The Airing of Grievances

I actually have few grievances, and virtually none which originate outside of my own shortcomings and failures to focus. I do think, however, that the holiday season would be more complete and much more interesting if the "Airing of Grievances" were an actual part of the celebration.

I have been thinking lately about my career (the part of it that I choose to pursue rather than need to continue). It occurs to me over (and over and over and over) that, for a writer, I don't write very much. That doesn't tend to bode well for one's future, so I have tried to figure out why that is. As I analyzed my use of time, I realized that I get bogged down too easily. I take my proverbial eye off the proverbial ball, become frustrated with the often meaningless periphery, and stop writing.

In my particular case, the stingy details are demo recordings. I have been warned about this a dozen times - that it is easy to become enamored by the process of creating music at the expense of creating songs - and now find myself far less productive now than I should be. This is made worse by the fact that I haven't learned the science and art of music engineering. I can kill a day trying to get the right sound on a guitar track. A good engineer can get it right in five minutes. Stephen Sondheim wrote "Send In the Clowns" in two days. Time is money, and I have spent mine whittling the firewood.

As you may have noticed on your right (my left), I made a New Year's resolution for the first time in many years. There are two parts to the resolution:

1. Read everyday. This doesn't mean the internet or the newspaper. It means something worthy of being published in permanent form in a book.

2. Write everyday. Blogging doesn't count. It has to be a song.

In order to do both, I will have to stop worrying about the things that don't matter and fixing the things that do. I really feel like this has to be successful. It feels like fulfilling my professional potential requires that I do both of these things, without the semi-comedic failure of many resolutions.

One of my biggest fears is looking back on my life and feeling as though I wasted something valuable.