Weekly Wish 06-06-11 - Reality and Madness

This one's for all you Geminis out there, in particular my bestest buddy Sarah, who's having a birthday today.  We've been friends for twenty-four years, since we were six.  She's thirteen days older than I am, which makes me a Gemini too, as will shortly become clear in this short story featuring our old friends, Katgut and the Voice of Reason:

"Ok, people.  Here's the deal," I began to type.

I went on to say that I'm preparing my first audition since I had some bad experiences a couple years ago and decided I needed to stay home and get my shizzle togizzle, so to speak. 

"So, I quit," I said.  "I quit this dumb Weekly Wishes bullsh*t, I'm tired of arguing with myself about how to spend my time. I'll put that energy into finding the next step in my career.  It's the Reasonable Thing To Do."

Really, Kat?  Not even 20 minutes in a day, as a kind of meditation, to work on something just because you love it and not because it pays the bills or might lead to the next step in your career?  You can't take that time to stay true to yourself as a musician, and build a sort of armor to shield yourself from the downsides of what can be a very unforgiving business?

Apparently Katgut has been reading Hunter S. Thompson:
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

Well, damn.  As a talisman, to ward off vampires like Disappointment and Fear of Failure, I will spend a little time each day going back to practice and delve deeper into one of my favorite songs from last year, for which one day did not suffice: Billy Joel's "Summer, Highland Falls".

I'm glad I have a mind that can see and argue both sides of a case.  Not that this trait just for Geminis, but it's a good excuse to wish my fellow twins happy birthday season!

Why Wish

Today I figured out why it's important to do my Weekly Wishes project.  I mean, beyond the wishing "...I could play like such-and-such".  As I've mentioned several times, I'm constantly arguing with myself about whether I should be putting time into my own whimsical project, when time is at a premium and there are so many other things begging to be done.  So today's revelation makes me a mite less conflicted than before, always a welcome sensation to this Gemini. 

I imagine it must be really lovely to be a naturally cheerful, positive person.  I wouldn't know.  I've learned from experience how destructive pessimism can be, and how nothing worthwhile gets done without a constant stream of "I think I can, I think I can".  The pastor at my church gig uses the example of two wolves - which wolf wins the fight, the good one or the bad?  The one you feed.  I have to fight every single day to keep from pouring a bag of premium feed into the big bad wolf's trough (wait, do wolves eat out of troughs??!). 

My point is, I realized today that my Weekly Wishes project is my reminder to feed the good wolf.  It has indeed been a busy week, but when I threw up my hands the other night and decided to give a teeny part of my week to working thru my Dr. John book/CD - just because I like that style of music and because studying music is what I do with my life - the good wolf won.  I haven't had much time to put into it, but I've been having fun with the Texas boogie (started memorizing it and trying it in other keys today), and just reading/listening through the rest of the book.

To satisfy the Voice of Reason:  I'm a lot more motivated to practice when I have a just-for-fun thing on the practice list.  And making time for one important thing helps me remember to try to make time for other important things, like friends and working out.

Oh, and sleep. 

The Valley of the Shadow

mmm... cake... ...*sigh*

Ash Wednesday yesterday, which means two things: I played a show at a gay bar last night with ashes on my forehead (Brandon, the show's host, is a preacher's kid and a big Sandi Patty fan), and I am once again about to discover how my mind messes with me when I try not to eat sweets, aka The Valley of the Shadow of Lent. 

It's nice to have a low-stakes environment in which to practice... I don't know what I'm practicing.  Not getting to have everything I want, I guess.  This happens all the time in real life, but the Lent thing is under my control: I'm avoiding a food category I really like but which is bad for me (in moderation, you say?  My inner cookie monster knows not moderation.) - it's my choice to give up sweets, and it's only for a clearly defined period of time. 

I'm steeling myself for my mind and body to mess with me.  There will be cravings.  I will be desperate for a cookie when what I really want is a nap or a day off or a boyfriend (cookies are easier to get, and more convenient).  I will rationalize that this is a dumb thing to do when I've got so many other things on my mind, that I need my mental energy and self-discipline for my career, and that I'm not a very religious person anyway so why bother... and other things that I won't recognize as mental chatter until after the fact. 

There's a lot of mental chatter when I play, too, and tuning it out is a skill that is as important to my playing as any scale or etude.  I've gotten better at it, so maybe that's why I'm sort of excited to see how I do this year.  Last year was a miserable failure on the Lenten discipline front, but last year I was going through a break-up.  I kinda had to cut myself a little slack when a kid I played for gave me two zip-locs full of homemade rugelach two weeks before Easter. 

Speaking of self-forgiveness, I've already (!) screwed up this year, when last night I took a shot to celebrate the birthday of one of the singers.   I wasn't tempted, I just forgot, until I was sucking on the sugary lemon after the shot.  Oops. 

It's gonna be a long six weeks!