The Super Quick Catch Up...

Partially from an email to a friend

My trip to Colombia was so great, it was wonderful seeing my in-laws and playing with my nephews, being in warm climates (even a Caribbean island for a couple days!) and getting out of my routine in general. I have some pictures up here if you are interested, but no pressure! http://www.flickr.com/photos/hum97/

Coming home to freezing cold temperatures, and diving back into work was too much of a shock I think, and I got sick for quite a while. Being sick put me behind for Christmas, and between that and being behind already from the two week trip, things seem to have just piled up in a big way to the point I take a look at it, freak out and retreat to my silly little video games on my iPod. Add the continuing super cold temperatures, grey, nasty weather with at least a few more months of the same ahead, extra shifts at the cafe to cover for someone out of the country and having paperwork trouble getting back in and yeah, I think I'm in a bit of a depression. sigh. So, fingers crossed this guy I've been covering for at the cafe will get back to the country tomorrow, I think not having to do double shifts over the weekend will help a lot.

I am plugging along though, I started taking some guitar lessons that I very much like, and I've started seeing a Chinese herbalist/accupressurist who is helping me get more healthy. I have a potential plan to do some recording with a local friend that is really exciting. There is a local dance company going to put on a show in March with music by local musicians and one of the dancers may use one of my songs that I'd record with the friend. I'm sure I'll post/tweet about that as it happens, so hopefully it will work out.

****

My word that came to me for this year is Action. I think it's a good one. More about choosing and doing. Creating what I want in my life. Going for it. It has been hard these cold weeks to get moving, but it HAS helped me at least a few times when I've been feeling inertia. Now for that to start happening more often!

bruised

So apparently the directors thought my song sounded "too thin" and want to add people to it. There's a girl who plays banjo back in town for the holidays who is going to see if she thinks she can do it and call me in the morning to figure out more stuff. I'm mad at the timing. Why did they let it go this long before "auditioning" me? Now it's 2.5 days before the show, and one of those days is Christmas and half of the other day I'll be working.

I won't deny that I am pretty heartbroken. I've been working hard for a while now on this one song and while I have had bouts of nervousness, I had gotten to a point that I felt good about it. Not fancy, brassy or loud, but sweet and heartfelt and honestly delivered. I wanted to be good enough the way I am, loved and appreciated for my uniqueness. I mean, the song was sung by a frog puppet fer crying out loud, it's not like his voice was all that full. He did have a string section backing him up, but where would I find something like that on short notice?

Tempting as it is to completely hand off the song to someone else, crawl into a hole and die, I'll keep trying till Saturday to work something out so they like it by adding more voices and stuff. If this is really what I want to do, I need to start putting myself out there and actually doing it. I guess if nothing else I'll find out faster if it's going to work or not and if not, the faster I can move on to something else.

This is where that line gets weird and blurry of "Be your creative self" that the books and teachers say who are trying to encourage artists. It's one thing to be yourself by yourself, it's quite another to have other people pay attention while you are being creative, and yet another thing to be in a situation where you don't get to call the shots, where someone else is in control and has the last word.

But part of being an artist IS sharing the things you do.

Am I too soft for this? Am I not good enough? Not ready? Delusional? Because eff - if I am embarrassing myself, don't play nice with me, don't mess with my head. That's not doing me any favors.

I'm exhausted. Two super late nights in a row trying to do cookies and stuff, and now I'm not even sure if I have it in me to finish off the effort to plate everything up. G likes the gingersnaps, he'd eat them all eventually...

Happy

It's been happening to me more and more these days.  I'll be in the middle of whatever crazy thing I may be doing, and I'll stop, and smile inside and say to myself, "I'm happy."

I don't know what it is exactly.  Maybe my stars have changed.  Maybe I'm doing more things that feel "productive" and that makes me feel better about myself in general.  Maybe it's spring and the green and the birds and the blossom scented air.  Maybe I've been a tad more physically active.  Maybe some of those Peruvian healing rites are working.  Maybe keeping the goals blog is helping, even if I don't manage to get all of them done, it's more than I would have done without them.

I still feel a bit like I'm on a roller coaster.  Can't see around all the bends and I know there will be some more ups and downs.  I wish a few more things were solid so I didn't have to wonder, and there are still plenty of "shoulds" that frustrate me, plenty of inertia I'm battling.  I still get cranky and tired and keep myself up too late and don't eat enough of the right things.  But so many of the things I'm doing feel good, feel natural and right.  Even when I'd expect them to make me feel nervous, frazzled or stressed, they don't.  

I'm happy.

