New Year, New Decade

And so it is. 2010. I have survived the holidays. Now time for the post holiday catch-up on things I meant to do (send cards?), plus try and focus on the new things I want to do. One of the things I want to do is get clear on what my ideal income producing situation would be.

Because:

1. That way when someone asks me what I want to do, I can tell them and they can put out feelers for me too

2. I can have more focus in pursuing this ideal situation

3. The universe supports clarity and purpose

Someone posted this astrology thing about Mars being retrograde through March. I really related to it, wowzer. Made me feel a whole lot better somehow.

Just spent the weekend working at the Cafe. Two days in a row is kinda brutal, but I could REALLY use the money right now, so I'm gearing up and powering through to do this the next couple weekends as well to fill in while P is on vacation. It also rather sucks because I'm on the opposite schedule of most other people - working on the weekend and not working during the week. So all manner of rehearsals and such run into conflict in one way or another generally.

Like I ran off to an audition for a very cool play directly after finishing up the food for the baristas (who worked a killer shift, longer than they are used to on a Sunday, I couldn't say no to them). I was an hour and a half late but I'd written ahead to say so and there were still plenty of people and scenes they were running through. I read two scenes for the same character, with two different guys. I can't tell if I was any good or not. I was all greasy from the grill, I would have liked to dress a little better, but I didn't have time for it really. I don't know that I look the part. One of the characters wants to sleep with her, so that has to be plausible. There were tons of other girls there and while that was the only part I could play, they could take that one or any of the others. And I'm working next week for the first read-through. So who knows. Seems like they will be pretty quick to cast though if the first read-through is next week.

Another song for the concert at the end of the month rehearsed today, I wouldn't have been able to go anyway, and another song beyond that is rehearsing next Sunday when I won't be able to go, so I'm quite sure I won't get a solo for that one, which is also ok. The point being though, that again, there is the rehearsal during work hours thing coming up, grrr.

Got an email that they wouldn't be training for coffee at the new cafe for a while, probably till they catch up on the remodeling expenses, so I don't know what that means for how soon I could be getting more hours there. grah.

I could teach another improv class. I could do a concert. I could make stuff and put it up on the web for sale, though that seems the least lucrative, unless I had something REALLY original, which I don't. And even then.

Part of me wants to run away to Austin and take lessons at the music school one of my blog buddies goes to and teaches and helps out. Just focus on the guitar stuff mostly, see if I have any sort of chance with it. Seems like I should be able to do that here, but it just hasn't happened yet. Maybe this is the year. I just wish someone could tell me if I have a fraction of a chance and if it's worth all the effort, because if I don't, then I could probably be happy not stressing on it and having it be a hobby...

G suggested I make a list of everything I think I would need to make more of a go at it with my music blog. Even if it was earning $20 a month, that would be something!! It's quite established by now, maybe it IS time to check out some of those tips and apply them and see what happens... One of the things on the list might be a consult with a more pro type person to give me some perspective. I'm too close to it...

Going to the Dr tomorrow to find out about some lab results. They didn't call me ahead of my scheduled appointment, so I'm sure there won't be anything serious, but she was checking for levels on things like B12, folic acid and thyroid and I forget what else. ugh.

Once again, the internet proves to be awesome

I think I've mentioned before, but I freaking love the internet.

I have a song to play, it's a big deal, in front of people, I don't want to mess it up. I've been cobbling together chords from various guitar and uke tabs to come up with something that works, that I can play, without having to train a bunch of new chord shapes into my hands in the few short weeks I have had to rehearse. I finally came up with a version that was working pretty well, but it had that damn B minor that I have had a hard time hitting since forever, doesn't matter the song. I would work it over and over these past couple weeks, with the two chords before and the one after, trying to train it in, but it's still been hit or miss. I was starting to freak out. I don't want to biff it, either in the performance or at the rehearsal/run through and have them take away the opportunity.

