Things I enjoyed this week (April 12th)

1. Played a show with my band. My performance was... kind of awful, all in all. Who knew that not playing in public for over a year would make you rusty? But I still enjoyed it. If nothing else it gave me an excuse to update the website with new photos and a cool-in-concept scrolling background that in practice is a little herky-jerky.

2. Yoga. I could put this down every week, but it saves me and keeps me whole.

3. I have a terrible habit of picking up a book, getting halfway through it and then putting it down for a month or more. My personal record is probably 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami; I started that when the English edition first came out and then didn't pick it up again for almost a year and a half ((The timing was kind of great because I was on my trip at this point and the various international editions were coming out. I ran into a woman reading it in Spanish in Peru and saw posters for it in Greece)).

A month and some ago I started reading a self-help-ish book about relationships and personality disorders. I was getting some things out of it but put it down for a while. This week I picked it up again. There's plenty to criticize in the book, but I'm am finding there are still things I'm getting from it, things it's helping me process.

It's a complicated thing; I don't think 75% of what's covered necessarily applies to my personal experiences. Much of the book is spent on symptoms and diagnosis, and the spectrum is so broad it seems almost meaningless. But it's helping me understand patterns of behavior; in myself, in my life and how my own patterns and behaviors may have encouraged or affected the patterns and behaviors of others. In so many other areas of my life I feel I've been able to approach things with a emotionally measured, calm and mature approach; but not this one.  Were I to go through those same things in my life again I feel better equipped to handle it now, thanks to ongoing therapy and things I've read here. That's kind of always the goal, right?

4. On Monday we celebrated my mother's birthday. Everybody loves their mom.

5. I paid my taxes... Yay? This was obviously not much a thing I liked, but I definitely liked the fact I won't have to deal with that again for a year.

6. I saw my good friend who I had not seen in nearly a month. We walked, talked and do the things we normally do. Somehow we find so much to talk about we never got around to discussing him going to his brother's wedding in Taiwan. Man, I still can't believe that didn't come up. Hilarious.