a piffy-what?

i've got it!

well, sort of.  i don't have the answer.  but i think i might at least have the question. (what do you get if you multiply six by nine?)  jk.  i already have that answer.  it's 42.  ;D

but i think i may have found part of the reason why my motives have been so conflicting.  it's at least partly because all my life, everyone around me has been stressing performance (except for maybe my family, which is a little ironic, but good).  i'm certain i'm not the only one.  think about it: i'm a musician.  the goal is to get the music as perfect as possible and get up to as high a chair placement as you can.  i'm a student.  the goal is to get good grades, to do well on important (and unimportant) tests, to challenge yourself as much as possible (and then some), to get all the different awards, to go to a good college.  even sometimes in church.  example:  you go to AWANA, memorize all your verses, get all your patches, get a plaque at the end...

don't get me wrong.  all those things are great.  but it's all (mostly) about impressing people.  i realized today that even though awards, for example, were originally set up to honor the people who did well, they got to the point where some people would do things out of normal just to get honored.  not because they enjoy it, or because it reflects who they are, but so that they can look better.  and, by the way, college apps are exactly the same way.  which i intend to take full advantage of, and i guess it improves society as a whole, or something.  so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

but here's my problem.  i'm a perfectionist by nature.  so all this "perform well to excel" stuff really took root in my subconscious.  but, i've also been raised a Christian, and now i pursue Christ with my life (or i try to).  the thing is, Christianity is all about Christ (duh...).  Who is all about love.  which is a lot about selflessness and humility and grace.  all of which becomes a real problem for someone who has been ingrained with a perfectionism and performance focus their whole life.  sometimes i think i might try to do the same thing as a Christian, rather than making it about my relationship with God.  i do it with everything, rather than making everything about my relationship with God.

it stresses me out and makes me numb.  this was me yesterday:

it's all the same.

everything i say, everything i do, everything i think about, all my responses to people, all my feelings, all my responsibilities.  even the patterns i play when i'm improvising.  there's nothing new.  everything is just growing stale, like bread that no one wants to eat.  even the things that i normally enjoy are growing old and monotonous.  tonight the only things that motivate me are sleep and silence, neither of which i have much promise of getting soon.

well, thanks, my numerous environmental contributors.  i know you meant the very best for me, but as it turns out, you really just confused my life-path that much more.  but at least you made it so that i had to find my own way, which might be good.

anyway, now i'm inundated with a million and five different options about my next steps in a scholarly/careerly direction.  i know neither what i want, nor what will be best.  i've been praying for direction, so hopefully when i'm quite ready to listen and think about it and make a decision, it will be made clear to me.  i guess i'll try to stop worrying about it until then.

~ ~ ~

completely unrelated side note:  today i looked up the lyrics and lyric meanings to a Switchfoot song that i listened to.  i already had kind of an idea what i thought about the song, but i wanted to see what other people's interpretations of it were.  the first one was completely different than what i was thinking.  my reaction:  hmm... i didn't think about it that way.  it makes sense, but i can't relate to it at all.  i kind of hope the intent was something different.  then i skimmed through the next comment, thinking, huh.  that's pretty cool and relevant.  then the next comment, somebody quoted Jon Foreman, saying what inspired him to write the song.  it was pretty much exactly what i thought at first.  =D  and i could relate to this song perfectly.  it was beautiful.