Well It's About Time

Am I right, or am I right? 

You know, we actually had the conversation about getting internet in our apartment again.  And my lovely boyfriend surprised me by turning out to be against it. 

Not having internet is all well and good.  I mean, I get a lot of other things done, like knitting and design projects.  I read a lot more.  I clean a lot more.  And I play my violin more, which is good.  (More on that in a few paragraphs, dear readers.)

But when it comes to updating my blog or anything else online, I'm really not motivated to pack my computer up and go somewhere with internet.  Today I'm at the library, so it worked out well.  I just find I have less motivation to turn my computer on.  It's odd.

So, as I've said before, that's why the long gaps between posts now.

Oi. Freaking. Vey.

Well, let's do this.

My mom's younger, estranged brother landed in the hospital due to his alcoholic tendencies.  They weren't sure he was going to pull through, but what do you know?  He did.  Then her best friend since high school was diagnosed with a very deadly form of breast cancer.  On top of that, my sister is going through a really hard break up of sorts with this guy she works with who is also ten years older than her but acts like a 12 year old sometimes.

It's been an interesting month, let's just say that.

I quit my job.  Yup.  Flat out quit.  I finally decided that working in dead end retail where I was talked down to by my boss and co-workers and where I could feel my brain melting out of my skull wasn't worth it. 

So what am I doing, besides the plethora of knitting designs and the occasional poem?

I'm teaching violin lessons.

I had two students, but the one I've had for over a year decided to quit.  It was a bit of a blow.  Out of the blue, I swear.  I had no idea.  (I'm trying not to take it personally, though it kind of feels that way.)

I've been thinking about going back to school.  I like to learn, I like to read, I like to broaden my horizons.  The only problem is what I would do.  I have an associates degree in creative writing.  Which was fun, but it really isn't what I want to do with my life.  I'm still feeling burned out from the classes and critics and everything else.

My original major was biology.  I had wanted to either go into astronomy or ornothology, the study of birds.  When I was a young teenager, I volunteered at this place called the World Bird Sanctuary and loved every minute of it.  The barn owl on the page cover was my baby, Tobin; when my family moved to Colorado when I was 15, they let me hold him on  my last day. 

(Sadly, he has passed on, but I will never forget him.)

So there's interest in going to school to get my science degree.  Maybe environmental studies?  I've been toying with the idea for a few months.

But then, I'm also really interested in religious studies.  I love reading about the different religions and cultures and faiths.  I like finding similarities and differences among them.  So maybe I would minor in that?

Another thing - what about textile designs?  Color and creation are a core part of who I am.  I live to create new knitted items.  And I love playing with patterns.

Ugh.  I don't know.  More thought, then narrow down, then enroll. That's what I'm thinking.

That really does sum up just about everything.  I'm thinking I'll try to fix my Twitter so I can actually log in again.

Until the next time, my dear readers.  Thank you for your constant patience.

~Meaghan

Music Challenge Day 26: A Song You Can Play on an Instrument

I'm a classically trained violinist.

Granted, I don't play much anymore and I don't practice.

But I have performed this song many times.

Many, many times.

Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in A minor.

Love it.

~Meaghan

Random Blog is Random.

Hello again, my dear readers.

There are several things I'm going to blog about in this, and I'm hoping it's not going to be too disjointed.  We shall see how that works out.

I just spent an awesome day out with one of my friends from school.  It was so much fun.  We went for burgers, looked at the mall, hit Kohl's (no, not literally although that might've been fun), and then got these amazing brownies at a local bakery.  It was nice to be able to step away from my life for a while.  You know, I'm still on winter break and I feel like I'm slowly starting to go crazy.  It was nice to get away from that crazed, bored feeling.  And my friend is awesome; I always feel like I can just relax with her.

So I've been going nuts, right?  Here's how bad it's gotten:

I have been writing every day.  Like, literally, every day.  I update here and then I try to do some free writing.  Well, yesterday, my characters had finally had enough of me.  I think that must've been what happened.  I wrote for two hours straight.  When I was done, I read what I had written and it didn't feel natural at all.  So then I tried this morning to do some character sketches before I left.

Didn't happen.

I don't know if I just ran out of inspiration or what, but nothing is working.  I have snippets here and there of short stories laced with the promises of well rounded characters; I just can not seem to connect the dots.  It's one of those pot holes I mentioned in the previous entry.

I like a challenge, don't get me wrong.  I just also like it when I understand my characters.  They are a piece of me, like my children.  I should know them inside and out.  I should be able to understand their motivation as I write, or at least have it develope as the story developes.

Right now, I just feel like slamming my head upon my key board.

Maybe I need space.  Maybe I just need to walk away from it for a while.  Doing that scares me, though.  What if I never go back to them?  What if they just sit in my notebooks and on my hard drive for an infinite amount of time?  What if school becomes so hard this semester that I don't have time to write??

