Longer Than It Should

 I've got to get rid of the ego, and once the ego is gone, all that's left is Jesus.  Today I'm going to write something on my Christian blog.  Take a look at https://fish4people.blogspot.com/ ... 

 I already have a pretty solid habit of journaling before bed, but this thing, this lowkey blogging habit that I'm trying to develop, is a different animal.  When shall I make time for it?  There isn't always time in the morning.  There isn't always time before bed.  Therefore, I either have to make time for it when there's time available, or I have to write multiple posts whenever I can make the time.  Yes, that sounds like a plan... Okay, now it's the next morning, and I'm feeling that it is obvious that I have to make a regular time to do this, and link it to a regular habit that I already do consistently (such as breakfast), or the habit will not survive long. To say something of substance: here 's a song I wrote about depression 10 or 12 years ago.  It's still pertinent.  It's something I wish I had remembered to remember earlier in my current low: "You gotta wait it out".  Of course, as the song says: "Make sure to take the time ...

 The legendary magician apparently has been known to take it easy and put on significant amounts of weight between his ridiculous stunts.  I'm not a legendary magician (yet?), but I do find my weight fluctuates with my moods, though it is certainly trending upwards over the last few years.  This thought process relates to a few days ago and shaving.  Life all seems to be spinning.  Each day is just like yesterday, except not quite.  Like this morning, I'm editing this post, which I started writing last night, only I wrote that sentence last night too, as though I were writing it this morning.  But who cares when I wrote it, actually, I guess two people might care... me and you.    Spinning ... great song by a friend of mine.  I'm finally operating on all cylinders now, an hour before bedtime.  I swear these medications aren't helping.  We're trying something new, but I have little hope that that will help, and then there's alwa...

 I have the desire to make all our Fish For People content free.  To do this, I would need to bring in more money from Lightning Lucas.  It's a complex ecosystem, and it is never quite finalized.  Most likely, a big Patreon Push would be the ticket, or part of the ticket anyway. I'd like to buy a new microphone (perhaps a Blue Yeti Pro XLR), and a new laptop (should I switch to Mac???).  Actually, a large debate currently in my mind is how much recording I can do at home.  Perhaps I can't do any Fish For People recording at home, but I can do Lightning Lucas recordings at home.  I was just reading about the specs on the microphone I just mentioned, and it says it can record sound up to 4x more in depth than CD quality... When would I ever need sound of that quality?  I don't know, but I guess it has its place.  I've come to view all the recordings I've ever made as Lightning Lucas as demo quality.  If a more important organization ever '...

Well just do it. Maybe tomorrow. No, right now. I don't have time. Sure you do. It's just an inconvenience, that's all. This poor dog, she's not even 2 years old and she already sleeps so much. I should get a job. I don't think I could handle it. I already have a calling, that's sort of like a job. Then why don't you live into that? That's what I'm trying to do right now. Does anyone really want to hear/read your thoughts? Sure they do, they just don't know it yet. Don't you view your podcast as a failure? I guess I do, but some people liked it. Shiny, shiny, shinier. Everything must become shinier. But this post will probably never be shined up.  I guess for me it's going to take a perfect storm of luck and skill and a little more luck. But I try to expand the surface area of my luck. So I hope you enjoyed reading these tumbling thoughts. Today I suggest listening to my song Longer Than It Should . See you tomorrow.

 I think part of my mental hygiene might involve writing something each day.  Perhaps I'll start today.  I don't understand the internet.  I don't understand the music industry.  I need to improve what I produce so that it can match the awesomeness level of what is in my brain.  I'd like to buy a new laptop... actually I just wish my current one worked a little better.  I'd like to buy contact lenses, cuz the world seems about 5% better when I'm wearing them.  I'd like to have a normal job so I could afford things like these, but I feel that I've proven that I'm incapable of holding down such a job, perhaps in the same way I've proven I'm unable to shave every day (or grow a large beard for that matter).  Our appetites are what we must strive to work on, because if we can change them, the habits will take care of themselves.  I'm working on my desire to write every day.  It doesn't have to change the world, but if it does, that'd ...

