The Hour Before Song Fu …

This is something I dashed off. It’s stupid. I haven’t been blogging very much lately. Haven’t really felt like it. I don’t really like to blog much anymore. I think I’m afraid of being online. I was happier when I had fewer people that I knew floating around here. Oh well. Ack.

 

DENISE’S IDEAL DAMN DAY

1.Wake up. Drink some coffee. (awesome example)

2.Play some random piano for quite a while.

3.Do some writing.

4. Make sure I eat breakfast. While I do this I can catch up on all the reading I have to do. The online stuff. I have a tunna subscriptions, websites, MyTwitBook, all that stuff. Then I need to call venues.

5. Then I should write, and record, and rehearse. All day. If I have to run errands, I run them. But mostly, write, record, rehearse. Maybe clean.

 

So I need to time my internet time. That’s just how it needs to be. It needs to get done, but it needs to also be left behind when it starts to take over my life. It’s eating my brain. So ironically, I’m blogging about it. Sheesh …

 

 

 

NaNoWriMo: #1

I have entered the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) contest. You don’t “get” anything if you win but satisfaction. I’m terribly nervous.

My only other attempt at a novel – a little sci-fi number called ‘Priest and Prophetess,’ was only around 23,000 words. There was probably a couple documents full of research. Maybe they each had a few thousand here and there. But there wasn’t more than 30,000 total in that whole project.

I don’t know how I’m going to do 50,000 words. That’s the requirement.

I am also trying to book more gigs. I have a first one. It’s at Westgate’s New Artist’s Market on Nov 15th, at 3pm. I haven’t played in a really long time. So this is pretty exciting. But I really need to get on the stick and book some more things.

Getting organized would be a good idea about now.

 

The 4 Month Challenge

I have a friend called Shelley who is a very motivated human. I met her in Longhorn Band. I have to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of my time in the band, as I spent most of my time in the pit percussion area (mallet instruments), muttering under my breath. Like Gollum, but not as charming.

Anyway, Shelley exercises and stuff. I’m kind of on an exercise kick too, and I’m receiving the benefit of happy drugs since I’m ditching some of my more offending pharmaceuticals. I won’t get into it, but I’m not as sickly as I used to be. No more Hector Pi Laureate or anything. No more hormonal madness. Nada. So I have an oppurtunity to bend my metabolism to my ever-loving whim.

I put my goals up in a previous blog entry. So how am I doing?

Well, not well so far. This is typical of me. I always rebel at the first start. I stick my tongue out at it.

AT THIS POINT:

1. I have not gone to martial arts this week once. This is bad because I only went once last week, and twice the week before. Unk! I’m going to have to go tomorrow morning, which is going to HURT! And then there’s classes every day including Saturday. I should try to make Saturday, because they have tournament practice then. I should also go Thursday, because that’s when I usually meet up with the 8pm people (which is where I should be tonight!).

2. I didn’t write down my food for the last two days. This is a two day slip-up and has happened for the first time in over a month. I’ve been good about this for an entire month. I’ll write down my food as soon as I’m done with this blog. I’m going to take my vitamins too, because I just loaded three weeks worth of them. It’s not on my “official” list of goals – but it should be in my mind.

3. I practiced for over 4 hours today, so that’s good. It was not really regimented practice, nor did I really get any ideas down. I am firming up ideas for 3 or 4 songs that will need to be finished and put on the 2 hour set though. I’ll need to tighten up on the scheduling and get organized about the rehearsing soon, but it’s good work. I did some good vocal rehearsing.

4. I was all over the place today, socially. I’m net-stalking people who really shouldn’t be net-stalked … I’m CARING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK (this is a huge no-no in my case), I’m getting in over my head. I need to detach and go back into my own little world. I have told myself that I’m Face-banned. I don’t know for how long. This is good. I’ve enrolled in a writing contest and I’m waiting for Song Fu. These things don’t directly pertain to my goal … but they will help keep me out of the trouble that excessive brooding brings.

I will try not to engage in excessive blogging, or Twittering … or anything.

5. I didn’t get anything done on the studio, but everything tiny thing in the house that I clean is a step in the right direction toward that.

