A Few Times

In order to keep both of I, Musical Genius's readers abreast of what is going in my life and to frame the post that will follow, I will give the following bit of news: I did not get into any of the doctorate programs that I applied to for this year.

This has been weighing on me a lot for the past month. I was really looking forward to going back to school and I've sorrowfully missed the academic environment since I've been out of it. I feel like teaching is my "thing" that I am good at and I feel like I've never been better at it than when I was in a university classroom. It sucks.

Now that my plans for the future have been altered, I've been thinking about what I am going to do and how I am going to deal with the way I feel. In general, there has been two main ways that I have done this:

1. Try to write a song about what you're feeling. It usually amounts to scattered phrases in two notebooks, one or two riffs and very little thought given to melody.

2. Write a post on here to work through things. I don't always directly address things that are happening in my life, but they are generally the inspiration for what goes up here, even if it seems like the ties are tenuous.

This all made me think about when I first started I, Musical Genius in the winter of 2009. I was having a hard time dealing with my feelings and I treated this website as a garbage dump for the young, dramatic mess that was in my head at the time. A lot of posts were short and over-dramatic and I might as well have stamped "JUST DUMPED" on my forehead. I was young and silly and needed a way to exorcise those feelings, so even though a lot of the old stuff on here is pretty mortifying, it did serve a purpose at one time. 

Coming forward and being honest about where you are at mentally is the first step in terms of having a healthier head and IMU was my way of doing that at the time. It's also not enough to just open a valve and let emotions gush out either. You need to have tact and understand how to deal with them rationally.

That leads us to today, where I am writing a post that comes from a similar place as my early ones, but instead of posting a break-up song or vague allusions that I thought were poetic, I'm being more direct and mature (I think). That's a tangible example of at least a little growth as person, so please remember that you're doing all right, Tim.

In order to make this a true classic IMU post, I'll end with a song. Am I finally coming around on Untitled? No, but you must respect that this one is a banger.