Deliverable

I have to get things moving here. Find a focus to my life. Too many hours lost. Not depression really… unsure what it is. Perhaps today was recouping time from a big day on Monday? It wasn’t a big day in that I did a whole lot of stuff, but it was a big day in that I had an audition and I got my new headshots back. Perhaps just alot of psychic stuff going on… energy moving around and such.

I just would like to put together a string of consistent killer productive days. I’d like to find my purpose and make concrete progress daily towards it. I have flashes. I have good days. I also have entire days lost.

What to do?

Right now, time for bed. We’ll see what tomorrow holds for me.

I started to think about what would make a successful day for me. I started to make a list of things I’d like include. As I begin writing this list I’m not sure if it’s a list of low expectations or high expectations, but I’ll start it anyway and see where it leads. I’ll type things in as they come to me and try not to filter.

• Play trombone at least 30 minutes
• Play guitar at least 30 minutes
• Play bass at least 30 minutes
• Play piano at least 30 minutes
• Sing for at least 30 minutes

Work on my book at least 30 minutes

**pause for reflection**

What do I have here so far? No acting stuff, probably because I don’t have a clear idea of what it means to “work on my acting for 30 minutes” yet. I know I should include “work on voice and speech for a least 30 minutes”, but that can be dreadfully boring. Continuing on…

• Go to bed by 12. Get up by 7 a.m. Get a solid 7 hours of uninterupted sleep a night.
• Eat a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats
• Eat an apple a day
• Drink 8 glasses of water a day
• Exercise & stretch at least 30 minutes
• Cook my breakfast & my lunch (healthy food)
• Take a multi-vitamin
• Hang up my clothes after wearing them
• Wash my dishes after using them (Ok, ideally I’d LOVE too have a dishwasher…)
• Write my morning pages
• Meditate (not sure how long…)

**pause for more reflection / save as “Draft” while I go and review previous entries in this blog**

**pause to eat dinner and do laundry**

Back again. It’s interesting to look back over what I’ve written so far with an eye towards what type of result I’m trying to reach with each of these groups of items. The first group is skill related… “I want these particular skills”. It’s probably important to ask why it’s important for me to attain those skills and I may deal with that later in this post. The second group are habits. Things I’ve been working on since I’ve started this blog. Character traits that I hope will help me feel more in control of my life and my day. (I’ll get to the “book” part in a minute).

Let’s say then that I had my successful day. Let’s say that I reached my minimum practice goals. That’s 2 1/2 hours a day spent increasing my skill at trombone, guitar, piano, bass and singing. Let’s say as well that I reached my “habit” goals. The big question is of course “what now”? Why am I doing this? To what end? If you figure 7 hours of sleeping. 3 hours for meals. 2 1/2 hours minimum spent on practice. That’s roughly twelve hours left in the day. Let’s subtract another two hours for showering/bathing/morning & evening routines. 10 hours left in the day. What now?

I think that in the recesses of my brain I’ve had this sense that if only I could consistenly nail down these habits… my practice & my lifestyle… that somehow I’d be able to acheive my dreams. I’m not saying that this is not the case. I suppose what is occuring to me is that I need some overriding passion to fill up the rest of those hours and to inspire the rest of the time.

I’ve said in the past that I am absolutely committed to achieving my dreams. I’m absolutely committed to becoming the best that I can be. The question becomes of course “what are those dreams”. What are those visions that drive me? The book is one. It is something that I absolutely must finish and finish soon. But what then? “We are made of the same fabric as our dreams”. What are my dreams?

It’s official: It’s been 3 weeks since I began my 3 challenges. (Cooking, Fiber, TV).

What have I learned?

• Fiber is a good thing. – The bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats in the morning has been great. I do feel better. I also noticed that there are times in the morning when I felt really sleepy even after a solid nights rest. I’d get up and have a bowl of cereal and the sleepiness would go away. The sleepiness was really just low blood sugar.
• Cooking my meals is a good thing – I only used my official Turbo Cooker recipes a couple of times but still found a way to cook for the 3 weeks. There were a couple of times that I ate out but these felt more like occasions which was nice. The best result of this was not indulging in the crappy Chinese take-out that had been a staple of my diet for so long. Even when I was tempted by time constraints to just go grab take-out I managed to cook quick meals.
• My brain is clearer without TV – Probably has something to do with not being bombarded with electrodes and messages from advertisers all the time.

