Categories: uncategorized
Date: 31 October 2004 18:43:13
I'm having a very satisfying afternoon - inspired by unordered, Arti and others I am having a big clearout (doing my bedroom today) and have chucked out or shredded tons of stuff. I can see my bedroom carpet for the first time in ages. I know I'm not the world's tidiest person, and I'm really not obsessive about housework in the slightest - life's too short. But even I have a breaking point, and I reached it this weekend. I wonder how long it will last! I've found a few bits and bobs, clothes and stuff, that I'd either forgotten I had or had assumed I'd lost, so that's good. And the scary pile of "stuff" isn't scary any more now that most of it is binned. Now I just need to do the same with my desk at work.
I was also in the (unusual for me) position of listening to someone else stressing about an essay, knowing that I don't have any looming myself. That feels kind of weird, though I'm sure I'll get used to it :D Hopefully though I can offer some meaningful support (or at least offer meaningful sympathetic cluckings) having been through that all so much over the last few years.
In other news, this morning for the first time I was a sidesperson at church. Which sounds like it's pretty easy and not that much of a big deal, but for me it was such a big thing as having left a church where anyone with the faintest hint of a pulse was roped into every task going, I've spent the last year being anonymous pew fodder and it's only now that I feel strong enough to start volunteering for things again. I have occasionally sung (not usually as part of the main worship group, but if we've been doing particular songs in parts for a particular service), and I'd used the Masters degree as my excuse for not getting more involved in the music side of things. Now I don't have that freedom (although thankfully Russian is on the music group's rehearsal night so I still can't make a full commitment). Playing in the worship group (I'm a clarinettist - my original degree is in music) is a really big deal for me as for some reason I've never found playing in worship something which came naturally and it is one of the many sources of my church-related stress. On top of that, it's taken me years and years to be comfortable with who I am, and I only ever played music during my childhood and twenties, a time when I was really insecure, so psychologically I find myself associating clarinet playing (something I enjoy and which I know I'm good at) with my old self and my old life that I really don't ever want to go back to. So although I'll try to keep playing in worship at church as an occasional thing, I'm really starting to feel like I should offer to play clarinet rather than sing. It would be a totally different sound from what the church is used to (pretty much the only melody instrument we have is flute, and nobody's played that for a while), so I think it is something that could really bless them, as well as hopefully helping me get beyond this stupid psychological block. I can't believe that something I know I'm good at is making me so nervous just thinking about it - here's me thinking I'm so together!