Is death a tropical vacation?

If life can be worse than death, 

so much so that some people volunteer to die,

is death never worse than life,

since no one who made that choice,

(or had death chosen for them)

has ever come back from it? 

Author’s note:

I’m not feeling suicidal in the slightest.

But the more I think about death,

the less I fear it.

I think the first few times you really sit in the idea of death,

it can be overwhelming.

But like with all great things,

it can be a bad idea to rush into it too fast.

Especially since I only see death villainized:

when we sit with our thoughts of death,

thoughts we’ve been told to ignore,

run in fear of, hold prejudice against,

to arm ourselves with every supplement

that Amazon could possibly sell you

in the fleeting hope of escaping it,

we are more rude to death

than death would ever be to us.

And probably it’s not even death we’re fearing,

it’s the people like us who might fling it upon us

in the cruelest ways we can imagine.

At this moment,

I believe I was born from death.

And I will die into death.

I’m not even sure how different this

‘life’ is from ‘death’.

Hmm, who knows!

I do know, that death scares me less than it did yesterday.

And the more I think about it, the more ready I am

for its assured embrace.

Kinda crazy

Ideas

Sometimes my ideas feel very heavy,

like I could never lift them.

The longer they sit in my head,

the more burdensome they become.

But if I can get any kind of motion behind an idea,

it immediately feels lighter.

An idea in motion eventually turns into creation. 

And a creation, regardless the quality,

feels so dang good.

02/23/25

Today was the most productive weekend I can remember. Like dang. I really managed my time quite well and did a great job sticking to the top priorities on the list. deep sigh filled with satisfaction

I wonder if I can do it again.

Challenge accepted.

Clowns

For quite a while I’ve felt like my stream/stream overlay didn’t really capture any of who I was, which is something I’ve wanted to work on since I don’t interact with the stream at all while I’m practicing music. So I’ve been cleaning it up and adding some informative things here and there, but mostly memes lol.

Anyways, I came up with a record player template to share some of my favorite moments in film, and while adding the ending to Perfect Days to that template, I was at first glimpse a bit disappointed with how it turned out and thought about deleting it. I thought the record player kinda made the lead character look like a clown, was unflattering and didn’t compliment the scene.

But then I realized, he is a clown to many people, maybe even most. He’s a clown for living his life simply and passionately, that is, how he wants to live it. Even with some people I’m very close to, I know they see me as a clown when it comes to my goals and passions. And before settling on music, my direction prior to that was clownish, and if I chose anything else besides music, I’m sure it would be perceived that way as well.

It seems that when you want to live your life how you want to live it, there can be a strong, usually negative and sometimes forcefully so, reaction to that.

It’s a bit late, and this writing is feeling more and more like procrastination. I’ll finish by saying I’m glad I didn’t delete the Perfect Days scene, and I’m very happy with how that added layer of subtext worked its way in!

Test test: take 2

So I’ve done this once before, I wrote something along the lines of “Hey! I haven’t been writing, but I will be!”

And then I disappeared for 2 or so years.

Well. Here we go. I’m back! Well, I think I might actually be back.

I’ve come to the realization that a big problem I have with my off-time is not planning how to spend it.

It almost seems counter-intuitive (at least for myself).

In my head, the internal dialogue is roughly, “This isn’t right! Planning is for Monday - Friday! We plan from first wink to last. We go non stop and planning means you’re working!”

Alas, my foolish friend who is also myself, planning is what keeps you moving for business AND pleasure!

It’s not one or the other! You plan a vacation. You plan your weekend. You plan time with friends and family.

You plan how you will pursue your off-time. Otherwise you fall into “maybe this”, “distracted by that”,

“maybe we can ____ this weekend/month/year” etc. and so on.

It’s a recipe to the most dreaded symptom in life: regret.

Here’s to planning!

Test test

It has been a hefty minute. The last time I posted was a while ago in what I’m referring to as Music Education Attempt #2.

I am currently in Attempt #3. Feeling good about it and happy to be here!

That’s pretty much all I have to say tonight. I needed to post something to get back into this groove.

Expressing yourself in positive ways is good for the soul and I’d like to find myself back in front of the typewriter soon.

Consistency

I have had a few periods of consistent musical study followed by a severe lack of focus (and a severe lack of focus is where I feel I'm still at right now as I type this), though I'm trying to put in the work to make sure that I trend back to my idea of what it means to be productive for the long-term. My first burst of productivity was about a year ago, and though I have thought about what led it to fizzle out, I haven't been able to hone in onto exactly what I need to do to maintain it for a much more sustained duration. Some areas I feel need the most attention to do this are dealing better with interruptions, being malleable with my time, scheduling rest and leisure and being more gentle with my progress (like remembering the long-term nature of the project and greeting negative thoughts when they say “Hey!”).

Interruptions come in many forms for me. I like to be a creature of habit, and when I am I feel like I can achieve everything that I've decided to focus on. However, when the interruptions start to appear I have found it hard to not only rebound from them, but to also view them in a positive light and manage them more effectively and empathetically. Maybe when someone hears the word interruption it's normally interpreted as being negative, but that's not how I'm trying to define it. Rather, it's something unexpected that detours away from what you were generally expecting to happen, or where you were predicting your time and attention to be spent. My intention is to be able to do well enough with my main study and practice schedule that on an average day I finish everything that’s scheduled, so that then when things do come up, I can deal with them comfortably while knowing that they are temporary and not actually disrupting anything in a grander sense.

