Change your attitude...

Slap the snooze bar, decide to get up anyway, pants, shirt, scrambled eggs, toast, green tea, pack lunch, shower, shave, train.  If only going to sleep was as easy for me as waking up.  Again, last night, I was up until past 3am, all because I decided to stop at a friend's bar after work even despite the fact that the trains were not cooperating and I ultimately ended up having to get a cab from the Financial District (not an easy task) which promptly got stuck behind a garbage truck for 10 minutes.  So naturally, I stayed out a little later than intended. 

As I've mentioned previously, I've been trying to overhaul my nighttime routine, get in bed and sleeping sooner, but I just like unwinding too much.  I was never good at being systematic about going to bed and sometimes when I get home I want to write or read articles or drink wine, and otherwise enjoy the space that I pay rent to basically sleep in.  It's healing in a way, too, to be able to spend a certain number of my waking hours not working or commuting. 

Part of it, too, is that I can't just say, "okay, go to sleep now," and actually fall asleep.  It's no surprise really. My mind is pretty busy these days regardless of how much I've gotten to unwind, full of thoughts about what just happened and the day ahead.  And when one of those thoughts is "I need to be going to sleep soon," it makes it that much harder to actually do the thing. 

I have my methods, though, when I start to realize that I'm in danger of tossing and turning for hours.  The first thing is to relax.  I know.  Sounds obvious but so many times I've been trying to sleep and noticed myself tensed up, trying not to move, trying not to scratch every itch, trying to ignore the fact that I need to eat something/drink something/go to the bathroom.  All I need to do in these situations is just lie on my back and breathe for a few minutes straight, sometimes pretending I'm at the end of a yoga class doing Savasana (Maybe even get up and eat something/drink something/go to the bathroom).

The next thing is to shut out that "oh shit, I need to get to sleep soon" thought, so I try to let my mind wander toward any thought but that.  Not in a "don't think about sleep," kind of way, though, because sleep is the first thing anyone would think of when told not to think about sleep.  No, I just daydream.  I try to imagine positive thoughts, like me getting an award or scoring a really fantastic gig.  Or getting my ass back to Nicaragua to the beach.  Any rich imagery that can completely fill my head and leave no room for stressing about getting to sleep.  Because when I stress about it, that results in the opposite effect.  I'm wide awake.

Lastly, if I really can't go to sleep, I just go ahead and deal with the thoughts about what tomorrow's going to be like.  Big deal if I'm tired tomorrow.  I'll just come home and be tired enough to drop right off to sleep.  That usually does it.  Letting go of results.  I'm going to sound very Buddhist here but I'm okay with that.  One of my yoga teachers uttered this gem on the morning that we heard that Maya Angelou had passed:

I'm sure the Buddha said something similar as well.  There are two aspects to this.  I was thinking about a lot of the things I've been going through and how just letting go of results can do wonders in terms of changing your perspective about whatever it is.  When I was going through my depression about 10 years ago (wow, 10 years ago?), thoughts like this basically saved me and turned my life around.  How easy it can be to spiral down into a pit of despair over something when if you just stopped and said, "well let me look at this another way," you could reverse everything and get back to square one.

I'm finding that every time I get discouraged about any aspect of my career, whether I'm just bummed I didn't get an audition or I am full on berating myself for sucking so bad at something, I can back up a few steps and say to myself that it's not nearly as bad as I'm painting it.  In fact, it might not even be bad at all.  And then, I'm free to look at it however I want.  I just accept my situation and move forward from there.  It's already 3am, I'm already going to be tired tomorrow, there's nothing I can do about that part of so I might as well change my attitude.  I didn't get that VO gig, it's probably not saying anything about the quality of my audition, they were just looking for something else.  I'm still on the right track. 

Lots of people want to tell you that this or that is not possible, or they want you to look at the reality of a situation and not get your hopes up.  "There are so many people doing what you're trying to do," "There's so much competition," "Just don't get ahead of yourself."  Well intentioned stuff, for sure...or maybe not.  I think people just get so mired in negativity, they forget to dream about what's possible.  And they forget that you should never let something like a negative thought stop you from acting on something anyway.   Why would I not try?  How else would I know if I could do it or not? By listening to my negative thoughts that are probably not even grounded in reality?  Of course not.

Anyway, that having been said, I also had to change my attitude about the inordinate number of hours I'll be working so that I don't go insane thinking ahead to how overworked I could potentially be in a few weeks time.  This past weekend, I was supposed to re-train both Saturday and Sunday nights at CNN but, upon getting there on Saturday and talking with my co worker, we both deemed it unnecessary for me to even stay too late that night.  So I left at 8, went out with friends and then decided to make Sunday a day to just relax and enjoy the weather.  Yoga, gluten free pizza, gluten free cupcake, East Village community gardens and a quick drink with a friend before cooking dinner, watching Cosmos (doing a tiny bit of work on the film score) and then heading to Barbes to watch Stephan Wrembel.  All around a great afternoon and evening.  And now, after this Thursday which I have off, I'm probably going to be working about 50 days straight on top of scoring a film and trying to get more VO work.  Don't worry, though. I'm not going to burnout.  Tim Daoust doesn't burn out. 

Onward and Upward...

I'm trying to find a non-cliché way of saying "when it rains, it pours," or "it's either feast or famine."  But to be honest, the schedule's been so jam packed lately that I have barely had time to grocery shop and do laundry, let alone come up with clever ways of saying that I'm effing killing it right now apparently, in terms of booking work.  I meant to blog about this the other day but after yesterday, it was more important for me to write about Penny when I had the chance to sit down.

So, anyway, Edge Studio called me again last Thursday with a quick VO gig for the next afternoon.  Another $200 job that took under a half hour and I was able to squeeze it, miraculously in between NY1 and a scheduled rehearsal with Lacy that morning.

I've been lucky that it worked with my schedule both times but to be honest, as long as they're calling me with work, I will most certainly take great pains to clear my schedule because I want to be seen as available.  I also want more experience and more stuff for my reel.  So this makes VO gig #12 and with it I even passed another milestone/yearly goal of mine: get two VO gigs within the space of a month.  Hell, I just got two in as many weeks!  Not bad I'd say. Not bad.  It may sound funny but I have a Google Doc with all of my goals in each arena (music, voice over and film scoring), plainly listed and have been checking them off quicker in some cases than I'd imagined I would.  It's a good feeling.

This second voice gig from this past Friday, I felt particularly good about especially since it took me just under 15 minutes to wrap it up.  I was hitting the mark the whole time and only had to do a few pickups before the director, who had phoned in for the session, was satisfied.  In fact, if I hadn't suggested two different pitch levels with my voice to the director, we might have finished sooner.  He liked that idea and had me do a take each with the two separate voices.  This was a 90 second corporate promo for a telecommunications company that will be working closely with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.  Can't wait to hear the final result.

On top of everything, as usual, Lacy and I are still kicking it with almost a show a weekend these days and certainly for the next three weeks (this past included).  We played a small show at Alphabet Lounge the other day and, despite technical difficulties got to try out a few new things with me looping and even iron them out a little.  On Old Languages I figured out a way to capture the essence of the song with just a few layers of looping and it totally went over.  Lacy herself enjoys performing like this as well so we're really looking forward to playing on a Cable TV show in White Plains, NY called Alive with Clive this coming Friday, the 7th of June where we will be looping that song and Dancing out of the Dark as well as playing two others from the new album.  On Saturday the 15th we will be performing at Marie Christine Giordano's open dance rehearsal as well.  Some of the same stuff and we'll be drinking wine and hanging out watching the rehearsal afterwards too so that should be good fun!  More to come on upcoming shows.

Meanwhile, I'm mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted but have determined, throughout these past few months that I can totally pull this off.  In fact, there are a couple of things I have learned from this experience.  First, I like the feeling of getting up in the morning and getting straight to work.  There's something invigorating about the morning air...however, I can't imagine getting up much earlier than 7am and liking it as much.  Second, no matter how early I got up and no matter how little sleep I'm running on, there is no guarantee that I will fall right asleep when I get home at midnight.  Working hours like these on a sleep schedule like this is still nothing compared to the fatigue I felt after an overnight shift when I had been up for 24 hours straight.  Thankfully, I still have the weekends to recharge though.  Third, there is no underestimating the value of a few minutes of sunning in the park between jobs for my psyche.  Fourth, (and this is more a thing remembered and/or actually applied from my basic intellectual knowledge of a yoga), I don't have to be in yoga class to be practicing yoga.  Simply stopping and breathing when dealing with tough or stressful situations is, in effect, practicing yoga.  It's a mindset and it's a good thing I have it because I haven't been able to take class nearly as much these days.  Three days a week and one of my classes isn't technically a yoga class but some weird cardio-fitness hybrid coined "Sculptworks" by the YogaWorks brand.  It's fun but almost too "boot camp-y" for my taste.  And it hurts my abs.