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creative Genius

OK, so enough people have been recommending this that I finally watched it, and I was really inspired by it! If you haven't seen it yet, here is the author of Eat, Pray, Love talking about creativity and how to help manage the fears you may have as a creative person:

Huh

It's funny, you know, posting things to the web. Sometimes you work really hard on things, put a lot of time and attention on them and want to share them with the world, you post them up and no one comes. No one responds. It's like shouting your head off to an empty room.

And then other times, you just do something random and innocent and they flock to it.

I have a video on YouTube, just a minute and a half, of some streets we drove through on the way back from class in Barranquilla. I actually made it because a video I'd posted previous to it was showing some of the really poor areas of the city and I didn't want people watching my channel to freak out that I was down there in such craziness, where there's a full range and high contrast between the wealthy and poor areas of the city. But somehow some site about B'quilla used my video on their front page, and now I have 26,469 views and 84 text comments, most of them fighting about whether the town is any good or not.

Or some of my most viewed pix on flickr are of the Vintage Power Wagons I took sort of on a whim during the rally on the square a couple years ago. I was inspired by the pretty shininess mostly. And big trucks driving up on the wheels of other big trucks is pretty cool too. :)

The thing is, neither of those popular "social objects" (as they call stuff that goes "viral" (relatively speaking, in my case) like that) is part of a genre or theme I'd want to maximize on. They were total one time flukes. Someone subscribing to my content streams expecting to get more of the same would be sorely disappointed.

So then my question is - is my content that I consciously create in hopes of getting a response just not good enough, or have I just not found my audience yet? Or does the world just like big trucks more than music?

Grah!!

So what's my deal? SO MUCH I want and need to do, and I spend all my time at home either sleeping or online reading blogs and "social networking". It's one of those things that's really hard for me to figure out how to balance, and until recently I haven't really even had any desire to. It's kind of hard because I can't just turn it off altogether - there ARE important and valid connections I'm making and/or maintaining and valuable things that I'm learning.

But how do I know which are the important things? There's ALWAYS more to read/see/do online and sometimes I find myself doing the STUPIDEST things - like re-arranging my freaking plants on my Facebook Green Patch. SERIOUSLY! WHO THE FREAK CARES?! But when you have infinite choice, that's exactly what you have to do, CHOOSE. I think sometimes I do the dumb things like organizing plants because it's mindless, yet it feels like some tiny corner of my world I can have control over. Like somehow I can think better or feel like master of my universe if my plants are arranged more or less in rainbow order. Because there's so much I can't control, so much chaos. hrmph.

Really been thinking more about some of the conversation Trick and I seem to have going the past few days (see his comments on previous posts). It's kind of amazing, pretty much all stuff I know in theory, stuff I've heard before and understood, but it all flies out the window when it comes to me and my own art - why is that?

The editor - the evil editor. I know, I know she needs to go sit in the back room while I'm CREATING and can come back AFTER there's even something to critique. I've gotten way, way better at managing her, but she still manages to poke her head in at the most inopportune moments.

I sat in on a brilliant session at Song School where Steve Seskin and Susan Werner starting co-writing a song on the fly in front of a bunch of us. Susan went a little bonkers, bouncing around, chewing A LOT of gum, pacing, lying down (I think?). Anyway, someone asked her afterwards what was up with the gum (It was like a whole big pack) and she explained that she was doing everything she could to distract the editor and just BE in the moment. I thought it was brilliant. Both that she was brave enough to show us what it took for her to get the best place for writing, and that she'd figured it out for herself, her bag of tricks.

The problem for me I think, is I don't just have an editor for writing, it's for most of life! How exhausting is that? Very. Very. I think I may have actually done pretty well lately when I actually get down to the real writing at letting the creativity flow. But getting to the point where I allow myself to do it, allow myself to write, well the critic always has a whole bunch of things I should do first - clean the kitchen, make the bed, fold the laundry, write to potential interviewees, blog on the music blog, clear out old files on my computer and back it up, file papers, purge the closets and take stuff to Lucky Day, cook food, organize drawers, detail the car, vacuum the birdseed off the floor, DUST (omg do I ever need to dust), exercise, practice, do homework, etc, etc. All these things I SHOULD do first, and yet I don't do ANY of them, I just mess around online.

