Writer's Block

Anger

Fear

Frustration

Judgment

Pressure

Stress

Impatience

Tired

Waste of time

Waste of energy

Unfair

Burden

Backed into a corner

My own damn fault

What's important?

Another blog

It occurs to me that in a way, I've been doing more updating of a personal nature on my music blog. Not sure if it's of interest to anyone over here, but just in case, here's the link:

http://heathermillermusic.tumblr.com/

Lots of songwriting contests and such and posting my latest demos there.

Loving the fall. Got myself a brown corduroy jacket and feel pretty spiffy about that. :-)

Read my grandma's memoirs again tonight. Lots of little insights and sweet anecdotes. Feels like there's gotta be a song in there somewhere. Would like to do one for all my grand parents. Hopefully before they go.

hrm

So the check in with the Dr went well. She reminded me of some things I already know, and she knows I know, but I don't know why I haven't been doing them. Refined a few points. I forgot to ask some questions (which always seems to happen to me in Dr offices! I just blank!) but nothing that I came away with feeling urgent about. And my cranky mood of the few days previous really lifted after. Go figure.

.5lbs and I will hit the 25lbs lost mark. That's exciting. I'm getting back clothes I haven't worn in a few years, also exciting. I sort of got rid of a bunch of stuff in the past year that I didn't really think I'd wear again, and I'm suddenly wishing I still had. Really only a few things though. I was pretty good about evaluating if I really liked the items even when they did fit, and only hanging on to stuff I actually liked.

Still have a few ups and downs, but generally better.

Thought I was going to get a raise at one of my jobs and found out that I'm already being paid at the rate they wanted to raise me to! ha! I really thought I was getting less but it must just be the stuff they have to withhold. I'm glad they thought I was worth it, and they did say they would try to bring it up later if they can.

Did find out that the money situation at my other job is actually better than I thought and everyone involved was happy about that, so good deal there.

Bought a hip-hop exercise video to try out at home. It was $9 so I figure even if I only ever do it 3 times I will have gotten my money's worth since it's $4 to go to the gym. Tried it out the other day and had fun even though I felt a bit like a doofus and the rug was slipping around. Next time I will roll up the rug, and having done the moves once, they should be easier. And in any case I broke a sweat and enjoyed myself which are really my main personal requirements for exercise these days.

I CANNOT WAIT until it's warm and dry enough to do stuff outside like walk and bike!! The time is approaching! The snow has melted and that teeny, tiny bit of green is creeping up through the dead grass.

Did some lovely work with my mom on ancestors. Learned a lot there, and we'll do more in the coming weeks.

Repotted a bunch of houseplants and they are SO happy! New leaves already!

Brother has started putting cardboard out in the garden to keep the weeds/grass from growing up, hopefully sparing us some digging/tilling headaches. We'll need to start our seeds soon!

Realizing I need to try and sort out my summer plans pretty soon here. Funds are in serious short supply and as a caretaker I don't take leaving the person who needs my help lightly! Plus since I don't have any paid vacation, when I don't work, I'm not only spending money, I'm missing out on making it. (A neglected fact that slightly tripped us up after Peru, sigh.)

Found out today a cousin in CA is getting married in May. Have known for a while that one of my best friends from college is graduating in May in Portland, which will also be the time when the other girls (who can) from that group will gather. Best friend since grade school is getting married in August and I am IN that wedding, which beautifully dovetails both time and location-wise with my trip to Song School in CO. At least 3 if not 5 of my family are going to the CO wedding. Not sure who can afford what and how long everyone can stay, and the cabins we're suggested to rent require a 4 night minimum. And then I'm staying for an extra week after that for Song School and Folks Fest. So yes, transportation, lodging, logistics, people to cover for me while I'm gone all need to be figured out. Ay yi yi.

Have a few writing projects that I volunteered for, plus homework still to catch up on. All of it at once is kind of freaking me out and leading to procrastination. argh. Nothing new, just nerve-wracking since now it's not only me who wants the things done but others as well! eek! And some of it is to promote shows coming through, people I'm sort of sponsoring/supporting and I really want the shows to be successful! And I know I'll feel so personally responsible if they're not! wahhh.

Deep breath, time to sleep.

oh crap... daylight savings. what time is it really now? yikes. I WAS doing better with bedtime for a couple days there.

Learning, learning, learning

So. Saturday. I think it went pretty well. I ended up singing with someone who was already in the show and already knew and loved the song. He's much more experienced than I am with guitar so it was nice to have him play and just be able to focus on the vocals and projecting. He was doing a different version of the song, so I'm not sure exactly how it fit together when we sang the same last verse, I tried to follow him, but we only had an hour or so to work on it a few hours before the show. In any case, the producers liked it, and I felt strong and confident in what it was, I totally had fun and let go of it being any more than we had time to do in the time we had.

