Tag Archive | reading

Creativity Goals Check-In September 27, 2020

Sep28

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Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Welllll, the fact that I’m writing this post a day late should say something. It was probably the roughest week yet.

Writing

  • work on Moonchild (writing project) all seven days – four.
  • work on blog at least five days – three.
  • at least seven sessions of digitizing old writing – I don’t think I did any?
  • craft and send an important tweet – I did this one. Now that it’s done I can say what it is. I tweeted my leaving med school post at Taylor Swift. I knew it was a long shot that she would ever see it, but her album, and especially “exile” has become so inextricably linked to me leaving school, and to me telling people I’m leaving school, that I wanted to share. I think that years in the future when I look back and think of folklore, I’ll think of leaving school and telling my story.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – two.
  • get up through song 100 of Book One of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book – which means FINISHING BOOK ONE! – nope.
  • seven piano practice sessions – two.
  • Continuing on my quest to catch up on Technic and Composition sections previously skipped in Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book, I will do the composing for Unit 4, technic and compositing for Unit 5, and technic and composing for unit 6. Then I’ll be all caught up and can continue forward – nope.

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 189 nights (27 weeks) in a row – yes. Getting extremely tenuous.
  • write Morning Pages every day – four.
  • don’t look at phone until after Morning Pages – this is back on – four.
  • Finish The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd – I’m very close to the end – and start a new book. Not sure yet what I’ll start with, as I’m in a few different book clubs and have so much I want to read – DONE, and I also read 11/22/63 by Stephen King, which is 850 pages, this week.
  • do an Artist Date – maybe? Maybe some of the reading counted? I don’t know.

Reflections on the Week

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Creativity Goals Check-In August 16, 2020

Aug16

goals4Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – DONE this morning.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – still haven’t done this, so it’ll remain on the list.
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – currently working on Nick timeline (the timeline for a relationship that figures prominently in my memoir project, explained in the reflections section of this previous check-in) – DONE.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – yeah, I actually did ten! I wanted to make up for the lost sessions last week.
  • get up through song 86 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book and introduction of the D chord – DONE.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – eleven! Also making up for lost sessions last week.
  • get up through page 55 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – DONE.

Lifestyle

Reflections on the Week

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Getting Lost…in a Book: A Complete Short Story

Mar15

lost in bookindexStephanie Carlson loved to read. She read whenever she got a chance to. She thought she never had enough time to, though. She thought she never had enough time to enjoy the lives of the characters, feel the suspense of a mystery or the romance of a love story. The truth was, as she discovered later, that she spent way too much time with her nose in books.

In second grade Stephanie discovered Nancy Drew books. She loved them.

In January Stephanie and her family went to visit their grandmother. Stephanie hoped she wouldn’t have to share a room with either of her sisters. Julie always wanted Stephanie to read to her. Then she would ask a million questions. Her other sister, Melanie, who was a year older than Julie, didn’t like it when Stephanie read.

For once Stephanie got her wish to be alone. Now she could read in peace because there weren’t any little sisters around to disturb her.

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Switch is On

Jul1

SwitchisonimagesAnother post from the past – July 2008

A few months ago, I wrote this post about how I felt sort of distanced from myself, and a time years ago when I felt more myself than ever, and how much I missed those times.

Well, I feel like I’m back.

First off, it’s like some switch totally flipped for me at some point, when I suddenly, acutely felt my intellectual frustration so strongly that I couldn’t ignore it or somehow make it okay.

I’m not sure how it started – with all these personal changes, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact start to things. They creep. Shift underneath the surface like tectonic plates until they’re erupting and lava is everywhere. And that’s a good thing, at least for me, because it’s like re-awakening, rekindling the inner fire. It’s passion. It’s aliveness. So, even though sometimes it makes present circumstances a little difficult or uncomfortable (because aliveness sometimes makes you aware of where your soul is dying), any day I’ll take it.

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On Not Writing (Or, Of Fear and Fond Memories)

Feb13

IMGP6957eCAMP_ORKILA_ROAD_ORCASA few winters ago, I lived with my friend Tracy in a house at camp, and I’ve probably written about this winter before, and I’m sure I will write about it a million more times because I was so freakin’ happy that winter.

The house at camp where I lived (called The Dispensary because in the summer, the medical staff lived there) looked like a cabin, with wood walls and this real “old” feeling to it, like living there was actually a time warp, in a nice way, back to something ancient, even though we did have modern conveniences there. I also loved the lights, they had a soft glow that on the wood walls just somehow reminded me of something primal. It actually had a feel that brought to mind my grandmother’s house, probably the only other house I’ve loved as much as I love the Dispensary. Something about that house was just like IV nutrition for my soul.

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My Artist Statement

Sep11

artiststatementimages(The artist statement is something I had to write for a grant I applied for. I railed against it, mainly by way of procrastination, but here’s how it eventually, perhaps a bit too passionately, came out.)

ARTIST STATEMENT

Like most people I know, my childhood was regularly awful. I am albino, which means that my skin, hair and eyes are paler than pale and I’m legally blind. This condition complicated social matters, but with a messy home life, I often felt more different and alienated on the inside than I was in outward appearance. I survived my difficult times by reading books. Books entertained and deepened me. Reading took me to other worlds, which paradoxically helped me understand my own life and illuminated what it meant to be human in a more universal way.

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