BLOCKS

Day 24.

It’s interesting to me that as I enter the home stretch of this exercise in daily posting, this is the most challenging part. Each day, I push my writing time later and later, as if I am doing my best to miss a day. I started this challenge writing my posts first thing in the morning. Now I am fitting them in during the last hours of the evening. I guess this is the part of the marathon where I am exhausted and ready to give up? Yet I am so close to the end, I am pushing myself through this last bit before the home stretch. 

The paradoxical thing is, I am loving this exercise. It’s done wonders for my creativity, and I have made giant strides forward on various fronts. I’ve pushed forward with some plans for my next album, and it looks like I might even be able to get back into the recording studio soon to lay down the first parts of the project. I’ve finally made some headway on two other recording projects that are in their early planning stages: After years of having vague concepts of what I wanted to do with each project, I suddenly have a clear vision outlined for both. I’ve also forged ahead with my Moon Songs project. My everyday singing practice is more productive than ever –I even think I might love singing more than ever.

I’m noticing that when it comes to my time, my first instinct is to give it away. I will prioritize answering emails, doing work for CAIC, practicing music on my to-do list for my upcoming engagements, and spending time with friends and family before sitting down to working on my own pet projects, like this blog or my recording projects. Under normal circumstances, the excuses are easy to come by and feel like responsibilities, justifying themselves. But in the context of covid, with no concerts on the horizon and nothing but time on my hands, I’ve found that I still use the same excuses to avoid working on my independent projects, which I am constantly daydreaming about. Over the past 12 months, the justifications seem less and less reasonable. It turns out that while they have been masquerading as “things I have to do”, many of my excuses are really just artistic blocks enabling avoidant behavior.

Clearly, I’ve not mastered pushing past these excuses completely, or I wouldn’t be sitting here at 10:30pm on a Friday night cramming in my post for the day. But I am really enjoying learning how to be better at pushing past those obstacles erected by my inner critics and insecurities. 

More tomorrow…hopefully at an earlier hour in the day.