Conclusion
I’m going to continue my challenges for at least another week in order to deepen the habits. The need for doing this is especially there for TV and cooking. I’ve engaged in bad habits in these areas for a pretty long time. I need to really stay vigilant with these habits until they’re fully ingrained.

What’s that? Feeling down, depressed, low, out of sorts? Oh wait of course… it’s Tuesday! It all suddenly makes sense!

I feel like I’ve ground to a stop. Don’t want to make a list or figure anything out or do a damn thing. I really get tired of typing the same thing over and over again because it feels like all I do lately on here is complain. Complain about loss of direction. Complain about how none of this makes any damn sense. I’m getting tired of hearing myself say it and I know others must be getting tired of me going through these stretches.

I’m stuck in a morass and I don’t know how to get out of it. Don’t want to make a start on the book because it feels like I’ve tried and tried and tried and still it goes no where. Music seems to not excite me at all… either listening to it or playing it. Acting? I don’t have a freaking clue where that is going I honestly don’t. I keep telling myself to just sit down and make a list of all the things I need to do or want to do but I can’t seem to even do that because it seems so damn futile. I’ve made list after list after freaking list and still I’m stuck in this shitty apartment lacking vision and lacking funds and not knowing what I’m freaking doing.

So here I go Universe. Another shout into the void. I’m not supposed to be doing the play. Fine. What the hell am I supposed to be doing? I’m really freaking sick of this shit.

I just finished the 2nd week of my various challenges. (Cooking, Fiber, TV).

• Fiber Challenge – I missed eating my bowl of cereal this past Saturday. Mostly because I got up late that day, I think. I’m not sweating it too much because the other days have gone quite well. I enjoy the feeling of starting my morning on a full stomach. The last few days I’ve begun taking a multi-vitamin as part of the routine. (Cereal / Apple or other piece of fruit / multi-vitamin). The multi-vitamins that I take have always seemed to sit pretty hard on my stomach, but this combination seems to be working alright.
• TV Challenge – I still haven’t watched television since August 24th. I did watch some of my Mission Impossible II DVD at one point when I was feeling kinda low. I also watched some of the short features on my Robert Rodriquez DVD for inspiration at one point. Still no cable TV which was a bit of a struggle there for a while. (I had to force myself not to watch it especially with all the Katrina madness unfolding down in New Orleans.)
• Cooking Challenge – I’ve not relied on my turbo cooker as much as I’d planned. It does work well for steaming vegetables at the same time you’re cooking your meat so I think I’ll do more of that in the future. I’ve managed to get by eating soup/sandwiches/salads for lunch, and a combo of my sauteed marinaded chicken/beef with rice or cous-cous. Also noticed that it’s good to keep those packaged pasta sides on hand.

Looking forward to my 3rd week. My guess is that I’ll keep at least the fiber & TV challenges going past the 3rd week and maybe even the TV challenge. We’ll see how it works out.

I made a post back on the 12th of August about fear. I commited that day to sending out my headshots consistently and not let fear get the best of me. I mailed out three packets the same day. This Friday I received a call inviting me to audition for an upcoming play. It was one of the productions I responded to on the 12th. I now need two contrasting monologues ready by Thursday.

I’m a bit freaked out at the moment about the preparation I have to do before Thursday, but just wanted to mark the moment. Put it out there and it will come back to you.

–Update 9/12/05–
Here’s how things turned out:
Callback
Callback Complete
Results

This is the 8th day of my various challenges (Cooking, Fiber, TV). All are going pretty well.

• Fiber Challenge – I missed eating my bowl of cereal yesterday, mainly because I ran out of cereal. I’ve remedied that and will continue on. (I guess that means a box of cereal lasts approximately 6 days. At $4.39 a box you can see how this “fiber challenge” might significantly improve Kellog’s bottom line).
• TV Challenge – I haven’t watched television since August 24th. This has been a bit more challenging than the fiber challenge. Like an old friend that I miss seeing (at nights mostly). I’ve substituted reading a book on the sofa before bed to kind of wind down at night and that seems to work ok. I suppose this means I’ll have to always keep the right kind of books on hand. (Not too engrossing… Don’t want to get sucked into a book and end up reading till 4 a.m.) We’ll see how I feel about TV after 3 weeks without it.
• Cooking Challenge – This also has gone pretty well. As I look at my calendar I see that I’ve cooked every night that I could this week. What this means in practical terms is that I’ve avoided the cycle of Chinese food / other crappy food that I’ve maintained for what seems like forever. There were days where I had to eat out because of my scheduling. There were days where my primary meal was the leftovers from the night before. One observation is that the Turbo Cooker can be a hell of a lot more complex to use than it appears on the surface. Perhaps as with anything this gets easier with practice. (I used it once this past week.)

