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.

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.

ProTools is now installed

Can I hear an “alleluia”?! I finally called in a computer expert. Sounds like he did in an hour what I’d been struggling to do for over a month. Let it never be said I didn’t try to be independent…or that I didn’t know when to call in a pro because I’d fallen flat on my face. So tomorrow I’ll pick up my computer and start evaluating how difficult it seems it will be to use the program, and from there I’ll make my decision about RPM Challenge 2008.

Also, this was another TaKeTiNa weekend! I know I’ve sung its praises before here, but this is just highly powerful work/play…and a ton of fun – highly recommended for anyone interested in rhythm, the learning process, or consciousness and awareness.

This is more a brief check-in; I’m in a quiet place and feel like I need to get a few more things before bed, and I’d like to get some sleep and hopefully get up early enough for my errands tomorrow. More fanciful and detailed blogging is on the way later this week though!

Preparation or Bike-shedding?

“…Well, with all that talk of changing the infrastructure and the punctuation conventions and things like that, it just sounds like a lot of bike-shedding going on there,” he said casually, grabbing a would-be escapee anchovy with his fork.

“Bike-shedding?”  I was sure I’d heard wrong.

“Oh, you haven’t heard that one?,” he said between bites of pizza.  “Well, the idea is ‘hey, we’re building the world’s best bike shed’…meanwhile the bicycle is out rusting in the rain, which means that even a tarp thrown over it would be better than waiting for the very innovative shed.”

“So kind of like ‘best is the enemy of better’?”

“More or less.”

I got in around 8pm and was up until 4:30am last night.  What was I doing all that time?  I can’t say that I remember, actually.  All I know is it was mostly stuff on my to-do list, and most of the stuff on my to-do list tends to be an intermediate step toward a bigger goal.  The main things I remember doing were sending emails, refining my goal-setting documents, and writing a comedy script…don’t give me that look, now…yes, I was writing a comedy script!  And yes, I had a reason for doing it.

I still don’t have ProTools set up.  I’m hoping to get that done this afternoon, but realistically there is no guarantee it’s going to happen.  The folks at tech support are doing their best but so far something just hasn’t quite worked…and even when I’m set up with CBR, it’ll take time to learn to use it.  I don’t like the idea of opting out of this year’s RPM Challenge though, so I’m considering that if nothing else I could either take baby steps into using ProTools or firing up the multitracker for one more month…in either case my novelty album concept would be a way to participate without making myself crazy.  It occurred to me that it would be great to have some spoken-word pieces in between songs to sort of flesh out the character who’s at the center of the musical concept…so I’ve been writing a script.

Oddly enough, I still go to bed at night feeling that I haven’t accomplished much for my music.  It occurred to me that it’s because even if I spend two hours writing a comedy script and it’s part of a recording project and it goes really well and I really enjoy it…I’m still not making music.  In fact what I’m doing is…

• writing a script, so I can…
• record a fake conversation with a fictional character, so I can…
• get a better sense of what some of the song concepts I haven’t yet settled on will be, so I can…
• write a bunch of novelty songs, so I can…
• record a bunch of novelty songs, so I can…
• be in RPM challenge and be doing something focused and musical, so I can…
• keep my fire on until I’m ready to do something “serious.”

I’m not saying I’ve decided this is bike-shedding…there’s a good chance I’ll go ahead and do it because it is fun and I’ve long wanted to give myself permission to take some time and do some things that are just plain silly…but it seems like an awfully long detour to take just to work around my problems with CBR and my need for creative motivation.  And I have to decide whether by doing this now I would be taking a pleasant little romp in the field of parodies, or detracting attention that I need to give to my “mainstream” efforts.

What would you do…

…if you knew you could not fail?

That question was posed to me last week in Wolf Rinke’s book, Make it a Winning Life. It was far from the first time I’d heard or read the question, but it hit me like a ton of bricks this time.

Most of my life, I have lived as if I had this question tattooed on my forearm for easy reference. Similarly I read Goethe’s quote as a teenager…

Whatever you can do, or think you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

…and thought not, “wow” or “gee, I wonder if…” but, “thank goodness someone with the verbal grace and influence to make it known saw this truth.” I find it interesting how sometimes it’s not my older self but my younger self I need to reach to for guidance.

At 20, I must say I had it pretty “together” in some powerful and unusual ways. Even then, folks in their forties and fifties enjoyed communicating with me, and I think part of it was a blend of tactfulness and straightforwardness. I would wait for the right time and place, but I definitely called it as I saw it and did what I felt moved to do even if it seemed unconventional, especially when I felt the stakes were exceptionally high. But in recent times, I’ve noticed myself doing these strange little mazurkas around what I really want to say, especially when there’s something quite important that needs to be made quite clear…and wondering, “if I try to do this, will it happen or will I just end up embarrassing myself?”

There’s a reason why I read books like Make it a Winning Life. I’ve started asking myself, what would I do if I knew I could not fail? The effects are already dual.

