Hardly Strictly a typical weekend

(A typical fraction of the crowd at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  Photo found here.)

I've been trying to do different things lately to break up the sort of...habitualness of my life.  I think this feeling I've been going through lately of being stuck in places I'm not really satisfied with has stemmed from the fact that my life has fallen into a rut of sorts.  In the past, I've thought about ways to get out of the rut but I've never actually attempted to, instead just waiting it out until I began feeling content again.  

Not this time.  

I'm tired of complaining about things and not making any moves to change them (who wants to be that kind of person, anyway?).  That isn't who I am or who I'm used to being and it's a habit I really need to break.  So after a heated discussion with Nate (helpful and obvious hint: do not attempt to bombard your significant other with your own stress when he/she is stressed out beyond belief all on their own.  A fight will most likely ensue and no one will win.) and a chat with the best friend (another helpful and obvious hint: best friends make everything better.  Everything.), I've started to slowly but surely climb my way out of my rut.  This effort has taken the form of hanging out with my friends more, making an attempt to be more independent when planning my weekends, and doing things that are sort of out of the ordinary for me.

It's been interesting to find out that what's now out of the ordinary for my life was once pretty normal, and that I apparently used to know myself a lot better than I currently do.  It's kind of backwards, don't you think?  To be sure of yourself and happy and confident, then to grow unsure of yourself and less content and less confident as you get older?  Aren't we supposed to know our own minds more as the years go on and we mature?  Aren't we supposed to be become more settled and less restless?

Maybe all of these expectations and "supposed to's" are what's been getting me into trouble in the first place.

Anyhow, in trying to diversify what I do during my free time, I decided to head out to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival this weekend in Golden Gate Park with Nate and a bunch of our friends.  Despite the 700,000 people that attended (no, that number is not a typo, there really were about seven hundred thousand people there) -- and you know me, I'm not the biggest fan of crowds and body odor -- I can't tell you how much fun it was to relax, listen to music (most of which I'd never heard before) and just feel like I was experiencing something new for a change.

I seem to constantly be in search of a new experience.