“Being malleable with my time”, I notice this in response to days after interruptions, late nights that lead to late starts or times when I need to start and stop frequently and can’t hit a good productive groove. Simply put, if I can’t do tasks when they were originally supposed to happen (like starting the day at 7am), my brain sometimes throws out of the idea of doing nothing at all – and this can escalate. It just feels easier to have a regular flow, but having an appointment in the morning and not doing a few tasks to compensate shouldn’t discombobulate my flow as much as it has. **Being present for my fiancee has also made me confront this malleability head on. She has sickle cell anemia which means unexpected, and usually late night, trips to the hospital so she can manage the intense pain crises her disease brings with it. I've done a lot of work to make these visits a natural part of my life, and while I am much more comfortable and confident in a hospital setting, I now know I’m not a person that recovers easily from sleep disruption and I need to do a better job allowing the next day to have a late start, and maybe also an early finish, to catch some extra Z’s if I’m serious about this whole consistency thing.

** 02/06/25 As the author contemplates finally returning to this blog, the most inconsistent blog he has ever personally seen, he would like to mention that this relationship ended over a year ago.

When it comes to rest and leisure, well, the thing is that I kind of disown them when I get into a flow state haha! Because music is my major interest and passion, it becomes the sole leisure, and leisure time becomes a desperate, down to the minute management of free time. I enjoy video games, and sometimes I unnecessarily feel guilty of that – leisure is supposed to be fun! Video games are fun! And if I cut off something like gaming entirely, there’s typically a rubber banding effect when I feel burnt out and then I cutoff productivity and turn entirely to video games. It’s not one or the other, it’s both, and their coexistence is a great thing.

Finally, understanding that frustration, setbacks and periods of seeming stagnation are necessary for learning, growth and development. Mistakes must happen to get better, and a healthy dose of frustration and setbacks need to be welcomed instead of being seen as damning failures or catastrophic embarrassments. I am making my practice and study public, and typically only the highlights of this process are shown, but instead (and don’t forget – purposefully) the majority of my time will be spent showing mistakes, confusion, errors of understanding and a crawling pace of progress that is seen over weeks, months and years instead of minutes, hours or days.

Looking back, while it’s unfortunate that up until this point I have not been able to remain consistent with my studies, I am optimistic about the future and glad that I have taken the time to see what hasn’t worked so that I can make corrections moving forward.

Being authentic

    The only way I want to do this whole endeavor is if I can truly be myself, and comfortable being that person, while the camera is rolling. This is why I initially wanted to do absolutely 0 interaction with the Twitch feed while practicing and studying, but moderation means that I will need to take a look to make sure that things are kosher. I've attempted YouTube videos before, and looking back on that experience I can see how I adopted very generic and cringy YouTuber/content creator archetypes void of authenticity despite setting out to do the opposite.

    I enjoy my study days. Sometimes I'm dead focused, sometimes goofy, sometimes pissed off, sometimes motivated, sometimes ready to throw in the towel -- you get the idea, I experience a range of emotions that are all normal to have (I also go through spurts of talking aloud to myself nonstop, and other times purposefully keeping everything internal). The point is, I want to make sure that my words and actions originate from places of genuine interest and not to serve the potentiality of who might be watching or what might keep someone watching.

    I suppose how I spend my time each day will naturally change as I continue down the path of musical education, but it's important for me to make sure that I'm working as hard as I can. Like assigning time appropriately according to my goals, being open to changing things that aren't working, deciding if an area needs more or less of my time, rethinking priorities and being able to leave my comfort zone when necessary. I don't want to change anything because of trolls, reading comments*, or if facing my own insecurity of embarrassing myself publicly while trying to learn a new thing.

    I (gosh, how many paragraphs am I going to start with “I”) know the camera is there. The setup of my music room is designed to present a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a non-musical person's evolution into a more musically inclined one. It's a research experiment/music education I've set up for myself where the camera is supposed to play 2 main roles: accountability and audience. My time already spent recording live streams in the past has been pretty authentic, though looking back I do recognize moments when I spent more or less time on activities to either boost my self-image or avoid dramatic embarrassment when struggling with challenging tasks.

    But the thing is, the biggest leaps in growth come from the worst mistakes! As an example, I like skateboarding, but you can't get better at skateboarding without taking nasty falls and breaking bones, and as someone who can't afford to break any bones, I'm fine with not taking that level of risk and being mostly a digital skateboarding consumer. However, I cannot have that mentality when it comes to music. Instead, when it comes to music, I will be taking the nastiest metaphorical diggers when it comes to attempting new grooves, theory, playing techniques, etc. As I write, this all seems like an obvious truth, but I do know that I have had moments where I feel self conscious and it's important to be ready for those moments and capable of confronting that insecurity in a healthy way.

    The goal is not to turn myself into an emotionless stoic, but rather recognize and grow familiar with my insecurities while putting in the honest work to understand where feelings like that are coming from and what it means to address them (largely in order to avoid losing my authentic self, or the self that I aspire to be). I suppose an additional aspect I've touched on is also staying true to myself and not turning into what I think a potential viewer would be interested in, or putting weight into negativity that can find it's way into the chat and letting that compound other thoughts that might already be lingering in my head.

*I didn't look at the Twitch chat at all during my first go at live streaming, but if the audience grows at all I believe that I will need to take some quick peaks at it for general moderation. Up to this point, I've only really seen like one mean comment, but one can be enough if you decide to put any weight into what it says. But at the same time, I must not forget that there are also advantages to looking at chat, like how most people are very positive and encouraging and how experienced musicians share helpful advice and give meaningful, constructive criticism and feedback.