Friday Fishday

At least I remember that being a thing in my early elementary school years. Probably not today, though. Yesterday was a relatively successful day. DTD (did the disciplines) - drums, vocals, guitar, Korean study, drawing, but unintentionally skipped anything writing related to include this journal, classes, or developmental reading. I did read another chapter in Dracula and I’m enjoying the elliptical or tangential narrative, even though the final outcome was spoiled long ago.

I’m curious as to how many of the original readers would have picked up on Dracula’s nature and how many would still be naive up to my current progress through chapter eight, after Dracula had already arrived in England and was just about to occupy his new estate. It all seems obvious to me now, but I imagine back then when vampire stories were still relatively obscure that many readers wouldn’t have deduced his nature yet. I think Stoker’s technique and prose are compelling and effective here, definitely something from which to draw inspiration.

I got the Nintendo Switch installed in the home theater and made some changes to my setup, moving the turntable to outside the rack and on top, what for the easier access. So far, so good. I’ve got the ring fit ready to roll out later this morning when I exercise, although I probably will have some calibration to perform at the beginning. I don’t think this will replace or supercede my elliptical machine and treadmill, but it will be good to try and work some long neglected upper body and core muscles.

I’m still on my gradual and very incremental progress in the various disciplines. I can slowly notice small things becoming slightly easier. My goal of a complete band cover is still a high priority. This is probably counter-intuitive and not necessarily what I really need on these various instruments, but my favorite bands are a large part in why I play an instrument and even if these projects don’t make me a more well rounded player, they are satisfying a long held desire as a musician and fan. As before, my first planned song is “Anthem”, mostly based on the idea that the drums will be an “easier” entry point into the world of Neil Peart. I can already say that there are techniques in that song that are new to me and it’s going to be raising my drum game to a level higher than most typical rock players.

I think I’m not far on the bass and guitar parts, although I need to groove those and get them completely under my fingers and I’ve yet to look at the guitar solo. I haven’t even toyed with the idea of the vocal and I may just record this as an instrumental although I have given thought to how I might adapt Geddy’s part down a few octaves to fit my voice. We’ll see. I need to nail the instruments first before I turn my thoughts that direction.

Wednesday Workday

It’s a rigorous schedule, but someone’s got to do it. Actually, my preference would be to work 2-3 days this week, but I’m still stuck with decreased demand and fewer big cases have been available as of late. I hope that changes, at least until we can pay the house off.

I’ve experimented with my daily routine in the last few days by putting Korean language study and drawing first and then practicing the various musical disciplines afterward. This has been successful so far in that it’s easier for me to maintain my motivation even if my mental focus is flagging a bit in the afternoon. I’ll keep with this for a while and see how it works out.

Another imminent change is the impending abstinence from alcohol once the on-hand supply runs out. This should coincide with Opeth on Saturday, so the timing is fairly fortuitous. This won’t be an absolute teetotal lifestyle as I’ll still have a few beers at concerts, but I’m going to at least give it a break during March and I’m going to try to resume more strict calorie and portion counting so I can lose some weight. On that note I went ahead and bought this Nintendo Switch and Ring Fit accessory, thinking I’ll give their fitness game a try. I’m hoping that some of these exercises will fire up some dormant upper body and core muscles that generally get ignored with my typical cardio only exercise habits. We’ll see.

Although I didn’t make a journal entry yesterday, I did watch the next JCO lecture on form, including one of her short stories. She has some interesting insights on how to add interest by approaching the traditional continuous chronological narrative in a different manner. Everything from making a story one continuous paragraph with no breaks, writing the story out of sequence, writing the story as a series of questions and answers, or only as answers. She even talked about visually altering the medium, e.g. typing out the text in the shape of objects like a tree. I’m not sure I would do this for a normal prose story, but it might be a cool approach for a lyric sheet to a song.

Her short story “Heat” was an interesting approach to narrative in that it seemed to be told by a friend of two young girls who were murdered when they were in seventh grade. Some of the paragraphs seem to be through the eyes of the friend (assume it’s a she) when the girls were still alive, and some of it’s from points in the future, even many decades later. It jumps back and forth between when they were alive, to their funeral, to the distant future, and back. It gives some stark contrast to some mundane observations interspersed with some really dark revelations. It’s very effective.

Yesterday was an overall successful day. As mentioned I studied Korean, drawing, and practiced drums, keys, and bass. As always, progress is slow and incremental but that’s the nature of the multidisciplinary beast. It’s interesting that JCO’s lecture on form coincides with my reading “Dracula” because that’s exactly how Bram Stoker approached his narrative. The story plays out in a series of narratives told through journal entries and correspondence, so you have a limited third-person view and must do a lot of the work to understand what’s transpiring. Most of us probably already know how the story plays out, so it’s not quite as nebulous, but I imagine this must have been a new and provocative take on narrative when it debuted.

The cyclical...

