So...second post regarding Resolutions and a new Five-Year Plan:

New Year Resolutions, 2018

(1) continue to rediscover self – a permanent goal. Lifelong!
(2) continue to tick the bucket list – another lifelong goal. Who could tick them all?

(3) maintain family, friends, and professional contacts – The extended family database was passed to a nephew and a cousin. Maintain my copy and contacts for our immediate family. Organize and make better use of professional contacts.

(4) continue to travel together, alone, and in groups to new places, for interests, for fun – as we have. No plans made; exploring options. Eventually to the UK, Europe, and parts of Canada we have yet to visit; more trips to BC; and back to Australia at some point. Over several years. Possibly Nashville in the future.

(5) dance and play - ukulele, classes and practice, and BalletFit - plus French – try Rosetta Stone again! Call Boleo (6 tango classes still to do.) Major goal: play ukulele well enough to play my own songs. Perform as often as possible. Accept all opportunities.

(6) repair body as well as possible through healthy diet, exercise, and with medical help – Continue GF, eat more vegetable-based diet, exercise more often (walk 30 minutes daily plus BalletFit weekly.) Continue monthly massage, pedicure, and physio exercises. Look after teeth and eyes. Follow up skin treatments.

(7) write one hour daily minimum: blog, tweets, fb, mail, email, stories, & songs – nope! See short term goals for social media first. Be more organized in terms of what I write and when. Submit more often to songwriting competitions and literary publications. 
(8) sort one hour daily minimum - be flexible! Office bins, photos, cupboards, clothes, etc.

(9) continue weight loss with healthy diet, less booze, more exercise. Do not stress about it!
10) budget and plan for me, us, family, and future – continue to transfer surplus funds to family expenses monthly. Continue to put $ aside monthly for projects (Wild Cat 2018). Keep books up to date, prep taxes a la Gold accountants for registered business and joint tax returns. Increase revenue from cds, royalties, music, writing, performances. 

This will be a series of posts as I develop New Year Resolutions and Five Year Plan

First an evaluation of the resolutions I made in 2012, 6 months after I retired. I will jump off of a progress report in 2014. I definitely feel a new 5-year plan coming on. Let’s see how I'm doing now. 
(1) continue to rediscover self – yes! I created and met new challenges. Some I simply abandoned.
(2) continue to tick the bucket list – yes! I recorded some songs (Celtic Cat 2015, Cool Cat 2017) and travelled to the red centre of Australia. Other items remain or are vague, stalled, or replaced.
(3) maintain family, friends, and professional contacts for us and Mom – ah! Mom passed away in 2015 at the amazing age of 101, 4 months, and 9 days. Last year, I sent the extended family database to a nephew and a cousin for use in hosting family gatherings. However, I will maintain my copy.

(4) travel together, alone, and in groups to new places, for interests, for fun – yes, to St. Lucia, Dominican Republic, Portugal, Florida, and Australia. In June 2012, I went to France with the Jacksonville Women. I attended ASN conferences in the USA each fall. We visited BC, Ottawa and various Ontario spots.  The big trips were to Australia - 1 month in 2012, 2 ½ months in 2016.
(5) dance and play - tango and ukulele, classes and practice - plus French - get Rosetta Stone, join a bilingual MeetUp – oh, boy! Dropped tango, pilates, and dancefit due to my knees. BalletFit works! Also physiotherapy. In general, I abandon exercise unless called for. I took ukulele from Judy and loved it. Now I take a weekly class with Mark and slowly improve. But it seems I cannot practice! Just as I cannot go beyond the first Rosetta Stone disk, Started 3 times. Not bilingual, me!
(6) repair body as well as possible through healthy diet, exercise, and with medical help – yes! Replaced the knees in 2014! Learned that I am intolerant or sensitive to either wheat or gluten according to my GE, which helped explain why I lost so many symptoms and so much weight when I started eating GF in 2014. I have retained the weight loss ever since and swear by GF for my gut. 

