Countdown: Twenty, Nineteen...

2019 is mere hours old. It’s still wet behind the ears. Barely post-partum.

Speaking of post-partum, pardon me—I haven’t posted since September. (That wordplay works better when spoken aloud.) But to be honest I’ve done longer stretches of blog drought and I probably will again.

Is there any uglier aural tableau than “blog drought”? Like a drain clogged with hair and unnecessary adjectives.

Like most other days, I spent today (or rather, yesterday afternoon, but since I’m still awake right now yesterday is still today) focusing on one thing when I ought to have been working on a great many others. Unlike most other days, I am oddly proud of what I accomplished, and to be honest I’m not really sure why. This project was the lovechild of boredom, a calendrical earworm, and a sudden urge to clone myself into a barbershop quartet. Never mind that I am technologically challenged and vocally limited. I’m no Jacob Collier, nor do I ever hope to be, but I birthed a musical creature from my mouth and it didn’t involve pushing any black-and-white buttons. So there it is.

I guess I am easily entertained.

New Year’s Eve Video

Welp, there it is.

It's just as I expected. Zero to sixty. Well, more like thirty-five. Summers are always weird like that. Especially this summer; new place (who dis?), few friends, fewer gigs. Just me and the crickets and the stifling humidity.

Then, bang! September hits and it's off to the races (and West Paces, ha ha shhh) and between that and the upcoming gigs and abundant trips, a nice blend of business and pleasure, and I'm more or less settling back into my unconventional routine-less routine. I think it's in the lazy perfectionist's nature to work harder when there are more things on her plate. (Yes, I've decided to speak for all lazy perfectionists.) When my schedule is free and clear, there's no incentive to get things done quickly, no looming deadline kicking your butt into gear, no threat of public humiliation (just private shame, which I bury under heaps of coffee-stained New Yorkers and crossword puzzles).

I guess I should be practicing right now though, or making pasta sauce, or working out, or all of the above! At the same time! This blog post is such a disaster. If you've read all the way up to now, thank you, but also, why?

#September #taskavoidance #procrastiblogging

Daily Constitutional

This morning I went on a seven-mile walk from the apartment through Piedmont Park along the Beltline all the way to Krog Street Market and beyond, to where the sidewalk ends. The oppressive mugginess of an Atlanta July had already cast a stifling pall over the 7am haze. Even the sun seemed bleary-eyed and lethargic. Midtown was exploding vertically before my very eyes, the views in every direction obstructed by a spindly forest of scaffolding. The sounds of progress followed me around like a loyal pet. Everywhere construction projects jackhammered and drilled and bulldozed, accompanied by a chorus of smaller but no less arduous workers--the lawn-mowers, painters, roofers that kept the already-constructed establishments looking spiffy so as to delay their inevitable demolition in order to make way for newer, bigger, shinier iterations.

In a couple months I will look back on these days nostalgically, missing the time when I was able to take a leisurely two hour walk, slowing down the pace of life even as life around me rushed by at light speed. I used to be--let's face it, still am--so anxious about keeping up with other people, measuring myself by the yardstick of their accomplishments, viewing their successes as a sign of my own shortcomings. It's a toxic way of living. At the same time I was losing my sense of self and purpose, trying to fit into a prescribed mold that didn't suit me. Now, as I crest the hill toward the summit of a new decade and look back at the valley of my twenties, strewn with the rattlesnakes of bad decisions and scorpions of naive over-confidence and boulders upon endless boulders of undying hope, I understand that it's finally time to relinquish control. The more you try to control something, the more it evades you. The mountain remains constant, even as the cities around it spawn and spread and sprawl, an urban fungus of consumerism and light pollution. You should endeavor to reach the top of the mountain. But eventually you'll have to come back down.

I should go on walks more often.

#Atlanta #ruminations #illuminations