Archive for August, 2009

With all the YouTube stuff and international collaborations happening lately, I got myself a Personal World Clock. Never before was I aware of the time in so many places at once. Just for fun, I added Wellington (New Zealand) and Honolulu (Hawaii) to my clock. At this moment, it’s morning in both cities. But in Wellington it’s Friday and in Honolulu it’s Thursday.

I just liked that enough to write this blog post about it . Have a good Thursday, Hawaiian people! How was your Thursday, Wellingtonians?

• Finish Marc’s recordings
• Clean house
• Finish a secret project
• Finally get some work done on ‘Home’

Still haven’t found the time to go look for a job. Next week will have to be the week.

Maybe it’s the haircut I got yesterday, maybe it’s the weather, the people I spoke to, the good food I ate or the feeling that I didn’t waste any time today.

But I’m feeling fine

To do tomorrow:

• Get up early
• Make setlists in train
• Rehearse with band
• Make OurMixTape video
• Make video for my own channel
• Work on demo for Alan

1

Wheezy Waiter recently said it in a video: perfectionism kills. One of the great and obvious truths in the world. But I usually have a hard time remembering it.

I’ve been working on a demo for Alan. And I had this idea for a piano piece. But I don’t really play the piano. You know, I can figure out chords, and melodies are always in my head. But my brain doesn’t transport these ideas to my fingers fast enough to keep up with the tempo of the song. Lack of practise, that’s what that is.

But STILL I have this foolish pride that makes me want to learn the piece by heart and play it fluently in one run! Now if my goal was to play the song live, that would’ve been reasonable. You can’t fuck up too much in a live performance. But this was for a DEMO! Just to sketch out what the eventual piano player is going to play later on in the process. That means I’ll play it now, and then never more.

Technology has granted us ways to record songs piece by piece. After fucking up for two days, I finally decided to do it that way. And finished it in fifteen minutes. Ok, I didn’t really play it in one piece, but WHO CARES? No one except a few insiders will ever hear it anyway!

Two days gone to waste because I’m so stubborn,  proud and perfectionist. I sometimes feel like I’m still trying to do it for someone. Am I still hungry for that pat on the back from my mum or my teacher? Has the virtually endless slating my music received in the parental house caused this insane behaviour? Or am I overanalyzing and is it just a nasty feature that’s always lived in my genes? Whatever the cause, I need to do something about it now.

So here’s a tip for me and everyone else who wants to deal with this problem: STOP being perfectionist and START being pragmatic! Which means: envision the disered outcome and adapt your actions accordingly. You and I will probably be a lot happier once we start living by that simple rule.

But this doesn’t imply that a little practise wouldn’t come in handy. Which brings me to that other big vice that’s been holding me back for years: lack of self discipline. But that rant’s for another day.

So yea, I did my laundry and dishes. But I failed again on the rhythm thing. Would’ve loved to go to bed on time, but I got into a nice chat with some people on BlogTV yesterday. I enjoyed that so much that I stayed on way too long. And after that I still had to finish the dishes and then I had a beer and some crips while enjoying me some Comedy Central. I need that kind of cooling down before going to sleep.

When I was finally in bed at about 2 AM, I found that I had had too much food, and it’s not easy to sleep on a full stomach. So I guess it was about 3 AM when I finally slept.

So I got to think about day rhythm in general. Why do I have to get up early when my body clearly doesn’t like that? The reason is my mind just feels out of touch if I get up too late. My body and mind apparently aren’t in sync. Or maybe it’s just peer pressure. You know. Most people get up early because they have jobs. Shops open early. And early mornings just have that unspeakable quality. A certain freshness, a quiet that’s different from the late night quiet. Especially when you go outside.

That freshness makes me productive. So when I don’t force my body into this rhythm I’m less productive. It’s 3:49 PM now and I’m still in sweat pants. Go figure.

Note to self: don’t linger at PC longer than necessary. Make schedule for regular tasks and stick to it.

My body still doesn’t seem to realize that I need to start working my ass off as of… well say fifteen years ago, but let’s be nice: right now! There’s loads and loads of stuff to do. The truth is money will run out within a few weeks now, so I’ll have to find a shitty job to cover the period in which I won’t be able to make money with doing what I love most yet.

What I love most is making music, in case you’re new here and really don’t know anything about me yet. There’s loads of cool stuff I’m working on, but none of that is profitable as of yet.  And my student loan is running out as of next month. So this Monday I will have to go and look for a job. And next to that job I have to work on:

• My band
• My Home project
• Profiling myself as a solo artist
• Marc’s band
• Alan’s album
• My YouTube channel
• Our Mix Tape
• Various smaller side thingies.

And so far I’ve been having fun, drinking beer, watching movies and, admittedly also doing some work off this list. But still. My head, my soul want so much and my body does so little. I wonder how many VAGED projects I still need to do to meet my own expectations.

Anyway, I’m going to bore you with it again. Simply because it works for me. I guess I won’t do it as VAGED anymore, but spread it out over different media. So that means I will at least Tweet and maybe blog my goals, whatever works best. And if there’s something worthwile to translate to moving imagery, I will do a video. And if there’s time to do that. So it’ll be a mixture of TAGED, BAGED and VAGED.

Goals for now:

• Do laundry and dishes
• Eat healthy food
• Get a decent day rhythm

All stuff I gained on the VAGED project, but slowly lost again mainly because I didn’t have the guts to call it a day and go to bed in time. Night rest should be sacred with me, or my days just degrade to dragging periods of low life.

Onwards!