No.  The last one will never happen.  I will always make time to write.  Always.

I'm ready for school to start.  With school comes stimulation, and with stimulation comes inspiration.  Inspiration breeds motivation.

Moving on...

So, has anyone else heard of this thing called the Slender Man?  And if so, why do I feel like the last person to hear about it?

My basic understanding is that it's an Internet meme gone awry.  I mean, the Internet is loaded with crack pot stuff like this; there are so many memes I can't keep them straight.  Who's to know what's real and what's fake, right?

The Slender Man was created by some guy on a forum for a contest.  From there it's turned into this huge deal.  He is a shape-shifter, wears a suit, has no face, and eats children.  That's my understanding.  There's a thing on youtube.com that involves him put up by a user called marblehornets.  I personally suspect it's just a piece of fiction fed by the Internet.

Still, it scares the crap out of me.  It's like when I read Stephen King's short story "the Boogey Man" last year and had to sleep with a light on.  It's fake, but there's still a part of the human psyche that sees the potential and is afraid out of instinct. 

Having a very active imagination does not help, either.

Ok, I've freaked myself out again.  Time to enter happy territory again.

So now that I've started playing my violin again, I feel like that's all I want to do.  There's no way I'll make a career out of it - I'm not nearly dedicated enough or want it bad enough - but I am enjoying it more than I thought I would.  I learned through the Suzuki method when I was taking lessons and I've been revisiting the books.  At the time I hated most of it. 

Now is a completely different story. 

It's like I understand the music better.  In the few years that I stopped playing, it's like I've gained a greater appreciation of classical music.  I love that.  I love that it feels new and fresh to me.  I love that I can feel my pent up feelings flow out through my fingers and into the notes.

I love it so much that I've decided to memorize one song from each book.  That way I always have something that I can play, no matter where I am.  I don't know why, but I'm feeling like it could be important somewhere down the road.  Why, I don't know, but I'm not gonna argue.  As I said before, I'm enjoying playing way too much.

One last random thing before I leave you for the night.  I'm listening to Neil Cicierega as I write this.  He is amazing.  He's part of the group Lemon Demon and he's also the creator of Potters Puppet Pals.  (I see the light go on; you know who I'm talking about...)  I love his youtube channel.  He's got this one about Ben Bernake which is a riot; I also enjoy the one titled "Brodyquest" - the songs are both very catchy.

He's the one who got me to look up the Slender Man, btw.  I watched his parody, called the Splendor Man.

So yeah, you should check him out.

You should also check out my sister's account while you're there.  As I am to writing, she is to film making.  She's HisFallenAngel4, and she's very good.  I'm not going to lie.  So you should check her out. =)

Until we meet again, dear readers.

~Meaghan

It Smells like Apples in Here...

..because I found my apple candle.

So today, dear readers, I decided it was time to clean.  I have like five or six boxes that I have yet to go through from when we moved to Colorado over five years ago.  I never wanted to deal with them or see what was inside them.

As far as I was concerned, I could burn them and be totally happy.

But then I got motivated today. 

I brought my violin into the bedroom and organized my music.  Then I decided to organize some boxes while I was at it.  The result?  I found a ton of candles, cleaned off my desk, recovered my incense sticks that I've had for forever, and made a comfier home for my instrument.

And now it smells like apples cause I'm burning my newly found apple candle.  It's a Wal-Mart candle (the front says 'MainStays' which is a Wal-Mart brand) called Warm Apple Pie.

It reminds me how much I love apple candles.  And really, just candles in general.

Mmmm.  I wish you could smell it.

I played my violin today for the first time in over five months.  I will never stop playing again.  As I played, I felt as if my soul were leaving through the notes.  I felt like I was truly breathing for the first time in years.  Even now, I feel great.

I will never be a professional, but I love it.  I forgot how much I love it, how much I need it.  It totally renewed me.

At this point, I feel I must offer you guys an apology for the abrupt blog last night.  I was doing fine until I wasn't, and at that point I was exhausted.  I swear, as soon as I left you guys I went to bed. 

Well, after I placed some movies on hold at the library.

But that's not the point.  The point is that I'm sorry for leaving you hanging.  I will do better in the future.  I promise it.

I'm really excited about the movies I put on hold.  All of them have Adrien Brody in them; he's my current favorite actor.  I had never heard about him until I saw "Predators" last summer (great movie, btw, I highly recommend it) and learned that he was in it. 

I watched "the Pianist" this weekend and it made me love him more as an actor.  The movie was brilliant.  It's about the Holocaust and is based on a real man's fight to survive in the face of opposition.  Another movie I completely recommend.  It was beautifully done.