 (7) write one hour daily minimum: blog, tweets, fb, mail, email, stories, & songs – nope! Still sporadic. But productive at times.
(8) sort house one hour daily minimum: Sun Playroom, Mon Office, Tues Gable Room, Wed Bedrooms, Thurs Bathrooms, Fri Kitchen, Sat Basement – did this for awhile during my first year of retirement. Good to reapply, but not so much room by room. I will think about this point.
(9) resume tracking WW Points Plus and weekly meetings – ack! Forget WW or other weight loss plans. Better eating, new knees, and more activity does it. 
10) budget and plan for me, us, family, and future – yes! We developed a good system for tracking family spending. I may never catch up but do contribute each month. But I also put $ aside for my music and writing projects. In 2017, I registered with an artists' accountant for my registered business (another tick!) which makes tax season tolerable and I do not miss anything.

SAC Songwriting & Blogging Challenge #2 - A Story Song Blog 2

As mentioned in my first blog on this second challenge, I did think of another little story. I drafted the verses and chorus, and have been working on it this week. This time, I had hoped to get it and the post to my blog submitted well before the Saturday midnight deadline. Maybe even a day in advance! Ha! Being at a cottage for the last half week with my daughter's family made me almost as late as I was for the first challenge. The internet was non-existent, and my data plan connection very weak. I spent far too long trying to play, listen, and respond to other songwriters - and one afternoon attempting to reply to Roseanne's comment on my post. It does not help that I have an iPad #1.

So.. Today I was home just long enough to pack a bag for SongStudio - the fifth time around for me. For those of you who do not know it, SongStudio is a week-long songwriting intensive. This year it is July 16-22. During the meet and play/sing session today, I was able to warble through my answer to challenge 2. That means there is some hope that one of the musicians in the program will be able to accompany me on it. But not today. So my song demo is a Capella again, and very rough yet.

Overall, this song has emerged within the musical theatre genre, I believe. That is the best way to describe it. Although the chorus has an old-fashioned, singalong sound to it, very appropriate for the setting. But the verses have that slightly operatic, almost recitative quality, with a sort of conversational feel to the way the words are strung together, uneven lines, and internal rhyme in a lot of places. It is still rough, as I said earlier, and I am finding it particularly difficult to sing the same melody in the top half of the second verse as in the first. The chorus and the second halves of the verses do not pose that problem. It is an arch in the line that I want which tends to elude me the second time I come to it.


I hope this blog does give a few of those who work from an instrument a bit of an idea of how I work as an a Capella songwriter. And do enjoy the story of a Port Stanley Summer Love!

SAC Songwriting & Blogging Challenge #2 - A Story Song Blog 1

Of course. Because I just finished recording the best story song I have ever written or likely ever will. The most important new song for me. And just heard the mix today. So the idea of writing another story song just now was a little daunting. I surveyed through my brain for the songs I have written before that might be story songs. Let's see. Stay Down Here With You...yep. That is the story of someone going to Australia, falling in love with the land, finding the love of a lifetime and deciding to stay. And my song Reunion, it's a story of meeting an old flame, remembering how it was, and admitting to having been in love at one time. But what will be the first song on my new EP, to be released in the fall, that song, Swing Daddy, is my father's story, started the summer he would have been 100. It's the best I can do.

However, I did think of another little story. So I have drafted the verses and chorus. It will take the rest of the week to get it in shape for recording. This time, I will get it and the post to my blog submitted well before the Saturday midnight deadline. Maybe even a day in advance!

Singing at 120 Diner July 12 at 10 - Special Guest of Chris Birkett

So this is exciting.

My wonderful producer, and brilliant songwriter and musician, Chris Birkett, invited me to appear as a special guest for indie night at 120 Diner, July 12, at 10 p.m. If you haven't been to 120 Diner, you must go. The food and ambience is great! The music will be wonderful. Chris performs with Shari Tallon on keyboards and flute and with the amazing Jeremy Erwardes, who plays every sort of harmonica or clarinet. It remains to be seen who and what will be playing for me.

