I will practice my music every day, and not let myself be distracted by other things that seem “more important.”
I will stick to my exercise program at Curves, even when the stupid doctors tell me “you’re not exercising as much as you think you are. If you’d only walk 1/2 hour a day and cut down on red meat, you’d lose weight.” As an adjunct to that, I will strive with all my might NOT to murder said stupid doctors.
I will take a more structured approach to learning Irish, with a goal of reaching some conversational facility by the end of 2006.
I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day
And ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone?
Song lyrics from: The Police–Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
It is in my nature to rebel against any rule possible, so making resolutions would be like setting myself up to fail. Rather, I have set myself some goals that may or may not be reached:
Quit smoking … eventually … sometime … real soon …
Learn to play my regulators
Remember more than 3 tunes at a time
This is probably more than I can handle for one year.
I resolve to be more patient with other people, including strangers, friends and family.
I resolve to be kinder to myself, enough of the withering self-critical eye.
Enjoy life:
I can share my most unusual New Year’s party. It took me a long to arrive at the destination on a wet and unpleasant day. I got a bad feeling when I saw no cars bunched up around the house. Did I have the wrong day, the wrong time, or was the party cancelled? It turns out the latter and in all the busyness, I had not gotten the word. The husband host had had a heart attack a few days ago!!! He answered the door and was most gracious. For having had a heart attack he was doing very well.
He told me his entire story and how lucky he felt. Four of the five doctors that treated him were former students of his. They all remembered him. Needless to say he got VIP treatment given the personal connections. Not to say the average person would not have. The chain of events included several other fortunate incidents, so damage was minimal and a full recovery expected.
It was a quiet New Year’s Eve. Only the host’s daughter came over with her husband and the two grandkids for dinner.
At the end of the evening I played a tune on my Susato, “All is Well.” It is a beautiful, soothing melody and appropiate given the background.
Each and everyone of us can count our blessings and toast to our good health (whether it be good or not). Cheers.
Good news on that front down here in Santa Cruz…Mary McLaughlin is going to start offering an Irish conversation class once a week, beginning in late January (assuming we can drum up enough interest). I’m really excited about that, as conversation is my weak point (not normally having anyone to practice with other than the cat, whose Irish is limited to “mí-ádh” )
Yep…she offered that class down here earlier this fall, and I took it…it was great! She’s working on opening a regular music school down here in SC, and is planning to offer a class in Irish choral singing, which I’m also very excited about. She’s a good teacher.
I don’t usually make new years resolutions, but the last couple weeks have sparked some changes. So here are mine.
All of these are for the next 30 days.
Practice 30 minutes EVERY day. (Trying to get in a couple of hours here and there isn’t working. It’s not giving me the progress I want for the friends I want to play with).
Write at least twice a week for an hour or so and finish one poem, story, or essay each week. I’m finding too much I want to say better.
Don’t turn on the TV when I get home from work until after I’ve practiced some tunes and spent time writing. Its too easy a distraction even over dinner.
Hopefully these will spark some changes in my routines that will give me better music, better writting, and more time to apply to everything. I may not be able to keep them up all year but 30 days should give me some results to review and work from.
The usual “watch what I eat” resolution, broken with a vengeance by the home-made Peanut Butter Blossom cookies I baked yesterday, those that have the Hershey Kiss in the center, all melty and warm from the oven.
Also the bag of butter-soaked popcorn eaten while at the movie (the Producers) with one of my sons Jan 1…
Now that that’s over with, I can try for a resolution similar to Lee’s, practice to a CD every day, perfecting my small repertoire of tunes. Even a half hour a day will eventually count for something…
)