advice, listening

I rarely ask others for advice. I've been thinking about this some lately. I'll ask advice about technical problems: money, how to fix something, how to write my paper. But not about existential problems, problems with God, with others, with me, with life. I ask God for "advice" (which is good), but not other people. I'm not sure why. Probably because I don't usually talk to other people about those problems. Part of the reason I don't is that a lot of times its not about getting advice, but when someone talks to you about their problems, it's hard to feel okay with yourself for just listening instead of finding some more tangible way to help. Usually when people give me advice, I feel like they end up missing the point. Not only the point that I just want them to listen, but the point of what it actually is that's bothering me. I often feel like I blow it when I'm listening to people, I end up feeling inadequate, or like I said the wrong thing and missed the point, or that I should have said more. Oh well.

I end up learning one way or another though. Mostly by observing others, myself. Seeing how people do things and realizing "that's how I want to do it" or "that's definitely not how I want to do it" or just by listening to people talk. I wasn't in boy scouts, but I thing I've turned out okay even so. Another part of the problem is that I sometimes just feel dumb talking about my existential troubles, and suspect that they must look dumb from the outside. And I don't like the uneasy they're-witnessing-me-having-a-break-down-and-it-must-seem-silly feeling. It's an unfortunate tendency that I need to hurdle, but sometimes I feel embarassed about emotion, positive or negative.

I also realized the other day that in my life, I'll only be able to read a few thousand books. This makes me nervous, because that seems like such a small amount. But when I read, I want to hear what I'm reading. This is easy to do with poetry, but its hard to do with a long, sustained story. But that's what I want to do. Hear what it says, and what that says to me. Books have been a big part of my life, and probably always will be. Better make sure that I'm paying attention to something that I'm expending time and money and energy and life towards (including people, incidentally).

I'm feeling pretty aimless this week, just sitting around. It will be good to get to school although then I might have an overload of things to do.