Are You Passionate?

That is the title of the last Neil Young album I bought. And I was all excited about it because I had simply adored Silver & Gold; in fact, there might not be a better song than "Razor Love," and I listened to the entire CD so many times that I had it memorized, front to back, to the point where you are already anticipating the intro to the next song during the blank space in-between just because you have heard all the songs so many times.

I listened to Are You Passionate? exactly one time and then officially kicked it to the curb. Yeah, I still have it, lodged somewhere between the other two Neil Young CDs in my collection (Harvest Moon is the other one I have, mainly for the title song; I latched onto a Decade cassette tape that had belonged to my very first girlfriend, back in the 1980s, but have no idea where it is at the moment).

I have a difficult time discarding music.

And I am not really thinking about whether I am passionate. I know that I am, about some stuff: Music and films, and certain TV shows. Books I love. Characters I love from certain books and films and shows. Lyrics and sounds from different songs. People who have affected me, in some way; yeah, sometimes the passion fades, but there is always a residual ... something, always, from/for anyone I have ever felt anything passionate about, for me, anyway. Certain foods. Certain sports moments, from my own life and ones I have spectated, from the local through the international levels.

What I am wondering is, am I emotional?

I do not consider myself to be. Then again, I do not consider myself to be moody, and yet, I can go to work in the morning feeling as if I am in a "good mood," only to find that my mood changes once people start coming into the office.

If I happen to be in a bitchy mood, does that imply moodiness?

And if I happen not to be moody, but someone else thinks I am, does that mean I might also be emotional, even though I do not particularly think that I am?

I have no trouble crying. I try not to do it in front of people at seemingly inappropriate times, primarily because if you cry, people usually assume something is wrong. And that is not always the case, at least not with me.

Sometimes, life is so beautiful, it makes me cry.

(I have a feeling I need to watch American Beauty, again, sometime soon.)

I suppose I am thinking about my emotions from the perspective of how I feel when I am on the verge of getting very angry. Thankfully, this does not happen all that often with me ... and no, I am not generally one of those people who keep everything bottled up inside. I tend to react to situations and then get on with my life.

Yeah, I could be a worrier. My dad got an ulcer from worrying, and my grandma ended up with the shakes from worrying. I do not wish to bring on physical problems from worrying, so, several years ago when I was feeling particularly stressed out about something at work, I told myself, late one night when I was unable to sleep, "OK, you now have 10 minutes to worry yourself into a complete frenzy, and then you have to let it go." And so for the next 10 minutes, I worried ... and it was kinda funny, too, because I actually found myself saying, "Worry, worry, worry! There ya go: Worry, worry, worry! You better get it out of your system now because your 10 minutes are about up!"

And then I was done worrying.

(It really does work. Pretty much, anyway. Sometimes, I need more than 10 minutes.)

: )

Someone made me angry the other night. And it was not even a deeply felt kind of anger or a hurt kind of anger, just an irritating and annoying kind of anger that had me on the verge of getting REALLY angry and perhaps even saying something I regretted. Which would have been incredibly stoopid (of me) because later, I would have been the only one feeling bad about it. And I would have felt responsible to make amends, or maybe I just would have written off the person for a suitable period of time, or perhaps we would have ceased being friends.

I dunno. I did not think about any of that at the time.

What I did, when I realized I was getting angry, was walk away.

Am I emotional? I do not think so.

Not inordinately so, anyway.