Top Tens
This year I moved to another state, another city and another food science department. I turned 30 and still making mistakes - sorry mom and dad. It's been eventful and scary, but the stress shits have gradually decreased as the year has progressed. December: no stress shits, but one pants party foul. This year was pretty decent for cinema, but even more decent was my beloved shoegaze genre on the music front. The later was so great, you should really consider my list as completely biased to the 'scene that celebrates itself' and sigh with a little mutter like "bob, you sad, stupid piece of shit". With all caveats in place, here's my top tens.
Movies:
1. Sacred Killing of a Deer
2. Blade Runner 2049
3. Call Me By Your Name
4. Lady Macbeth
5. Baby Driver
6. Phantom Thread
7. Lady Bird
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Dunkirk
10. The Shape of Water
I did not get to see Florida Project, Good Time, The Square, A Ghost Story.
Music
1. Slowdive - Slowdive
2. Iron Chic - You Can't Stay Here
3. Fazerdaze - Morningside
4. Tigers Jaw - spin
5. Deafcult - Auras
6. Airial - Molten Young Lovers
7. Miniatures - Jessamine
8. Radiogaze - Blankenberge
9. EP Daily Double: Big Nothing - Big Nothing | Kindling/Kestrals - Split
10. Drab Majesty - Demonstration
Runner-ups: Pia Fraus - Field Ceremony, Images - You'll Never Get to Heaven, Cigarettes after Sex (self-titled), Gleemer - Anymore, Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds from Another Planet, Kelly Lee Owens (self-titled), Panda Riot - Infinity Maps.
Sustained Happiness
The use of "I" in this post is intentional. Everybody looks and deals with problems faced throughout life differently, and below is how "I" viewed and dealt with them. Sometimes another's perspective is helpful so here is mine.
Recently someone asked me how I was so calm about some situations while still being involved and caring about others. If asked this before turning 26, my answers would be ones not based on experience, but on observation. But I'm 30 now, and in the last 4 years I have experienced many the situations/feelings that I had only once observed and now realize these past answers to things were disillusioned at best. My solutions to most problems up to age 26 were temporary and I still did not have answers to two very important questions: What is happiness? and How do you sustain happiness?. Reading the questions, any one can see that one question came before the other, with the first recognized while I was young and the other manifesting only in the last 4 years. Going back to the first sentence of this passage, I was asked about how to handle situations/feelings. My answer to this was with the acknowledgment of these questions and their solutions. Funny enough, the solutions to both questions are very simplistic with the first involving a binary balance based off a binary choice of the second; however, maintenance of the first question based off the choice of the second takes practice. To achieve happiness, you must have a balance of connectedness and pursuit. In other words, you need mutual love with people while having goals worthwhile of achieving. It's a very simple truth that works for me, but to maintain that balance the second question must be addressed. For each object which fits within these counterbalanced categories, connectedness and pursuit, you must decide to either have an attachment or a non-attachment. Preached heavily by Buddhist teachings, attachment equals suffering, but unlike the Buddha and his followers, I don't think total non-attachment is a good idea if you want a life worth living. To this extent, I agree total non-attachment removes the balance equation and can keep you in a constant state of happiness, but you lose out on a truly enjoyable life. You lose out on a the occasional imbalance that can lead to extreme happiness (and sometimes extreme sadness). Once you decide which things are worthy enough to make an attachment (e.g. career, a lover), you must learn how to regulate the emotions that come with that attachment (and they will come). To this point, I've been heavily practicing a version of mindfulness. A somewhat shortcut to reduce the harmful, nonsensical emotions (or at least reduce the time they spend in consciousness) while enjoying the beneficial ones. I'm not going to explain it all here, but it's a way to look at each emotion objectively to determine if they are real or an illusion, if they warrant attention or not. Together, by regulating the emotions that accompany the attachments you choose and restoring balance across connectedness and pursuit, you can sustain happiness.