 

‘This Thing Between Us’

This is my entry for the Brigit’s Flame writing contest. I don’t think that anyone but Flame members can vote in it (it’s an lj community).

It’s on my journal here:

‘This Thing Between Us’

 

On paper …

I have never advertised any blog that I’ve ever written on.  I have one little signature which I put at the bottom of some emails.  Mostly I don’t like to blog because all my blogs are about not blogging.  Now, my diary entries are about not writing in my journal.  I don’t write in the morning now much either, which used to be my old routine.  I used to be able to count on at least all of the writing routines.  Now, rather than just avoiding a public that wasn’t really ever interested in me, and then avoiding my friends (who have too much to do to listen to my never-changing crapola); I am now also avoiding myself.

I think that “me” is sick of my self-loathing.  It is now causing me to avoid work, even.

It’s been quite a year.  Mostly, I have just sat around staring at people and feeling.  Having strange little thoughts and trying strange little things on for size.  And always, trying to figure out how I could write without nauseating myself with this whining.  I still have not been very johnny-on-the-spot about the writing.

I don’t know what to do about all of that.  

I am very afraid.  There have been some “hard knocks.”  That’s what my dad’s side of the family calls it … the “school of hard knocks.”  I feel bad even saying it, because I live the luscious Western life.  I am fed and clothed and am in the top eschelon of the top 1% or whatever.  I live in a city where bad things hardly ever happen.  I am safe from everyone but myself.  When I want to complain about the “horrors in my life,” it’s really not going to impress anyone that much.  But it’s very scary to me.

On paper, I do not look very brave.  There are a lot of things about my life that look very different on paper than they do in my head.

I’ve decided to be okay with the fact that I’m not perfect.  This hurts a lot.  I want to be perfect.  It feels like giving up.  I didn’t really want to do anything at all unless I had an unshakable plan.  This includes writing anywhere every day.  I thought “I’ll come back and do this-or-that when I am a whole person.”  So I have vegetated.  Waiting for perfection.  I was going to come out of nowhere, a complete being.  If I am ever complete, I will be too old to care.

So I will write some things down and stare at them until they make sense.  It’s important that I keep words spooling out onto the page and that they keep popping up onto a screen.  And that I keep organizing them somehow.  And that they are going through a filter, because I still have my secrets.  I used to not think I deserved to have little things that were just mine.  I am a married woman of 35 … who has blown all her chances at stuff.  I didn’t get to have any mystery.  But I don’t think that’s fair.  I’m sick of being told what to do.

I have rediscovered the simple pleasures of writing this kind of thing in a cafe where all the songs are just stunningly perfect.

 

Armand Assante, Love, and Donuts [LANGUAGE ADVISORY]

I have an Armand Assante bathroom. I’ve been visiting it a lot this morning, because last night, the beer and cigar fairies came and danced in my forest (no, not in my gutter – so remove your mind from it … even though there is no “you,” because this is my second “blog” and I don’t actually believe anyone is reading this so I can actually go relatively unobserved). Let me tell you, it’s pretty liberating to have Mr. Assante looking down at you (from a large poster on the back of the door) while you do your business; as if to say “you really aren’t living right.” He’s doing it with a kindly attitude, as if he cares about your body, your life, your career. He’s got a cigar in his hand – so he knows how it is. He’s being very zen about the whole thing. He just wishes you’d get some exercise … or go to the doctor more often … but whaddayagonnadoaboutit?

I’m writing in here, but I feel like sometimes I’m only writing in here because I’m trying to keep up with the rest of “blog university.” My husband is looking at other people’s blogs and telling me how much more “me” I could be. I know that’s not what he’s doing, but we both agree that I would be more successful if I had more of a “web presence.”

I was working while shoving donuts in my face. I was actually getting a lot done (besides the fact that it’s rather dubious for a “rock star” – ha, ha – to be shoving donuts in her face) and putting in my stuff from the tiny recorder I have this neat thing that I work with where I put all my “input” … jams, thoughts, sometimes “voice-diaries” down. I might integrate it into the blog if I get brave … I don’t know. I know that on lj you can do voice posts … although I’ve never done one. I’m pretty shy about getting my voice out there.