Monthly Archives: January 2013

tides

I’ve been look­ing for new inspi­ra­tion and lis­ten­ing to as much new music as I can find recent­ly. I haven’t dared go into much of my old music. I sup­pose that means I’m not yet com­plete­ly over some­thing or oth­er. Thankfully, peo­ple send me new songs all the time (this gem cour­tesy of Mansour Chow), and often it keeps me going until the next addic­tion.

I haven’t picked up my gui­tar late­ly either. For the first time, the break has been self-imposed, though out of a desire to pur­sue oth­er inter­ests more than any­thing else. Also pos­si­bly the fact that I lost two months of growth when I chipped my thumb­nail, and I’m not inter­est­ed in learn­ing any­thing that requires a thumbpick right now. Ever since my dad gave me Larissa as a birth­day present two years ago, I haven’t able to put her down until now. I’m hop­ing it’ll reset a few bad habits, and give me more focus when I start again.

Practicing gui­tar has been the one tan­gi­ble way in which I could tell I was improv­ing. Now that I’m tak­ing a break, I’ve been faced with an unset­tling sense of stag­nan­cy, cause I’ve always held self-improve­ment as one of my main rea­sons for liv­ing. But I’ve also real­ized that it’s not always pos­si­ble to con­tin­u­al­ly improve, so I’m try­ing to be hap­py with who I am at the moment, and accept that it’s nat­ur­al to go through cycles of growth and stag­nan­cy, pain and heal­ing, frailty and strength.