Holding Pattern

Sick most of the week. Work a half-day, collapse on the couch, stir long enough to eat a little and sleep ten hours. Not a lot done.

Better now...but still feeling overwhelmed by the creative projects. Even after winnowing out and concentrating down I still have two massive difficult things going on. One is trying to get some music done. The other is writing my first serious historical fiction.

Weird note on that. The last two fanfics were both subtly historical pieces. One was set in 1995, the other in the first decade of the 2000's. The later also involved me in fairly intense research about pre-dynastic Egypt, the Battle of Lepanto, the Siege of Marienburg, the reign of Rudolph II (and his Kunstkammer at Prague castle), and the Manhattan Project.

But I've only completed a novel once (it didn't sell) and it is a hell of a task. Making it historical fiction only makes it that much more insane.

Meanwhile I'm getting conscious again of just how poorly I play my selected instruments. The project currently in Reaper files is stalled because my fingers aren't fast enough for a guitar riff I want and I can't seem to move forward without it. And the other ideas percolating (so very, very many of them) depend on more music theory, more sight-reading. I've done ninety percent of the work towards setting up a keyboard so I can work at the piano again to problem-solve and try out ideas, but that last ten percent is rapidly declining under "Oh, here's a flat surface to put these bills and magazines on."

Last dozen practice sessions on the violin have all been bowing exercises. I picked up some bad habits. Or never learned the good habits. Had to go as far as simply holding the bow still and trying to rock from one string to another without making any noise. I've been dipping the bow, especially when chasing a scale up the neck. I've also been overcompensating when I cross strings.

But the worst is that I was starting the stroke before changing the bow angle. It is a millisecond difference in timing, but I'm finally getting programmed into my muscle memory to start the stroke after the angle change. And that cleans up my sound so very, very much I'm reluctant to do anything else, not practice tunes, not record, not do another video until I've made that instinctive.

That's gonna take another week worth of practice. Oh, yeah. And surgery is three days away.