Deliverable

I freakin’ hate to do dishes. There, I admit it. I find it painfully tedious and unbelievably boring. I let my dishes pile up in my sink until the thought of even looking at my kitchen counter disgusts me. It’s only the prospect of having visitors over that gets me to actually do the damn things, and even that doesn’t always work. The camels back has finally been broken though. I was on my way out to teach on Thursday morning… I’d left a carton of milk out on the counter the night before because it had gone bad, I couldn’t actually pour it down the sink because of all the dirty dishes there. Of course I knocked the carton over, sending it’s half solidified contents all over the kitchen floor.

Enough is freakin’ enough!

I don’t know how I’m going to do this yet, but I absolutely positively must make this one of my “Public Enemies to be Eliminated”. It’s wrecking the quality of my life and I can’t take it any more. I think what it may take is a few “absolute lines in the sand”.

Here goes:

• I will do the dishes while I cook. (This would mean that I’d actually have to cook something, but that’s a whole nother post.)
• The dishes that I’m not able to clean while I cook, I will absolutely positively clean immediately after eating. This means that I will have to leave time in whatever my schedule for the day is for both eating and doing the dishes.
• I can not leave the house with dirty dishes. If M. is over and we have lunch or dinner, then the dishes have to be done before I walk her to the train, or we otherwise leave the house.
• I put the clean dishes away immediately the next morning after they’ve dried (in the case of dinner) or before cooking/eating dinner (in the case of breakfast/lunch).

It’s possible that I might come up with things as I go along, but this should get my started at least. Dishes for me are a serious “hot spot”. For me, one dirty dish left in the sink quickly turns into a raging forest fire of disgust. My one consolation in this is that the discipline that I’ll develop by keeping my sink clear is going to help me get to the point in my life where I am successful enough to buy a damn dishwasher.

More public enemies:
Erratic Sleep Patterns

I found two open calls and sent out 7 other packets.

The breakdown:
8 films and 1 staged reading
6 were emailed and 2 were mailed.

There’s also a singing audition that I might go to. I’ll talk it over with my voice teacher tomorrow.

“Things I could hear myself saying one day “#1:

I ended up teaching beginning guitar because I needed the money. The things is that teaching the guitar forced me to become a real student of the instrument, which raised the level of my playing tremendously. I found myself practicing alot more because I didn’t want to look bad in front of my students.

Suddenly it seems like I’ve got a dozen different balls in the air, and I’m not entirely certain how to proceed. It’s a rush and I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just that I feel a bit flustered. It’ll probably help me to list things, so here goes…

In no particular order:

• Starting 2 new students on guitar – This is a big thing for me. I have to get materials together for them work on and figure out what the hell I’m going to teach them. Feels like a big responsibility, cause I want to give them a strong foundation and inspire them to play guitar.
• Playing guitar well enough to show my new students how to do the things I want them to do – Being also able to play well enough to just generally not suck.
• Teaching my current students tomorrow – Nothing new there, but I finally am feeling the need to get off my ass and finish this damn book so I’ll have something to teach them. Goes hand in had with the guitar teaching, as the approaches are similar.
• Finish the damn book – Again, nothing new. See above… it’s all linked.
• Practice the various instruments & sing
• All the things in my Inbox – Probably an overstatement. I’m not actually sure what is in my Inbox, which is part of the problem.
• Tuturing C.T.
• Water the plants – They’re very angry with me at the moment.

That’s enough for now. Needed to get something down just to clear my head a bit and settle down. Possibly more to come. We’ll see.

Just wanted to pat myself on the back a bit. I went to bed at 11 last night in an attempt to get my body ready for teaching this week. I tossed and turned for a couple of hours (which was quite frustrating), but I didn’t get up and go watch TV or go online. My planned 6 a.m. wake-up time ended up being 8:30 a.m., but I did shift my body closer to going to bed at 11. It’s a single step, but I wanted to mark the moment.

Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford this past June. I’ve just started reading it, but one thing that jumped out at me immediately was this:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Archived copy here.

I figured I needed to capture what I wanted to do with the rest of my day in some type of clear way. I thought to myself “Hey, I’ve got a blog… why not do it here?”

The Rest of the Day: 4/24/06

• Play trombone for a minimum of 20 minutes (complete)
• Play guitar for a minimum of 20 minutes (complete)
• Play bass for a minimum of 20 minutes (complete)
• Sing for a minimum of 20 minutes (complete)

Last week I began tracking my sleep patterns. At this point it’s more about observing patterns and seeing what I’m currently doing. Last night I did my “falling asleep on the couch to TV” thing. So far today I’ve been listless and haven’t gotten a damn thing done. Now that I think of it, it was preceded by another day in which I got nothing done because I went to bed way late because of a gig. (Full disclosure: I could have gone to bed right at 5 when I got back from the gig but decided to stay awake another couple of hours to watch TV. I didn’t sleep on the couch after this and I did get a full 7 hours sleep in my bed, but my body clock was so messed up by the time I got up that the day was pretty much wrecked.) The important thing to note here is that I’m really much more aware of the connection. I see my fucked up mood as something that is based on the quality of the sleep I’ve gotten. I took a nap for about 45 minutes or so (might have been an hour to an hour 1/2). I remember dreaming, though I’m not sure what the dreams are at this point. My head feels clearer. I feel like I have more drive. I feel like I can still salvage the day. It’s amazing what REM sleep can do!

Ah, patterns are a wondrous thing to behold indeed! In the past I would have repeated this sleep pattern right into my teaching days. The whole week would have gone by and I would have gotten way less done than I might have otherwise because I was working on half a brain.

I am committed to creating a new habit in this area of my life. It’s this type of self observation and analysis that’s going to help me do it.

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Related articles:

• Erratic Sleep Patterns = Public Enemy #1
• Consistent Sleep Schedule

I just received a form email from the person I auditioned for yesterday telling me how impressed he was with my work and how he hopes we have the chance to work together in the future. It then goes on to tell me all about his masterclass that is invite only and asks me if I’d like to attend. Note to this person: Don’t send out a form letter to people telling them you’re impressed with their work, and especially don’t send it to yourself and then blind carbon copy it to everyone else on the list of people who auditioned for you. It’s incredibly rude.

Live and learn, I guess.

It’s official: 5 auditions in the past 5 days. I showed up at 1:45 or so this afternoon, waited about two hours and was the next to the last person they saw. I performed the piece for the head of the theatre company. It’s really difficult to judge how the piece goes when it’s just one person. I felt like my timing was off somewhat. Whatever. The point is that the only accurate answer that I am able to give is that I have no idea what he thought of the piece. Let it go and move on.