The emcee totally dissed the song before we came on, saying he wondered why it was in the show at all and then found out backstage just before coming on that it had also been covered by someone famous/cool, so maybe he was ok with it now or somthing. It was weird. Especially since it was ON the list of possible songs to sing sent out by the producer, not just something I came up with! It was good to get feedback from people later about various things because it helped me see a little more objectively which parts were coming down to a matter of taste, and that maybe next time I can be a little more confident in my opinions, in saying, "That's nice, but this is the way *I* want this to happen", sort of a thing. If there is a next time. I'm soooo glad I did it, but not sure if that is the arena for me to pursue... We'll see. I felt really comfortable up there, natural. I wasn't nervous afterward. I did get good feedback from a bunch of people, even after the night, which I always consider to be the true test. If they see you later and say something, when you didn't even know if they were there or not, that means they didn't HAVE to say it so you know it's genuine.

I did my warm-up routine that afternoon before rehearsing, I think that is part of what helped. Also that the sound guy told me as we were prepping - "just get right up on the mic, don't be afraid!" somehow that snapped something in me (in a good way!) and I just went for it.

Also, surprise, surprise (not really!), turns out I was PMSing on Christmas Eve, so yeah, it was a crummy situation, but that helped me feel like I was not a true, terrible basket case/lost cause (just a temporary one) and that I might in fact be able to handle more of this kind of stuff than I thought - on good days at least. It seems unfair that the PMS so often turns up as me questioning my whole right to exist and be happy and follow my dreams. Rotten sabotager!!

Got to hang out with J while she did a few errands/appointments in IC yesterday. Nice to reconnect, nice to talk about art/acting/singing and fears and insecurities and hopes and see how much it's the same and also how much I've moved ahead by working through The Artist's Way. Also goes to show it doesn't really matter where you live as an artist. The same drama and headtrips, internal and external, happen in small towns and big cities alike.

The last couple weeks have also been just showing me how effective the tools I have are, IF I USE THEM. The journaling, the singing warm up. They work. It's all simple, useful, much less drama, I have them already! Not hard! The thing that's in my way is my head and more and more often I'm seeing that and just tired of it. So good. Progress. Sheesh.

I wrote a screenplay over the past couple of days and submitted it to a local contest. It's super short format, I may have even made it too long. Two pages over the "minute per page" rule, but it's hard to tell how long it would be when acted out. I hope it still qualifies. Hard to know. I have no idea if it's any good. Maybe it's stupid. But I freaking wrote a screenplay! Are you kidding me??? Who am I?

Part of me says I'm dinking around, distracting myself from songwriting, thinking that maybe screenwriting is easier only because I haven't done it before and don't know all the things I need to know, being too naive. Part of me says "You're a writer. There are many formats available for storytelling and for this story you chose a screenplay."

It's a simple little thing. Not much happens. I wonder if there's even enough time for all the action AND the dialogue to happen in the allotted time. But part of me is hoping that the simple is beautiful, that it's a little snapshot of "Oh, I recognize a little bit of me there, I don't feel so alone." Not world changing or funny or gimmicky, no twist at the end really. It might not be enough for the contest judges, but I feel good to have done it. I'm not attached.

I'll know by the middle of next month if anything comes of it with this contest, if not, maybe I'll post it somewhere. Dunno...

Anyway, been really terrible about sleep lately, gonna try to bump it up by a little tonight, maybe a half hour per night and get back in the swing of things. Silly holidays throwing everything all out of wack. Or me allowing that as an excuse at least... hrmph.

New Song! Winter Time

I gave myself an assignment last night, to write, record and post a seasonal song. At the last minute I added one more requirement, that I use my partial capo. It came out pretty fast, maybe 20-30 minutes. I'm still liking it a day later, so that's a good sign I think, and it's gotten a pretty good reception on Facebook. In a moment of inspiration while recording, I threw on my hat from Peru and my fingerless glove (thanks Nandi, a million times over! I've been using them a lot these days!), which got me a bit more in the mood because it only took a few tries after that. :)

I just used my built-in computer mic, lyrics are below.



WINTER TIME
Frost is creeping
Up my window
Trying to keep it from my heart
You are sleeping... See More
But I can't go
Frozen here before I start

It's winter time
winter time

Days of summer
Words unspoken
Echo through my lonely head
Barefoot pavement
Sunburn peeling
Layers of an angry red

but
It's winter time
winter time

I'm looking for the light
to get me through this night
put a candle in the window for me

It's winter time
winter time
winter time
~ Heather Miller-Rodriguez 12/9/09

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.