Anyway, there's talk of more work coming from TruTV after my CNN hours are slated to dry up and CNN may still call me for weekend work after July.  And I have some film scoring stuff potentially on the horizon that it's still too early to talk about.  But for now, I'm tired and am going to stop writing and start trying not to fall asleep at work.  Daoust: Out.

Trains, metaphors...

I'm going to go ahead and skip all the "I've been too busy to blog stuff" and get right to it.  Things are great right now.  Lots of things floating in the air right now but definitely, there's a lot of potential and I'm choosing to look at it all as positive.  In the past few years since I've been living here I've gone from waiting and waiting for fun/good/awesome things to happen that I can write home about to realizing that I can usually tell when I'm on the way to stuff happening that is fun/good/awesome and that that alone is good enough to write home about.  Granted, this when I'm looking at this blog as a way to "write home when there's something to write home about."

I digress.  Point being, knowing how things ebb and flow, I can be so much more patient when good things are dangled in front of me and not instinctively run at them, knowing that what will come will come.  I had a moment this week where I almost ran at the thing and preempted a bunch of stuff that wasn't ready to be preempted.  I've often spoke to friends (especially fellow freelance friends), about how, ultimately I would like to be fully freelance, stitching together a living with voice over and film scoring jobs and the occasional TV or film job, here or there.  It's pretty much the dream right now.  The realistic dream.  Not that I don't still dream of being a full time composer.  But that's mostly what this blog is about.  So you all know that.

In the past few months, I've secured two well playing freelance jobs, one at TruTV and one at CNN.  I'm mainly working at CNN and still at NY1, with TruTV promising shifts when people call out sick or take vacation, but the simple thought that between those two other freelance jobs, I could supplement a whole new approach to my income, with voice over and music playing lead roles.  It'd really be the perfect scenario.  So the setup is there but in the execution is where the problem lies.

I took a few days to think it over. At different points during that time span, certain things occurred to me I hadn't initially realized and by the end of it all, it just didn't seem like the right time to make the leap for a myriad of reasons but it only took a few to really make me see.  I was far too eager, for starters. As I have been for the past few years.  But also, I was getting too far ahead of myself in terms of what was possible.  Without going too far into detail, it really came down to whether I could expect enough work from either freelance job to justify leaving the full time job.

Consensus: it's not time.  Oh, how I wanted it to be though.  Good thing I have long train rides during which to think these things over.  I even thought of a metaphor one night this week.  Working at 9am until 1130pm can really make you loathe waiting on the train platform at night.  I'm going to preface this by saying that soon, I'm going to start taking cabs home on the company's dime because they reimburse after hours cab fare.  But these last few weeks I've been taking sometimes hour long train rides home (including wait time) knowing that I needed to wake up at 730am at the latest.  And that's when it gets really really frustrating when you miss that first train or a connection.  After I moved to my current neighborhood a few years ago, I suddenly had about 9 different paths I could take to work.  So, on the way in, it's a matter, sometimes, of just taking the first train that comes. On the way home though, it's a guessing game as to which train is going to come first and then it's a gamble as to whether either path is going to get me home any sooner.  Forget for a minute that we're working with a range of about ten to twenty minutes difference, at most, in commute time.  Or maybe don't.  My ultimate conclusion, and what calmed my frustration, was that it doesn't matter what path you take sometimes and if it does, it's a difference of a few minutes that really isn't going to translate into a more restful night's sleep.  You're really at the mercy of the train schedule and the fact that there really is no train schedule.

Just as in life, sometimes you're at the mercy of what's available to you and have to make the most of the options available to you.  So maybe I don't need to rush at anything.  Not necessarily arbitrarily choosing my path but realizing that when the time comes, I won't need to.  That train will be coming and I can get on it and catch it without having to run down the stairs and risk spraining my ankle.  Nobody wants that.

Optimization...

Nothing much is new this week but I feel like typing anyway.  I've started writing one new track that I still have no idea what to do with, prepared two voice over auditions, one of which I couldn't submit because I was invited to audition by the system way too late (mere minutes before they closed the auditions), and have been cleaning my apartment in my spare time, i.e. throwing things out willy nilly.

Getting rid of things I don't need anymore has been on my mind since the turn of the new year.  Even slightly before.  Probably because I was going through piles of stuff in my parents' garage while in Raleigh, NC during my vacation, and realizing that there's so much shit in there I'll never look at or need again.  On top of that some of the mementos I couldn't part with...tapes of my old band Buggstar, a printout of the story I wrote when I was a kid (by the way, it's terrible, I started trying to read it again), videos from college...could easily be digitized.

And the books?  Well, the books could be sold.  I took a selection of about 12 of them and put them up for sale on my Amazon seller account.  Within mere hours, some of them started to sell.  And some of them were actually worth a big enough chunk of change to justify bothering to sell them.  In fact, when I got back to Brooklyn and took a look at what books I had here that I wanted to get rid of, I realized I had at least 7 or 8 books that I didn't even look at anymore.  One of them, a graduate school text book from one of my seminars that I'm not sure why I didn't try to sell back in 2008, was going for $195, used, on Amazon because there were only about 4 of them.  A new copy was selling for a little over $400.  I never found out why this book was worth so much but I was thrilled.  Skeptical but thrilled.  Still, thinking that no one would possibly fork over that much money for it but that it couldn't hurt, I put it up for sale anyway, undercutting the others a little.  And wouldn't you know it?  In a matter of days, it sold.

This all has really made me want to pare things down even more.  I mean, I just got rewarded for downsizing!  So, I've been getting practically ruthless with my discarding of old things, spending as little as 10 seconds deliberating before chucking in the trash the weight of years of pack rat-ism.  And I don't even hang on to that much stuff!

It is such a great feeling to be free of the clutter of the years and to move forward into the future unburdened.  Yes, at this point, I'm not just talking about the clutter of physical things.  I'm talking about leaving behind bad habits, behaviors, friendships even.  Clearing some of these things out has made it so that I can see more clearly what's important to me, as with random junk as well.  And not just what's important, but what's necessary.  Being able to determine what you really need to function can be very cleansing.  I think of my life now as a piece of software that I have just optimized.

There's obvious value in having a physically clutter free environment in which to work efficiently.  But fixing all of this other stuff that I realized was slowing me down in my career goals and even in my personal development is quite invigorating too.  I guess this is what new years are for.

I'm not going to bother going into specifics but suffice it to say, I've been examining a lot of things lately that haven't been working for me and looking into why they haven't been working.  I guess, to put it rather broadly, the space that I have cleared in my apartment to have a cleaner more spacious working and living environment is analogous to the time I have cleared in my schedule by breaking habits, the mental space I have cleared by dropping bad friendships or just not spending time and energy on them and the emotional space I have cleared by not wasting my energy on things that aren't serving me.   It has renewed my dedication to my career and my understanding of how important it is to me to keep at this thing that I do.  Especially since I remember all to well how I almost allowed myself to give it up for a person who didn't care, years ago.  Never again.  Never again.

Aftermath 6, The Kindness of Strangers...

Sunday, I took off from work. The head cold won for a day...or at least I let it think it won for a day.  I slept in until about 8:00.  Yes, I set my clock back before I went to bed.  Every fall, I much prefer this to doing so after I sleep.  It somehow makes the night and that extra hour seem longer.  I can change the time when I'm in a quasi-somnambulistical state, forget I did, and then wake up at a regular time but feel like I've had more sleep.  Anyway, that amount of sleep, almost 9 full hours, seemed to get rid of the aches, most of the snot and a even a tad bit of the coughing.  I'd say by tomorrow morning I'll be closer to 100%.

I wanted to do something, and have wanted to do something all week, with my good fortune following this storm.  Knowing it'd be Wednesday before I could go anywhere that needed help, I opted to donate clothing Sunday because I heard my church was picking things up and taking them to communities in our area, Red Hook and other places on the waterfront.  I also wanted to go to church, even though I told my choir director I wouldn't be there for rehearsal.  Just felt like I needed to be there.  After the harrowing images and stories from this week, and knowing that some of my fellow congregants were affected, I needed to sort of touch base and hear everyone's stories.  Some of the members got up and spoke about their respective adventures throughout the storm.  One woman had a tree on her house and just happened to have taken her family out for dinner that night while the storm was just starting to get bad, so no one was in the house when it happened.  Another, our junior minister, was in the E. Village when the substation exploded on 14th Street. Sounded like it was pretty exciting and scary.  He was outside and, like many others, saw the sky light up blue before all the power went out. 

