Time, Priorities, and a Side of Aloha

I once thought about how amusing it would be to make up some kind of board game based on what it takes to “succeed” in my life…but I quickly realized the rule book would be thicker than the local Yellow Pages. So many areas to “score points” in…so many pitfalls that could set you back…

These days I find myself busy pretty much constantly. I am in one of those periods where I end up not doing some very minor stuff because I didn’t feel I had the two minutes it would take to dig up a pen and my planner while I was flying between activities and it crossed my mind. I’m doing chair massage at New Leaf in Capitola, my private practice of Swedish/integrated massage, a lot of practice in lomilomi - 2-3 practice sessions a week now…I’m in hula class, planning to start a Hawaiian language course online at the end of April…my involvement with the Santa Cruz Indian Council continues…I haven’t been playing guitar much…I want to do an open mike soon but just haven’t gotten my act together lately, literally…and then of course there are those things we all need to do…taking out the trash, cleaning the house, doing the shopping…and that’s before interpersonal relationships come in, in all their varied and delightful forms.

Last night it occurred to me that it would be great to learn ipu, the Hawaiian gourd-drum. Suddenly - but with humor and quite gently - I put my foot down. I basically told myself, “you know, you don’t have to learn to do everything in the world yourself. That’s why there are other people out there. Let somebody else play ipu. You can hula to it. After all, you can’t really do both at once. Trust somebody else to hold up their corner of the world, okay?” I started questioning after that if I’ve been trying to do stuff that could actually be safely left to other people…or nobody at all. I’ve often wished I could hire an assistant…well what if the world already is my assistant sometimes and I just haven’t noticed? What if I let somebody else do something and I just focused in on the things I most wanted or needed to do myself that much more?

Doing my best…

This is definitely a time of initiation for me. I felt it coming on a couple of weeks ago but I ended up smack-dab in the middle of it very swiftly. There have been minor meltdowns, things to make peace with, things to do to symbolically release what doesn’t serve and call forth what does. Yesterday in particular was a time for that; I received a lomilomi session from Aravinda, aka Gregory Hyman of Santa Barbara, CA - a FABULOUS healer, and the one who first guided my heart to pursuing this work myself. I followed that with a trip to the beach to play at the waterside, and had hula class in the evening, which was wonderful.

I’m feeling called to really step forward and take it to the next level these days. Old dysfunction in several areas has got to go, Go, GO. There are people to talk to, languages and music to learn, spiritual commitments to renew and follow through with, and about a million things to do for my healing practice…it’s exciting…and yet there are only 24 hours in a day and I need about 7 of them to sleep…and yet I’m starting to get the sneaking suspicion that it just might be enough…and I might just be enough.

The Waiting Place

I remember a line in a Dr. Seuss book -called Oh, the Places You’ll Go - about “the waiting place.”

The Waiting Place… for people who are just waiting.   Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go, or the phone to ring, ot the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow.  Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for the wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.  Everyone is just waiting.

While I most certainly am not so suspended as the people caricatured in this passage, I am indeed waiting for something.

Waiting for a brand new chair

Waiting to learn to braid my hair

To learn to remove my captive bead ring

(Although it’s among my favorite things)

Waiting for a call from her

To help pry my brain from a dysfunctional stir

For Saturday to come and pass

So I can get on with my life at last

Waiting for someone to step my way

To look at my chair massage sign and say,

“Not only can I use a chair massage here,

But I haven’t had bodywork at all for a year…

Do you think I could get an appointment one day?

Sometime in between my hard work and my play?

Life’s tough on the body, for a jock or a geek…

Come to think of it, I’d like to visit each week.”

But right now I’m just waiting.

I’m reasonably sure nobody wants to hear the details, but suffice it to say that as busy as I constantly am, on another level I feel I’m always waiting for something to shift, waiting for some opportunity…I’m getting bored with it, to tell the truth.  I wonder what the alternatives might be.

Recovering and relaxing

I seem to have approximately four modes of activity.

• flying around like a paper kite/running around like a chicken with its head cut off/shooting around as if I’m on fire
• soldiering on - meaning I’m still doing a very credible job getting things done but I’m a little less fiery
• dragging/hitting the wall
• dead halt

Now, this poses an interesting question: where, if anywhere, does relaxing fit in? I’m always either doing things with a great deal of effort and determination or basically crashing.

Well, now that this cold is close to releasing its grip on me and I wisely chose not to schedule any business activities for what has turned out to be a deliciously lazy, sunny Saturday, a funny thing happened. I woke up and just refused to panic.

