Snow Ball Effect

#144, My latest on Youtube:
Two Years of Procrastination
Ends NOW

Of the mountain of mundane "To Do" tasks I've been up to my neck in lately (physical therapy, taxes, laundry, client work, and even one item that's been floating at the bottom of the list for years – see the video link above for more on that) at this point I've cleared away enough to report to my husband that I'm Finally and Triumphantly... cleared out to the waist.

It's a good feeling. 

Once you get started on a rampage like the one I'm on these days, the more freed up you get, and in turn, the more inspired you get. To harp on the analogy, I imagine a pile of paper and envelopes, with me pinned in the center of it all. First I was up to my neck, handling thing with my teeth. And now I have two hands free! It's a snow-ball effect, in the very best sense of the term. 

I am focused and determined in a way I haven't been in a long long time, maybe ever. And along with that focus comes clarity, a clarity that allows me the occasional moment when I can feel confident that nothing will fall apart if I take a break. Not long enough for a full day's reprieve, but I'm closing in on that.

I actually picked up my guitar last night. And dug out my old music binder. 

You may not know this about me, but back in the day, I wrote maybe a hundred songs. I've got all the lyrics preserved on various scraps of paper, but some of the melodies are long forgotten. Some are semi-forgotten, some etched upon my synapses perhaps forever. Last night I dredged up a couple of the oldest ones. These may be the strangest, overly-wordy, most embarrassingly sentimental ditties of all time. But I played them anyway, with gusto, in celebration of the strange, overly-wordy, embarrassingly sentimental kid I used to be. 

And then I went to bed early.

Sometimes that's all it takes to enjoy life.