 I wanted to write a blog at some point sort of encompassing my entire experience with the storm and its aftermath and some reflections.  But it's hard to really know where to start and stop.  For example, the news coverage angle never really stops.  We went straight into election coverage and now there's a Nor'easter slamming the city as if Sandy wasn't enough...it's actually snowing outside right now.  WTF?

Two realizations have come from this experience.  One has to do with the over-arching dilemma of how inefficient and sometimes one-sided news coverage can be and even if it is thorough on some news outlets, how easy it is to assume the one bit of coverage you happen to watch is the entire picture.  For example, I've heard so many sound bites from angry Rockaway Beach residents (whom we've given a chance to shout at the camera and make their voice heard regarding the inefficiency or non-existence of the clean up effort) and, forgetting for a moment that they probably don't have electricity to watch TV coverage of the storm cleanup, it makes you think that, wow, the government is really dropping the ball here, or why hasn't their been any relief out there?  But, stay on the channel for a while, and you'll hear all sorts of reports about how quick and efficient the government response has been to the worst hit areas or how ordinary people are helping out in so many ways.  I saw a story that moved me quite a bit, the local Sikh community in Staten Island were some of the first people (in fact, maybe the first), to go out and serve food to people who were without power and whose homes were destroyed.  The Southern Baptists even came up to serve food to displaced residents in Staten Island.  So, there are amazing things happening and those sensationalized sound bites are merely one side of a story.

I also heard that the gas lines were crazy.  One man was arrested for brandishing a gun at a man who complained when he jumped the line.  But every interview our reporters have fielded from the lines, people seem to understand why the lines are there, why this is happening and they are not angry.  One man said, "so many others have it so bad, so what is it to me to have to wait in line for a few hours?"

It's interesting how people can take one bit of information and run with it without consideration as to whether that bit of information is truth, only a tiny piece of the reality, or a complete falsehood. This is a can of worms indeed so I won't go so far into it.  Suffice it to say that there are far more than even two sides to every story.  While some things as far as cleanup and relief have been inefficient and some bad things have happened post Sandy, I personally choose not to firestorm the government agencies and whomever else because I have had a chance to see several interviews with the local officials over the past few days and I see how big and multifaceted this clean up effort is.  Getting the subways back online in a timely manner itself is a massive feat of engineering and quite frankly, I think the MTA officials are genius for having the presence of mind to shut down the subway to safeguard the equipment.  We are up and running at almost full status as of just about a week later and I'm probably never going to be so quick to complain about a late train for at least a couple of months now that I've been listening to what goes in to keeping the system running 24/7 like it does...the inconvenience of being without it for a few days notwithstanding.  
 
I acknowledge however that I have a pretty comfortable spot to survey this all from and perhaps I would feel differently if my home had been swept away and I was dealing with a range of emotions over the loss and needed somewhere to direct that.  I get it.  But that's just my perspective and I'm aware that it can't be easy to lose so much.  At least three of my co workers had their homes flooded and are dealing with cleaning that up and salvaging what they can.   It's heart wrenching. 

The other realization ties pretty closely in and it has to do with my own reaction to the storm's effects on this community I live in.  I'll preface this by saying that I've seen this in rooms full of people watching news coverage of past storm cleanup efforts a dozen times before over the years.  Every time this argument comes up and I have to pause when I hear it.  Those people in the evacuation zones who are stranded without power, with destroyed homes, what are they even doing there?  They should have evacuated, it's their own fault, how can they expect government help, yadda yadda blah blah blah.   It's almost cliche at this point.   But, my response to that after being this close to a situation like this is this, and it comes straight from Buddhism: we should be compassionate toward people without judgement.  Especially since some of those people either couldn't evacuate because they are elderly, or maybe they weren't even in an evacuation zone but just happened to be affected or couldn't get out once the storm got bad and they closed the bridges so they hunkered down.  The point is, you don't know someone's situation and you can't presume to condemn them and say they are undeserving or they just want a handout.  If someone's drowning, you don't ask what they're doing in the water.  You jump in and try to save them as best as you can.  Ask questions later.  This is what I've seen so many in this city doing over the course of the last week and it's amazingly uplifting.  We as a society should be more like this all the time.  That's a slice of Ana's sermon on Sunday at the UU church.  Kind of this call to not stop at donating clothes and canned goods.  And I agree and I also think it should extend to more than just storm relief.  I'll leave it at that for now though.  I don't much care for proselytizing or grand-standing.  I just feel like we as humans are at our best when we are compassionate toward each other rather than when we are being isolationist or selfish. 

With that, I'm going to photograph this insanity outside my window and get back to troubleshooting my audio/MIDI equipment problems.  And also share with you a wonderful piece of news that I got last night as I was starting my shift at work:  I just booked another voice over gig!  My 9th paid gig in almost as many months and the first one I'll be going into Manhattan to record at a studio.  It's an internet ad for a young adult novel.  I'll let you know how that goes.  The session is Monday at noon.  Talk soon!

Inversions...

Been thinking a lot lately about my inversion practices in yoga class and how they relate to my life as a whole. The headstand, the hand stand, forearm stand, tripod handstand...I always feel like I'm right at the point where I could leave the support of having the wall behind me when I kick up and actually practice them in the middle of the room.  But then I start to settle in to the safety of the wall as a support and a backup and I'll spend months not advancing at all with any one particular pose.  For example, I may have gotten to where I can balance for a few seconds in a handstand but, without the wall there behind me, I can't come up without risking toppling over on my way up. In headstand I've grasped and put into practice the concept of using my core strength to lift myself up versus using momentum from kicking up but lately, though I can get up, I haven't been able to stay up for very long for fear of, once again, toppling over. Either way, with any of the poses, I always hit a wall. And I don't advance until I sit back and examine what I need to do to get to the next level.

As with music and voice over, I feel as though I get to one point and can't get any further until I fully examine the nature of my obstacles.  Regrouping and examining my methods and their results is key at these points.

Having this insight from yoga is great, too, because I can apply what that practice teaches me across the board.  Which is this:  I find that, in yoga class, and lately, especially with headstand, it's most effective for me to not feel bad if I have to come out of the pose for fear of losing my balance.  I just allow myself to make several attempts at it before accepting that I've tried hard enough for today, no matter how far I've gotten.  I also avoid looking around the room at the damn yogi rock stars that are up and balancing the whole time.  It's not about competition.  Even if the voice over and music stuff can be at times, it's still helpful to import this line of thinking into that arena.  After all, I have to acknowledge with both that I can only do so much and that there are only so many hours in a day.  The important thing is that I try and I'm not idle.  If I try something and it doesn't work, I keep going and I try the next thing. And when I've had enough: rest in child's pose. 

That having been said, I am definitely making strides with both but there's never an uninterrupted stream of progress.  I must always contend with obstacles.  Trying not to let this discourage me is the trick. 

And the amazing thing is that, with both areas of my life, I will often pass a milestone in a very noticeable way.  That feeling of weightlessness when you can balance in handstand even for a second equates with that amazing feeling when someone hears my music or my voice and likes what they hear enough to hire me and I realize that the hard work has paid off to some degree.  It's that "hey, wait.  Maybe I can do this."  feeling that's so amazing.  And it really does feel like, despite all of the slips and falls and awkward landings, I can balance, at least a little.

So I should keep it going, right?  I started this blog sitting at Barbès and typing on my phone while listening to Slavic Soul Party.  It's a Tuesday night which means it's my Friday and I wanted to cut loose a little so I headed over there after dinner with my girlfriend in the Village.  Work at NY1 has been hectic and I'm really feeling the weight of all the balls I have up in the air right now (At the moment, I'm looking for legal help with the contract from the licensing agency and have several emails out to talent agents and production companies with my voice over demos attached.) and occasionally, it gets a little frustrating waiting for them to land.  Though, I'm happy right now that I have lots of work, even if not the paid kind, just yet.  I'm finishing a ton of pieces to send off to this licensing agency once I finish looking over the contract and am satisfied.  I'm doing some pro bono work for a friend who was helping produce a short PSA and needs music.  I'm also auditioning for voice over stuff on an almost daily basis.  On top of it all, I got a little bit of a nice pay off from all the hard work I've already done this year when a director I worked with sent me a link to the finished film that I scored.  I'm a little unsure about posting it just yet because it was a password protected link but PM me if you wish to hear/see it.  It's a 13 minute Sci-fi short titled, "The Feed."  You may have heard me talk about it a good bit back in April, May and June if you read this blog at all. 

Now, I'm afraid it's time for me to go to sleep for a change.  Wish me luck with all of the above, headstands and handstands notwithstanding. 

Commuting...

