Our Hearts Are Restless

My lifestyle these last few months has been quite different from my gregarious, frenetic college career.  I'm no longer surrounded by a group of like-minded individuals, I don't have a few girlfriends in my room every evening, and distraught post-breakup souls don't knock on my door for a hug.  (Although they still do call for advice sometimes.)  I don't bounce from class, to running a club meeting, to counselling a friend, to editing someone's paper. The status quo of my life is solitude, enforced by distance from family and old friends.  A normal evening is spent between cleaning the apartment, cooking, and working on freelance projects at my desk.  My weekends usually involve grocery shopping, singing in the parish choir, testing new recipes in the kitchen, and curling up on the sofa with a book or movie.  Every now and then, I'll volunteer at my parish or be invited to a get-together at a new friend's house. While I'm still a choleric-sanguine , ...

Roughly 33% of my nerdiness is music related, the product of a lifetime's exposure to live orchestral concerts, Gregorian chant and polyphony, band and orchestra experience, and private music lessons.  I was close to becoming a professional musician, until I realized that A.) I couldn't pass up Christendom 's solid Catholic liberal arts education, and B.) I didn't have the passion for practicing that you need if you want to make it as a pro.  My life choices changed, but my love for the arts has not; the first thing I did moving up here was to join the parish choir. Recently, I attended the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra 's semi-staged performance of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio , which was such fun.  I'd never actually listened to a full opera before, and this was a comic treat, such that I went back and listened to a few of the arias again on Youtube.  Also recently, I've been sorting through the music on my computer, compiling a long playlist ...