I'm finding that writing this blog is similar in nature to when I choose to shave or not shave. I often think I'm on a roll and will continue indefinitely, and then something triggers me to miss a day or two, and then often that Cascades into a month or two, or even a year or two. If only I could make this blogging habit stick for a few years, I think it could be highly beneficial. I'm also considering starting a different blog, Fish For People, to go with my new Christian album. Actually I'm going to do that now. Right now. It has been a privilege,  Lightning Lucas 

I know my tendency. If I have a great streak going, (on anything, for example getting enough exercise), if I fail to meet my goal for a couple of days in a row, then I'm highly likely to stop striving for the goal altogether. So right now this attempt to start blogging daily again is in jeopardy. For example this morning I had to go get my blood drawn, which is another story, but I missed my normal time to write.  I was able to jump back into my routine of showering and eating breakfast, but blogging fell by the wayside for a few hours. Fortunately I'm doing it now, and hopefully I can come up with some worthwhile insights. Insight number one: something is better than nothing, so if I can do something that feels like it at least sort of checks off the box of the goal, I should do it. Insight number two: we can't all be LeBron James and score 50,000 points in our career, but we can learn that the best ability is availability, so we have to show up. Insight number three: rout...

Well, I sold my skateboard for 20 bucks, and my snowboard for $125, so there's a little bit of progress. And I listed the three things I mentioned yesterday, and I came up with a way that I might be able to keep the bike in the family if it doesn't sell online, so that's progress as well. Perhaps today's word is progress. Progress is in the eye of the beholder, although it clearly implies movement in a direction. I guess what's in the eye of the beholder is whether that direction is preferable or not. In my mind it's clearly preferable for me to be getting rid of many larger pieces of clutter in my life, especially if I can make a little money from them. A big part of progress is chipping away consistently. And progress relates to habits because if you can make making progress a habit, you're sure to make plenty of it. And so, I'm once again trying to make it a habit to blog daily. Both to get the juices flowing, and to get into a mode of working, or at ...

Last night I journaled about it, and this morning I am planning on it. I'm going to sell some more of my stuff. I already have way less stuff than I once did, but more of it has got to go. Especially duplicates. I have two Sun lamps. I rarely use either of them, so I'm going to sell the nicer one. I have a smartphone gimbal which I have never even used (other than to just turn it on and make sure it works). That's got to go. But the one I'm sorry about is my bike. I've been thinking about it for a long time. It's got to go. I don't need a bike that is half as nice as the one I have. And I need the money. If and when I make more money I can always buy a similar bike again. I believe I've been called to steward all the things in my life. And the time. Right now I'm not stewarding the things I have well because I'm spreading myself too thin. (I have too much stuff).  And I'm not stewarding the time well either because I'm not scheduling a pr...

Created something daily!? Something good. Perhaps the blog would be the thing to try again. Perhaps it should just be a blog for a blog's sake? Or perhaps I should focus on my new Christian album. Or perhaps I should get a normal job. Or maybe some combination of all of them. I don't think I'm cut out for a normal job, perhaps I should get disability if I could. Perhaps I don't deserve it. There's a lot of things in my life I don't deserve. Some good and some bad. Perhaps the cards just fall where they're going to fall. Perhaps that is mixing metaphors. This air filter is quite noisy, perhaps it needs to be cleaned. Perhaps I'll make some more fizzy water. Perhaps I should go on a longer walk today. Perhaps I should get the psychiatrist to give me a drug-induced lobotomy so that I can function in this society, even if I do have to become a robot.  That's it for today, no podcast recommendation, because as I said, maybe I need to blog for blogging sak...

