December 18, 2015
Nell is engaged.
I’m being a pussy. I’m not being real. I need to cut out the bullshit in my life. Fuck people’s feelings. This is my life.
Cut the bullshit, focus on what matters.
I gave church a chance… against my better judgment. It ends.
Seek pleasure, avoid pain. This is what people naturally do. I’m being challenged by fear. I feel it. I have the chance to fight it, and I’m a pussy for not drawing my sword. Instead I search for a place to hide. To avoid embarrassment.
Halfway through an immersion in fear, I feel the grip of the chains shackling me. But also I feel my strength increasing, slowly building so that I can see the day when I’ll be able to burst forth from the constraints I’ve been imprisoned by.
Music. It’s clear now. Do it.
Nell is engaged. She will get married.
I am on my path. The roadblocks are clearing.
Run. Get up and run. The path is now clear.
Get up. And run. Don’t look back. Only go forward. Don’t fucking look back.
There was a picture on her Instagram page showing the location of where she got engaged. The moment I realized what I was seeing, I didn’t throw up or cry. I just felt terribly sad and thought, “Some guy is living my ultimate dream. It’s over. I lost. Now what?” I overcame a lot between the time I’d first met her and the present, but frankly it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t terribly shy anymore, but I was far from being outgoing; I was coping. I wasn’t perennially broke anymore, but I was far from being rich; I was just making a living. And I wasn’t anywhere near where I wanted to be in regards to writing music. I wanted to record a full album of beautiful songs. I’d play my songs around town, and people would want to be my friend. And If I ever met Nell again, I’d have an amazing pedigree of great songs to play for her. But she would be married.
Elizabeth still wasn’t talking to me… Nell was enjoying the climax of her love life… I needed to get my mind off all that and meet some new people, so I turned to a Korean church. When I was young, I had some Korean friends at the church I went to with my family. But as soon as I stopped going in my mid-teens, I suddenly had no more contact with other Koreans. I wanted to reconnect with this side of me, thinking it was sort of like if Superman made friends with some people from his homeworld Krypton.
I also wondered if believing in Jesus and God was a requirement for joining this free social circle of friends, or if it was enough for my heart to be in the right place. I was 90% sure most of Christianity was bullshit and if this didn’t work out, at least I’d settle any religious doubts I had left in my mind.
For a while I had a nice time hanging out with these Christian kids in their twenties. We had lunches, discussed the Bible, fed the homeless, and played games. I enjoyed spending time with them as individuals, but the more theological they got, the harder it was for me to side-step the fact that I was a heretic.
I agreed with most of what they were teaching about love and forgiveness. In fact, the person I related to most was Jesus, and I thought of myself as sort of like modern Jesus, a pariah to the establishment. If Jesus was crucified for speaking out against the nonsense back then, I would have to be outcast for my convictions too. It was the superstition and mythology that I thought they took way too seriously. Their beliefs rubbed entirely the wrong way with my own to the point where the friction made it uncomfortable for me to stay any longer. They told me not to waste my time, and I cut ties after about four months.
I then took some time off of work to spend in Los Angeles, an hour and a half drive north. A pick-up instructor had a program where you went through a week-long camp with about a dozen other guys to get better at talking to women. It was one of the most intense weeks of my life, not only because of all the people we had to talk to, but also because of what I was going through with Nell and Elizabeth.
We spent every single day at the mall walking and talking with girls passing by. At night, we did the same at various bars, clubs, and rooftop lounges. For a whole week, I went on dates, talked to countless strangers, and put myself in scary new situations. After only a few days, I experienced total burnout. I was mentally strained and felt too scared to keep going. But I thought about how both Nell and Elizabeth were moving forward with their lives. I had to forge my own future as well, and this affirmation propelled me to see through to the end of the course.
When I came back to normal life, I set my priorities on writing and recording my music. There had been a lot of things holding me down before. Between the move to California, my breakup, and Nell’s engagement, it seemed like I’d run out of excuses to continue simply dawdling through my life.