Mon Sep 29 2014

Had meetings and lessons until midafternoon on Friday, and again on Saturday. Outside of that, made it a mental health weekend. Took myself out to dinner on Friday. Some guitaring Friday and Saturday for no other reason than my own enjoyment. Did a lot of reading, a mystery novel with no particular redeeming value beyond simple entertainment and diversion, watched some movies and tv. Rain most of the day Sunday. Made it a total do-nothing day off. Not even guitaring. In fact, forced myself to avoid it. Football. Reading in the back yard once the sun made an appearance late afternoon. Closest thing to labor was steaming vegetables and throwing together a salad to go along with leftovers for dinner.

I’m not very good at actually doing nothing. One of the things that happens is that in the void I start noticing all of the things that need doing, or have been avoiding, and over time I’ve gotten in the habit of addressing that sort of stuff as soon as I see it, lest I forget. So to ward off that tendency I put out a piece of paper and wrote down anything I thought of along those lines throughout the day. It was still an effort not to do them when I saw them. I did give myself leave to go ahead and take the garbage out to the curb, since the schedule for that isn’t really optional, but found that one of my neighbors had already taken care of it. Took that as an sign that I was on the right track.

This morning, then, was the resulting office day. Up with the alarm clock. Balancing bank account and credit card statements, paying bills, writing emails, answering email in my “for later” folder, looking into airfares for Christmas back east and the GC Intro/OCG Prep course in Mexico in February, following up on some self-promotional stuff (updating Craigslist ad and putting in bids on one of the online services I use), and beginning the search for a GP since I can’t remember the last time I had a physical.

It is now after lunch, and the only thing not crossed off the list is “practice”. Yay. Several hours before the lesson schedule kicks in.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yikes, a couple days of laying off the focused practicing and my playing goes to hell. Settled in on holding down the basic guitar parts for Don’t Go No Farther, while working on phrasing and delivery of the lyrics, which for some reason get me a bit tongue-tied. Mostly I think I just don’t know them well enough yet, so I really have to think about what is coming up next, and that doesn’t really lend itself to a natural flow of delivery. Plus there are a couple of timing quirks. By Wang Dang Doodle standards, these lyrics are a piece of cake, so I know it is doable, but it has hit that “I’m not really having a lot of fun practicing this” stage.