“Amazed” by Lonestar is the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. The lyrics are inept, the music is laughingly bombastic, and the whole production is so unbelievably cloying it’s unreal. I listened to it on the way home from an errand this morning just to laugh at it. I get the impression it was made just so good ol’ boyfriends could sing it (squeakily) on the karaoke machine to their girlfriends at the pool hall. It’s indisputably one of the worst songs I’ve heard.<\/p>\n
Of course, then I hear Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” five minutes later on the same station, and I’m groovin’ along to it, even though objectively they’re probably close to the same level of schmaltz. But at least the Bon Jovi song sounds<\/i> a bit more sophisticated, even though it’s not–just a different genre.<\/p>\n
I feel pressure. I feel like I’m being productive, but in a way I’m baling water, since there’s no underlying organization, and at the rate I’m going I’d have to spend an unacceptable amount of time to stop and get organized, though that’s probably not true.<\/p>\n
Gahh. Where is the victory that I want to permeate my life? Where is the rising above the mudane, nine-to-fiving? Where is the ambition, the drive that I need?<\/p>\n
And again, all I want to do is run away. If I don’t catch myself sometimes the feeling of “I don’t belong here” is almost suffocating. But what am I looking for? I thought about this on the way back from Kinko’s. Is it a place, a situation, a collection of friends, a job, a career, a mindset, what? And I think it’s just a state of being. It’s a collection of circumstances that I can think about at any given point of the day and rest my mind upon them. But it’s all transient. I felt that in France, in Nice, and I told (and still tell) myself that it would be a permanent sensation if I lived there, and it’s not–it comes and goes as the people and situations swirl around me. But just knowing that I could feel that way, that content, that deeply, even for a moment as I did–I’ve never felt that here. Never. There’s always been something else, something I’ve been subconsciously longing for, and Nice is as close to that place as I’ve come, physically. I think it’s like getting into a relationship with someone–you resist idealizing; you know that in addition to all those good qualities you see, that there are flaws, and yet you long for them in spite of those flaws. Same difference with France–I long for it in spite of the fact that I know it won’t be like it was at the Pignols except for a very small percentage of the time.<\/p>\n
But in the end, I need to learn, as Paul said, the secret of being content in all circumstances. God, help me to learn that. Give me insight and understanding and the knowledge of how to apply that to my life, or how to let You apply it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Amazed” by Lonestar is the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. The lyrics are inept, the music is laughingly bombastic, and the whole production is so unbelievably cloying it’s unreal. I listened to it on the way home from an errand this morning just to laugh at it. I get the impression it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}