Tue Sep 09 2014

Better job of getting up this morning. Lolled a bit, pondering the travel adventure dream I was having before I awoke, but didn’t go back to sleep, and certainly didn’t check out for 90 minutes of adventures with arithmetic again. That little episode, frankly, is more disturbing the more I think about it.

Interesting quandary last night and this morning. Found myself wishing to practice a bit, but at hours that would not really be appropriate with respect to my relationship with my neighbors. Electric certainly out, but I don’t think acoustic would actually be an improvement. I’m pretty well insulated from the 2 front apartments, but for the folks upstairs it is a different matter. They are old friends, and very understanding. They put up with one very early morning lesson I have down here every week, but for the most part I try to keep office hours limited to 9am-to-9pm. Last night I went for electric guitar unplugged, which pretty much limits things to the most rudimentary calisthenic work. Better than nothing. This morning I opted to spend the available time on necessary office work. I have been remiss in keeping up my advertising (such as it is) so I decided to catch up on the online postings, and went ahead and invested a couple of bucks in one referral service that I’ve had a little success with in the past.

First lesson at 10am, and then the day is off to the races.

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Funny how seductive office work can be. Banged away at updating online profiles and lesson advertisements until my 10am student arrived. An hour of work with counting and playing, and Bicycling to Afghanistan (which is always fun) and then I found myself back at the computer to do more of this stuff, contemplating a redesign of the flyer I put up on local bulletin boards, and now I am actually laboring to tear myself away in order to get some quality practice done before my next student. The funny thing about all this advertising is that I rarely get any students directly from them. Indirectly or mystically? A little hard to measure. But there is something to the notion that when you make an effort and put yourself out there, things do tend to come your way, often from unexpected places. So I post a bunch of online ads and hit all of the music store and coffee shop community bulletin boards, and suddenly I start to get inquiries that come from referrals, or people who have stumbled onto my website, or former students who “took a break” months or years ago, not from any of the advertising. Hey, I don’t need to know how it works, I just need to know that it does and get on with the important stuff.

Now, I will absolutely practice.

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Got in some practice. After a little more calisthenics I found myself coming back to Going’ Down Slow, over and over again. I trust it is not prophetic, but I was just feeling it today. Dropped the key a whole tone and even at apartment volume it felt like I was finding some things in the vocals. But for the most part the day has come down to promo. Worked up a new flyer and decided to get it printed up as postcards. It would be really nice to have 6 more lessons a week. That is for tomorrow. For tonight, I am done.