…nature of my health habits is pretty consistent. I start getting bloated and overweight feeling (and weighing, although I usually avoid confirmation via the scale at this point) and this eventually leads me to swear off beer and snacks for a few months. It’s been a long while since I recommitted to that, and I’m consciously avoiding the scale, knowing I’ve let my weight creep up. It’s on me, but I have allowed the recent passing of Neil Peart and Lyle Mays to justify additional beer drinking in a nightly ritual of remembrance. However, this has segued into just a nightly routine of beer drinking along with television or reading.

So, it’s about time to get serious about calorie counting again. This is the method that has worked in the past, I have to be disciplined about it. If it were just extra weight without other adverse side effects, I’d probably ignore it, but it starts to affect my sleep and increased the various musculoskeletal maladies as well. Anywho, I’ve got enough beer on hand at present to get through next week, and with Opeth on Saturday, that will close things out for February and I’ll make March an abstinence month. I’ll see how I’m feeling and if it seems my weight's dropping, I’ll eventually step on the scale again. I’d like to at least get below 200 again, even though my ideal weight is probably 170-180 (based on being somewhat wiry underneath the layers of suet), I know just getting below that threshold results in feeling and sleeping better.

Now, on to the more fun stuff. Yesterday was a fairly solid day, with the requisite drums, keys, bass, exercise, dog walk, Korean study, and nearly thirty minutes of drawing. My writing yesterday was the journal, and I watched the next JCO lecture on addressing taboos. I’ve decided to try and plug along in her lecture series and choose the writing exercises a la carte because it seems like if you take on all her suggested writing and reading, the series will take a couple of years to finish, at least at the rate I read and write. The taboo lecture was very powerful. I gather a lot of her writing focuses on these sorts of topics. I haven’t read any of her stories to my memory, but I plan to rectify that gap. She highlights the history of women writers and how in the past, they were discouraged from writing in general, but if they did write, it was supposed to be about domestic subjects in line with the accepted roles of women in a patriarchal society.

It’s interesting to hear how subjects like domestic abuse and rape were just not talked about as if ignoring them would make them go away. In many ways, we live in a more enlightened age where these former taboos can be addressed in the open, but I know there are still many societies around the world that haven’t moved on from those darker days. My wife’s home country of Korea is still largely patriarchal, and it’s still fairly pervasive as far as I know; daughters are expected to get married and have children. I don’t regularly interact with young Koreans, so I have a feeling this may be seeing a generational shift, along with many other significant cultural shifts that have happened in the age of the internet.

Particulars aside, I think JCO hits on an important point that’s shared by Neil Gaiman in that a writer tells stories to reveal a deeper truth. Often the most upsetting events in our life shape so much of who we become, although we often suppress those memories and will rarely talk about them, even with our closest loved ones. For me, writing and my other creative endeavors are a way of learning just who I am and what I care about. The expression of this truth can manifest in various mediums, but specifics aside, the act of creating is a way of transferring a part of oneself into another form and revealing a bit of who I am and what is important to me.

Another integral part of her lecture on taboo was the technique of elliptical writing. She used Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” as an example of when taboo couldn’t be addressed directly, and so it was expressed in a vague enough manner that avoided the literal homoerotic and left it to the subtext. I’m not sure if I picked up on it when I read it as a teenager, although it wouldn’t have necessarily fazed me if I did. I plan on a re-read in the future. I think the elliptical approach is something I’ve already used, at least in songwriting and often in my natural language and these blogs. I think it’s not only a useful technique for one who may have been forced by their particular situation, but I think it can also be an effective means of leaving things open to interpretation and not being overly literal. It’s sort of analogous to Neil Gaiman’s “truth in the lies” approach, in that you’re expressing a thought, feeling, or theme but leaving it open to the reader to find their truth.

I should also mention I finished reading “The Song of the Black Sword” by Michael Moorcock. I’ve come to realize that Moorcock has a history of repackaging many of his stories, and so what I thought were some stories I hadn’t previously read were included in the original paperbacks I read all those years ago. Within many of those paperbacks were sections that were more like short stories but part of the overall narrative. The paperback book that was third in the original series I read “The Weird of the White Wolf” was comprised of three stories, “The Dreaming City,” “While the Gods Laugh,” and “The Singing Citadel.” I suppose these could stand on their own, but they make more sense as part of a narrative. The only significant difference between SOTBS and how I read the series originally is the later publication of “Fortress of the Pearl,” which now comes after “Elric of Melniboné” and before “The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.” It’s been such a long time since I read these originally that it’s like reading them anew.

I’m still plugging along on the “Inside the Victorian Home,” which has proven to be a great resource alike “The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England.” It’s amazing how different our cultures were just a few hundred years ago. I need to pick my next novel to read, and I think I should shift back to a classic so I can eventually start to whittle down this behemoth of a TBR list. I think I’ll go easy on myself and at least pick something a bit shorter this time, and I’m eyeing “Slaughterhouse-Five” or maybe “The Maltese Falcon.”

Frauds, Roombas, and Contraband...