Yeah, there’s a lot to do. Yeah, every day is extremely valuable. But my gosh, it feels SO good to just wake up, journal, hug the cat, put on some Beatles music, paint my nails, window shop online…and generally just enjoy a little of my time without making any kind of a big push toward anything for a while.

I’m imagining people reading this…it’s my experience that most people are either practically experts at relaxation, or they haven’t relaxed and years and seem to think it’s impossible or sometimes just plain silly to try. To the former, I say, hats off to you! I like this artform, and in some respects I dare say it’s more challenging than any instrument I ever played. To the latter, I say…try it - you’ll like it! (And yes, that includes me the next time I’m so deep in my frenzied mode that I can’t imagine putting down the busyness long enough to say “ahhhhhh…”)

I’m still alive

This is basically just me popping in for the sake of popping in, and letting anyone who may be following this blog know that it has not been abandoned.

I finally finished acting as “producer” for the RPM Challenge project I mentioned.  I noticed a post a few days ago with someone asking what participants planned to do when they finished their albums.  Some people were planning on going out to eat, others were simply planning on sleeping or cleaning house for the first time in a few weeks.  I found it strange that I wasn’t coming up with any plans of my own, but apparently my body came up with one for me - I’m somewhat sick.

Normally that would depress me, especially since it’s the fourth time in five months, which is unheard of for me, but I took this as a very clear signal that I am exhausted and in need of some renewal.  I have been sensing a period of initiation or great change coming on for a while now, and it seems that becoming slightly ill is giving me the space to actually go into that process.  It’s amazing what happens sometimes if you have a few quiet hours alone.  I’m not feeling called to go into detail, but suffice it to say that good, if challenging, things are on the horizon.

Thanks a lot, buster!

I’ve been fairly careful, at least in those cases where I have a choice, to surround myself with supportive people, or at least people who don’t tear everyone in their path down at every opportunity. Well, I guess I need a Version 2.0 of my social firewall because I’ve had experiences lately that suggested security needs to be tightened a tad.

I won’t waste my time or yours going into the gory details, but suffice it to say that in the course of only a few days, I had a friend, a family member, and a friend of a family member attack various aspects of my creative activities. Again, I’ve done all I reasonably can to keep such things from ever happening in the first place, so I guess I need to be prepared for not-so-friendly fire from presumably friendly people at this point. Kind of a sad commentary, but it’s true.

So, first, a friend attacking my embryonic attempts to reapproach an instrument I’m picking up for the first time in about a decade was painful and very hard to work though…but in all the time I have known him he has never attacked me. As someone else said who I confided in, the truth is that if he isn’t even in such a state that he can or will take reasonable precautions to treat me decently, he is most certainly a bit off the rails at the moment and probably can’t judge anything aesthetically anyway.

The family member in question simply has no context for what she’s critiquing.  Yes, the song that plays on my website begins with the line “It’s almost February now,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean the site is outdated…it might just mean that my most popular song begins with the line “It’s almost February now,” and that even when I sing those words in June people still go nuts.

As for the friend of a family member…well, sometimes you look at a friend of a friend and just don’t know what to say, and this is one of those cases.  ‘Nough said.

It’s a pity when you have to be resilient against attacks from your own inner circle (and their “friends” for that matter), but being able to defend your spirit from this sort of thing really is needed.

Getting Cranky

If you know a Christian, a musician, a former psych student, an educator, or a massage therapist, (all of which I am or have been at one time) you likely know that they all share the same lovely quality: an unflappable calm that just flows through the room like filtered sunlight to the forest floor…

Unless, of course, we get triggered. Today has done just that for me. I got up early to do some exceedingly important things, only to find that due primarily to mechanical and/or organizational problems that I definitely did not create, none of them were possible…and I’ve ended up looking like an idiot because of it. So far today I’ve logged somewhere around six hours’ effort and and 35 miles of driving and absolutely no good has come of it that I can see. Also, if any of the problems were resolved I would feel better but they’re all still up in the air. If it keeps up this way, I’m still going to be working around most of my circumstances tomorrow.

I’m finally at a point where I could pick up and go somewhere else and try to get something or other done…maybe work on my recording project for RPM Challenge if nothing else…but I am so irritated and soul-weary from the whole thing that I really feel like I should be allowed to sleep through at least the next two days. I don’t feel like I have the energy or focus to have fun anymore today!

Couple that with the fact that today nearly everyone I know is out of town or otherwise occupied, and I’m left without much in the way of company for a pleasant distraction. I think perhaps what I’ll do is go home and listen to music…I’ve been very happy lately to find that I can listen and really focus and dive into a piece to a greater degree than I was for a long time. Maybe that will keep me from being such a cranky-pants.