For one, there’s the sudden increase in action and willingness. Phone calls are happening a little quicker – not that they were at all slow or delayed before, but they’re happening, say, before I shower in the morning instead of after. I’m starting to wonder if perhaps the time has come to work on a second CD, and if maybe today could be the day I get the tech support I need to get my CBR software running. It doesn’t seem so improbable anymore that I could master more than one of the instruments I have in the house, though it would surely take years of effort.   I’m wondering if perhaps, despite my busyness, I could do some more soft sculpture work once in a while just for creative variety.  What would I do if I knew I could not fail? Start now, and have faith.

Also I’m starting to notice the Pygmalion effect more than usual. When I don’t doubt that something will work, it usually does. If I just throw the book, it will end up on the bed in just the right place. Nevertheless, if I think I’m going to have trouble opening a container of pomegranate tea, I end up wearing part of it. If I rattle off an impromptu rhyme (think something like a comedic version of a poetry slam) and don’t imagine myself having any trouble with it, it comes out clear as a bell. If, on the other hand, I’m worried about stumbling over something much shorter with a lot of alliteration, however, such as ordering a “blueberry bliss” smoothie…well, last time I went to the counter feeling wound up I ordered a “blueberry briss.” Well, if the blueberries are Semitic, male, and eight days old I suppose it’s time…and hiring a rabbi to help the barista would certainly explain why a simple cup of pureed fruit costs $5…

Well, now that I have a lot of disturbing questions in my head regarding the circumcision of fruit, I suppose I’ll wrap it up by saying that this is turning out to be a good question to ask myself. And what about you, the reader? What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Rebellion and Ergonomics

I’ve been working pretty hard lately.  Promotions have taken up a lot of my time, as have practicing lomilomi and a host of other things.  Friday I felt myself beginning to rebel.

I’d just been working too much, too long, too hard, and the fact that I wasn’t really seeing commensurate results was really making the whole thing exhausting.  I finally got my body straightened out on Wednesday – I needed a massage very badly indeed – but my brain and my spirit were still balking at my overall workload.  So I pushed forward through yesterday afternoon, after which I still had things to do but nothing that absolutely had to be done right this second.   So I spent the night alternating between watching Complaints Choirs on YouTube and reading The Da Vinci Code.  (I don’t normally read much fiction but this was a gift from a dear friend.)  I don’t think I’d done a reading marathon like that in at least half a year.  It was a much-needed break.

Today my morning was pretty much spoken for before it started; I was headed to church and then had a few errands to run.  I’ve done a lot of work (errands, studying, things along those lines) today again but the good news is I got almost all the critical stuff on my list accomplished before 9pm, and there’s also been some time just for creative and enjoyable things – more reading, practicing Native American flute and violin, hugging the cat.  So I think the tide is turning; while I don’t expect to run out of work/errands to do anytime soon, it seems like there’s a little more room for me in all of this mess all of a sudden.

Following my massage Wednesday I was pain-free for the first time in a few days, and I’ve started relaxing enough to remember how to play the violin without clamping it like a vise under my chin.  I adjusted my desktop computer setup so it’s a bit easier to manage, but I still don’t find it a cozy place to sit.  I’ve been trying to stay away from it, which I think has actually helped me find something else I need – it’s too soon as of yet to tell whether it’s time that was previously being eaten up by surfing for info or whether it’s just the feeling of not being tied to this box constantly – being free.  All I know is it feels better.

Well, since I still have a couple of hours before bedtime, I think it’s a good time to go practice another instrument and enjoy myself.

Forward motion at last

There are some days when I look at my to-do list for the day and think, “I should be able to get all this done pretty reasonably.”  This usually turns out to be a somewhat exaggerated prediction.  But I’ve deliberately worked lately toward having both shorter daily lists and more balanced ones – ones that include inherently satisfying activities as well as things I’m doing simply out of necessity.  I got up early today and got rolling, and while it will still be a challenge, I think I can actually achieve what’s left…

• blog [in progress]
• practice guitar
• clean house for lomilomi practice [for a limited time; not to do the whole project at once]
• go over ongoing project list
• work with a book on spirituality or life planning
• pack tomorrow’s lunch
• watch an ASL (American Sign Language) instructional video

This will definitely keep me busy until midnight, maybe somewhat later, but I think it might happen…I might actually finish a to-do list for the day.

What’s interesting is that the stuff I did earlier was not inherently fun for the most part – getting up early for an oil change before church, doing some grocery shopping and business product runs, cleaning my incredibly messy car, taking out a large pile of trash – but I was motivated because I was aware I was lightening my load.  Not at all bad.

I’d like to reach a point – and may actually reach a point very soon – where my space and my schedule are relatively clear and I can focus more easily on creativity…and in the meantime, creativity can’t wait.  So off I go.  Time to geek out studying ASL and
play some guitar.