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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

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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.

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

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    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.