So finally, rather than looking up chord finders for the 3rd time, I just put the words into google - "substitution for b minor guitar chord" and low and behold, some person who is now my eternal hero has totally saved my ass by giving me a very workable alternative that my fingers are hitting consistently within minutes of learning it. THANK YOU INTERNET! THANK YOU PERSON! Not only that, this posting is from two years ago. So it's like, THANK YOU PERSON FROM TWO YEARS IN THE PAST!!! Time travel-ish?? hrmm. VERY COOL EITHER WAY! :D

It's stuff like this that reminds me again and again, just TRY putting in your exact question to the search box. Sometimes I try to get all fancy and try to figure out how the internet thinks so I can put in some magic, contorted combination of words to get what I want, when so often I only have to ask it exactly as I normally would, and BINGO! Done.

And I still have two more days before the run-through. My calluses are getting good again. By Saturday I will be golden.

WHAT THE HECK, FRIDAY IS CHRISTMAS?!!! And right now is my brother's birthday? eeks.

PS Made $15 in tips cooking today. But I am freaking tired, feet, back, neck. But I had fun. We were wearing red and green aprons, Barista was wearing green, I got cashier to put on a red apron so we were all xmas. I don't know how many people noticed other than the ones I told, but it was still fun. Also I will start working Saturdays again this week in the new place, so that will be nice to have that back. Whew.

Bass Fun

Got myself a new toy yesterday after work. Managed to slide in to the music store a few minutes before it closed. It's actually my xmas present from my parents. Long story short, I couldn't find a video camera at Christmas time that would work with my old laptop, and in the time since then I now have a webcam in my new laptop and also been borrowing a video cam from my bro that he seems ok with letting me hang on to long term (he upgraded a while ago). I've had several other ideas of what I might want but most of them seemed to involve more research and planning and at this point it seemed like it might be NEXT xmas before I got anything. I've been catching up on my Harmony class homework this weekend and I was hearing some bass bits in my head and thinking it'd be nice to have one to play them on.

So yeah. I had a couple moments of panic yesterday - what if I can't play it? What if it's a crap one and I should have done more research and gotten a better one? It's a Fender rip-off from what I can tell. Pretty basic. It should suit my purposes - adding my little bass lines to home recordings and such.

Anyway, I was working on my latest assignment, and I discovered that I could plug my acoustic in and use these virtual effects pedals that are in the new version of GarageBand and get a pretty rockin sound - I chose a dreamy texture for the guitar and liquid bass, lots of reverb. Found my chords, found a drum track that worked. And then I plugged in the bass. Started figuring out where the notes were, keeping it super basic. Set up GarageBand so I could do several takes in a row, and mid-way through one of those takes I got a huge smile on my face and thought "I'm having a blast!"

It was a moment of total fun and pure joy at what I was creating. I was doing it for me and because I liked the way it sounded. Something I don't think I've really felt in a while while doing music. Too many critical voices telling me that what I'm doing is boring, too simple, unoriginal, etc, etc. Too much trying to make things "follow the rules", not enough of the spontaneous just following my ears because they are the only things I have. And yet I WAS following some rules, the structure that was set up for the assignment. But it was kind of like an improv game - set up the boundaries and then let loose inside them.

The bit I came up with is still pretty much just a draft/sketch. A verse and a chorus. Enough for the assignment, not really ready for sharing out of that. I'm not sure if I'll ever develop it into a full song. The teacher might rip it apart when he grades it. But whatever happens, I'm so grateful for that moment of inspired joy. Glad to know it still exists and I could probably find it again. Tells me I made the right choice to buy the bass.

Momentary Panic

My brother is a prolific YouTuber. He went out to San Francisco for the YouTube live event. Just 3 days, he took Friday off work and the event was on Saturday and we went to pick him up in Des Moines today.

G had to get a hardtop suitcase to carry a desktop computer to the trade show in Dubai, so we stopped at the Samsonite outlet in Williamsburg. There was a buy one get one half off, so we got a new big suitcase for us to replace the falling apart one I brought to Colombia. I also got a new laptop bag, a padded silver one that I'm SO wanting to take out to a cafe somewhere so I can feel terribly romantic and professional. Maybe tomorrow. :D

Anyway, G also needs a black suit jacket, and we were trying to figure out if we should just make T wait longer and stop at one of the nice stores at the outlet mall or continue on and go to the mall in Des Moines. We opted for the latter since we were pretty behind schedule and didn't want to make T wait too too long.