"Catch yourself not thinking ... Thinking cannot tell you who or what you are." - Eckhart Tolle. There is a easy chair in the corner of my parents' dining room. From this chair one can sit and soak up the sun. The dog can lie on the foot rest and keep one's feet warm, and the wind chime right outside the window can marginally increase one's auditory experience. You could say it's a slice of paradise, so it's no surprise that we argue over whose turn it is to sit there.  This chair is a place I often sit to forget my problems. To catch myself not thinking. To win the game that is not thinking about the game. To need a jolting alarm to bring me back to the real world. This jolting alarm is often the dog alarm. She hears something I can't even hear and goes nuts. And yet most of the time she sleeps more calmly than I do. Oh for this ability to sleep soundly and peacefully and yet to operate fully the second the call of duty comes. What we would all give f...

 I would be a bit tempted to drive for Uber, but I can't because my car only has two doors. I guess I could do Uber eats or something else like that. What I really need to do is just actually work for myself. There is plenty to do, and some of it actually makes money.  I just listened to a book summary that argued that extrinsic motivation can be harmful. I think I agree. The drives I talked about last week, the appetites, are intrinsic. How then can we adjust the appetites without having to call that adjustment 'extrinsic motivation'? It's all a semantics game after all, but it's a semantics game worth playing I think. Like how reverse psychology totally works in certain situations.  I'm parked next to a stone wall, and I have the sudden realization that life is more like a stone wall than a brick wall. In the end you're going to end up with a wall, but to begin with you're probably going to deal with some irregularities. On the other hand our days are ...

 The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao - loud Sue  I'm here on our easy chair and the dog is asleep on my feet. The sun is coming in the windows at an angle that is better even than a sun lamp. I am catching my rays for sure.  I am planning to go to church as soon as I finish writing this. I have not written in a month, but for no particular reason. It's not that I didn't have anything to say. I have been working on several songs, vacationing, and continuing to raise Jamie. It seems that some tasks never go away once you sign up for them. Perhaps that's what I want to focus on today. Appetites. If we can change our appetites, our drives, then we can change our actions. We don't want to try to get ourselves to go to the gym. Rather we ought to try to get ourselves to want to be in better shape. Then we might go to the gym automatically. I don't know why people use the gym as part of their metaphor so often. Let me put it a different way.  I like quick ...

I was just going to link to another podcast, but I decided to write something... My last 2 years have been fairly devoted to Hold That Note (my musical podcast which came out weekly for most of 2022 and 2023). Alluding to the title of this blog (Longer Than It Should), I was sure that somehow the show would make a breakthrough eventually.  Now I'm not so unrealistic... there is no reason that the show can't remain in obscurity perpetually.  Even if I never stop making art, 'the people' are not obligated to tell their friends about it.  They will only do so if there's something in it for them, which makes sense... that's how I operate too... an equal and opposite reaction, or whatever. Well, it's clear that I have some bitterness about the whole thing.  (I'll admit that).  My whole ecosystem on the internet is so close to good enough... and yet so far.  It's like the difference between good and great gapes larger and larger the closer you get to it. ...

 Here's the link to my newest podcast episode:  https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/holdthatnote/episodes/119-Nikos-Song--Wake-Up-Oh-Sleeper--journaling-with-God-e2rhpt3 Or find it wherever you get your podcasts by searching 'Hold That Note' ... and don't forget to subscribe.

Figuring out what to do with your life isn't easy.  Sometimes I feel like I'm a stem cell... I could morph into anything without warning.  (This may reflect a fairly rudimentary understanding of stem cells). Right now I've basically been stripped down to me, my dog, and my car... and for now I'm staying with my parents... so we're all just waiting to see what I evolve into next.  Could it be a musician? A blogger? A YouTuber? A podcaster? A comedian? An actor?  A children's book author/illustrator?  An accountant? A business tycoon? A foot surgeon? A railroad conductor? A theoretical physicist? A bazillionaire? A racecar driver? It's hard to decide.  And the rules are changing daily... It's hard for me to even discern what my personality type is.  It seems to shift like sand. I'm not exactly sure how sand shifts.  The way I shift is by getting energy from some gatherings and being overwhelmed and anxious about other very similar ones.  Tangen...

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://yo...