dailyshampoo48

I used to try very hard to be pleasant and kind to everyone I met. But after taking a critical mass of other people’s crap and nastiness, I no longer have the energy to give like that anymore. Unfortunately, kindness make people think you are weak, which leads them to try and take advantage of you. I hate to be so pessimistic, but it seems best to think of most people as being self-serving turds, and when you find the ones you truly like, then that is the time to be giving.

I did not have some phenomenal sense of revelation. Indeed, my thoughts as I read the last words (“yes! yes! yes!”) were more along the lines of, “Gee, glad that was over”. Not that I disliked reading it – in fact I think that anyone who is interested in literature should read it at least once in their lifetime. But talk about being put through the works. I’m so sick of his purposefully obscure writing style – quite frankly it was more like being put through a rigorous exercise in reading comprehension rather than presenting eloquently some “truth” of existence through the use of characters, or any other reason that I’d rather read literature than pulp fiction.

Ok, so it’s not all bad. Joyce is (obviously) a master writer, and spent an inordinate amount of time on this monster novel of his. I am planning on reading this again, probably about seven to ten years from now to see if I pick up any new insights, and Ulysses being so complex, I am confident that there were numerous things which I missed. But sometimes I wonder if the only reason that this book has the high literary reputation that it has is because it gives certain English professors an excuse for their existence.

Haha, I feel stupid deciding this as I’ve hardly started. I played for about a year before becoming extremely burned out with the repetitiveness of the lesson plans and the nagging from good old mum. But a couple weeks ago I was going through some of the old classical tapes I had, and I remembered why I’d wanted to play in the first place and got really inspired again… Strangely, it’s been very easy to pick up again, and I would even say that I’ve gotten better during my long absence. Odd.

I’ll consider “mastery” when I can play one of those beautiful sonatas I love so much at performance level. Since I must be exact, Brahm’s in G major. Until I reach that level, I’m working on simple tunes in the various books I picked up in my short stint, and stuff I found on the web. Eventually, I hope to join a casual orchestra, and maybe get some lessons so that I feel there’s a formal reason to keep practicing.

I think that the key to getting good at something is to really enjoy it. I’m not sure that all this goal-setting is always such a wonderful idea, because a lot of times the things that you do “for fun” are the ones you end up pursuing. I’m not so sure that forcing yourself to do things is the way to go.