I called my cousin who lives in DM (and only about 5 minutes from the airport) to see if she might be able to pick him up so he could wait at her place instead of in the airport. She was out but said if she went home before we got there she would swing by and see if she could see him waiting outside.

T's flight was supposed to land at 2:15. I tried calling him at about 2:20. Straight to voicemail. Same deal several times after that. It's just a temp, pay as you go phone he only uses for traveling. We figured he probably wasn't freaking out that no one was there quite yet and would remember to turn on his phone as soon as he wondered where mom was. Called my mom to let her know what was going on in case he called her (she was originally going to pick him up).

My cousin drove by the airport around 3:30 and didn't see him, and he still wasn't answering his phone. I called the airline to see if his flight had landed and it had. G and I got there a little after 4 I think and T was nowhere to be seen. Des Moines is a tiny airport, you can walk the whole area that you're allowed to walk (baggage claim, ticketing and foodcourt/gift shop) without a ticket in about 5 minutes.

This is where the panic sets in. My mom had called him once while he was in SF, but he didn't answer. I knew he'd made it to SF because he'd sent out a Twitter saying so but hadn't heard anything after that. The airline people can only tell me that he hadn't changed his reservation but his original flight arrived on time. I don't know if they actually KNOW if he boarded and just can't tell me or if they don't even know. There didn't appear to be any operators working the white phone paging system because it just rang and rang and rang. I started crying. My mom called me back to say that she'd talked to his hotel and he had indeed checked in on Friday and checked out that morning, and she was trying to look up his flight number and call the airline to see if she could track him down another way.

G points out that there is another flight coming from Dallas (T's connecting city) at 4:30, which by now is only minutes away. I continue to freak out. T finally, finally calls, he is indeed on the 4:30 flight and it has just touched down. His flight from San Fran was delayed due to weather in Dallas or something, and when he got to Dallas his phone didn't work. He didn't check any luggage, so when he gets off the plane we can go straight to the car.

On the way to the car, he tells us that he had had a headache, and ended up watching the event on his laptop from his hotel room. He'd left his sunglasses at home, so apparently walking around all day without them gave him a headache. (He does have really sensitive eyes.)

It turns out he couldn't find the place it was being held, even though his hotel was supposed to be a 7 minute walk away from it. Apparently the map was misleading. By the time he figured out he was lost and went back to his hotel and got help with the directions, and made it back to the event, THEY WOULD NOT LET HIM IN. Even though he had an e-ticket. Which was apparently fairly meaningless, because it was first come, first serve, and he was late enough that they said they were at capacity. I thought the point of tickets was to RESERVE YOUR SPACE at an event?!

So now I'm pissed. Here's a guy, YouTube is a MAJOR part of his life, he has over 400 videos and watches plenty more than that. He can tell us all about these people by their screen names, many of which are a combination of numbers and letters like xx23pandaxxx. It's his community. I don't know how many people actually watch his stuff or if it's a one-way connection, but he took a whole day off work, spent money on a ticket and a hotel, and made at least two videos that clearly demonstrated how excited he was to be going. One was him simply dancing around in pure joy, and the other an improvised rap. His stuff is nowhere as polished and professional as his idols, but you have to give him the devotion and passion points. And he gets to this party/concert event that is being billed as a community building event/celebration, and ends up watching the thing on his laptop in his hotel room. It must have felt like a betrayal on some level I'm sure. Thank goodness the hotel at least had internet. It would have sucked even more to not get to see it at all.