…is a statement that has no relevance to this post, but it was fun to say. Back to work today for the grueling two-day workweek. It’s tough, but some of us are hewn from ancient granite. It was surprising three years ago when I switched over to fee basis, how quickly I adjusted to the then three-day workweek. Within the space of two weeks, I knew I could never go back to a full time five day a week job. I know that’s not an option for most people, and I would work that schedule if I didn’t have a choice, but now I do. Shifting from spending most of your time working and all the ancillary tasks in a typical life gave little spare time for other pursuits. That’s probably the single greatest gift of the job change, all the additional time for creative disciplines.

My typical schedule had been three days/week for three weeks and then the fourth week off, but I’ve adjusted it slightly. Lately, the available work has taken a bit of a hit, plus I’m waiting for a new salary waiver approval to come down, so I’ve switched to two days/week for three weeks, followed by a one-day work week. This is intended to allow me to stay within my current salary limit of $153K, which thankfully seems permanent in case the waivers don’t get re-approved. Under that system, I was able to earn $210K, but it was a national program that needed renewal every two years. We’re still waiting since the last one expired at the end of 2019. As it stands I’m working seven days a month, but will switch back to nine if the waiver comes through. All this in effort to pay our house off by April of next year, after which time I may dial back to seven or even six days a month. My schedule has also taken a slight hit because our overall exam requests have been down for the past few months.

Part of this is external, but part is how many exams our clinic is allowing us to take on. I’m still not entirely sure how that number gets determined, and it puts the fee basis providers at the mercy of the actual number of exams we accept. When the numbers are high, I have no problem getting big exams, and my typical day will just be one patient. Here lately, those larger exams are scarce, and so I’ve even had them cancel the odd day when I couldn’t get an ideal patient. Other providers will see multiple patients with smaller exams, but my preference is always one patient with a big case that can take care of my entire workload goal at once. We get paid by the number of individual exams within each claim, so one patient could have twenty (or more) exams in one visit. I’d much rather perform twenty exams with one patient than one exam with twenty patients. The latter is much more time consuming, and there will always be people running late or canceling in those numbers.

Enough about work, this journal isn’t necessarily supposed to be about anything specific, but I want to tailor it towards the creative, predominately writing, but any of the disciplines can come into play. Yesterday was a good day. I took care of the daily requisite - ran five miles, walked the dogs, shopped for workweek supplies (sandwiches for lunch and sundry groceries), practiced drums, keys, bass, studied Korean, and spent some time drawing. I hung a bunch of new LOTR paintings (like I needed more) with the use of a new laser level after our old trusty died (I think we’ve had it for 15-20 years). This new one is quite novel; it fires a laser in a 360° circle both horizontally and vertically. I mounted it to a mic stand and just raised it to the height at which I wanted to hang the pictures. The biggest challenge was standing on the step ladder on the bed, not the safest approach I’ll admit. It was either that or move the king-size bed, so I diced with the devil and came out a winner.

I’ve found that surrounding yourself with the things you love is a great mood lifter and adds to the sense of comfort and tranquility to the home. If something makes me happy, I try to surround myself with it and give constant reminders to myself regularly. The result is that our home (primarily my upstairs domain) is adorned with posters and art, centered mostly on music and movies. The living area has an entire wall of bookshelves that I’m close to filling, and this is the third in the triad of happiness for my life - music, books, movies. Within the books (and to a degree, the music and films) are the many other subjects and disciplines in which I find interest - science, history, writing, drawing, philosophy, comics, video games, etc. It provides an excellent environment that enhances all these creative efforts.

Not counting the journal, I didn’t spend a great deal of time studying any writing or working on any of the courses or works in progress. The journal felt like it was at least exercising those muscles, and after I had finished all the other disciplines, I did take some time to complete the chapter (the drawing-room) I was reading in the Victorian home book. I decided to forego any television, and read a few chapters in the Elric collection “Song of the Black Sword.” The order of his narrative is a bit different than the publishing order, as has been determined by Michael Moorcock, so my reading order is different than when I read the books as a teenager. The last novella was “Fortress of the Pearl,” and now I’m reading “Sailor on the Seas of Fate.” I remember scarce little from the first time I read this about forty years ago, so it’s like a new story all over again.

I thought that although it didn’t occur to me back then, Elric and much of Moorcock’s work is so different from Tolkien, who even to this day has remained a considerable influence (in no small part due to the movies). Elric is sometimes labeled as dark fantasy, and I suppose that’s as good a description as any. His stories are often as much about asking existential and philosophical questions as they are fodder for action and the typical fantasy tropes of the hero’s journey with classic archetypes. He does go on journeys, and there are villains and heroes alike, but Elric is never the wide-eyed and earnest character so often portrayed. He rejected his role as emperor of a declining and barbaric civilization and set out looking for answers to life’s most important questions, or at least an escape from a life that had lost meaning. Sometimes I wonder if Moorcock did acid or smoked a lot of weed, there are elements of psychedelia to some of the stories, but maybe he just had a fertile imagination. I enjoy the stories either way.