(no subject)
I must say, it's easy to forget how nice it is to feel fulfilled.
(And how easy, too!)
I think that setting personal goals and meeting them, no matter how small or time-consuming, has been quite good for me lately.
I have been working diligently on the third movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata no. 2 in B Flat Minor. I have only been working on the third movement, Marche funèbre, because it works well as a piece on its own. I think you all have heard it at some time. It's beewaful.
I also have begun work on two major essay scholarships from the Ayn Rand Institute. I'll read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and I'm going to write essays on each. It's only 1778 pages total! And due April 25! But I'm looking forward to it.
I personally find Ayn Rand and her philosophy repugnant (anyone who called Immanuel Kant a "monster" and a "destroyer of nations" is dead to me), but I have an opportunity to expand my horizons, read something I wouldn't otherwise, get essay-writing experience, and perhaps solidify my own ideas. And $15,000 from a rarely-entered contest isn't bad.
Apart from such goals, both realized and developing, I admit that I am experiencing a quandry. I know that only I can resolve it, so unless I make a rash decision, count on my pensiveness for a while. Well, not necessarily pensiveness, but thoughtfulness. People have a tendency to think that when a person has things on their mind, they should be comforted. It happens to me a lot.
Perhaps some fun words from John Stuart Mill may lift the spirits:
"If there are any persons who contest a recieved opinion ... let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do much greater labor for ourselves." -On Liberty