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I've been doing my best to practice with my drum. I am the rhythmic equivalent of the number zero (thank you Mr Pratchett), and so I've been sitting with my metronome and playing at 80 bpm for five minutes a day. Well, for five minutes some days. Regular practice, I think, eloped with my sense of rhythm. But I figure little and often is better than trying to do it all in one go. If I can beat a steady rhythm, then I can concentrate on the journey and not have to worry about anything else. I can only do that when the beat becomes instinctive.
I have found the practice to be somewhat soothing and hypnotic. Who'd have thought that, hey?
The other thing I've noticed is that I have real trouble, 'being here now'. My mind is always somewhere in the future or the past, and is terrified of the prospect of the present. I'm thinking about what's going to happen when I meet X or go to Y, and I find I'm wound up about it. And when I get to X and Y, I'm upset when things don't go as planned. I ignore anything which I don't want there. Why is it so terrifying to just let whatever will be, be?
Easter weekend was nice, although very, very poor. There's something deeply wrong about an Easter with no Easter Eggs. Or hot-cross buns. The weather was lovely, though, and we took a walk up the mountain outside our house. We passed a farm with some free-range laying hens, and I indulged my fantasy of roast chicken. They looked like the sort of hens they put on the front of egg boxes. Then we came home to minced Quorn pie and mash. Nice but... roast chicken?
Still, pay day tomorrow and cheques cleared today. That means I have pizza for tea. I've also brought myself a gadget which will plug into my mp3 player and play it through my car stereo. Saves on CD's and on long car journeys, I can just put the player onto Play All, and not have to worry about changing CD's when I should be changing lanes. Of course, it's just going to transfer the argument from, 'who's CD do we play next', to 'who's mp3 player do we plug in'. Maybe I'm old, but that's what real progress looks like.
I have found the practice to be somewhat soothing and hypnotic. Who'd have thought that, hey?
The other thing I've noticed is that I have real trouble, 'being here now'. My mind is always somewhere in the future or the past, and is terrified of the prospect of the present. I'm thinking about what's going to happen when I meet X or go to Y, and I find I'm wound up about it. And when I get to X and Y, I'm upset when things don't go as planned. I ignore anything which I don't want there. Why is it so terrifying to just let whatever will be, be?
Easter weekend was nice, although very, very poor. There's something deeply wrong about an Easter with no Easter Eggs. Or hot-cross buns. The weather was lovely, though, and we took a walk up the mountain outside our house. We passed a farm with some free-range laying hens, and I indulged my fantasy of roast chicken. They looked like the sort of hens they put on the front of egg boxes. Then we came home to minced Quorn pie and mash. Nice but... roast chicken?
Still, pay day tomorrow and cheques cleared today. That means I have pizza for tea. I've also brought myself a gadget which will plug into my mp3 player and play it through my car stereo. Saves on CD's and on long car journeys, I can just put the player onto Play All, and not have to worry about changing CD's when I should be changing lanes. Of course, it's just going to transfer the argument from, 'who's CD do we play next', to 'who's mp3 player do we plug in'. Maybe I'm old, but that's what real progress looks like.
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