Here's the thing, my brother has a mild learning disability. In school they called it ADD, I think some later time they called it a form of asbergers. It's not a big deal and he's fine living on his own, but it's little things like my mom did want to make sure he had family nearby, so T lives in his own apartment in the basement, he's probably never going to drive a car, and he sometimes seems to ignore people when they talk to him. I think it's also why he wears sunglasses a lot, because normal life/light is too overwhelming for him sometimes.

But some people aren't going to know all that. Some people are just going to think he's weird, or stupid or stoned. And they're going to be mean and make fun of him. I've seen it in some of the comments people leave on his videos. And the big sister protective vibe kicks in big time. But all I can do is give those comments a thumbs down, and that's probably more than I can do in most of real life. I've gotten a lot better at not taking it personally and making it my responsibility to protect him all the time, but the whole thing still breaks my heart sometimes. He's such a good sweet person, generally happy and mild mannered and creative. And the YouTube thing has given him a chance to reach out and connect. I just hope he doesn't get too discouraged by stuff like this.

Maybe I'm the one more bummed out than him, he's already got a bunch of plans to tell the organizers how they could do a better job next time, and he's already got some ideas about how he can be proactive from his side (finding out how to get to the venue is the night before the event, trying to meet up with some people he can go with from the same hotel, etc.)

Anyway, he's home safe, and learned a bunch of things.

And now that's off my chest I can remember that I wanted to mention this morning I stopped by the cafe because Anais had run out of CD's at the concert and was supposed to bring one by this morning, but it turned out she'd really run out, so she said she could mail me one. I brought my box of jewelry that I'd made for the Farmer's Market and let both of them pick something out. Rachel immediately grabbed the green chunky bracelet that was on top, and looked through a couple other things but said, "well I think I might have already found it", and I said "I had a feeling you might like that one" and she said "who me, green?" hehe. At that particular moment, she was wearing green glasses, a green hat and had long green fingerless gloves. Then Anais said she had to choose carefully because she tends to just wear one jewelry item at a time until she loses or breaks it, and picked out the big wooden etched medallion on a sheer green ribbon necklace. It matched really well with what she was wearing. She asked if I was saving it for anyone special and I said I would be happy to for her to have it. The fangirl in me really wanted to take a picture of them wearing the stuff, but I didn't want to be too, well, obviously fangirly. heh. Would much rather be a friend.

Then they had to go, for a quick dash to The At Home Store for yarn, and then back to Chicago for one more show of their mini tour. (We were a quarter of it.) Sharon was out in the lobby playing her guitar so I sat down and talked to her for a bit. She asked me what I had and I showed her the box of stuff. She particularly liked one set of earrings and said she'd buy them from me later, but I told her she could have them as an early Christmas present, because I was probably going to give her something and it was probably going to be from that box so she might as well have one she liked. I told her about my experience FEELING the guitar, and she agreed that it's pretty easy when you get into the business side of it to forget about why you started at all. And then G called cuz he was ready to go to Des Moines. So a good little quick plug-in with my music peeps for the morning, glad I made it over while they were all still there.

I did it

I picked up my guitar for all of 3 minutes before work and I FELT it. It was out of tune and has a little buzz that I should get looked at if I even knew where/who/how, but in spite of all that, I FELT it. And it felt good. I need more of that.

The new buzz around the web today seems to be that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Apparently that's 5 years of 40 hours/week. Damn. At the rate I'm going I'm pretty screwed. But then again, I don't supposed you have to be an expert at something before you start doing it. Indeed, you HAVE to start doing it to become an expert!

More reason to take more classes, at the same time, to really dive in. But I'm scared, I'm way behind with my ONE class, I don't know how I'd keep up with 2 or more! Not to mention I don't know how I'd pay for them. If I sell my car that will pay for this one and my next one, but after that?

I'm SO loathe to go into debt in such a big way again. I still have $600 more left from my B.A. that I'm letting sit because it has a lower interest rate. And it's not something like going to get my nursing degree where you KNOW there's a need for nurses and you're guaranteed to get a job that'll pay it back. For all I know I'll take a bunch of classes only to find out that I suck, or am mediocre at best, and that I should stick to promoting the real talent.