So I put the new King Kong on hold, a movie called "the Singing Detective" which has a great cast including Robert Downy, Jr. and Katie Holmes and is about a novelist who writes detective novels, a war movie called "the Thin Red Line" which is about WWII from the American Army perspective, a film called "Hollywoodland" which is about the murder/ death of George Reeves, and a comdey with Owen Wilson called "the Darjeeling Limited" which is just going to be good. 

BTW, you should go watch the trailers for all of these or go see them.  They look great.

And that's my day thus far.  Oh, and I broke one of my mom's new mugs she bought before Christmas.  I felt bad about it, but she kind of laughed it off.  So I guess it's ok.

Until the next time, dear readers.

~Meaghan

The Girl and the Violin

Once upon a time, I played my violin religiously. Well, I actually complained a lot about practicing and didn't do it, and when I did, it was far from religiously. But the point is that when I did practice, I sounded great (the beauty of being musically inclined) and really did enjoy it for the most part. So why am I telling you guys this?

Because I quit my job.

No, no, no. I am not going to pack up my belongings and play on a street corner somewhere in hopes that some random strangers, feeling touched after a Bach sonata, will give me money to live off of. Not at all. Although, buskering (playing on streets and at fairs and stuff for pocket change) is pretty enjoyable. Truth be told, I like performing in groups and in places where no one is really paying attention. It's fun and not stressful like solo performances at a recital are.

Again, not the point. My bad.

I quit my job for a number of reasons, actually, including but not limited to the fact that I hate working 4 am shifts and that my job was threatened over something that was not my fault.

But the main one is that I am sick of answering to the man. That's right. I am tired of having corporate used as a threat above my head, I am tired of working everyone else's hours, and I am tired of having to act like it's ok. Cause it's not. That is not how you lead or manage people, and I know that from my parents and from my years as a Girl Scout.

So I quit my job and next Wed. is my official last day. Great. What the heck am I going to do and what does this have to do with the story of me and my lousy practice habits?

You see, teaching is one my ambitions in life. I know I am never going to make a fortune off of it, and I know that it's a hard job to have. I know that some teachers get very little respect for what they do. But it is a noble thing, teaching the next generation, so to speak. I see the odds, and I also see the rewards, and frankly, if I can make a difference for one student, then I will feel like my time here has been worth it.

Which brings me to what I am going to do after I finish at Bagel Hell. I am going to teach violin.

That's right. I am pulling my beloved instrument out (I really do love it; it's a part of me that I will never be able to get away from) and am going to offer private instruction to beginner students. It's not going to be super profitable (if I wanted profitable, I'd stay where I am and be miserable) and it's going to take some time to get set up, but in the end, I feel it is going to be worth it.

I wouldn't feel I could do this if I didn't live at home, if my college wasn't paid for via a student loan, and if my savings wasn't built up. I have the perfect alignement, it seems, to pull this off.

I have not felt happier. I am going to do something my dad has been trying to get me to do for a while now: I'm going to be my own boss. It's going to rock. And I'm doing something that I love, which is a plus. I seriously do not care if I live off of peanuts as long as I am doing something I love and care about. If you don't care about or enjoy what you do, you shouldn't do it.

On that note, I'm auditioning for an orchestra next Tuesday. I think I'm going to audition with "the Swan" by Saint-Saens. I'm pretty excited; playing in an orchestra is like no other experience. It's fun, it's crazy, the music is usually good, and performing is a blast.

And now the homework beast is calling, so I must leave you for now. Until we meet again, dear readers.

~Meaghan

Practice Time!

I just contacted the local orchestra to see if they could use any more violinists. As it turns out, they most definitely do need more violinists, and it doesn't matter that I'm out of practice. I am thrilled!

So now I have to wait to set up an audition. Which is fine, cause it gives me some time to pull one of my favorite classical pieces out of the woodwork and start polishing the hell out of it. It's been so long since I last played, but I am ready to do this. Orchestra playing (or any sort of playing in a group) has always been one of my favorite aspects of being a classically trained violinist. Now, I am going to get to do that again.

Provided I get an audition booked and I make it through the audition process.

Auditioning is one of those necessary evils in life. If it were a paid position in a professional orchestra (like the Boston Pops), the audition process would be a lot more intense, with scales and memorized pieces being involved, not to mention having to know things like the Bach conceretos in full. To top it off, there's like intense sight reading involved.

For my purposes, it's a lot more simple; have a piece ready (I don't know if it has to be memorized or not, so I'm going to go ahead and make sure it is to play it safe), be able to sight read some simple pieces, and go from there. I'm going to go ahead and work on a piece that I had memorized before I stopped playing the violin, which should make it easier to memorize again.

I think I'm either going to do a Vivaldi piece or a Mozart piece. I am leaning towards the Mozart one, because I like that one better. Vivaldi is great, I've just played him too much in too short a time span.

That is, provided I get an audition.

But hey, it sounds like they need players and I'm not opposed to doing second violin. So the odds are good.

Until the next time, Cyberland readers.

~Birdgirl90