It's easier. It feels productive somehow. It seems like any one thing I want to do is just going to take a couple of seconds. But add up all the sites, checking messages, reading posts, leaving comments, and all of a sudden it's 11:30 at night and I'm too tired to think and give the proper attention and energy to the important things. It doesn't take a lot of brain power to check Twitter posts. But if I don't keep up on them, it takes a long time to catch up. (and there I just went and spent 20 minutes checking all those sites again. damn)

But the thing I've been thinking about is that I need to get my head on straight with the music. Back to the joy of just doing it. Because what's the point if I'm just as miserable forcing it, piling expectations and demands on it? That's no different than the office jobs I'd be trying to escape! I have a pretty good set up right now of part-time, and in an office environment that rocks, working with and on the business side of music. And I have so many ideas for when we have more users about how to make it a fun and useful community.

I have ideas for the musicians I'm helping out too. It's just hard to know when to put the ideas out there. I don't want to step on any toes or tell someone how to live their life or do their thing. Or like some of the ideas I've put out and they've been well received as ideas, but how to actually get them into reality?

And then, and then, what about me?

A Modern-Day DaVinci Genius?

Wowzers!

Funny That...

So B is moving. I know it's just an hour, but that does make a huge difference. Sigh. It'll be good for her though.

Anyway, S and I were helping her pack up last night, and we scored a few cool things she didn't want any more, including crafty stuff. We were commenting how we all had somewhat neatnik guys, and we were all "creative organizers" (aka, a bit of a mess/packrat when it comes to stuff.) and also had different perceptions between the boys and the girls of the importance of timing cleaning stuff. and wondering how that had managed to happen for all of us...

Poor boys. We must have other good qualities. :)

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...

wow

today I was soooo tired and miserable. ugh. and staying up right now to do this won't help anything tomorrow really. But yuck.

Good thing - both the AQ and the YG are at the printers. No more to do about them, onscreen anyway. Now I have to enter all the addresses for mailing, because that is the whole point of printing so many extra, to mail them out... I have learned a lot I didn't know, and it was cool to see the blueline of the AQ printed out all big and stuff! weeeee! I only ever saw it tiny on my screen, or really tiny printed out...

Got my oil changed, free car wash, and vacuumed out my car too! Dropped of Wally's cards at the At Home store, and we'll see what Rosie says. Maybe she will take a few, and I could get The Antique Flower Garden to take some too... I think that would be 2 good places to sell them... Sorta different clientel prolly. Yeah. Hope that works out.

Cried a lot at work today. Dad came in to tell me something and asked what was the matter... Saw a documentary of Joni Mitchell last night, which make me all sad about not doing my music. She talked about one of her grandmothers who kicked a door off the hinges because she was so creatively frustrated, and how her other grandmother was too, and she felt like maybe she was the one to break the cycle... G was talking tonight about how I should get out of here. But I don't know where/when/why/how... If I had a really good reason or thing to do, well then, maybe, but it would be so hard to be away from him, and besides, I don't know what I'd do really... The blessed boy doesn't know what it is to be miserable. Says he has tried but can't do it. Just to see what it is that other people go through. Amazing. Enjoy that. Be blessed!
I also told my dad we were thinking of June '05, & he said that he loved G, and approved, but was that what I wanted? Was G committed to it? cue Heather thinking about ring again. I get in such a tizzy over it, because I know it's too much to ask for financially at this point, but I really want some symbol/declaration of commitment, something to hold on to so I know it's for serious. What if I mess up? What if he changes his mind? Where would I be/what would I do without him??? I mean, heaven forbid, and I don't think it's gonna happen, but sometimes it's good to check in with worst case scenario... I was having the same "what do I do with myself and my creativity is being suffocated to pay the bills" situation in Boulder too, and I was really lonely. He's so comfortable and fun to be with. I was in such a powerful space when we first met. Even despite the heartbreak, I was ok with just feeling it, knowing it would pass eventually. And like I said, even if I wasn't everything I wanted to be, I had the energy to go after it, make it happen... Where'd it go? I've gained nearly all the weight back again - to me a sign of how miserable I must be. But I just ignore it and dull out the pain with food. My dad is suggesting going to the Raj. G doesn't think I'll be able to follow through with the recommendations so why spend the money... I'm so lost. Seems like every time with this weight stuff I try a new tactic, instead of sticking to one thing and making it work... but whatever, god I hate myself right now. Nothing fits. Getting dressed isn't fun. It's whatever I can find on my floor or bed that doesn't smell. I feel so fucking worthless. And it's not just the weight. The weight is a physical expression of something bigger and deeper.

No improv for a couple of weeks... :P Spring Break, so for sure no one will show up. We really, really need to do a show... and/or get some more people involved....

I downloaded me some songs from Wal-Mart.com. yay. legal new music without buying a whole album... Don't shoot me, they're cheap there - 88 cents! I've decided this should be my new treat, instead of candy or cookies, for the same price I might spend on something sweet, I can have a song, and it lasts much longer!