I hiave never felt so powerless over a situation. Everyone on “my side” is assuring me that they are working their hardest to resolve this situation. But there’s nothing I can do. The ironic part of all this is that my preparedness to get everything lined up for the new condo is actually working against me. I’ve had to call ATT, DirecTV, Comcast, etc. to let them know that, no, I am not actually moving when I said I was.

So now I go into a holding pattern. Thankfully, I was able to extend my lease of my apartment in Evanston for a month while this nonsense gets sorted out. There’s really just nothing to say. I was hoping to make a post here explain the process and what’s holding me up, but frankly, I just don’t have the energy right now. I’ve been spending too much time today just feeling defeated. It’s really all I can muster right now; just that feeling of “well crap, there’s nothing I can do”. Everything’s on hold: my new place to live, the settling in, my parents coming to visit my new place, getting a dog. All of it has to wait. It’s all incredibly unfair; I just want to scream and cry, but what good can that do?

Ugh. That’s about all I can muster now. Just, ugh.

So I’ve been listening to Pandora Radio a bunch lately. It is an amazing site, especially to test-drive new artists. In my case, I’ve been listening to stations based on Imogen Heap and Regina Spektor. They’re both solo female artist singer-songwriters, but their styles differ quite a bit. Imogen tends to do a lot of heavily-overdubbed songs with layers on layers of vocals and various instruments, with the vocals occasionally transformed via a vocoder, notably in her famous and gorgeous song “Hide and Seek“. Regina Spektor comes from the anti-folk movement in NYC, a stupidly-named scene that takes a lot of the musical traditions of Dylan and such and carries them forward to the present day with various lyrical themes. Her music is spare; about half of her songs are just her and a piano. “Samson” is a song from her latest album that came out a couple years ago, a gorgeous little ditty about first love viewed in retrospect.

Inspiring music. Gorgeous, amazing songs that make me wish I could write music like this. It’s so sucky. I played violin and piano for years, but as a kid, I just never got into it. I was much more into playing games on my Nintendo than practicing those instruments. Perhaps it was my way of passive-aggresively rebelling against authority and all the duties I felt were pressing in on me. I blew it, in any case. I could go on psychoanalzying myself, but the point of all this was to say, just, wow, I really wish I could get these kind of soundscapes in my mind that these people seem to be able to do. One thing I want to do with my new condo (when I actually can move into it! arrrrgh) is pick up a keyboard and start trying to relearn some piano chops and try my had at a little composition with Garage Band. I have no illusions of ever becoming anything like Imogen or Regina (and what is it with me and female artists?…), but I’d just love to be creative again somehow. WoW is fun and all, but it is ultimately not at all a creative endeavor, in the literal sense that nothing is created through your time playing the game. It’s the social aspect that makes it interesting, and why I’m still with the group of friends I’ve been with for almost 2 years now, save a couple months early last year.

Meh, as usual, I’m rambling more than saying anything interesting. But yeah. Friday afternoons are a great time to think about life, since you don’t have much else to do.

Peace.

So I’m leaving for a while for my parents’ place starting Friday 6/29 – I’ll be back in Chicago around on July 8. One thing I am going to try to do while gone is get my mind back in order. I have been spiraling pretty quickly down into a pseudo-depression yet again, and I’ve been lashing out at friends along the way, people who have gone out of their way to help me and listen to me. At least a few friends this past week have told me they’re fed up with it. The more tightly I cling, the more desperate I become, and it’s just getting worse. My greatest fear is losing friends – I just haven’t had much luck in keeping them because of my extreme self-consciousness. Every little thing – every well-meaning ribbing, misspoken word, everything negative becomes amplified. Everything positive becomes diminished. It’s worse than seeing the world in purely black and white with no shades of grey – eventually you only see black.

It’s even gotten to the point where it’s affecting my work – nothing I do there seems to matter, and these roller-coaster rides of emotion I’ve been on are getting worse and worse. What’s even more terrible is comparing my own situation with those around me – what the hell do I even have to complain about? I have a great job, loving parents, awesome friends. How dare I complain?

And yet, I do. It’s a tough spot to be in. So anyway, to those I’ve hurt (I’m talking especially to you, Muzz/Dave), I apologize. You guys, my friends, have given a lot of yourself that I cannot repay. Maybe I’ll find my way back to sanity, maybe I won’t. Please be assured that I’m trying, though. Also know that I’m not blaming anyone for the state I’m in – not even myself. It is what it is. I don’t expect pity or condolences or anything – I just wanted you guys to know where I am right now.