The Godspeed show was amazing, as expected. There's an Explosions in the Sky show coming up on April 6th, but it's a Wednesday, and I can't go because I have to work late. There are decent seats still available and they're not that expensive. So I'm pretty upset considering Low and Eluvium are opening for them.

It was a really fun day all around. Spending the day with the Daves took me back about 6 years to my Junior and Senior years of college when we used to hang out all the time playing Smash Bros. Bernstein and I got together around 11 AM once I finally got through the morning traffic and arrived in Brooklyn. We had breakfast together at a weird little diner, which supposedly had the best food in Brooklyn. It didn't compare at all to Country Corner, and, put it this way: if that's the best food in Brooklyn then I don't want to live there.

Afterward we grabbed our cameras and walked to Prospect Park. Eventually we found our way to the Zoo, which was pretty tiny but had some interesting animals. Dave was like a kid in a candy store. The highlight of his day was watching otter sex for half an hour. I hadn't been to a zoo in ages. It was fun walking around and taking pictures. I got a few good shots, and we walked around Prospect Park afterward as well, so I'll have some things to put up in the next couple of days. We were out walking for about 5 hours, and my legs are still sore today even though I've been exercising.

We met up with Berg around 6 and had dinner in Union Square, which was actually really good. We made our way closer to the venue and stopped at a bar, then got a taxi to take us to the show. Bernstein and I were both pretty beat, so the three of us found a couch on the third floor with flatscreens showing the stage and chilled out there for most of the show. It's orchestral type music, so actually seeing the stage isn't that important. We got a taxi back to Berg's apartment after the show and went to a bar around the corner. I had about half a beer and suddenly started to get really tired, so I had to leave them there and find my car to go home. I didn't get home until almost 3 AM, so it's a good thing I left when I did. All in all it was an awesome day. I'm hoping that Berg will be up for hanging out more often. We always say we should get together more, but then neither one of us is that good at keeping in touch.

Pretty soon I'm not going to have any time to do anything social. It looks like I'm going to keep my job at Besim's. Somehow he pulled it out of the fire and is planning to move down the street in the next few weeks. Don't ask me how, but he held off the tax department and I'm even getting a few extra hours. Once April comes around I'll be working almost 70 hours a week. I really need to save some money and get my own place, so I don't mind working hard.

Tomorrow my psychologist and I are going to start talking about medication for my anxiety. I hate my social anxiety so much. It's cost me not only love, but opportunities, and my general anxiety has impeded my progress a lot. I never realized how much it affected me until recently. It's hard for me to get to sleep at night because I lay awake thinking, and tensing my muscles. It's completely involuntary. I can't even imagine a life without anxiety, or even with decreased anxiety where I feel normal. I've been living with it all these years, and I've even been called selfish because my anxiety prevented me from going out or spending time with people. I feel like a leper. Nobody understands how hard it is, because if you don't have it then it doesn't make sense to you. There's no concept of the effort it takes to hang out with strangers, or even people you just don't know that well. Sometimes even people you DO know very well. People completely misjudge you, call you moody or elitist, aloof or self centered... there's a difference between those things and being an introvert. You can't do something wrong if you don't know it's wrong, if there's no intent to cause harm or frustration in others. I've been made to feel like these things are my fault, somehow under my control. It's only recently that I realized that I have no reason to bow to those opinions, and that the way people have treated me as a result of these issues is what's really wrong with this picture. I take responsibility for my actions, but not for things I can't control, and I refuse to take responsibility for something when your being hurt by it is only a result of you not trying to understand it. The wrong things I've done are few compared with things that have been taken as such by people with no understanding and no capacity for empathy. I hate to keep rehashing this stuff, but I wish I could grab people and shake them or make them see a psychologist themselves so they could have this explained to them. When I do it I just sound like I'm making an excuse to them, or not taking responsibility for my actions. If I didn't have social anxiety and I didn't want to hang out with your friends, or go out to a bar, then go ahead and call me selfish. But if I say no because the thought of it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin, or hide somewhere by myself, then you have to understand that it takes an effort of will to do these things.