Thursday, November 20, 2008

The Value of Friendship

---TANGENT---
As James pointed out to me, we bloggers in this circle seem to go through cycles of depression and the like. He may post about it, we'll see. Several bloggers have been feeling down of late, like AJ and Landyn. Others might have "coming out anxiety" like Charlie and E. We should all be good friends and give them lots of love and encouragement, as well as the gall to drag them out of the mire of down-ness.
---END TANGENT---

On the outside I usually try to stay as calm and as stoic as possible, as it helps to quite down my emotions enough to allow me to think (and we all know how I tend to over-think). But unbeknownst to many, I have a tendency to soak up the emotions of others. So I often get happy when others around me are happy, and down when others around me are sad or stressed. Even if my own personal situation doesn't concord with those of others, the emotions of others sometimes take priority over my own. I don't know if this is a good or bad then when the lines between my emotions and the emotions of others become blurred.

A couple days ago I was in the bank depositing a check. As I stood in line my eyes began to tear up for no reason at all. I wasn't personally sad, I didn't keep my eyes open for a really long time, and I don't think it was an allergen in the air. But for some reason my eyes just welled up and although I didn't cry, I sure felt it.

I think it was the "weight of the world" kind of thing. How for a while now I've internalized the emotions infused into the posts of other bloggers, and how I've had to deal with my own things. I won't go into them here as it'd only make me sound emo or something, and I'm totally not an emo kind of guy.

I spent much of the evening bumming around in my apartment - without motivation, without inspiration, without want to do anything. I was just lonely and crawling by. Then I IMed my friend, JW-M. (For those who're new, he's probably my best friend from university here and is currently in China for a year.) He just replied, "Hey, I'm playing Neverwinter Nights (NWN) a bit, it's fun." Then he said something like, "We should make a module together!"

For whatever reason, that seemed to pull me out of my personal little mire of despair. Not sure why and I'm not sure why he has the power to do this. But I love him for it. It's totally trivial, really, designing a game mod together. We've attempted in the past with another game or two, but have never been able to finish. He assured me this would be easier if we made it as simple as possible just to get success. He said I could brainstorm storyplot ideas (he knows how much I like to think and come up with random creative things).

So in the span of 5 minutes, he had given me some kind of strange purpose in my life. I don't know, but it made me pretty happy. And it's utterly silly in retrospect - all this over him saying that we should do something with a game together. But hey, we all need random things to perk us up like that every now and then, no?

Other tidbits of my life in the last couple days:

- Apparently I did much better on my pathophysiology exam than I thought. I got an A+ with the curve.

- My cold is progressing on time. I now have a minor cough and a slightly stuffed nose. Great. Too bad my pharmacist friend told me that every study on cold and cough syrup indicate that they do nothing. Note that for the future.

- I went to go see the CSO concert. I don't think I've ever heard all of Beethoven's monumental Symphony #5 in C minor. It was something else. I may do a post on just how the conductor seemed to weave the individual parts of the music from each of the sections into what we call "music." There was much nostalgia in attending a concert.

- I watched Top Chef tonight (well, last night now) with two friends of mine. Oh how we love food, and thus that show. Her roommate also watched with us and would not stop talking! A part of me wanted to say, "Hey, I love talking to you, really, but I can't hear the TV and the volume's up at a decent decibel." After her roommate went to her room, my friend (in a very quiet hushed voiced) apologized for the loquaciousness of her roommate.

- My brother's birthday is today. I'm going to skip going to the gym and he's going to skip class so we can have lunch together.

- My friend, JW-F, will be flying into town late tonight. I haven't seen her since we graduated. It'll be nice to catch up and such. (If you ever wonder who these people are, they're generally listed in the panel on the right of this blog if they're "recurrent characters" in my life.)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love emo boys, tell us. ;)

No, I think those are exactly the things that we need to keep us distracted.

Can you start out with a tangent?! >.<

Steevo said...

Emotions are not bad. Not even good really. They just are. So feeling sad is not bad unless we let it grow and invade our lives. Being angry and upset might be good if it motivates us to makes changes or see life in a new way.

Trying to keep emotions "in check" or "on an even keel" all the time requires huge amounts of energy.

It's really "OK" to get "emotional". It's human.

[bareati]

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Joshua said...

Omg I hate classical music!

Anyways, my friends luckily are not affected by my emotions, because I literally go from up to down to up in a span of ten minutes. IT'S WEIRD. But I get affected by their emotions, and then I get affected by mine, and it's just a strange cycle.

naturgesetz said...

The Beethoven 5th is great! And IMO it's not even his best piece, but it is right up there with the 3rd and 6th, and the 5th piano concerto, and … and … and… . And hearing it (or anything else) live in the concert hall really does enhance the experience.

Steevo said...

"My brother's birthday is today. I'm going to skip going to the gym and he's going to skip class so we can have lunch together."

Not to pry, and just ignore this if u want 2, but does this mean one bro is already at UM and _another_ one just got accepted into the Engineering School?

Diary of a Mad Latino Man said...

Very good blog... I couldn't have put it better myself...

I hope to talk with you further.

Peyton

Aek said...

James: It's my blog and I can start with a tangent if I so choose. :P

Steevo: I prefer to keep my emotions in check, most of the time. I don't like losing control over myself. As to your second comment, I'll let you know otherwise. ;P

Naturgesetz: Yeah, I totally agree.

Gay Snowboarder: Hi! Nice to meet you. Thanks for the compliment. :)