There’s the weekly challenge wrap up. Nothing too dramatic. I just have to keep on keeping on.

I’ve been talking about writing my book for what seems like ages. Not content to just use the methods of others in my teaching I’ve been piecing together my own method since I’ve been in NYC. Students have come and gone and still my book is not complete… not published.

I know intellectually that up till now this has been a good thing. It is one of those works that waits for the right time to be born., the right moment to come to fruition. I also know that I must finish this damn book. I absolutely cannot teach another year without a text to teach from. I’m arrogant enough to believe that the text I must teach from is my own. So be it.

Where does this leave me? I MUST FINISH THE DAMN BOOK BEFORE I START MY TEACHING AGAIN THE 3RD WEEK OF September!

Ok, so how do I do this? What is “The Book”. That’s helpful to know, right? If you want to finish something by a certain date then you should at the very least know what it is that you want to finish. As I’ve begun writing this down I know more clearly that I actually have two books.

Book one: My GBD-**** stuff (showing them how this can be used not only to read music, but to play chords and arpeggios in any key/ Intervals: Why they’re so important / Scales stuff / R-Grams stuff. This needs to be put into a format that can stand alone. Independent of any technical “trombone stuff”. A general music book that can be used by all instruments. Might include an online link to the beginnning songs for their clef.

Book two: Using GBD-**** to teach kids to read music / Using R-Grams to teach them to read rhythms / Presenting this in a format that includes the technical stuff of how to play the instrument and the songs that they’ll start playing.

I think that my next step then is to outline each book here. I’ll do that in two separate posts.

So, what am I “putting out there”?

I have a concise text to teach from when I begin the third week of September.

• This text will include all of my beginning songs laid in “Redux/Song/R-Gram” format
• All beginning songs will be posted online on my teaching website.

More to follow. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

Give me a specific believable achievable monthly income amount to strive for over the next 4 months. Something that excites me and inspires me to work towards.

I need someplace to begin. Sending it out into the universe.

T.V. has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. A kind of security blanket. I watched loads of T.V. growing up. I’d come home from school and start with General Hospital (shameful to admit, I know…) and watch straight on thru to The Muppet Show. I have a lot of good T.V. memories. Shows that I loved. (The Muppet Show was one of them… Space 1999… The Kroft Superstar Hour…).

It’s with alot of trepidation that I start this next challenge:

My one caveat:

• I can watch a DVD if it is something I’ve rented from Netflix. I see the Netflix DVD’s as research, especially if it’s something classic.

I’m tempted to give up even the DVD’s in order to get the full effect of this, but I think I should allow myself those. We’ll see how it goes.

It’s time to let go of television. It’s become too much of a burden at this point. I become like the vegetable when I watch it. It’s comforting. It’s numbing. It’s got to go if I’m to move forward.

In preparation for this post I did a Google search and came up with a few sights that will hopefully help me:

Here’s a list of activies that one of the sites recommended as fun substitutes for watching television:

making a friendship bracelet, climbing a tree, attending a local play or sporting event, writing a letter, solving puzzles, crosswords or word searches, taking a walk, a swim, or a bicycle ride, inventing your own game and teaching others how to play, visiting a library, museum or zoo, listening to music, fixing something that is broken, planting a tree, cooking a meal with friends, making costumes out of paper bags, learning about the wildlife in your neighbourhood, writing a play, taking pictures and making a scrapbook, looking at the stars, going skating or roller-blading, learning a card trick, and reading a really good book.

I think the site must have been more geared towards kids, though I guess making costumes out of paper bags could indeed be entertaining.

I’m just going to pretend that I’m able to keep with this. I’ll make an X on my calendar for every day that I go to bed without watching T.V.