Like Hitting the Wall, but Without the “Oof!”

Well, earlier this week it occurred to me that I was at one of those points where not a dingdong thing was going to happen unless I pushed with all my might.  And so I did.  I started a new round of making calls on Wednesday to clear the next big hurdle vocationally…I started rehearsing like mad for the open mike…I started putting more weights on my dumbbells for my next training increase…and before I knew it I was talking to folks about gaining steady employment left and right and heading for the stage, and bench pressing more than ever before, as well as staying up late nights working on the RPM Challenge project.

All this took a ridiculous amount of time and energy, gave me even more mental and emotional stimulation than I was getting before, and totally derailed what semblance of sleep habits I had, which was scant to begin with.  Two consecutive nights of about five and a half hours sleep per 24 hours took what would’ve been a challenging few days and made them almost impossible…almost.  But I squeezed in a half-hour power nap yesterday afternoon, got into some comfortable clothes, and headed downtown for the last big energetic push of the week, the open stage.  I made it…and I dare say it went very well indeed.

After church this morning I did quite a bit of errand-running and cleaning; once I’m out of the house and doing things I consider productive I tend to want to stay out a while and I used that to my advantage.  But ever since I came home I’ve been just sitting, more or less.  I think this is what most people call resting.  I haven’t quite hit the wall exactly, but the stillness seems quite compulsory.

The stage of the RPM Challenge project I’m in feels like bumming around and playing games with myself so I might be able to do some more of that tonight.  Outside of that, I’m glad I wrote myself a brief to-do list for the day, because not much is happening anyway!

Quality Problems

I guess if the worst thing you can say about your life is that there is too much purposeful, productive, and outright entertaining stuff to do than you can possibly manage, you might be doing okay after all.  Actually that’s not the worst thing I could say about my life, but it’s the worst thing I’m going to say, at least for the time being.

I’m gradually getting more into the meat of my project for RPM Challenge.  This is requiring not only writing and rehearsal, but trying to the best of my ability to learn how to use ProTools and also finding some royalty-free sound files to use, which is a first for me.

I’m also planning on appearing at The Poet and the Patriot’s open mike this Saturday, which means I need to rehearse.  I’d like to work in a fresh tune or two; ideally I’d be unveiling a new song this weekend but it might have to wait until next time.

Since in addition to singing and playing guitar, I also dabble in about half a dozen other instruments, it’s necessary to put forth some effort to keep in touch with all of them, so to speak.  Last year my ability to organize a coherent practice routine was floundering rather badly, so I started by declaring January “flute month” - I played the Native American flute every day from December 31st to January 30th.  Now February is “ukulele month.”  I started my daily practice on February 2 and plan to continue until March 2.  Now I also have repeating reminders in my planner to go over my flute repertoire every few days so that my month’s progress doesn’t get covered in mental mold.

The job search and other business activities continue.  I have to make a few calls this afternoon, too.  It’s hard…I’m so attracted to the idea of being able to serve someone, and it’s not as if I’m terribly hurt by rejection but it sometimes seems to come in a flood, and that gets old in a hurry.

Aside from that it’s the typical 5-ring circus in my brain; so many things I want to do and accomplish, and at the most I can really only be awake 17 hours out of the day…this is not easy!  Still, it’s fun sometimes.  I’d like to focus more on the abundance of a life focused on creation, healing, and learning rather than the overwhelm of The To-Do List that Wouldn’t Die.

Trundling along

Just a few words to let any regular readers out there know I’m still alive, fairly well, and creating.

I’m doing RPM Challenge.  I don’t know if I’m going to ultimately end up doing my recording with ProTools, my old multitracker, or perhaps some of each, but I’m learning to use ProTools, and I’m thinking that sometimes it’s more important to get going than it is to sit there planning.  No reason why I can’t think on my feet if it comes to it, right?

Time just seems to be racing forward, and I wish it would take some of my progress with it.  I’m involved in an album for the month now in addition to my usual stuff…and there are days like today when even doing the laundry sounds utterly exhausting.

Of course my little sleep disturbance last night didn’t help at all.  I passed out around 1am trying to accomplish stuff, had a very violent and weird nightmare, woke up around 2am, tried desperately to get a hold of someone or other for support, finally got back to sleep around 5am, and then woke up long about the time when church was ending.  (By that point I had hoped originally to have not only attended church but made it to the laundromat…not at all promising.  Pretty depressing actually.)

With the help of a few friends I’m collecting up my consciousness and trying to move forward.  At 4pm I’ve covered almost all the items in my “morning routine.”  Oy.

Still, I have a lot to do and I’m going to do it.  Off I go.