Here I Sit, No More!

Good lord... what a non-week.

I missed a post on Wednesday, not sure how that happened. Anyway, I pretty much have nothing to write. I feel like I should write. I need to write.

I should be at some stranger's house right now, but I ended up staying home from Regionals. The reasons for not going started mounting so I didn't go. Wednesday I completely lost my voice, I mean it dug a tunnel beneath the walls with a spoon and wasn't heard from again until yesterday evening. That was combined with an overall feeling of illness. Lesser reasons for staying home included not knowing the music, not really liking the director we were going to have, simply not wanting to go through the housing ordeal and spend so much time rehearsing again, and having to miss my guitar lesson as well as show up late to work on Saturday. So today and yesterday I simply slept in and goofed off. I'm not really feeling sick anymore, but I was going to be out of school today anyway and honestly... I just couldn't see the point in going in.

But this week has been overall pretty lame. I mean like I said, Sunday was amazing, but other than that, I made no new revelations, learned nothing, and spent most of my time doing diddly. Everyone has weeks like that, I think.

Tomorrow is guitar lesson and work. Sunday I meet with Khai.

The guitar is coming along, sort of. I haven't made as much progress as I wanted to this week. I can play three, maybe four chords automatically, the problem is it still takes me too long to find them, so I can't really play in time. The movements still feel awkward and unsure. Maybe this is all to be expected in your first week of playing, but I wanted to have the chords and changing between them down cold by tomorrow. I imagine the space between the progress I feel I should be making and the progress I actually am making is going to grow wider and wider as time goes on, probably because I simply expect too much out of myself, and also I have no standard to judge myself against. Is the rate I'm learning at normal?

My only real advantage in learning the guitar is the same with any instrument I might try to learn, which is that I have a pretty good idea of music, arranging, register, range, rhythm and sight-reading going in. I can focus solely on technique and getting the movements down, since basic musicianship is already innate. For instance, given the starting notes each string plays when open, I can pretty much figure out the fingering to any chord on my own. With just a little guitar theory and technique it won't be long until I'm making my own arrangements of songs (and my own songs, which I already do of course). The problem is always you don't know what you don't know, and I may be looking at a much steeper mountain to climb than I realize.

This next lesson will be very important. It's going to tell me a lot about myself as a guitar student and my teacher as a guitar teacher. Here's the progress I've made, now what's next? What can I do to help me improve beyond this point? I want to leave each week with a clear idea of how far I've come and what I'm supposed to be practicing. I have who knows how much to learn and only six months to learn it, I don't want there to be a single stagnant week where nothing is really accomplished.

I feel really stupid for not having started this whole process two years ago. It's not like I'd never wanted to learn the guitar until now. It's just now that I'm feeling motivated enough to do it.

Anyways, it's quite thankfully almost the last week in February, which means only March, then April, then May, and I'm out! of! here! Isn't it funny how regular and unchanging the passage of time is, yet certain periods of our life seem to stretch and shrink depending on how we spend them? The best times always pass the quickest, the worst stretch on for eternity. Not always, sometimes our best or most vivid memories make certain months seem a lot longer than others. But time is a very steady rhythm, a steady snare drum beat marching us towards our final destination. But the more time you spend thinking about that, the less time on earth you ultimately have for all the better, happier things.

I wanted to write about how all this week I felt like a big, unmoving blob in this chair, futilely picking away at those same damn chords every day, not going anywhere any which way. How I want to spend my time more wisely, spend less time doing nothing, make more music, feel less blah inside. This skipping of Regionals feels like a culmination of all of that. But I'm not going to write about it, I'm not going to dwell on it, because the more time I allot it, the longer it will take to move past it. This next week is going to bring new challenges and new opportunities and new songs, I'm going to grab them, hang on and not let go until I'm somewhere else besides right here.

So there.

I love Rachel. Oh, how I wish she were here. I can't be the only one who feels like he was born to be alone.

_Dr. M

Progress?

Well, the progress I was making Monday feels a little stunted now. I did finally learn today that I won't be able to stay at Jeff's house this weekend, so I'll only be seeing Rachel on Sunday. But I still haven't heard back from the guitar teacher, and I've made barely any progress in Logic. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, there's only so much I can do in the three hours between school and school show. I want to do more, but hey, I'm stuck being me. I'll have to make the best of it.

I wasn't looking forward to this weekend as much since I didn't know what I would be doing. But now that I know, and really it's not so bad that I won't be staying Monday since Rachel has class and I wouldn't have gotten to see her much anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing her Sunday. Then I have all Monday to get caught up with my album, since we don't have school.

Today and yesterday felt like straight-up spring, sprinkles of rain and everything. It was very nice, extremely nice, but it also made me really horny, which is weird. I kind of feel like a woman when I say that... men aren't usually turned on by environmental factors like that. At least I'm not.

Anyway, today I spent my one day off from school show at work, which was unexpected but nice seeing as it's MORE MONEYZZ HA HA. Never a bad thing.

So now! I need to hear back from the guitar teacher, I need to start my album, I need to get a bank account. That's about all I think. I wrote a song yesterday, and as usual I started wanting to write one thing, ended up writing something completely different, and still had something pretty good to work with. I'm trying to write a song for somebody to sing at the senior recital (which is just what it sounds like) which happens later this year. We'll see how that goes.

This week is PSSA testing, standardized shenanigans all PA schools have to put up with, but it's for eleventh grade only. I put in my time last year, so now all this week I get to sleep in an extra two hours. No English or photography for almost a whole week. Pretty good deal.

I know mostly I'm just blogging about what I'm doing every day, not so much my feelings or thoughts or anything. January I was in kind of a funk, and now I'm just chugging along, waiting for things to end, and for things to begin. It's not such a bad state to be in, really.

Westchester finally contacted me about auditioning for them. I don't want to.

I don't.

I probably will anyway. Seems to be the standard operating procedure in life.

_Dr. M

Ah, progress!

Things seem to have clicked into motion this week, finally. Yesterday (Sunday) I finally started to read the starter's guide to Logic. Most of it I could have figured out on my own... I'm thinking I'll skim through the rest of it. Gotta start that album! Then today I called Jeff about staying at his apartment in Philly next weekend for when I visit Rachel (hopefully he'll get back to me soon). Then I called the guitar teacher at the community school about lessons. I got the answering machine, but then his wife called back and said she'd give him the message when he gets back from wherever he is (tomorrow, hopefully). So I've been more productive than usual. I still need to finish the paper work to get a new social security card, without which I can't get my PA ID, without which I can't get my own bank account, which needs to happen soon. After that I'll be caught up on almost everything I have to do.

Have you ever noticed that, that at any point in our life, there is a running list of things we need to do? Here's mine:

1. Guitar lessons
2. New album
3. History homework
4. SSC/bank account
5. Regional music
6. Twilight March songwriting

I think that's everything. There's probably something I'm forgetting.

I need to do a little history homework tonight. Ug. It's so simple, so easy, yet I hate it so much. Why?

This blog must be pretty boring for anybody who's not me. Maybe it's randomly interesting to follow somebody else's life in such great detail. Then again maybe not. Who knows? I've never tried it. I'd like to though. Maybe I'll try and find another blog as active as mine.

OH GOD! I LOST POETRY OUT LOUD! I still wake up screaming this sometimes. That's not going anywhere for awhile.

Can I think of anything random left to right? Yes? No? Anything? Maybe?

No.

_Dr. M