Comfort

Comfort is a weird thing. We always strive to be comfortable. We want to be in that comfortable pair of jeans, that comfortable relationship, that comfortable job, that comfortable house...We always say there's no such thing as too comfortable, and then we think about it.

There's certainly such a thing.

I am only going to speak of one kind of too-comfortable that I've always avoided, though I have many more personal experiences with plenty of other kinds, too.

For me, I've always tried to avoid comfort when it comes to my academics. I start law school in 3 days. (why am I awake at 2:30 in the morning, then? I have 3 days to adjust my sleep cycle!!!) (Oh yeah...I started reading my contracts text book and got so excited that my tea to help me relax wore off, but I digress.) Law school will, most certainly, not be a comfortable experience for me. It will require lots of hard work and plenty of shutting out the people around me, I'm sure. I will be irritable at times, and I am certainly sure there will be times when, no matter how hard I try, I will only be able to speak of what's on my plate -- be it a story from class, freaking out about an exam, or the case I just read. (Note to my friends reading this: I apologize in advance. Feel free to yell at me.)

But this is not the first time I am making myself feel uncomfortable.

My previous educational experience as a composer was filled with voluntary uncomfortableness.

I spent 5 years figuring out what I was good at and doing the exact other thing. If I was really good at writing 3-horn arrangements of standards, I made sure to write for 5 horns. If I felt I was good at writing interesting voice-leading accompaniments, I would spend my time writing counterpoint instead. If I...well, for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll just say it simply, and redundantly, if I was good at it, I avoided it.

I learned. I moved forward. And oddly enough, I started getting uncomfortable with things I was once good at since I got out of practice.

I'm still confident I can write a 3-horn arrangement of a standard quite easily, though perhaps not as quickly as I once could. I'm sure I could do a saxophone quartet arrangement of "Rainbow Connection" without it being horrible, but as I move on to new uncomfortabilities, what was once comfortable no longer feels quite right.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but comfort has been on my mind a lot in the last couple days. I guess you could say I was quite happy being comfortable for once, and since then, I've been forced out of comfort.

I guess I'll just learn how to be comfortable in this new situation...and then move on, whether I want to or not.

(Which, by the way, I don't.)