Making Lists

Last night I sat down to write, but didn't really feel inspired to expand on any of my notes.  Instead, I found myself making a list.  Somehow I've managed to feel both overwhelmed and directionless lately, and I'm not sure whether to blame that on ADD or not having a right arm (or maybe both).

Whenever I feel like giving up on something or just need to calm down, I make lists.  The act of cataloging tasks, organizing them, breaking them down, and finally crossing them off a list is very therapeutic.

This time, I laid out the things I hope to accomplish in 2010.  I tend to set overambitious goals, so we'll see how far I get.  What seems easy now may seem ridiculous in the Fall, but then again, I wrote 50,000 words last November!

I even made a separate page to store my list, but for now I'm going to introduce it right here.  My creative goals for 2010:

1. Finish editing my NaNoWriMo 2009 manuscript and send it out into the world.
2. De-clutter my house.  The whole thing.  Seriously.
3. Begin writing a stage or screen play, preferably as a collaborative project.
4. Win NaNoWriMo again.
5. Write a short story.
6. Begin pursuing a graduate degree.
7. Compose an original song.
8. Learn to play a song fluently on the piano, including singing.
9. Audition for something.
10. See a Single Carrot Theatre performance.
11. See a Broadway musical.
12. Write a poem and share it, even if it isn't very good.
13. Write a short story.
14. Fill three notebooks.
15. Starting in May, get out of the house to write at least once per month (and document it).
16. Create a writing space in the house (with desk and comfortable chair) where I feel productive.
17. Starting in May, write for at least 15 minutes every day (or at least 90% of the time...).
18. Take a creative retreat weekend (and document it).

Bouncing Back

Yesterday I heard some words that hurt a little bit.  No, no one was picking on me.  I'm talking about those people in my life who I can depend on to give the honest (and sometimes obvious) advice I'm not quite ready to hear.

So the truth? If I really, really wanted to be actively productive right now, I probably would be. I'd be stubbornly perfecting the left-hand part on some new songs.  I'd be typing one-handed, wearing out my wrist on my manuscript every day.  Instead, I've been reading and watching movies and eating animal crackers.

As an ADD person, this can be a big sensitive spot when said the wrong way.  After all, we hear a lot of hurtful (read: ignorant) words labeling us lazy, unmotivated, inconsiderate, unconcerned.
        
The truth is, that has nothing to do with it.  This is just where I am right now.  Maybe I just need to, well, recuperate.  Despite having only one arm, there's not a whole lot I can't do...just some things I shouldn't.  Examples include: hunching over a piano or computer, going on too many long car rides, and dancing around and acting silly.  

Since these things aren't impossible, it's easy to overdo it.  Really, I should be sitting still and watching movies.  Even more, it's okay to let myself want that.  Maybe I feel like that's a wrong thing and I want my old self back, but this takes time.  I've never had a bounce-back period this long before.  More than likely, I need to stop moping, stop sneaking in two-handed typing, and just accept the fact that I want to take some time off.  Because that's the natural -- and most healthy -- way to recover from surgery.


And hey, at least I'll be able to say I watched five seasons of Weeds and all the 2010 Oscar winners when it's all said and done.

Picturing My Way Out the Other Side: 1

You'd think life would be returning to normal two weeks after my surgery, but not quite.  Not being able to write has been disorienting, I'm surrounded -- or not, it's turning into a ghost town -- by illness at the office, my husband has been pushing to meet deadlines at work, and the house is in a bit of a state due to my reduced capacity for general upkeep.  On top of that, I've almost certainly been infected with mono, so I'm sort of waiting around to see if I actually get sick.

A couple years ago when I felt a little lost, I started documenting the places life took me on foot.  I collected little grainy pictures in my plastic camera, snippets of sights seen in Baltimore.

This time I'm just using my phone.  I'm going to take a picture of each day until life irons out again.  Look, I even made this one look like it came from my 110 camera!

(Oh, and welcome back to daily posting!)

Disability & Disorientation

There have been plenty of times when I've said that I generally lack ambition.   In art school my professors talked about a drive to create, an insatiable need to keep working.  They even used it as a cautionary note about choosing a partner who would understand and give us the necessary intangible room for art-making.  I always thought that that was something that applied to other people, not me.  After all, I had never created anything great. But times like this, more than anything else, show me what that need to create really means.  