I spent a good bit of time thinking about how to spin this one.  I had a pretty violent angry commute or at least I did at the very start of it.  So, it got me thinking a lot about anger and how to handle it.  And I also came to the conclusion that I am, deep down, a decent person.  Why? Because I didn't do what I so badly wanted to do someone who tried to #$#@ with me. 

Well, I was headed for the train this evening after work.  Getting off at 6pm like the rest of NYC is my least favorite part about my Tuesday shift.  There's already a tension in the air when I enter the subway, as there was a long line of people trying to go through the single entrance turnstile at 15th Street and 8th Avenue.  Why I always go this way is beyond me.  I finally break through and turn right immediately to go down the stairs to the downtown platform and barring my way is a kid in a red shirt, his hand gripping the railing.  My immediate expectation, as would have been anyone else's, is that this kid would see I had no where else to move to and get out of my effing way.  But no, he braces himself into me and tries to basically walk through me and, when he doesn't go around me, I say, out loud, "move," because I have nowhere to go.  But instead of moving this jackass tries to push me down the stairs.  Lucky for me, I have cat-like reflexes.  You do not knock Tim Daoust down any stairs.  I swing around instinctively to get a good long look at this idiot and see him poised ready to fight me.  He looks like a stupid kid who's played too many video games.  I took one look at him, told him to go f*@#$ himself and then walked on.

Because that's the smart thing to do.  Nothing is ever worth fighting about, especially on the stairs in a subway station when you're at a disadvantage. Of course, and no one can help this, when it dawns on me exactly what the idiot could have done in the heat of the moment, i.e. knocked me head over heels down the stairs, the anger wells up in me and turn again to I don't know what.  He's already halfway out the turnstile so I shout a few more choice obscenities at him and decide, positively vibrating with raw anger though I am, to let it go.

Still the smart thing to do.  The anger is going to be there but you deal with it because it's not worth it.  My mind went, eventually, to this quote by Thich Naht Hahn:

"It is best if we do not listen to or look at the person whom we consider to be the cause of our anger. Like a fireman, we have to pour water on the blaze first and not waste time looking for the one who set the house on fire."

 

I think he had a good thought there.  It's not important, hell it's not even smart to lash out at someone who has done you wrong.  Or anyone else for that matter.  When I got on the train I realized that I was in such a state of mind that I had to be mindful or else I might lash out at the next random person to cross me.  So, when a fully loaded A train and a not so packed E train rolled up simultaneously, I opted for the one with fewer people on it so I could avoid any close encounters until I was sure I was calm.  

 

Then I got to thinking, this is why it's important to clear your own head first, put out the fire as it were.  In the process of mindfully calming down, avoiding the train car full of other people, I was trying not to do what that kid had done to me.  He had probably been having a worse day than me and somehow, me not moving out of his way must have seemed like a huge offense and thus made me the target of his anger.  Hence everything that happened not really making any sense.  Why corner someone so they can't move out of your way and then get angry when they push back and try to push them down a flight of stairs?  None of this made sense to me.  I was not the initial target of this kid's anger.  So, why would I want to continue fuming and risk passing his karma on to someone else?  This profound thought carried me through the rest of my commute and every time I bumped into someone or they bumped into me or stepped on me or anything else, I was as nice as I could be.  I might have weirded some people out a little, too.  

 

Of course, the anger took me all night to deal with.  I had to get it out of my head that this dumbass was really trying to hurt me, move past thoughts of how badly I could have kicked his ass and how little time it would have taken me and accept that there was probably something else going on with him that made him react without thinking.  And that is not important whatever it was.  Because you can never know.  You just have to realize that when you come in contact with anyone, so much has happened to them before that moment that will inevitably influence the tone of that meeting.   And always respond with mindfulness.  

But I swear to god, it's enough to make you want to avoid commuting during rush hours.  Half of me wants to start a routine where I wait around in the city after work instead of going straight home.  Ugh.  But this is part of living in a city with 9 million people in it.  Some of them are inevitably going to be assholes.  You just have to deal with it like you do every other trail of living here.  And keep you nose clean.  And mind your own f#$%ing business.  That's all. 

   

 

Low Crescent Moon...

It was a beautiful sight looking at the clear sky in the west, with a low crescent moon sinking slowly.  Between the planes on approach to LaGuardia and the street lights along 5th Avenue in Park Slope, you wouldn't think you'd catch very many star gazing opportunities here.  But, on many a night I've seen a great deal of stars and can almost always spot Jupiter as it's very bright these days.  In fact, I saw Venus just before sunset on Wednesday during my lengthy jaunt around the East Village...and this was standing on Houston St. in the first few minutes after sunset!  Here's an article I just caught about how the two can be seen close to the crescent moon at sunset these next few weeks.  In March, the article says, Mars will be very bright, the brightest it's been for two years.


Wish I had a decent pic for you guys but it wouldn't come out.  Go outside and look for yourselves though.

Moving on from astronomy to something a little less predictable, my commute this evening could have put me in a bad mood but for some reason I was a little more relaxed at the fact that debris on the track was causing delays on the A, and the dispatch couldn't seem to decide how to reroute the train.  I remained on the A because I thought they said it would be going over the F line (which would have still taken me to the stop I where I wanted to change trains).  However, when I noticed the train wasn't moving a few stops later, I looked up and realized we were at Canal street (an A train stop) so we hadn't switched to the F line.  Yanking out one earbud, I tried to make sense of the chatter on the intercom but when I heard something that sounded like them suggesting we take an uptown train back to West 4th Street, I opted to get off the train and walk.  The great thing about downtown Manhattan where it starts to come to a point is that the train lines all get closer and closer together.  I knew that the R train (the train I would eventually be switching to in Park Slope) stopped at Canal street a few blocks east of where I was stuck on the A.   And I never get the chance to walk around in Tribeca.  So I opted to take my time getting home.  Because after all, you have to slow down every once in a while and relax.

I'm finding that my schedules on Thursdays and Fridays are so tight with work and errands before work and yoga on Thursday bright and early, that I can never expect to get too much done on my other projects.  Sure I can spend my entire break on them or sneak a look at my to do list, write emails or do other work when there's down time at work but it's probably best not to because the quality of my work suffers and I risk getting into trouble at actual work.  So, I'm taking a different approach to Thursdays and Fridays.  I'm not going to try too hard to push forward on those days on any of my projects as long as I spend adequate time on them during my days off and the days of the week that I have significant time off during the day where I'm not rushing around.  Manage my time, so to speak, so that I won't feel so bad about letting a few days go by without making headway on whatever I'm currently working on.  Deadlines or not.

This way, when Saturday through Wednesday comes around, I can dive back in fresh and start to work and plan my week ahead. Ironically, the first two days of my work week will now become like a weekend from my music projects.

And occasionally, I do plan on taking a weekend from both.  Soon enough.  Meanwhile, I'll try and do as much leisurely walking through random neighborhoods and spotting astronomical phenomena on my walk home. 

A room with a view...

I would just like to point out that I live in an apartment with a view of Manhattan. Partial view, but still.  I dub that cool. I probably spoke at one point about things happening so slowly that you don't realize that your life is getting better or that you are getting closer to achieving your goals.  Sometimes, though, one little thing changes in a big way and you start to look around at other things to see what might happen next. 

I just keep working at all this stuff I do hoping that one day things will come to fruition, but not always being able to tell whether or not the things I'm doing are having an effect.  I spoke about the voice over thing a while back and how I had one or two people tell me I was doing all that I should be doing. Same with music, when I met with that composer who's a friend of a friend. Just keep plugging away was the advice I got in both instances.  Of course, they were a little more specific than that but that was the gist. 

Now, seeing myself finally land an apartment that I love, here in New York, makes me realize that good things can and do happen.  Granted sometimes there's a hefty dose of luck involved.  But in all honesty, when I look at this situation, yes there was luck, but there was also action on mine and Katrina's part.  We saw, we agreed, we moved, we seized and then we moved in.  And I don't think we could have pulled it off had we not had all the previous experiences we've had with apartments and apartment hunting in this city.  No one gets it right the first time.

In the same way, the strides I'm making in music and voice over are stacking up and it's because I'm doing all these small things and gaining experience that I'm opening myself up to other opportunities.  Building a foundation, as it were.  I find excitement sometimes in that I don't know where it's going to lead but I have a strong feeling that it's somewhere good or at least somewhere interesting. 

Sometimes, I think back on my life before New York (and by before I mean, before I even hatched the idea of moving up here to pursue a career in music and film).  Back then I was practically at a standstill paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of what I wanted to achieve and how little I knew.  I had to learn a lot.  But without that despairing feeling of knowing what I wanted but not knowing how to get it, I wouldn't have even been able to begin. 

