Less Delirious But Random As Ever
Dang. I guess it’s the flu, after all. I refused to jump on the flu-shot bandwagon last month or whenever it was, fully confident in my super-awesome immune system, which hasn’t let me down in almost three years! Maybe it was just time for a good rest and detoxification. Prob’ly. I don’t regret my decision and it will be the same next year.
It is nice in situations like this to have the sweetest boss in the land. It’s the busiest week of the month, when the newspaper is about to be printed and everything’s crazy and she needs all the help she can get, and she insists I stay home - for the whole week if need be. She even asked if I need anything. She would have made a house call if I’d said yes. How bizarro is that!? I need to give her a present.
Speaking of presents, for the next week, until I fly to Michigan with my husband for Christmas, I’m going to try and post a present here every day. Hooray!
Album news: As you might have guessed from my absence around here, I’ve been quite a busy camper, making songs n such. New song seeds just keep coming (close to 60 recorded now), and I’ve completed (not recorded, but written) two song-songs I’m happy enough with to call finished. A few more are getting very close. I’m thinking this will be an EP, so I only need about 7 good songs and then I’ll let her go. It will probably be in the Spring. The recording phase is where the real fun (and time intensiveness) will begin for me, I thinks. Playing with layers is something I can definitely see myself getting carried away with. A fun way to be starting out the new year!
Some rather unlikely collaborations are in the works as well, like a hip hop cover of “Lil Red Riding Hood” with my ‘new black friend’*, Pharoah Snefru from NY. But I’ll let these things speak for themselves when they happen, because who really knows they will until they do.
Win Wenger of Project Renaissance asked me to write an article for his site about my use of his ‘Improvitape’ method, an approach I’ve had a lot of success with. I’ll post that article here too (probably in January).
Some cool news which has had my mind bouncing all over the place lately is the infamous Tim Boucher’s recent announcement that he has released all of his work (at least his entire blog contents, past, present and future) into the public domain. Pretty awesome. He encourages derivative works, and it’s a great (as in vast and as in awesome) body of work to draw from, so go look at it, you creative bastards.
Speaking of cool news and awesome people, here’s the coolest news of all for me. My little brother just celebrated his first “Clean Day” at AA (that means clean for a whole year). I wish I could share the entire account my dad and step-mom sent me of the event because it blew my mind and had me in tears, but I want to respect his privacy and the whole ‘annonymous’ part of Alcoholics Annonymous. I think I can get away with this little bit, though: “We listened to person after person get up and tell how much [your brother] has had an affect on their life over this past year… people from late teens, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and even an elderly woman in a walker! Your brother has been an inspiration to so many, he is loved by so many, and he is making a huge impact in other peoples lives.” That’s an amazing thing to say about anyone, but if you knew my brother as a kid, you’d know why I was in tears reading it about him. He’s gone from someone I, at times, feared and despised (when we were kids) to possibly the person I admire more than anyone else I know (no offense to everyone else I know). I only wish I could have been there to celebrate with him. Needless to say but I’ll say it anyway — anyone who claims that “people never change” or “once a ___, always a ___.” — They is wrong.
And now I forget what else I was going to talk about… oh well.
Present time! First present:
I found this little jackpot the other day. It’s full of awesome MP3s! …like the entire 5 volumes of Sufjan Stevens’ “Songs for Christmas”, the soundtrack to “The Fountain”, Elevator’s “Parts 1-3″… and tons more.
See you tomorrow, kiddies.
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I remembered one other thing which I might as well throw in while we’re spewing out random stuff — I quit smoking a couple months ago. I forgot my cigarettes in Seattle when I was visiting there, and when I returned I just decided not to buy them anymore. For the first while I missed my little meditative ritual of sitting outside, smoking, but then the freezing-ass winter took care of that, so it’s all good now.
Good job with the quitting smoking. There is somthing to it though about the ritual, plus it effects mood in positive ways. Cancer is kind of a bad trade off though.
Hope you feel better! Looking forward to reading your posts.
Ted
Well done quiting, i would but im not addicted i only have a few a week because i enjoy them :P
Really looking forward to EP :)
Thanks guys! :)
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About the smoking thing — yeah, I wasn’t really addicted either. It was all about the ritual, and for awhile I’d get a nice buzz because I only smoked very occasionally, so it was enjoyable. I rarely ever smoked more than 3 a day, a half-cigarette at a time. It just stopped doing anything for me. I kept smoking socially for awhile and even that eventually lost its appeal.
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It’s amazing though how most of why I craved it (when I was still allowing myself social smoking) was simply because I left it open as an option. As soon as I said “alright, that’s it, I’m not smoking anymore even if I’m offered one. I’m done.” and pinky-swore it with myself (which I do only when I’m really serious — it’s a big deal to me to break a pinky-promise), I didn’t even think about it anymore. There was nothing to think about.Once something is decided, it’s a done deal. It’s not open for negotiation anymore.
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One reason people struggle with quitting bad habits has to do with exactly that. They won’t take authority over themselves.
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I also noticed that being only a ’sort of’, ‘non-addicted’ smoker can make it even harder to stop, because you don’t feel like it’s a big problem to begin with. It’s like being only a few pounds overweight. And I guess it isn’t a big deal, but that doesn’t meant it’s what you ‘want’ either. I’m not lecturing, I’m just a perfectionist, and I just like to make observations about things. I certainly could have kept going at my moderate level of smoking for some time and still quit before any permanent damage was done. The problem was that I stopped enjoying it, and I have this incessant part of me that can’t let anything pointless continue for too long, if it’s just out of habit. it starts bugging me to stop being a robot. So mostly I quit to get that part of me to shut the f. up. But of course, as always, I’m grateful that it it didn’t until I did.
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But if you still find it enjoyable, and you do it in such moderation, I don’t see a problem with that. I wish I still found it enjoyable. If I did, I’d still be doing it! And I do kind of miss it… Aw, damn… now I’m negotiating with myself! “Maybe I’ll make it a seasonal thing… it will be enjoyable again after having not done it for a few months!…” Hmm. It seems my theory may be somewhat flawed… not wrong, but somewhat incomplete…
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To be continued.
No, I forgot — I pinky-swore. Nevermind. Flawed theory or not, the pinky-swear carries all the weight I need.