Scissors Object Writing

OK so I missed yesterday because I had my radio show. I still got up before 9 though. Maybe I'll do one on Saturday to make up for Tuesday.

Scissors
There is something SO satisfying about that shhhhick sound that a pair of heavy metal scissors makes when cutting through hair. The dozens of tiny points of resistance succumbing in succession to the sharp blade edge. I’d almost want to become a hair dresser just to feel that sensation over and over every day. But probably all my clients would end up with pixie cuts since I wouldn’t be able to stop with the scissors. Plus the tiny prickling cut hairs end up everywhere, itching inside your shirt collar, tickling in your waistband. I guess it’s worse for the person who is getting the hair cut, but I imagine being around it all day you’re bound to get some weird runaway hairs stuck to you somewhere. Then again there’s the yummy shampoo smells, and all the other fancy hair products. I always love having my hair washed at the salon. Relaxing back into the chair, the mini head massage and the squelching of wet hair in the sink. Then feeling a portion of stress washing away down the drain with the suds.

Object Writing

My goal for this week is to get up no later than 9 am and do Object Writing for 10 minutes, Monday - Friday. The idea is to pick an object and write about it, staying as sensebound as possible, for 10 minutes and 10 minutes only. Set a timer and STOP no matter what when it goes off. Since I seem to hold myself accountable to blog goals, I thought I'd post them here.


Chopstick

I slid the blonde wooden sticks out of the paper sleeve and cracked them apart. The sweet smell of ginger and coconut wafted up to my nose from the steaming bowl of noodles and my mouth started to water. I firmly held one chopstick under my thumb and the other like a pencil, like the little line drawings on the wrapper illustrated. According to the directions I should now be able to “pick up anything”. I dove into the bowl, attempting to spear a head of broccoli drenched in curry sauce. I lifted my hand but the triumph was short-lived as the tiny tree tumbled back onto the mountain of noodles. My waiting mouth remained open in surprise, how could the hand be so cruel? Undeterred, I aimed for a slice of zucchini, thinking maybe the flat shape would be easier grasp between the two tiny sticks. As I pinched them tighter, the green and white disc slid out and landed next to the broccoli. My mouth screwed shut in impatient frustration.

Short Story

One of the fun things about being in a writing class is - I'm writing more! LOL. We are supposed to write for timed period based off an object word that is revealed when the timer starts. Doing it in the morning "wakes up the writer for the day" and gets ideas flowing. (it's really true, and awesome, rather than thinking in Tweets and Facebook status updates, I'm thinking in stories, descriptions, verbs and lyrics!) Later on we are encouraged to pull images from the object writing into our lyrics. This morning I had 10 minutes to write about "Ice Cube" and this is what came out.

The ice cubes crackled and sang when they hit the water in the tall ocean-blue glass, and gently clinked on the way back to the table. The dewy sides quickly left a wet ring on the paper tablecloth. With a muttered thank you to the waiter she picked up the glass and pressed it to her sweating forehead. She didn't care when the water sloshed over the sides when she rolled the glass to the back of her neck. Who's idea of paradise was it where every day you had to fight against melting into a puddle on the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West?

They were all treating her like the Witch. They cowered and clammed up when she stalked out of the bedroom in the mornings. She didn't mean to get so snippy, but she had never done well in the heat, surely they knew that? It was probably better this way, that they leave her alone till a few days after the long plane ride home, and she'd had a chance to cool off, literally and figuratively.

A bead of sweat slid its way down her forehead and spiraled down an auburn curl into her eye. She smeared the unruly bangs away with the back of her hand. That was another thing she hated about the heat and humidity, the way her hair sprang out from her head in every direction. It didn't matter how long she spent yanking it through the straightener or how much goop she dumped on it, five minutes outside and the curls popped up like mushrooms. She had given up after the second day, no point in purposefully bringing more heat close to her head when it wasn't even working.

She glanced out across the beach, they were laughing and splashing through the shallow surf, running towards the bigger waves with boogie boards held high above their heads. Tan skin glistened up through the salt-water spray.

She turned her arm to examine the new batch of freckles that seemed to have cropped up in her walk from the car to the cafe. Another reason to stay here in the shade. Her only two options in the sun were burn or freckle. Jason teased her sometimes, that if she got enough new freckles maybe they would finally blend together into one big freckle of a tan. She only scowled at him, refusing to admit that she had secretly wondered the same thing as a child. Dammed Irish skin.