It's probably pretty normal, at the beginning of an endeavor like this one, or at the beginning of any difficult career course, to feel it's pretty massive.  But I think the more you work at it, the less overwhelmed you feel.  Because you're not trying to do it all at once.  You begin to understand that it has to be bit by bit.  That's the only way anyone can handle anything this size.  And the more you build on it the more you start to feel you're on the right track after all, even when you can't see the end.  And because no one can see the end, you come to terms with the fact that you have to go at it with faith that you can accomplish it against the odds.  You obviously can't go at it thinking, "this may or may not work."

So anyway, I'm feeling a little more strongly about the fact that I might be on the right track here with a lot of things.  But right now, I'm so incredibly tired I think I might just sleep.  Now.

The next step...

I sent the letter to my landlord via certified mail on Monday, saying that we wanted out of our lease. The ball is rolling and I'm feeling pretty good about it all.  And about a lot of other things too.  Let's forget for a moment that I just hurt my leg jumping the stairs in the subway trying to catch a train, right before I'm about to go out of town to go backpacking.  Let's also forget for a moment that I'm a little scared that I can't really afford this move right now.  I've proven to myself over the last few years that I'm remarkably resilient and though I may not be entirely solvent, I am incredibly resourceful and intelligent enough to always find a solution.  So, go me and all that.

I actually sort of had an epiphany, or rather, have been having an epiphany, slowly over the last few days in a sort of it's gradually dawning on me kind of way, that things may be going pretty well even though I'm nowhere near my goals.  The thought occurred to me that I could be on the right track and still be pretty far from the destination, or in this case what I want to achieve.  And maybe I'm not going to be able to see the destination over the horizon for some time. And strangely, as the Universe tends to do to me on occasion, right after the epiphany becomes solid, I get some kind of sign that I've interpreted the signs correctly.

This all kind of started earlier in the week when I got thinking about the informational interview I had with that composer a few weeks ago.  How he was pretty much saying that it sounded like I was on the right track and to just keep doing what I'm doing, writing new music and trying to meet people and network.  It's funny.  It still didn't set in fully, even though I had said, at the time, that it was great to hear that from someone in the business who is actually out there doing it right now and has probably been where I am now and knows exactly how I feel.  The first chance I got to start doubting myself I was right back in the pits thinking I had so far to go and about how frustrating it is to work so hard and not seem to be getting anywhere, how things seem to be blocking me at every turn.  But then at the beginning of this week, I entertained the thought again that yes, I was on the right track, probably for no other reason than I was sick of hearing myself think negative thoughts. 

On a practical note, I realized that, in voice over and in music, I've been far too eager to jump ahead, often deciding where I want to be and trying to just go there directly, i.e. applying for jobs I have no business applying for and wondering why I don't get them.  Sure, I should have the confidence to apply and maybe applying doesn't hurt, but ultimately, I was expecting far too much.  What I really should be doing is, yes, applying for whatever the hell I want, but also taking the time to consider what level I'm at and having some realistic expectations.  Maybe figure out what kind of jobs I can get right now and how I can find them.

With voice over, for example, I tried for a few weeks to apply to jobs on Voice123.com but then I started to really get a feel for the culture up there and what it's really good for.  People who get jobs on Voice123.com, first of all, only supplement their income with those jobs and are typically the kinds of people who can apply right away, (i.e. those doing voice over full time and therefore people that are really good already), and be among the first submissions, and therefore be the first heard and probably most likely to get the job.  I have a day job and cannot apply to every job that comes to my inbox and even if I could, I don't have the chops yet to stand up next to people who have been doing it for years and years.  The same thing came clear when I was looking into Guru.com again, a site where I can find freelance jobs in both fields, music and voice over.  They have something called a Customer Acquisition Rate that affects your ranking on the site, and your likeliness of being awarded projects.  It's the age old catch 22 that you need experience to get work but in order to get experience you need to work.  Suffice it to say, these sites probably take a long time to benefit the people using them.  Sort of like a microcosm of our entire careers.  It takes a long time to be solvent in any field.  A lot of dues paying and waiting for that break. 

So, what I'm realizing is that these sites are not for me right now.  I was at Learning Ally today just finishing up my regular weekly 2 hours of recording and I decided that I wanted to try and chat to my voice coach Sylvia, a former regular at Edge Studio where I did the demo, and get some advice.  It really only occurred to me this morning, er, afternoon, when I woke up, that all of these questions I've been having, the what to do next's and the am I doing this right's could easily be addressed to Sylvia, who was ever helpful, though I only had one or two real sessions with her at Edge.  I was thrilled, back then, to discover that she volunteered at Learning Ally too.  Anyway, when I cornered her after my session, she was saying exactly what I was thinking, that these sites are good for practice but that even the people who work on them successfully only do them as a supplement to the jobs that actually earn them the bulk of their wages.

Anyway, the question that leaves me with (and sometimes narrowing it down to a question, even if you don't have an answer, can be satisfying enough) is what is the next step?  I keep envisioning where I'd like to be but that place is often several footholds up the rock I'm climbing and I need to look for footholds that are closer to where I'm hanging at the moment.  Sylvia told me I was on the right track with voice over, practicing weekly at Learning Ally.  Soon, they'll be doing voice coaching at Learning Ally as well but in the meantime, I may do some additional coaching with Sylvia.  And my new composer friend also told me I was on track.  So beyond knowing the answer to that question of what the next step is, it feels great to finally let go and just accept that I'm on the right track and, for all intents and purposes, I may just be exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.    

Dumbo Arts and Wall Street on a whim...

Good but exhausting day.  I think sometimes it's the prospect of staying up all night for work that makes me tired.  I managed to sleep for a few hours before coming in but I'm certain that I'm going to crash later.  It's just what happens on Sunday night/Monday morning.

The DUMBO Arts Festival.  We started with brunch at Superfine which was great.  I had almost forgotten that there'd be a band playing there too.  The Jack Grace Band. And my steak and eggs and coffee were damn good.  Superfine is another of these local, seasonal, changing menu kind of places, which makes it pretty cool in my book.  Mine and Katie's friend Rachel came all the way down from Washington Heights to meet with us so we had a little mini-UNCG reunion going on.

After brunch we mostly strolled, stumbling across whatever until we found one of the festival programs on a counter in one of the restaurants on Pearl Street.  Here's a pretty good digest of the thing we saw, captioned and all:

Best of DUMBO Arts Festival

Among, many outdoor exhibits and open galleries and studios, there was dancing (both inside and out), musical performances and even a guy cutting someone's hair with clippers that were hooked up to a guitar amp and several effects pedals.  This was pretty awesome but not the coolest thing I saw all afternoon.  Here's a link to a description of what I thought was the coolest.

After Rachel left us to go to a rehearsal, we walked around for about as long as we could stand and then spent some time watching the dancing and trapeze at the Galapagos Art Space.   Galapagos is a great venue and I'm really hoping that Tania and I can book it for Rhythmic Movement 2 in November.      The seating is fantastic. Floating islands in a 1600 square foot indoor lake.   And it's a LEED certified green building too.

After a little bit of time off of our feet we decided not to wait for the next set of dancers and instead go down to Wall Street to witness the spectacle of dirty hippies protesting everything and anything.  I had seen some Facebook posts from one of my coworkers who was there.  And we actually ran into the two of them who were there shooting the event, a reporter and a truck operator.  Dan, the truck operator who had posted, was telling me how some of the protestors were hassling him as they were trying to interview other people, telling him he was part of the problem.  Oh, the disillusionment.  One protestor had been sitting around topless all weekend. Not sure what that was about.

The protestors have basically been camping out in Zuccotti Park for over a week now and complaining about Wall Street bankers getting bailouts among other things.  The wikipedia article I just linked apparently mentions the protest and already has a pic up.  Here are some pics I took:

Occupy Wall Street Protest

We watched the protestors for a little bit, standing in a tight group and airing grievances.  It was a lot more peaceful than what I've been hearing about the last few days.  Idiots in the streets getting maced because they were resisting arrest or otherwise not complying with police requests.  Apparently, they're not allowed to have amplification so, to get around this and so everyone would be heard who was speaking, they would repeat everything that was said, line by line, by each individual person who stood up to speak.  This was fun to watch for a while but I still couldn't hear half of what was being said.  In addition to not being allowed to use amplification, they are not allowed to even be camping there.  The park is privately owned and flyers were handed out today instructing them to not camp there anymore.

