Early start, lot of information. Lot of caffeine and resulting full-body shudders.

Questions: do I try crank this out before going to training? Did I somehow miss a day of working or posting?

I did not, but later I went to strength conditioning and had to leave. I was too tired to keep up, which set off a panic response I was too exhausted to counter. Which means, you cry. It’s not anything more or less than that. I did leave training early, which I don’t like, but I went rather than skipped it, which is what I would usually do when I’m that drained. I don’t know if I made the better or worse decision, but I think the bottom line is I need to take better care of my sleep schedule.

My coach made an excellent point. When you’re dealing with a new challenge, your body takes time to adjust.

New information is exhausting. Changes in schedule are exhausting, and I’ve been incorporating more changes into my daily schedule. Evidently I left out the option for sufficient resting time.

I get edgy about taking time to rest or just watch non-educational stuff for a while, because 1) I am pretty great at procrastination, and 2) because usually there  is always something to do. It’s tough to switch that off.

Wait But Why has a fantastic article on procrastination and it did help me contextualise it somewhat. To use the article terminology, it’s pretty easy to get stuck in the dark playground, where you end up sleep deprived and hating yourself. This graphic really says it all. Bloody instant gratification monkey.

I came back from training early feeling drained and frustrated, but I figured that I might as well work on what I’ve got. So I worked on two items: sends and delays.

Sends and delays were tracks I had seen and never used. You can send a track audio to a specific track that has reverb effects or delay effects, temporarily or fully, one or the other or both. So it’s pretty cool for changing the audio effects midway.

What did I decide to do with this new information? Grab my kazoo. I had promised Precious that I would record a kazoo cover of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, and by gum I meant to do it. Given I had made this promise ages ago, I originally thought I’d just record a quick and dirty cover into my phone.

However.

Now that I’m taking on this challenge, my brain started thinking of the session view and how you can use it to create small loops. And then I started listening to the bassline of White Rabbit and realised it was a melodic ostinato, so I could theoretically hum it, loop it, and create a kazoo layer on top.

Then I thought again and figured maybe I could see if I could whack in a really rough drum track.

So long story short this may become a proper cover attempt that people probably will not want to listen to, because what is the max endurance for kazoo? Going to say about one minute, if that time touring was anything to go by. Eight of us in a van, and at one music equipment shop, myself and one other person were so bored we decided to buy kazoos and have a little sing-song in the van en route to the next venue.

Stunningly, we were asked to put them away after a while. Tolerance was probably fairly high at this point, because we had been listening to Fleetwood Mac on repeat, as we could not agree on any other music to listen to.

This is more about learning by finding the fun, as my dad always advises. Even when it seems like a big, daunting task, there’s always nonsense you can fit in.

If you’re at the point where there’s no way to bring some fun into a task, it’s okay to step back.

Example: look at this. This is the circle of fifths and I have the hardest time remembering it. Carolyn Gets Drunk And Eats ButterFlies is all keys if you start at C and read the circle of fifths clockwise. Carolyn Fondles BEADs lists all keys of the circle of fifths if you start at C and move counter-clockwise. Thanks Michael New for that mental image.

Challenges from friends or mentors can work. Silly mnemonics can work. I’m not forgetting that in a hurry.

Not every day will be fantastic. Can’t be. You cry, you barf, you deal, you try and make sure you get some rest so the next day might be a bit better. At the least you’ll be more rested.