(dc -> dc) stability

i'm entering a new phase of life. i'm not sure, but i think people know me as someone who moves around a lot, goes to lots of exotic places, does lots of interesting things, meets interesting people. someone who pushes envelopes and makes disproportionate sacrifices and overextends. i'm sure they know me as lots of other things too, but i'm just talking about this particular aspect right now.

well, i think i'm becoming more stable in my almost-middle age. i'm learning the value of getting enough sleep and not overpromising. i'm learning the joys of having time to read and relax and reflect and create without deadlines, and those joys are so great that i'm not so willing to sacrifice them anymore. i'm enjoying the world of abundance that is finally coming into existence for me after years of investment, and although i'm still investing, i'm doing it differently in a more sustainable and less overextended way.

the last 7 years or so has been a deliberate and intentional march towards simplification requiring a fierce adherence to priorities and a dogged commitment to completing things. with the last of these 4 CD projects complete, only two incomplete projects from the previous era remain, and they're both in the work arena: to publish my Ph.D. work in the form of a peer-reviewed scientific publication, and to publish the comprehensive final reports of all the analogs research i've done in the form of a NASA memo. the great thing about these two final projects is that they are in the context of work that i am getting paid to do, so i can work on them at work during work hours until they are complete. this kind of puts them in a different class of projects than all the other things i've just finished, which were all extracurricular and had to be done in my "spare" time, of which there was of course never any.

one of the songs on kat's record, reckoning, is a quote from Baha'u'llah, "O SON OF BEING! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds." i worked on this song for hours and hours and hours, so i had a lot of time to reflect on it. i realized that i have been resigned to not being able to bring myself to account, on account of the fact that my life was far to complicated and overextended to be able to account for everything. i was so moved by all of it that i made a bonus track on the record, called death unheralded that kind of reflects my internal processes while working on the song. both of these songs were created using a real musicbox that my mom gave me for my birthday one year - recorded and manually chopped, pitchshifted and reversed and all sort of other things. if i could have found the sound chelsea and i made for her song carnival, i would have used that for the death drum, but my files, ironically, were too unorganized to find it in time, so i had to use a regular kick drum. it's fun to see my thoughts and life and character reflected in the music i work on.

this new phase feels new because, for the first time, i am almost in a position to start bringing myself to account each day. what's left to organize (my photos, my contacts, my computer files, my emails) is actually organizable and no longer feels infinitely untacklable. my projects and activities are doable. i'm in a position now where i can actually fulfill on my commitments to people and integrity is not an impossibility. i'm going to write a will. i'm going to get things in order such that if i died tomorrow, my loved ones wouldn't have an enormous mess on their hands.

in short, integrity is possible and creativity is unfettered. this is new. i really like it.