First Published: 2022 April
For a variety of reasons,1 I haven’t been going to open mics since around February. I went again tonight, and I forgot just how much fun they are. I got to sing a song that I’ve been working on for a while,2 and at the prompting of a friend I sang a great song with another friend.3 The friend who made the recommendation is also a fantastic musician and was willing to take requests. It’s really fun singing Three is a Magic Number4 with other adults, especially when everyone is over trying to look cool.
I’m really excited to make open mics a regular part of my schedule again.
First Published: 2023 April 9
Fourteen months later, another musing on writing. This month I’ve set the goal of writing more each day. In retrospect, setting that goal on the third of the month, when your first two days were 2494 and 3087 words may not have been the best choice. But, today is also Easter.1 2
I realized that there’s value in living a life outside of just writing for the sake of writing. So, while the goal continues, I’m going to be taking Sundays off. Tomorrow I will find the time to write 3600 words3.
Read: my schedule today was Mass, calling a friend for 90 minutes, and then spending from 1pm to 9 pm with another friend and their family. It was a great day, but oh boy did I do absolutely nothing approaching work today (which, to be fair, is an explicit goal that I’ve been told I should have on Sundays).↩︎
I kind of think that my footnotes might be longer than the actual text of this post (especially given this one), but they don’t explicitly relate to writing, so it’s fine.↩︎
of varying quality.↩︎
First Published: 2023 April 8
Apparently I’ve never reflected on Easter here. That’s interesting to me. This year will not be any different though. I’m heading to sing at a Vigil Mass tonight, so while it is not too late for a1 post now, I am a little rushed, and will almost certainly be too tired for one afterwards.
Anyways, Christ the Lord is Risen!
coherent↩
First Published: 2022 April 7
I’ve kept up with writing the novel since I last talked about it here. I’m no longer spending time plotting chapters before writing them, which is also working surprisingly well for me. I’ve written more than 100,000 words of it.1
I started posting the book to a website about the time I stopped blogging,2 and it’s gotten nearly forty thousand views, which is incredible to me. Anyways, that’s most of my update for that book.
I’ve also started writing another book, which I’m doing for a writing competition. The goal is to write 55,555 words in 5 weeks, and I’m so far on track for it. It’s been fun to try to stretch myself by writing more!
First Published: 2023 April 6
In the time since I stopped writing this blog, there have been a number of changes in my life.1 One of the most notable of which is that I am now a PhD candidate. I haven’t quite figured out how that changes my own life, but I understand that it generally comes with a few changes in a PhD student’s life.
It often means that you’re beginning work on your thesis. In theory I’ve been working on that for a while.
It often means that you’re done with classes, but I’ve been done needing classes for more than a year and done taking classes for a semester or so.
It often means that your PhD project has been approved, but at least in my program, we never actually get a formal approval for our PhD project from our committee.
Where does that leave me? More or less in the same place, except that I’ve changed my LinkedIn profile to say “PhD Candidate” instead of “PhD Student.” As I write this, I’ve already found a second use case for that! Someone asked me to write a bio for the public talks I’ll be giving again this summer.2
First Published: 2023 April 5
Wow! A year ago two days from now I wrote my last reflection on how I gave up on writing this blog. Unlike then, I do kind of regret this break. It wasn’t planned, it just sort of happened.
I have been keeping up on my creative hobbies, another difference from last year. However, I do find that I still become ungrounded and disconnected without blogging.1
So, a few updates:2
I passed my candidacy exam!
I have kept writing the book that I talked about before giving up
I started a new book
Anyways, hopefully I’ll be able to get back to doing this daily!3
First Published: 2023 February 1
Another month has passed me by! I said my goals last month were
Blog daily. I have faith in myself.
Listen to the BiaY and CCCiaY on average once a day each
Stretch daily
Write a poem a day
Write a piece of music a day
Write through Chapter 35 of the book I’m self publishing
Practice music daily
Say a rosary a day
In reality I:
Blogged 12 times.
Listen to the BiaY and CCCiaY much less than once averaged
Stretched at least 10 times
Actively gave up on the poetry goal.1
Wrote Fifteenish pieces
Wrote through Chapter 23 of the book I’m self publishing
Practiced music most days
Said very few rosaries
On the other hand, most of the time, I was not aimlessly wasting away my time, which is one of the reasons I wanted to have more activities to do. I found that my scheduled list of events ceased to be useful about when I started being busy again.
Other things I did this month include:
Being asked to play for a musical and spent about 10 hours last weekend recording guitar
Finished a draft of my 1 page for my third year exam
Started lifting with friends!
All in all, I’m glad for the month, for all that I really wish that i had recorded more of it here. It passed by in a blur, and that makes me sad.
which is a first↩︎
First Published: 2023 January 23
So on the bright side, I’ve now figured out at least one reason why I sometimes stop blogging/composing/everything else I value doing. When I miss out on sleep, I not only feel tired, I just generally fail to accomplish most of what I’d like to do. Moving forward, I guess this means I need to start prioritizing sleep more. C’est la vie.
First Published: 2023 January 14
Fifth Species counterpoint is fun! I like writing melodies, and I realize how much I love suspensions. Maybe in part because of the way the system is set up,1 I use them a lot. Anyways, despite2 missing two days this week, I still feel ready to move on to First Species with Three Voices. Exciting wow. Rules
Only Whole notes
Consonance is defined against the lowest pitch
Upper two voices allow consonances, P4, tritone
Try to have mostly triad voicing
Woo! Let’s have some fun.
First Published: 2023 January 12
Prereading note: After each section of the DnD campaign I’m playing in, I’m going to have an in-character journal log about the events of the session. Hopefully it’ll help me develop the character’s voice and remember what’s happening.
I fear what my dreams will bring tonight.
Today began like any other lately. My companions and I sat in the Nail and Board, waiting for a job offer that we all knew was not going to arrive. Brent clearly took some pity on us, because he offered us a job.
His opener hadn’t shown up today. Of course, Kaeden had never been the most reliable employee, so it was not concerning that he wasn’t there. Still, he offered to stand us a round of drinks if we found his lost employee.
We looked in Kaeden’s usual haunts, only to find that this was not an innocuous case of oversleeping. After nearly a full day of investigating, we found that he had been kidnapped and taken to a barn in the nearby woods. Shockingly, the people who had kidnapped Kaeden did not have his best interest in mind.
Jenna scoped the barn out, which seemed to be a cultic ritual. Neither Stygia nor I have ever had much fondness for unknown cults, so we elected to free Kaeden and correct these poor souls from their error.
Of course, with everything else that had gone wrong today, it should not have been a surprise that the lead cultist was himself a necromancer. We eventually felled him, with my own starlight landing the final blow. Kaeden was otherwise unharmed, but we learned that this ritual was only the first of terrible events to happen.
Tomorrow, the lead cultist was apparently going to hand off the dagger Kaeden was to be killed with at the Swamp Lily. Some of the cultists we returned to their stars were regulars at the Nail and Board, people we had known, if only vaguely.
As worried as I am about tomorrow, I am glad that the skies will be clear. The stars will watch over me, should I fall or succeed. I just hope that they will carry the message to my family if we should fail tomorrow.