I'm glad I got to go down and witness it all on a relatively peaceful day.  Whether or not I agree with what the protestors are going on about (some of it I do agree with), and whether or not I agree with their methods (I don't, in fact, I always think they do less to help their cause when they present it in such a way where the people whose attention they're trying to get surely won't take them seriously), it's still interesting to see how many people come out and what they're all saying, what they're signs say.  Some of it dumb, some of it compelling, some gross misuse of statistics and some kind of cool ones.  There was one in the pics I took with one of my favorite quotes from the Buddha, and probably the most sensible thing written on any of the signs, which I will leave you with now:

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.  Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.  Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Buddha

Diving into work...

When I get depressed or just harried or when things don't seem to be going my way, I tend to throw myself into my work. It's gloriously therapeutic and has the strange effect of helping me to change my perspective on a lot of things. I remember that I'm lucky to have something I'm passionate about and that things are going to swing back and forth from good to bad, overwhelming to underwhelming, good times will come and go. The ever popular, "This too shall pass." No matter how bad things get I remember that at least I have the basic things I need to be happy, right here and right now and that whatever is bothering me probably won't last too terribly long.

That having been said, this is the perfect time for me to be feeling like that because I have a lot of work to do. Sunday night I finally saw the scene that I've been writing music for all this time. It fits amazingly. I watched it about three times in a row with my music over top of it before actually sitting down Monday afternoon when I got up to put it on a timeline and line up all the hits. There were at least three points in the animation where we wanted to have the music accent and sync up with the action on the screen. So that only took me about an hour or so. I had to play with the length of the oud solo a tiny bit and then cut down the electronic part at the end so it would finish with the end of the scene.

But seeing it with my music was pretty awesome. I actually got chills a few times! This is going to be a great film. The rest of the week will be devoted to getting the mix to pop. I'll be trying it out on a few different sets of speakers and headphones in order to really fine tune it.

On top of squaring away all that, I've been plowing ahead with my new VO demo. I've decided to get some peer reviews on this, first to get an idea of how the quality of my equipment measures up and then to get an idea of how my delivery is. Additionally, I've decided to compose the music for all the scripts I'm reading and have gotten three of them done so far. But this won't be finished until I get the peer reviews. That's key. I can go on Edge studio's website and upload it to get people to review it. They have system where once you've uploaded your first, you have to review two other people. And then each subsequent time you upload you have to first review two other people again. So, I can at least expect to get some attention up there. Either way, I've found other online VO forums as well that I can tap into.

It occurred to me that this was the way to go. I'm not going to be able to jump to where I want to be without acknowledging where I still am. So, I decided to back off of trying to jump to getting a paid gig right away and start to work on honing my skills even more. That doesn't mean I can't submit to jobs and auditions but I feel I should spend more time on presenting myself professionally. Just a few things at a time. The next thing after re-doing my demo is going to be to train a little more and then eventually, when I'm confident I can get one, to go look for an agent.

Incidentally, this is also attached to something I've realized a long time ago. The best way to achieve a goal is to break it up into manageable increments. If you tell yourself, "By next year I want to be blank," and blank happens to be a monumental task, it can get overwhelming thinking how you're actually going to get there from where you stand. So, I find, you should set the goal and then just focus on the next step. You can't reach the goal from where you're starting, you can only reach the first step, so worry about that first. It's sounding a little bit trite and obvious the way I'm explaining it but you get the idea.

At any rate, I'm pretty confident about the first few steps. Once I finish those, the ideas is I'll be confident about what comes next until I'm doing what I couldn't have imagined doing a few months ago.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll spend some more time on the mix and then devote the rest of my time on getting a first version of the demo together for uploading to Edge's website. I got here late today because of the trains so I have to stay a little later and then I get to sleep. Glorious hours of sleep.

Bar 82, yoga and the score...

We played Bar 82 last night, a small but very nice venue with a generally under-attended open mic (according to Wayne, the organizer). We ended up going first and played the best versions of "In the Garden" and "Vengeance is mine" yet. The performance went un-recorded as there was no really good person to ask to do it. But we'll do it again in a few weeks at Pete's Candy store and probably rock the place right in half.

There were at least two folks from Banjo Jim's open mic crowd (other than Wayne) that were there last night, too. One of them, Walter Ego, spoke to us for a bit. He's a good guy and has his own thing going for him, which I appreciate. So many times you meet a musician trying to emulate, which can be good in its own rite. It's always nice though to see some originality poke through the chatter.

Right now, I'm getting ready to bike to work for the first time. First chance I've had to do it all week since I started considering it and the weather is perfect for it. It's not going to get much hotter than 80 degrees F today and I already sampled the air this morning on the way to and from yoga. A great class this morning, too. Sarah's a great teacher and one of my favorites at Abhaya. There is nothing at all like getting up early on a bright morning and practicing yoga, pushing your boundaries and finding new strengths before most people have even sipped a cup of coffee and groggily entered the subway station. Most first time yogis that I have the pleasure of talking to after their first class say things like they feel taller and some say they feel like they could fly. While I don't ever encourage this, I do agree with them. Part of what I enjoy so much about yoga is that rush. For me that comes from stretching my own ideas about what I can do on the mat (which translates to off the mat as well). Whenever I do something I've never done before in yoga, I bring that feeling of power I get back to my real life and apply it as best I can. You really do start to feel like you could do anything short of flying.

I get a similar feeling of empowerment when I look back at all that I have done since I moved here. While, on a grand scale, it doesn't seem like much, it certainly does seem like a lot when you consider where I came from. From my own perspective, I have done things that six years ago I might not have even considered possible. Sure I might have dreamed of them but thoughts of implementing those plans and realizing those dreams had yet to surface.

So here I am. Working on major film project #2. The oud player we have our sights on now is a guy who responded to one of Mohammad's cragislist ads. He has some recordings on last.fm so I've had a chance to listen to what he can do already. I think this one will be better since he's actually a professional player, not a hobbyist. Plus, he responded to us so that indicates a higher level of interest than anyone yet involved. We'll see. With any luck, I'll also have my hands on an oud as well within a few days. My choir director may have one I can use. My idea i to get an idea of what can be done on it and ultimately let the oud player we use improvise on some ideas I've written so that it'll segue perfectly into the electronic part I've already written. I'm also debating using edited samples of the oud to layer in with the electronics or just having the oud player continue to improvise over the electronics. We'll probably try both once we get in the studio.

So that's the next step and meanwhile, until then, I flesh out ideas here, adding more layers to the track.

Wish me luck not getting run over by asshole cab drivers on the way into work.

Many hats...

I'm sitting at one of my favorite coffee shops in the village right now (The West Village) killing time between working Technicolor this morning and working at NY1 this afternoon, drinking mate and charging my phone. Yes, I can do all these things and type a blog. I'm pretty sure I just saw Keri Russell on the street on the way here too. Which is weird because she was in August Rush and one of the films I screened this morning at Technicolor had Freddie Highmore in it who was also in August Rush. Weird coincidence. She had a very floppy hat on to hide her face but I saw it was her.

Speaking of hats, (kick ass segue I just thought up) I've always worn many hats in my professional life. Currently, I'm a projectionist, broadcast media operator, composer, performer and voice recording artist (I used to joke that I was like Tyler Durden from Fight Club because of the multiple jobs and that one of them was a projectionist job). I am all these things to varying degrees. Because I can't be them all at 100% I've recently realized. I was starting to get a little overwhelmed last night in fact, which somewhat prompted me to write this blog. Last night, despite being sleep deprived from the night before and having to switch my sleep schedule around so that I was waking up when I usually get off work, I couldn't sleep. Juggling so many of these things, having a professional career, a side career, music as a hobby and then trying to have a social life as well can be daunting. So, in a moment of clarity, I thought it might be a good idea, instead of tossing and turning, to do a little exercise in compartmentalization. Dividing my life into five categories seemed to be the way to go.

1. Professional Career, i.e. day job.
2. Side Career, i.e. voice over and composition
3. Music as a hobby, i.e. performing with Lacy and singing with the choir, as well as working on my own live music projects
4. Social life, including dating
5. My health.

The reason I put health up here is that it's important to me that I remain healthy and if my focus is taken up by too many of these things my health will suffer, no doubt. Not only from lack of sleep, negative effects of stress could really put a damper on things quickly. It becomes necessary to put all these things in an order of priority then for this exercise to have any real effect on my life. Of course, health is always going to be in slot number 1 or 2 because of how important it is to me to remain healthy. It is also necessary to point out that if one of these "hats" is lower in ranking it doesn't necessarily mean I don't work on it or that I neglect it entirely. It merely means that I work on it next, after I finish working on those things that are higher ranking. Or if there's a day where I have a limited amount of time, items that are lower in ranking just might not get worked on. On any given day (well, day of my work week), my day job will of course be in slot 1 or 2. And all the other things will fall somewhere else on the scale. Health will always waver between 1 and 2, likelier to be in slot 1 on days when I'm not feeling myself.

