Longer Than It Should

Jamie does this thing where she will lay peacefully at my feet, but then she will spring to attention the second I get out of my chair to do something. Just now I had to ask my dad to hand me my phone because I had accidentally left it on the other side of the room before sitting down (and Jamie had decided to lie down at my feet almost immediately).   ----------------- I'm trying to blog more because the numbers show that it's more effective than podcasting, at least for me. Also it takes less time and effort for me to make a post, so if more people read it AND it's easier to make, that seems like a big win.  It's always hard for me to pick a medium. YouTube is great, and it's not that hard to do once you have a setup, but I don't really have a setup right now, and I don't see a likelihood of a sprawling desk covered in giant sleek monitors manifesting itself in my near future. Right now my basic plan is to try to have three or four house shows (although, l

I find it's easy to fall into an existence where one only wants to do the easy things. We are all like water droplets meandering down the window panes of life, choosing a left here and a right there for no apparent reason to the human eye, but to the eye of the water droplet each decision of which way to go is obvious. Since we are humans though, not actual water droplets, sometimes our decisions seem loaded and important. If you ask me, they aren't. Each one we come to, we end up doing exactly what we were destined to do. Perhaps this is predestination talk, but it's an interesting thought process. Have you ever seen the Mario minigame where they drop a little treasure chest into the mouth of one of three intertwining pipes, and it winds its way down through the mass of pipes and comes out at the bottom into the expecting hands of either Mario, Luigi, or (God forbid ) Bowser?  What makes this game fun is that the mess of pipes which the treasure chest goes through is publi

As I continue to brainstorm and dream about what my next steps might look like in the creative department, perhaps I will just write some of these blogs occasionally to try to keep the rust at bay.  (Could I do three a week? Or is that too ambitious?) They still lack the marketing which my podcast lacks, but they are much easier to write and edit, and they can serve the same purpose of getting the songs out there. -------- Recently I have been listening back through all of my podcasts, and I think I have succeeded at making a bingeable thing, the episodes flow nicely, although you do get tired of me telling you all of the ways to support the show at the end of each episode. -------- One episode really stood out to me recently. It's the episode featuring my alarm clock song and ringtone song. They are both awesome!  It is episode 72 of Hold That Note on your favorite podcast app (please subscribe in case I ever do restart the show) ...or just listen to it here:  https://youtu.be/qrn

I've had a hard summer but in many ways it has also been full of joy. I got a puppy... she is amazing. Right now she is napping, so I have time to write.   Having experienced another episode of the ultimate high, a manic episode leading to a week in the psych ward, and having experienced erratic highs and lows in the months following that hospitalization, I have come to see that everything in life is temporal, and our attitudes about our life situations are much more important than the situations themselves. I have recommitted to team Jesus, and along with that, changed my personal name. If you know me personally, you'll know that already. -----------------------------  I find that life is a lot like a giant game of 'Avalon The Resistance' (go ahead and buy it if you enjoy this post).  In Avalon you are given a secret identity. The Red Team knows who else is on the Red Team, but the Blue Team is in the dark as to everyone's identities.  The Red Team tries to confuse

Wellbeing is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing.  -Zeno, founder of Stoicism As I soak in the beauty out here at our cabin (listen to last week's podcast for a song partially inspired by said beauty) I find it almost silly that I was having such a hard time existing last week.  If and when I take a step back, it becomes clear that my tasks are utterly trivial.  But maybe that trivial nature is part of the source of my despair.  I long to make a splash, but instead I make drops in dear Liza's leaky bucket.  I have to zoom out to remember that 'nothing is lost on the breath of God,' meaning those water droplets out of her bucket are going somewhere... watering some earth I may never know about... growing something. I'm thinking again about pivoting... the podcast really isn't growing/working.  Perhaps I could make an episode every time I finish a new song... part of my problem historically has been that I always want to move on to the next thing...

Well, it looks like I'm not going to get a podcast done this week (slight chance I'll be wrong about that)... Maybe I can at least do a blog post...  It's a Thursday afternoon... I did a couple of productive things this morning (therapy and life coaching), but since lunch time I've stalled.  I've been so depressed on-and-off recently that I get paralyzed just expecting the negative thoughts to come back.   I said this in last week's podcast, but in case you don't listen regularly... I'm finally considering ECT (electro-convulsive therapy... aka shock therapy).  There's some stigma around it, but the idea is really a good one... They're creating a seizure in your brain... using it like a reset button... like restarting your computer when it gets sluggish.  I've thought for years that a brain reset is what I need.  Seems that is what I'm trying to do with all the hypersomnia... if I could just sleep long enough, maybe I'd wake up cured.