In the Aftermath

I've done my usual trick of adapting to the spring time change automatically. It helps that I always seem to be singing in the first service that Sunday, so it forces me to adjust my body clock, but I got up at the usual time without setting an alarm this morning (which should have been an hour earlier to my body). If I go by my usual pattern, I'll start waking up "early" tomorrow now that I've caught up on missing sleep from getting up so early Sunday.

As for Sunday, I think it went okay. I felt really good about the first service, but something seemed weird/off in the second service, and that started freaking me out and then the paranoia kicked in. I didn't get a real chance to talk to anyone afterward, so I didn't get a lot of positive reinforcement, and that also triggered the paranoia that no one wanted to talk to me because of the "if you can't say anything nice" thing. It's probably all in my head. I'm just going to remember the first service when I felt like I did well and wasn't even that nervous. One reason I didn't get the chance to talk to anyone after the second service is that everyone else I was singing with slipped out after singing instead of sitting through the whole service a second time, and it didn't even occur to me that I could do that until I went back to my spot in the choir loft and the person sitting next to me acted surprised that I hadn't left. But then I was already up there, so it would have looked weird to leave again, so I heard the sermon twice.

Thinking back on the thing about me not really having a lot of "vice" in my life, it's possible that self-denial itself can become a vice if it's done for the wrong reasons or if you expect a reward for it. For me, I suspect it has to do with my tendency to go for difficulty points in life. I also have a weird thing about delayed gratification, where I enjoy looking forward to something more than I enjoy doing or having the thing I'm looking forward to. Anticipation might be my real vice, so if I gave that up for Lent, I'd have to actually do stuff instead of just planning it and looking forward to maybe someday doing it.

A whole team of psychiatrists could probably make careers out of studying me.

It's theoretically spring break here, which means I don't have dance or children's choir. But I'm behind on the book, so I will be making use of the extra time to be super productive. I hope.