This system, now that I've worked it out, should keep me slightly more sane, in theory, because I won't be hassling myself if I don't get to work on a particular project on a given day. And I will be making sure that I keep things in perspective. And that alone should reduce stress significantly. Particularly the kind of stress that makes me toss and turn when I know in my mind that I should be tired enough to fall right off to sleep.

At the moment, for example, here is my current ranking: 1. Health, 2. Professional Career 3. Social Life 4. Side Career 5. Music as a hobby. The reasons: health is 1 because I'm feeling a little off today from lack of sleep. Professional Career because first, I'm working extra shifts and freelance at Technicolor this week, and second because I'm job hunting…shhhhhh. Social Life is 3 because I've started seeing someone and I have a few friends that are moving away or leaving town soon. 4. Side Career should be two sub-categories, music and voice over separately. Right now, I've put VO on a small hiatus while I save up for some more seminars and coaching session. I'm figuring out if I want to do a new demo for audio books or commercial work as well. Music is on an even smaller hiatus because Mohammad and I are meeting today to talk about the first bit of music I've submitted to him (sans oud) and then we have to wait until we can finish anything else because, while I have finally come by an oud, it will be a few weeks before it is in my hands. My choir director has to get his oud from his parents' house in NJ. And then I might need to re-string it. 5. Music as a hobby is on a small hiatus because Lacy and I won't rehearse until next week and I'm skipping choir Sunday to help a friend move, a friend that helped me move in back in 2009. A move that involved three very scrawny people heaving a piano up 4 steps and down a short hallway. I think I owe this friend.

Anyway, things may change with that list in a few days, but I like the idea now of having a priority list like that. It means I can more easily tell myself that it's okay that I'm not doing everything. It acknowledges that I simply can't. And I should be okay with that.

2 years gone...

I've been in NYC for 2 years exactly today. The time really feels like it flew by when I look back and it also sort of snuck up on me, too, this date. But I don't want to spend too much time thinking on it. I've got a lot to think about as far as what's coming up this next year and I think I'll spend a good bit of time tonight on my next steps. Once Collapsing Elbows' score is really finished, instructions for electronics and improvisational sections included, it's time to start rehearsing with Tania. Soon I'll have that laptop and I'll start working on new electronic music incorporating the guitar and the ideas should flow like wine. Soon the website will be up and I'll feel like I can really start to push the voice over thing. But before any of this can happen, I feel like I need to sleep for 10 hours and have a real day off before I burn out.

Incidentally, speaking of voice over, I did my first reading test at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic last Wednesday and tomorrow I should have some idea of how I did. I'm going in for another volunteer session at 3:30pm, something I'm going to be doing every Wednesday from now on. When I can. In two Wednesdays, Lacy is coming up and we're going to jam on some of her songs and bounce ideas off each other for live performance. So that'll be fun.

On another unrelated note, I do still remember to take pictures of my experiences up here, just so you know. The problem is remembering to post them. That and they're almost exclusively taken with my phone. But here are a few from the past month:

Misc. Jan-Feb

I was thinking about it and it might just be that I'm not a tourist so much anymore. Or I could be just so pressed for time these days that stopping to take pictures of beautiful and interesting things is not always the first thing on my agenda. When I first moved here and I had buckets of free time, it was no problem to just hop the train up to Prospect Park or some Manhattan neighborhood I hadn't yet visited on my day off and take the camera with me. But now, not so much. Also, factor in that the camera I own now is a bit bulkier than a point-and-shoot, albeit much nicer. It became a hassle to remember to bring it with me on my every day trips into the city.

Either way, as you'll see from this album, and though I may have expressed sentiments to the contrary, snowfall still warrants pictures due to the lingering novelty of it all. I think I'm ready for spring however. We're about to hit a record amount of snowfall for a winter season here in the city and it's all banking on how much the next one drops on us.

Right now it's raining and the piles of muddy crusty slimy snow and ice are slowly shrinking and dark brown mud is covering everything. Also, bits of flotsam and jetsam are slowly being revealed as the ice disappears. On my walk to the subway to head home in the mornings, there is a car that has been parked on 15th Street halfway between 8th and 9th Avenues on the north side of the street for several months now. It was never dug out which leads me to believe it was abandoned. There's also the fact that it's full to the brim with newspapers and trash and covered in graffiti. I'm not sure why this car is so intriguing to me but seeing it get completely buried and then slowly emerging again like all the other trash in the city just gives a measure to the scope of how dirty this city can get. Maybe it could serve as some kind of extended metaphor for our own personal problems and how hard it is to truly bury them. The ice will always melt and reveal what it was hiding underneath.

So, I'm not really sure where I'm going with that but it does lead me to something I've been thinking of lately. How sometimes you just have to let go of things from your past, old behaviors and things you clung to, even old relationships that no longer function or have run their course. Maybe in order to make room for new things or to get out of old patterns. But ultimately, they'll keep coming back to stare you in the face unless you sincerely do let go...as opposed to just burying them under the ice.

That's enough profundity for this morning. I should get back to work. I promise to reveal my new website soon...and even sooner you may all be able to buy some of my music. More on that later. Goodbye for now.

Late night/early morning ramblings on the importance of comfort for efficiency...

Lately, I've been obsessed with organization, particularly of the space in which I work. In fact, I've taken a look at my space and realized that it alone is probably the largest detriment to my productivity and I've been neglecting it, trying to just get by the way it's set up now. For those of you who have not seen my bedroom/office let me describe it:

It's a 9 X 9 box that barely fits my bed, a bookshelf, my dresser and a desk chair. I've found that it's much easier to roll my yoga mat out in the living room and do my stretching out there in the mornings. On days when my cousin is home and watching TV though, I have to do upward facing dog with my face two inches from my dresser drawers. Not fun. The dresser itself is currently functioning as a desk with the computer taking up most of the five foot wide, 19 inch deep surface area. (CRT monitors may have great resolution but they aren't exactly a space saver...for crying out loud, my keyboard is resting on my half open sock drawer!). My guitar amp is crammed against a wall with my oscillating fan resting on top, rather precariously. My MIDI keyboard is slid underneath my bed and resting on top of some plastic drawers that I use to store office supplies and software CDs. One of the guitars and the mandolin are both shoved under the bed along with boxes of things I don't use that often, like old music scores, while the other guitar that I play most often is sitting on the floor in its case next to my chair. My laundry bin is close by along the opposite wall from the door, squeezed in between the radiator and the dresser, giving barely enough clearance for me to open my jeans drawer. I have installed shelving on the wall where my desk is which has added marginal storage space that I'm not even sure helps that much. The closet. My cat's litter box takes up the floor, my clothes barely fit and the top shelf is given over to a cat carrier that had to be disassembled to fit and a tent which I can't use because it has no tent poles (as I recently discovered).

The biggest problem here is that I don't have a comfortable and ergonomic place to sit at my computer and compose. Whenever I write using my MIDI keyboard, I have to pull it out from under the bed and put it on top of the bed, plug it in and sit in a chair that does not recline, swivel or properly support my back. Whenever I type, my hand is not parallel to the keyboard nor the mouse. And whenever I get papers or bills I have almost no space on my desktop to stack them and the pile gets overwhelming way too quickly.

I dream of the day when I can have a separate room to do all these things I do. Imagine what I could accomplish if it were actually comfortable for me to sit at my computer and if the space was a lot more functional then it is at present. In order to do this though, in my current space I need to somehow fit a desk and a dresser where only one seems to be able to fit currently.

It would also be nice to have a different room to work in, separate from my bedroom, so that I can have a place to escape my work at the end of the day. And really, honestly, when I think about it, I really do have two rooms worth of stuff crammed into one.

And floor space is important too. Not just for yoga but for giving the room an uncluttered feel. I stumbled across this article linked from this article linked from a fellow composer's blog. The site that the first two articles originated from is great and is actually most of the inspiration for this post.

These are things that have been on my mind for a while, but unfortunately, I don't have the extra money to make a real change in my living situation, and I don't have the option of moving to a new apartment with a second bedroom or office. As much as I value location when apartment hunting, I'm quite certain that the next place I move into will likely be a lot more spacious regardless of where I have to live.

At any rate, I can't do much about where I live at the moment but, while it's daunting to think about, I can change my space and I may not have to buy too many things to make it work...or let's hope anyway. I need a desk and dresser option that will work in that space and I need a comfy chair. This can't that huge an investment.