Seriously, how terrifying is that, to throw a huge bunch of money at something when I have absolutely no idea of the outcome? It's like gambling! I suppose on the one hand it's like a vote of confidence in myself, that I DO deserve it and I DO have something worthy of developing, and that THIS is the path to get to it. I know that a bunch of people I admire have gone down this path before, but it's not like a magic wand either, I have to to do the work. So that's the question - do I have the confidence and the drive?

grumbly cold

I hate how the cold gets into my feet and takes so so long to get out. Really wears me down. And my slippers never seem to be where I can find them easily.

Saw Beauty and the Beast today. Love the Disney movie to bits, one of, if not the favorite movie of all time of mine, and the play doesn't vary very much from the Disney movie, though they added several songs. Diana IS Belle, so adorable and spunky. And nearly all of the children in the audience thought she was Belle too. It was amazing and adorable to hear them call out "There's Belle!" and then after the show they approached her with such awe. Some were so shy they turned their faces into their mom's jackets. Kind of like meeting Santa or something. She was so gracious and sweet to them though, I think most overcame their fear.

The guy who played Gaston was absolutely amazing as well. He really got into it and looked very much like the cartoon. Hilarious. Loved their dance with the beer mugs in the tavern. And the "Be Our Guest" number was GREAT too. I finally figured out that the "cheese graters" were laundry baskets turned upside down and painted silver, brilliant!

The whole thing was 3 hours though. I have mixed feelings, part of the reason why it took so long was they completely changed the set for every location in the play and there were 7 scenes in the first act and 6 in the second. But the set pieces they had were SO clever that it was almost worth it. Lots of rolling panels that could be flipped around, and also unfolded, plus a big wall of tri-paneled scenes that would rotate. So for the size of their stage and the number of scenes and the amount of time they had, it was pretty astounding actually.

Came home and did some bills and had a money freakout. I have enough to cover my basic bills and I'm paying G back for my online courses so we don't have to rack up too much credit card interest, but there's not much to spare at all and it's frustrating. I've definitely gotten to a point where I don't just go around buying junk every week (well, passed that point a long time ago.) but there are a few bigger things I want that I don't NEED and therefore I'm not willing to just dump on the credit card, but I don't really see being able to save up for anytime in the near future either. For example, new laptop, video camera, iPhone, colored highlights, a real blog design. None of those things are passing whims either, I've wanted them all for over a year, and in some cases much longer.

I'm certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could get more work if I wanted it in a matter of a few phone calls at minimum and a few months at the most. I've actually turned down a few offers lately in the name of making sure I have more time for my music. But I haven't been putting that time to much music use. Not sure what the story is there. Well, there's the theory course, I HAVE been doing that (although I'm behind right now) but that doesn't involve hands on my guitar.

I used to get such joy out of it - just feeling the vibrational transfer from the body of the guitar to my body made me feel so good, so alive. My head critic is so in the way I think, so worried about how it sounds, is it good enough, interesting enough, will people get bored, will they zone out and miss the lyrics, are the lyrics good enough or are they trite, chatter chatter chatter - I forget what it FEELS like to play the guitar.

I'll have to look for that tomorrow. Force myself to make time for it and feel it out. I might need some new strings. My dad always says putting new strings on is like getting a whole new guitar.

Anyway, the whole upset got me real moody and I didn't work on my theory homework or my blog for the radio show on Tuesday. (Which should be a really good one I'm very excited about.) Although I AM kind of waiting to hear back if there are going to be 1 or 2 people calling in first. But I'll have to just put something up tomorrow morning if I don't hear back by then. The homework is to a point where I'm both behind on this week and have a bunch of old stuff I need to correct, so it feels way overwhelming.

I'm also fairly certain that I'm having a hard time handling all of this at the moment (it's not like it's really much different any other time of the month in terms of workload or finances) because of hormones, my face is definitely predicting things. Doesn't seem fair that one has to feel ugly AND emotional all at once.