She stuck her finger in the glass and slid an ice cube up the side to pop into her mouth. A second one followed to trace a cooling path over her face, neck, collarbones, knees. She didn't care who was watching, and pushed out out of her mind the horrified look that surely would be on her mother's face had she fished ice cubes out of her drink at a restaurant back in Manhattan. She rebelliously cracked the ice cube in her mouth with her teeth. She was on vacation after all. Where you were supposed to relax and let loose. She paid for this and if all the joy she could get out of it was cracking an ice cube with her teeth her mother could suck it!

Fired Up and Freaked Out

Thought I was going to get to Cafe Paradiso too late today, but of course it happened exactly as it should have!

Hung out most of the morning online, T called and was super glad to catch up with her finally, one of the people on my list to call for a while now! Always good to catch up. Then I got dressed and went to Cafe P and ran into E and T who said that Ellis and Terri (oh, that's funny, they both have the same initials!) were coming over shortly and I could sit with them. J was there waiting for J (doh!) and got to catch up with him for a bit - he'd just had Thanksgiving with his fam in Disneyworld. Awesome. Then Terri and Ellis showed up and it was fun to just be part of the conversation with them.

I feel pretty at ease with them, I think they both do a good job of asking questions, they are genuinely interested in what you think about things or what your experiences are. It's not necessarily that I'd expect them to keep in touch with me all the time or something, but that in the times that I DO ever hang out with them, they are going to be really present and interested in that moment, which is pretty cool.

Sometimes when I hang out with the musicians who just performed I feel so much in awe that I'm kind of dumbstruck and just end up saying next to nothing. And when I think about it - from a skill level I normally would be dumbstruck by someone like Ellis, and I am a little, but it's so so much less than with most others. Nice.

Heard that Terri REALLY likes caramel, and Steve was trying to figure out how we could get some to her, but they were running low on theirs at the cafe. I dashed home before the workshop and got some I had from one time that I'd made a little extra. Unfortunately it had a few little crystalized bits, but it still tasted good, so I just told her that it wasn't at it's idea state but she could get the idea. Hope she likes it. :-S eeps. It really is tasty, and I made a bunch more tonight, but I didn't have any to give them before they left.

Workshop was really good. I thought I wasn't really ready for their stuff at Song School, and I'm not totally, but some of the stuff like goal setting is really useful for RIGHT NOW, so yay.

HL was at the workshop too and she was asking if I'd eaten yet and I said she was welcome to come to my house because I had all this food that I wasn't likely to cook unless it was for someone else. On our way out S was driving by, they had to go look at a keyboard for the band, so they did that and then came over, which was great because it gave me a chance to give the kitchen a once over. It had been super disaster from Thanksgiving, and I'd been hoping to have my brother and his GF over sometime this week to get my rear in gear, but now I'll just be able start from a good place already! It was also really good because I needed to make the caramel, so I was able to get everything cleaned up for that and get it going right after they left. Made a stir fry with my hacked ginger soy type sauce and rice noodles and we ate it all up. Felt good to feed some friends and get to talk and hang out and review some of what we'd learned in the workshop.

Actually played some songs tonight after they left, that felt good too. Had been hit by a big wave of loneliness and acute awareness that G was NOT home and VERY far away and had the thought that maybe playing some would make me feel better and it did! Yay! Now I just need to get more specific on some of those goals!

Well, look at that, I made it through NaBloPoMo! Something for every day. Honestly it was more like I wrote something very early, in the first hours of every day, but I back-dated most of them so it would be to the day I experienced before going to bed. But either way it turns out that I wrote something every single day. That feels really good. Feels like it sped by too! Not sure how much I'll keep it up for the next months. I have a new class starting in January for Lyric Writing and part of that will be writing something everyday for class, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have for blogging here. But I hope it'll be more frequent than lately (as in before November) because this had been very productive in terms of taking time to think things out FOR ME. So easy to get caught up in doing things for other people, or just going through life on auto pilot. It's good to stop and reflect more often.

ergh.

1. We're getting a Prius within the next couple of days if all goes according to plan.

2. G bribed me with pizza to iron his shirts and pants for his trip to Dubai. He knows me well.

3. I have an interview at 9am with Ellis and Terri on kruufm.com.

4. Spending time prepping/dealing with 1-3 meant less time online tonight, means you're getting this list of 4 things for a NaBloPoMo entry.

So there. :D

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.

What the hey...

I noticed that NaBloPoMo has rolled around again. That'd be National Blog Posting Month, where you're supposed to post something every single day in November. Well, I already missed yesterday, but I thought I might give it a whirl this year and see how far I make it through the month.