As I get to thinking about it though, I start to remember why I settled with things the way they are now. Cost and the hassle of getting rid of the old stuff and then physically moving everything intially led me to accept that my dresser does work as a desk and, in a pinch, it would have to do. If I can make this work now, maybe I can make it work just a little bit longer until the next time I move (potentially as long as a year from now). Then when I move I can make having a second room a priority. That way, oh man, the ideas of what I can do. Comfy reclining chair, desk that makes ergonomic sense and a computer that doesn't take up the whole damned work surface. Then perhaps a keyboard stand. And I can do yoga in my bedroom again!

But right now, my problem isn't solved. I think with the consideration of decluttering and perhaps another look at how my work area functions, I can probably get by. But it's nice to dream meanwhile.

Got a late night tonight and will think of some of this stuff tomorrow. I have to finish some editing tomorrow and possibly record some more takes for the dancer's piece and then I can send it out. Nearing the end there.

Saturday night, Peeper: A Sort of Love Story screened at Inivisble Dog Art Gallery in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn at 9pm. I was able to stop by and make an appearance before heading in to work (actually to cover the writer/director's shift who took off to have the screening in the first place). Only got part way into the movie before I had to bounce. But, it was great seeing everyone and meeting a few new people. The director and the lead actor were there and we were all introduced, including yours truly, to the audience before the film started. The director and writer always have really gracious things to say about my score and I always appreciate that. I wish I could have stuck around to see how the film was received by this audience. I even had to miss the Hoboken International Film Festival screening but I hear it went well.

I'll keep you up to date on how things progress as I work on finishing the dancer's music and as I work on some new electronic music.

New Apartment...

There's a line in American Beauty where Kevin Spacey is narrating after he dies in the end of the movie that I love. Living here for the last few years in a city that I love I feel like I know exactly what his character means. The line is:

"...it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry...You will someday."

(Gotta love it when they post the scripts on the internet...makes it so much easier to quote)

I'm especially talking about the beginning when he talks about feeling like he's seeing it all at once. I get that way about the things I want to do and experience, specifically. As in, I want to do everything, be awake every second of the day (probably the reason why I've stayed up for 24 hours straight the past few Sundays with choir rehearsal and the overnight shift). I think up all this stuff at once and realize I have no time to fit it all in unless I don't sleep and even then, I still couldn't do everything...then I remember to let go. Let the experiences come to me, as it were. There's just too much to do and if I get to experience any of it, it should be enough. I tend to just stop at these moments and try to take in what's around me and how awesome that is, whatever it is. Tonight it was leaving the diner with the snow coming down and saying goodbye to my friend, thinking how a a little less than a year ago, I was wondering when I would find that routine and start to have things like yoga and friends, late night diner food, a consistent paycheck and medical benefits, places I like to hang out and being able to make plans with friends to go hang out there. I remember all those lonely months of trolling around New York by myself with a camera, chronicling it all, a perpetual live-in tourist. Now, I feel like I'm really living here, a resident New Yorker, a Brooklynite.

Right now it's snowing, accuweather.com says for tomorrow's forecast simply, "blizzard," and I'm loving it. Between being home in Raleigh last week (fun trip by the way) and diving back into work right away, apartment hunting and carrying on with choir rehearsal in the morning and then an overnight shift and no sleep between the two...I'm having the time of my life still but I feel like my head is going to explode, or maybe all of me is. Thankfully, most of that stuff is done and I get a day long reprieve from work to keep such head exploding shenanigans at bay a little while longer.

Yes, you heard me. Apartment hunting is all but done. We applied for a place last night. A huge relief that was almost dashed by the fact that someone swiped up that apartment while our paperwork was processing. Luckily, there was another unit available in that same building, one that we had tried to get into with the broker the night before but couldn't. Two in fact were open but one was a 5th floor walk-up and was considerably smaller with a bit of an awkward layout. So Katrina went by today in her off time and checked it out for us, then relaying the information to me. Hopefully, this one will go over without any issues.


View Larger Map

The location is a bit farther south than I'd like but it's a step up from where I am now in terms of proximity to things (not necessarily work...I have to take three trains now instead of two, unless I want to take a local train the whole way...and no matter what, the commute is actually longer). It is, however, and most importantly, cheap enough that it is going to save me over $400 from what I'm paying in my current place. It's still settling in that I've paid my last rent check to my landlord here. What a relief.

Tomorrow is my day off and we should have about 10" of snow on the ground. I'll likely try and return some library books and get out and photograph some of the snow for you. Indulge in my hobbies so to speak and just relax for a day now that I can. In a few weeks though, we'll have to move of course, so that'll be interesting...the fate of my piano, notwithstanding. Still haven't fully decided if I'll keep it, donate it or try to somehow sell it. I'll probably keep it. I was saying to a friend the other day that the longer this thing stays with me the more attached to it I'll become and therefore the more obliged I'll feel to take it with me places.

Anyway, here are some pics as requested by some of you of the place. These are all taken by the agency and some are of similar units, not necessarily the one we're looking at.

First New Apartment pics

So, that's what's been going on. Apartment hunting which, if I chronicled it, I'd be here typing all night, working overnight shifts, visiting Raleigh, attending yoga, and anticipating snow. With any luck, I'll have time to shoot some snow pics tomorrow before it gets trampled and turns into icy gray muck. Good night for now.

Work and the impromptu tom-foolery that keeps me sane despite it...

An early, mid-week blog to sort of spew some of the contents of my head. I just had a shit day at work coupled with a great jaunt around parts of Manhattan with Karishma afterward, rounding out the day quite nicely while successfully tiring me out. I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight, that's if the stretch of 42nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenue will have mercy on me tonight and turn down its loud rap music and send its screaming kids indoors.

The shit day at work was really only because of a few misunderstandings resulting in a little bit of unnecessary crossfire between my department and another (coming from the other direction obviously). Nothing that a little perspective couldn't fix though. I don't usually buy into horoscopes and other types of mystical stuff but I read them for the fun of it anyway. I actually get one in my mailbox from a website that purports itself to be Buddhist (it's fairly close) but it's often tinged with a bit of mysticism. Nonetheless it's full of uncanny wisdom and today, it happened to really ring true. This isn't a horoscope in the traditional sense, but more just everyday advice, which is why I read it, because even if there's not the eerie notion that some horoscope writer is predicting my future, it usually contains some gem of wisdom. At any rate, point being, it was right on today and then funny thing is, the horoscope usually ends up in my email box at the end of the day so I have to look back on my day and say, "oh, I guess I could have applied that earlier this morning," or something like that. It's even better when it's telling me how to handle a certain situation and I find that, despite not having read the thing, I already handled said situation exactly, or relatively closely to, the way it told me to.

Weird. Anyway, enough of this. The example. I won't reproduce the whole thing here but it opens like: "You may be on the receiving end of criticism or judgment today, and this could cause you to feel a bit insecure or inadequate." Uh, yeah. So that happened. So I got a little miffed but held it in and then went to my manager to find out whether or not I was in the wrong in this particular situation (instead of fuming about it all day and trying to sweep it under the rug, in case they went over my head with it). Turns out there were steps I or my coworker could have taken that we didn't, let's just put it that way. The details are not important. At any rate, I think I handled it pretty well, even though there was a lot of tension going on throughout the day. The horoscope goes on to say: "Remind yourself of the skills you possess and the work and dedication you’ve put into developing them. If you do receive criticism today, you might consider taking it as constructive feedback. Absorb the information that is helpful and discard the rest."

Sounds like a plan...and that's what I did. Good to know that I instinctively do these things. I knew that if I didn't address my own role in it and forget about how angry I was that my coworker had yelled at me over the phone, then I would gain nothing from the scenario. So that's what I did.

Then, I left work, the second I could and met Karishma at Union Square. We were talking about going to the UWS (okay, okay for all you non-New Yorkers, The Upper West Side), but I randomly suggested we do the Roosevelt Island Tram since Karishma never had. So we grabbed the N Train up to 59 Street Lexington Ave. and walked one block over to the tram. I took loads of pictures. This is the same tram that Spiderman saves Mary Jane from falling out of at the end of I can't remember which Spiderman movie. It glides along beside the Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge, Feeling Groovy?). Here are the pics:

Roosevelt Island and Other Stuff_1

After that we walked to 73rd and York Ave. to grab Mexican food at this little hole in the wall called Palazio Azteca that I've eaten at with my friend Matt before. Great stuff. The place is BYOB but luckily there's a little bodega two doors down so we grabbed a tall Corona Extra and brought it in with us.

So, our bellies full, and the weather beckoning we considered going to the Upper West Side anyway, since we were on the Upper East Side and all we'd have to do is traverse the width of the entire island. No small feat so we settled for walking to Central Park and sitting on the Great Lawn and watching the softball games finishing up and the players trickling off the fields.

Such a great night for a walk. And now I'm exhausted and I need to sleep. But first I gotta make a sandwich.