The Joy is in the Journey

It's funny, the things you inadvertently learn about yourself over time. For example, I've ended up liking R.E.M. a lot more than I ever thought I would, when the radio used to play "Losing My Religion" all the time.

In a sequence of events I never saw coming, I let my own devotion to someone dampen out my fire, my lust for life, my high- and, I think, right-minded ideals about I relate to the world around me, only to have it recently and suddenly rekindled. I had withdrawn into myself. I'd stopped drawing, stopped making music except for singing karaoke, and had become afraid to feel anything, or to speak or act what's in my heart. All I had left were my ridiculous sense of humour and logic. And it all happened so gradually that I didn't notice. Then someone amazing came into my life. A magnet. A person who shoved my world-weariness aside and asked my joie de vivre to dance. I found myself ready and able to remember and act as me, truly. Genuinely. I found myself able to speak, unguarded, un-self-consciously. I'm drawing again; pictures I can stare at, at length, in wonder, because it's as if I never stopped. I am no longer complacent, although it still takes extensive measures to make me angry. Once I find an instrument at a price I'm willing to pay, I'll start writing music again, and I feel energetic again. I feel like I can actually do something with the skeleton of a novel I've been sitting on for 4 years. I feel amazing, and I don't know if it would've happened without this inspiring, provocative person. I hope she & I stay friends into old age. Oh, and I actually care about the music I listen to again! Over 5,000 songs in my iTunes library, and I now realize how unrealistic that is.

I've also found that I'm good at blending in. As I walk around Seville, people randomly speak to me as if I'm right where I belong. By the same token, I'm good at standing out, when I want to. I credit these both to a confidence I never realized I had, or maybe it's just new.

And one last thing, something I realized a long time ago and remain surprised by how true it stays. I find a peculiar joy in certain types of melancholy. I enjoy doing things alone. Not all the time, and only some things, but occasionally, my own company is the best I could ask for.

I think I'm kind of awesome, which I think is pretty, well, awesome!

Random opinion question: Would I be taking my Doctor Who fascination too far by getting a tattoo of a heart (the organ, not the shape) on the right side of my chest?