Most of my friends keep telling me I'm lucky.  I'm lucky to have so much time to sit and watch movies, reruns of Weeds, to read a book or just not to do anything.  And isn't that really enviable?  Don't we all want extra leeway at work, plenty of down time, guilt-free television watching, an excuse not to accomplish anything for a while?

And maybe we do, generally speaking.  Maybe I do.  But when it comes down to it, I just can't enjoy it. I can't.  


Do we call that an unfortunate excess of ambition that I'm suffering from? Maybe.  All I know is when I wake up in the morning and realize I have all of these songs, all these words running through
my head and I'm not able to get them out in the way I'm used to, it's hard to get up and get going. I feel extra needy of support from my friends.  When I'm by myself, I start feeling like life means less,
somehow. This is really unusual for me. Usually, alone time is full of creative energy.    


This is all to say that being prohibited -- physically or otherwise -- from creating in the way we are used to can be very traumatizing for an artist.  It removes part of our sense of belonging in the world. I'm not sure how to get around this.  I guess the only choice is to find ways of creating anyway, ways of doing what I do anyway, despite physical limitations. 


So far I've a few things that work.  Among them:

• Voice memos.  Unable to write as quickly with my left hand, I've spent more and more time hiding in far corners of the house whispering voice journals, secrets, letters I'll never send.  This amounts to my daily writing exercises, and even though speaking is hard to acclimate to, it's something.
• Talking about my work.  Some of these Evernote voice notes are about my manuscript, and I'm seriously hoping for a chance to talk some things over with a writing buddy sometime soon.  At least then I'll be able to create a list of work to do when I can really type again.
• Karajan!  I may not be able to practice my usual stack of songs on the piano, but plunking out things by ear should be fine, right?  Playing by ear has always been my weakest point, so I shelled out 15 bucks for this iPhone/iPod Touch app and wow, was it worth it.  I've spent the past few days drilling on intervals and recognizing augmented, diminished, and suspended chords.  This is what it's going to take for me to realize this is just another skill, and not a terribly hard one for me to learn.  I want to write out a piano version of "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" by the end of the week.

Other than that, I'm just left to wait it out, watch those movies, and hope my best friends are able to make a little special time for me while I wander around like a lost lamb.

YouTube Artist: Approaching Respectable Job Title?

Sometimes I think I have an addictive personality. While it's true that I can't live without caffeine in my life I've learned over the past few days that a narcotics addiction is just not my speed. I've spent three days hovering in oxycodone dreams, thinking I should write a press release for work or return an e-mail or two or maybe get some writing done.  It's not until I try to do these things that I realize all the sharp edges of my mind have been dulled. I'm not even taking a high dose, but then again I do have a reputation for being a lightweight. 


Today I decided it was time to step it down and start getting back to my normal old self. I still haven't had the inclination to write a word or sing a note or even really read a whole lot of books since my operation on Wednesday, but I did find something really exciting this afternoon.  It's called Musicians Wanted on YouTube and it looks like a program created for people just like me in terms of their career aspirations. Seriously. Check out a couple of their promotional videos.  This looks like it could be really, really cool.  Just another example of how huge and how open the playing field has become in an online media world that encourages us to do and be what ever we want.




On a seemingly unrelated note, thanks to Dragon Dictation for giving my left hand a break from doing all the typing. This post was born 100% spoken word.

A Few of My Favorite Things...

In a little over eight hours, I'll be in surgery.  I started to write a blog entry about that, but what a downer, right?  I've had an awful day on account of being preoccupied by my fear of anesthesia and medical procedures.

So guess what, I'll write about the finer points of my day, like writing myself notes so I remember to try to figure out Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod by the Mountain Goats on the piano.  In an attempt to make my evening somewhat enjoyable, I sang along with everything, including the continuous procession of songs playing in my head.  Hell, once my arm is in that sling tomorrow singing will be one of the only things I can do largely unhindered (though the sore shoulder might make it a little hard to breathe).

This evening reminded me of my previous post on music as a coping mechanism, and this is one of those times when it was great to come home from work, sit down at the piano, and figure some stuff out.  Focusing on telling stories through song took the weight of my stress away, and I think I really relaxed for the first time since this week started.

Writing about my experiences and making music have been my standby coping mechanisms since the first moment I had anything real to cope with.  Not surprisingly, they're the only two things I chose to do tonight (in addition to watching American Idol, that is).