You see, I am an a Capella singer-songwriter. There is nothing quite as exciting as hearing music played for recording one of my songs - it is fantastic that I can sing it and they can get it. However, when I perform, I usually stick to a Capella - singing the sounds in my head. However, I have sent Chris the potential song list, so come on down to 120 Diner and see whether anyone will play for me, or if I have the mic to myself, singing my words and melodies on my own.

Hope to see you there!

SAC Songwriting Challenge #1 I Do Not Speak The Language

So...

I have not written a blog for ages. And I do have a website via WordPress under construction. But I keep spending my money on recording, and mastering, and so forth. So the web site design has had to wait. Therefore, this old blogspot will have to do for the challenge. If others read it, well so be it - I am pretty sure it is linked to my fb page.

As  I told North, I must have been out of my mind to accept a spot in this challenge. My time this summer is very limited. But one advantage of being an a Capella songwriter is that it can be done in the background of the brain while, oh, I don't know, taking the grandkids to Wild Waterworks, for instance. Or the market. Or to buy penny candy at Bulk Barn while I buy gluten free cornbread mix to make for dinner. 

However, and what the many of you who are musicians will not understand, I do not speak the language of chords and riffs. Consequently, I was about to bow out and leave my spot for someone else. Rosanne suggested that I find two notes to build a melody over. Hmmm. Maybe. Both explained that a riff was like a repeated melody or line. Well, that gave me a starting point. All I have been thinking for days is, "people, please, put down your guns." So, that is what I built a gentle little folky protest song on, and I finally posted it to the group. 

Now, I do not know if we are supposed to critique ourselves. I will wait to hear if I met the challenge. What I do know is that to me the song is repetitious, a little precious, a lot trite, but somehow heartfelt. And sad. Because nowadays it all seems so impossible. And yet, 50 years ago, it is what we did. Regardless of Put Down The Guns future as a song, there is a starting point in it that may develop into a song or poem that I love somewhere down the road. 

Finally Some R&R

It has been crazy around here the last little while. Ever since I finished SongStudio, the Songwriters intensive on July 27, there has been one thing after another consuming my days, energy, attention, whatever. You get my drift. Today, finally, with my 8 year-old granddaughter off to Art Camp and a bit of alone time (other than our carpenter friend and his work mate sawing and banging away on the porch reno), I feel as if I might have a calm, relaxed day of self-direction and grace. After I shower and dress (yes, it has been a slow lazy morning thus far) I have given myself a bit of a to do list of odds and sods to get done around the house. Then I will pick up the young artist at 3:30 and have a bit of fun with her on into a quiet evening. The to do list includes washing and drying the vegetables I harvested from the garden yesterday (green and yellow beans, cucumbers, green peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes) as they keep better and longer once that is done. I am also going back to my weekly sort schedule. Today it is the gable room's turn. It's full of a lot of stuff from parent households, old photos, stored clothes. I have made a dent but would like to get it cleared to make room for a single bed for grandson visits. I may get there in the hour devoted to it today. Otherwise, I have a lot of correspondence to catch up on, reflections and photos from this year's trips to deal with, and all at a lovely leisurely pace. It is cool and rainy today. Great for working inside.

2012 New Year Resolutions

Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year Resolutions

(1) continue to rediscover self
(2) continue to tick the bucket list
(3) maintain family, friends, and professional contacts for us and Mom
(4) travel together, alone, and in groups to new places, for interests, for fun
(5) dance and play - tango and ukulele, classes and practice - plus French - get Rosetta Stone, join a bilingual MeetUp
(6) repair body as well as possible through healthy diet, exercise, and with medical help
(7) write one hour daily minimum: blog, tweets, fb, mail, email, stories, & songs
(8) sort house one hour daily minimum: Sun Playroom, Mon Office, Tues Gable Room, Wed Bedrooms, Thurs Bathrooms, Fri Kitchen, Sat Basement
(9) resume tracking WW Points Plus and weekly meetings
10) budget and plan for me, us, family, and future