Trimming the Fat

As much as I wish this were a post celebrating weight loss, it’s not.  I’m probably heavier than I was when I last wrote a blog post, which was back in February.  Heavier physiologically, but not heavier emotionally or psychologically.  And that brings me to the real point of this post: the simplification of life and the joy it brings.

Though there is not a single defining moment to point to, the summer of 2017 was a revolutionary one for me.  In some ways, it was a time of embracing.  In other ways, it was a time of letting go.  The end result is that I am more happy and satisfied in life than perhaps I have ever been as an adult.  Or maybe ever.  And because I’m quite pleased with the ways in which I’ve fine tuned my life, I have every reason to be optimistic about the future.  The course I am on is a rewarding and fruitful one.  I am eager and excited to travel further down this road.

So as not to be obnoxiously vague, allow me to say more about the changes that have taken place over the last few months.  The most important is my involvement with music.  Every year, the guitar school from which I take private lessons offers various summer programs that are meant to supplement one’s private lessons.  I did not participate in any such programs in the summer of 2016, at which point I had barely become a student at the school.  But for Summer 2017, I enrolled in a program that put me together with three other guitarists and a drummer (none of whom I had ever met).  Every Thursday evening, we got together to learn and rehearse songs that we would eventually play at an end-of-summer outdoor concert.  I absolutely loved it.  Almost every time we got together and played, I found myself thinking, “This is me.  This is who I am.”  I felt more connected to my “true self” than I ever had before.  Not that I don’t play guitar on my own, but it’s different to be in a band setting.  And the fact is, playing with others made me so much better.  We’re not talking about minor improvement here.  It’s hard to put into words, but if the player I was at the beginning of summer could see the player I was by summer’s end, I would scarcely have believed it.

In a similar vein, I have made great strides as a vocalist.  I actually sang one of the songs we did at the end-of-summer concert—a cover of The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” which isn’t the most flattering song for my voice, really—but that’s not what I regard as an accomplishment.  You see, once I knew I would be singing a song at the concert, I started paying even closer attention to my vocal abilities.  Not only did I spend a fair amount of time singing along with the radio on my way to and from work, as I had always done, but I started doing things like recording myself as I sang and then listening back to it.  The outcome?  Soul-crushing heartbreak, to be quite honest.  I sounded so much shittier than I expected.  I never thought I sounded amazing as I was singing, but playing it back on a recording, I sounded so much worse than I had ever realized.  And it devastated me.  So, in desperation, I started looking into some vocal exercises.  Truth be told, I didn’t even do that much in this department.  But the extremely little that I did—and I’m telling you, it was next to nothing—had instantaneous results.  Seriously.  There were like two or three little things I did, but from the moment I started doing them—and I’m not kidding, I really mean within the first 30 seconds or something—I noticed things about my voice or what I was doing with my throat, etc., that gave me better control and more awareness of how to use my voice.  And so, once again, if the me from May or June could see where I am at today, I would have been a bit flabbergasted.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m nowhere near incredible.  Nobody’s ever going to want to listen to me sing just because my voice is so gosh darn beautiful.  But I am way, way, way, way better than I was just a few months ago.  It’s quite shocking.  And now I drive home from work singing my guts out and not even sheepishly trying to hide it when other cars get too close, like I used to do.

My involvement with music has definitely played the biggest role in making me happier than I’ve ever been.  But so has the general overall focus my life has taken.  That is, outside of work, music, and my family—which I list in no particular order, so don’t read into it—I have almost nothing else on my plate.  And it’s blissful.  It’s such a 180 from how life felt one year ago.  As my poor wife can tell you, I spent so much time complaining and freaking out last year because I never had time to do anything that mattered to me.  I was constantly stressed, and I never felt able to get done the things I “had” to do, much less the things I actually wanted to do.  In hindsight, I’m not even sure what it was that occupied so much of my time.  But I know my to-do list was always a mile long, and I know it felt like at least 50% of the items added to that list would not be completed before another 10 or 20 items were added on top.  It just felt like chaos, and it seemed like there was never any time for me.  Well, focusing on music, which has always been my first love, certainly helps matters.  It ensures that I don’t feel like an ignored aspect of my own life.  But it’s the cumulative effect of focusing more on music and less on other things that really makes life grand.  And there have been many things I’ve cut back on.  Purposely, intentionally, and giddily.

One thing I have proactively reduced in my life is ecclesiastical responsibility.  The church I attend has a rather small congregation.  Because we are small, simply being a member of the church provides one with ample opportunity to help out.  On the other side of that coin, it provides one with ample opportunity to feel guilty and/or stressed out.  I’ve never had the time to commit to the church that some of my more enthusiastic (and less-employed) cohorts do, but I’ve tried to be very involved since I started attending this church nearly three years ago.  For almost two years, I’ve served in the pastorate.  I’ve had many wonderful experiences that I sincerely cherish, and depending on whom or what you compare me and my situation to, a case could be made that my church responsibilities are not all that burdensome or time-consuming.  Be that as it may, church had recently become a consistent source of anxiety for me.  Many weeks, I found myself thinking that, if not for church-related duties, life would be well-balanced, wholly manageable, and rather pleasant.  The addition of those church duties, however, was just enough to make everything spiral.  Time and time and time again, church was the tipping point between calmness and chaos.

Eventually, I realized that my mental and emotional wellbeing were not a tithe I could afford.  In late August, I reneged on my agreement to preach an upcoming sermon and declared myself unavailable to preach or preside (i.e. oversee a worship service) at any point between now and the end of the year.  In and of itself, I don’t see this as a huge deal.  I still attend church regularly—though I also skip it regularly, and usually with great satisfaction—and I am even teaching one of the Sunday school classes this week, a responsibility for which I volunteered without having to be asked.  (I’m the one in charge of asking people to teach Sunday school, as a matter of fact).  So, it’s not like I’ve decided church has no place in my life.  Far from it.  But as simple a change as this is, it feels tremendously freeing.  I feel so at ease, so content.  I look forward to preaching and presiding again at some point in time, but my involvement is going to be significantly scaled back for the foreseeable future.

There are other ways in which I’ve reallocated my time, but nothing quite as noteworthy as what’s already been discussed.  A lot of little changes have contributed to a more satisfying life.  This includes minor adjustments to my work schedule, adjustments that have come about in response to a variety of factors.  Long story short, I tend to get to work a little bit earlier than I used to, and often I’m not staying as late into the day.  Consequently, I get a surprising amount of things accomplished in the evenings, and I feel much more connected to my family.  It’s a win-win, and it’s definitely part of why I’m loving my life right now.

As I draw ever nearer to being a middle-aged man, I am repeatedly convinced that adulthood is—or should be—about fine tuning one’s life.  Call it living authentically.  Call it self-awareness.  Call it confidence.  Call it a combination of the above.  Call it whatever you want.  I just think it’s great.  I still get my hopes up that my best years are ahead of me—which may be naïve and may be a recipe for utter disappointment.  But if these past few months are any indication, I think it’s quite possible that my greatest joy is yet to be experienced.  After all, if you had asked me at the beginning of summer, I would’ve said these last few years have been my most satisfying.  And look at how much it’s improved since then.  This is what a focused life can do for you.  I don’t “want it all,” as the saying goes.  That strikes me as immature.  No, I want relatively few things.  And usually, I have too much.  But the beautiful thing about cutting out the excess is that you suddenly find yourself with a shitload of the relatively little that you want.  And that is when you know you’re living the good life.