It's been a long time since I really wrote a post on this blog, at least the kind I remember writing when I started, but that's not to say I haven't been thinking up posts in my head. That's a problem I think I have with a lot of areas of life, actually taking the time to translate things out of my head and into reality. I get frustrated with how long it takes, and how it's often not as cool as when it was in my head.

But there's another thing I've been realizing/remembering a lot lately too, kind of headsmackingly obvious but it's come into focus for me lately - if you want to get good at something, you have to do it. Practice. A lot. I forget because I have certain skills that I take for granted. "I can type pretty fast! I can remember where all the letters and numbers are on the keyboard without looking! How come I can't play guitar?" But I remembered recently that when I was learning to type, it took me a while. And my parents got me a game - Mario Teaches Typing. The game made it fun but I had to play it a lot to get good.

Oh my sheesh, I LOVE YouTube! Here's a short video of the gameplay. But was the sound really that annoying? ergh. You'll get the idea without sound if you turn your speakers off:


Same thing goes for writing songs. "I wrote tons of songs in just 6 months of college! How come I only get a couple a year now?" Uh, maybe because it was my assignment in music class to write a melody EVERY DAY. And if I did a chorus melody one day and a verse melody the next day, the rest of the song is bound to come out pretty quickly. duh. And even if they're not all good, when you're writing at that volume, there's bound to be some keepers.

So I think that's part of my reason for wanting to try this NaBloPoMo thing out - just to write something every day, with a definite end in site so it doesn't seem too daunting - with the hopes that by writing frequently on the blog, I'll get those writing juices flowing in general. My other goal being to try and keep the posts at short, easily digestible sizes, for the sanity of both me and any of my possible readers. I know there are a couple of you out there! We'll see how it goes though, the temptation is to try and update this with everything that goes on, and just write till my head is empty, but that doesn't seem very practical.

Phew!

Went to the Ali Sperry & Betsy Huebner concert tonight, thanks to selling one box of tea and taking on a bracelet repair that my brother refused at the Farmer's Market. I even have $2 left! Wheee. Tuesday can't come fast enough, my goodness. Not that I'll have MUCH left afterwards, seeing as I still need to pay off my plane ticket from the big trip, but luckily there is a special offer going on one of our credit cards that we never use of 0 percent on balance transfers for 6 months, so I shifted my excess over to that, which should help me pay it off faster.

The concert was really sweet and inspiring, though I couldn't help but notice that a large percentage of Betsy's songs involved drugs or dissed boys in some way, or were a bit heavy/depressing, while Ali's songs for the most part were happier, or love songs, and to top off that impression for me, Betsy was wearing black and a silver chain belt, while Ali was wearing white with yellow leg warmers and a sparkley headband. Don't get me wrong, they were both AWESOME, it was just something I noticed. :) Ali did another gorgeous original that she wrote for her boy. I told her I can't wait till she does a concert that's a flip of the ones she does now, where she'll do all originals and then one kick-ass cover. Her original stuff is so powerful, it has that little extra edge of connectedness that sets it just over the cover stuff she does so well.

She told me that *I* needed to do a show myself, which really is true. And I was glad that I was inspired by them to do a concert, rather than intimidated - which sometimes happens at these things. and I was a little worried about that happening because I had a meltdown day today. (Which I'm blaming on the full moon because it's not the right time in my cycle, and I do have werewolf tendencies where I turn into a raving monster for no apparent reason other than the moon. God bless G for sticking with me through it, even if he doesn't understand it at all. (heart)) I almost considered not going because I was feeling so raw, but I'm really, really glad I did.

I feel like there might be some new songs coming, what with the poetry class getting me writing artistically on a more regular basis. I was also having thoughts about asking Ali & David to perform with me! I don't know what their story is for stuff like that, I'm sure David doesn't work for free... I also don't know what the set up for the Cafe is anymore, I'm sure they need a cut. If I didn't actually need the $ myself I'd also think of donating it to KRUU.FM, but maybe there could be some sort of a split, OR "pass a hat" around midway like they did at the Adrien concert...

On On Writing

(Found myself with a rather long response to this post of Patrick's, and decided to post it here too...)

Yeah, it's been bizzare to be the copywriter/on demand at work. And that's just little blurbages, and the occasional few paragraphs, and even more rarely, like some little one page essay. And even then, it's just variations of the same thing, but trying to be fresh and new and creative about it. So then when it's like, something real and worth while or such all that multiplies... whoa. but I do just try to keep writing, little things at least, whereever I can, just to keep those juices going, to be in the writing state of mind, and I think that does help it flow better, when the time comes. although if I find myself "stuck" for too long, I do turn to other people to get it flowing, because you have to get it in on time... whoa. didn't know I had that much to say about it!