Today is Friday

For the first time in a long time, I am glad today is Friday. Boys & Girls Club has made the week quite long. I have been working full-time over the last couple of weeks. Monday will start another long week. I cannot really complain about my work though.

I have become much better at ping-pong. My appreciation for professional table tennis has grown tremendously. One of my fellow staff members at the club is particularly good and playing him has helped me improve a lot in a short period of time. I am super down with ping-pong.

I have not said anything about music for a while. Writing has still been better than ever. A few things I have found over the last couple of years to be true have helped with this:

• Depression transcends mood alone: being depressed for a long period of time created a huge block in my motivation as well as ability to write, practice, and learn music. I literally did not touch my instrument for weeks to months at a time. Easily the lowest point in my life.
• Exposure yields inspiration: listening to a large variety of music and actively listening regularly is guaranteed to give you some ideas. The search for new music is a good way to stay busy too.
• Solitude yields production: being alone for a long period of time will force you to produce something just because there is nothing else to do. A great way to find a sense of self discipline as well as self truth.
• Being liberated is not just doing what you want, it is truly not caring what other people think. It is not feeling so insecure that you are plagued to mindlessly follow the ebb and flow of trends forever. It is feeling alright all of the time, and realistically knowing that once you truly free yourself, you will not be motivated to impress others, but to appease yourself.
  

Tooting the Ryan Horn

So once again I have let a long period of time pass since my last post. I am not going to write a ton of detailed updates like before because that is just boring, so I will sum it up. Everything is good, like always.

Performing at Portfolio's coffee shop the last couple of weeks has been nice. I took some time off for my summer classes and traveling, so it was nice to go back. Last week I played my song that has no title, but every knows as "Father Said" or "Mother Said". A lot of people were talking to me about it last week and this week too when I went back. I have felt quite a boost of confidence lately and have been able to sing much more confidently over the last few months. I am very excited about direction my songwriting is taking these days. Hopefully there will be lots of recording soon! I have plenty of songs to document now. I think I have improved drastically since my first song in this series of solo acoustic songs I have written.

My program at the Boys & Girls Club is underway and has been a big hit so far! Tons of kids have signed up and my boss and Long Beach administrators want my program design to be the template for all of the clubs now. Will see in the end how well it works out in practice.

I have written quite a bit as it turns out. I'll save the rest for another entry.