It will be very interesting to look back over this month of posts and see if I can find any greater rhythms to it, I feel like I've been mostly a downer, but it also feels really good to write, write, write and process things out - for example that thing about how the guitar FEELS came to me as I was writing it, as a result of processing, and I think it's an important revelation.

Last thing, I'm worried about some of my online friends and it's a strange thing. I ONLY know them from online, but the connections we have feel important and real, and since they are musical connections they are ones that I don't have too many of in my offline life. One guy's MySpace page disappeared completely, I'm not sure if it was from his side or MySpace's that it got taken down, but I know he has health problems (not what, but that they are bad enough he's been offline for weeks at a time). He's always come back before, but his page has never disappeared before, so I don't know what that means. The other is a girl who just found out she has MS. I *think* she pretty much supports herself through her music, so I'm not sure how that is going to affect her life. She is super spunky and positive and a fighter, so if anyone can get through it's her. But the strangest thing is since I only know these people from online, if anything happens to them where they can't get back online again, I won't have a way of finding out what happened. It's not like I can track down their mom or something like I could with my friends I know offline. Weird and beautiful world this is. Strange.

Did You Try Turning It Off and On Again?

I helped a friend of my mom's get set up on GarageBand today. She wants to record a talk she's giving tomorrow and just got a bunch of equipment that she didn't know how to use. Since I (still!) have a cold and I'm trying to stay inside, we tried setting things up over the phone, me looking at my screen and she looking at hers. We got it to work just fine using the built-in mic, but once she hooked up her pre-amp and nice mic, something wasn't quite working. We tried a bunch of stuff and I finally had to say "I think we've reached the limit of how far I can go without seeing it in front of me. I think it might be something fairly simple, but without actually seeing it I just don't know." We decided that she'd bring her laptop and gear over to me and I'd check it out.

Sure enough, there was one little thing that I wasn't seeing that made all the difference. Turns out when I asked if the phantom power to the mic was on, she thought I was referring to a whole other little device that was for providing phantom power when you have the mic hooked up to a tape recorder. I tried just plugging the mic straight into the USB pre-amp and everything worked from there! Whew!

James Moore called me from KRUU last night. He was really nice and encouraging, saying how much he liked the pilot we submitted. We talked for a bit trying to decide if it's worth it to start a show that I would only be here for a month before going away for two months. It seems like while that's not the ideal, the options are also pretty open and he was willing to explore ideas, but he was pretty burnt out from a big week and a long day, and my head was pretty stuffy. He told me to think about it and get back to him Sunday or Monday. It'll also depend on B and how she feels about holding the reins by herself while I'm gone, although with the power of the interwebs, I'm thinking I could still actively participate pretty well from afar, especially since I HAVE my own recording equipment... It does sound like now that they've got so many quality shows, they are getting to the point where they can (and have to be) a little more choosy about what goes on. He said he was thinking of us for a 9 am slot though, which is pretty cool - not something at like 3am when not many people would probably be tuned in...

I got a little mini travel guitar for Christmas - group gift from the fam. I told G I really wanted it and would rather have that than lots of little things I don't need. I've been wanting a travel guitar for years because it's so stressful trying to take my actual guitar on the plane. It's a small sized guitar, and it really DOES fit in most overhead compartments if the plane is more than 3 seats across, but it just depends on the flight staff of the plane. Sometimes they'd actually store it for me in their coat compartment, other times they'd make me put it under the plane. This little Washburn Rover has a really great case that I wouldn't be afraid to send it under the plane if they made me do it for a little commuter flight or something. The other awesome thing about it is the neck on it is regular sized, so switching back to my big guitar is no problem. I'll be glad to have it in Colombia!

Flowing

I finally played my guitar today, for the first time since we moved into this house. I just ran through the 3 songs that I had lying in my guitar case, but it felt good. I love that sort of easy remembering when I'm not trying to hard, just innocent... yeah, hope it's just the start of more to come.

The drain in the bathroom is also flowing for the first time since we moved in here - I poured a big black bottle full of nasty chemicals down it last night...


A strange set of coincidences - what was blocked is flowing?