I am noticing a slowdown in my posting here lately.

I think it might be from having to post so many show promotions. I feel like I already wrote something, then I don't write anything here.

It also could be partly from the news lately.

Sometimes when the world news is really big/hot, it has a dampening effect on wanting to write.

It could be partly the weather. It is getting hot here quickly, and I am not used to it yet.

The humidity in Japan is a lot different than where I am from. It always takes a while to adjust.

It could be the device as well. I love my laptop, but I am a little sick of typing lately.

I should switch to the iPad and Apple Pencil, maybe. There is also pencil, paper, and then scanning with the phone, which works very well actually.

Not a huge issue, but something is off lately, and course correction is in order. Listing out all the excuses, gets them out into the light and they dry up.

Before moving my blog to Drupal, this site, I was using a platform called Blot. I loved Blot because I would write a post in a text editor, tag it, Hazel would move it to a folder in Dropbox, and it would publish itself. It was magical. Before that, I was using something else (probably Blogger). Anyways, I have a lot of random blog posts in backups and text files lying around.

It is a minor annoyance mostly because there is a ton of music I listened to that I want to remember. Yet I don't want to read a bunch of my history because I am more of an in-the-moment or looking forward type. So I keep kicking the task of getting the music into this site down the road.

Yesterday i read a quote from Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem that made me want to tackle the task of getting things into here.

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."

The whole passage that came from is even better. You should go check it out.

That made me think that I need to just get all the old posts into here little by little. Each day, go through the past years and add that day to the blog. Get the past albums I listened to into here. Look for old things I wanted to do and see if they can be done easily now. See if there are any patterns like "I seem to always think the same thing on 05/14" or anything else. Mainly, try to make looking back enjoyable while I get things all in one spot.

Weird that was such a hard decision but I already feel a little lighter which rules.

I am starting to become devout about using lead-ins for the morning writing brainstorm mind-clear I do daily. Things come out slow when I sit down to a keyboard and try to get all the things out of my brain.

But if I use a lead-in to start a phrase and use it over and over, words pour out of my head. They probably let my mind get up to speed before making the jump to the thought. The repetition is soothing as well.

Examples

• "My day looks like I need to..."
• "I don't know but..."
• "Today I need to..."

If the thing I need to do or remember is a cymbal crash, then the lead-in would be the drum fill leading up to it.

Starting off on a new pencil today.

It is a Mono100 3B made by Tombow. It has a softer lead than the F pencil I just finished. There is still a faint bit of hardness to it, though. Like soft with a little grain to it. The B side of the HB Scale is darker, so it is easier to read all the random notes I scribble down.

I think for a lefty like me, 3B is kind of perfect. As you get further into the B scale, you start to see the lead on your hand more. 3B isn't so bad for that.

Found myself at the keyboard, kind of void. I think it is because I like writing about minutiae, but there are a lot of enormous things happening. Me choosing my next pencil compared to global economic upheaval is a proton-level tiny thing.

That proton-level tiny action is what I need to do to start the ball moving at all. Doing the particle-level things gets me to the atom-level things and so on.

I am at the end of the pencil I have been using. It is an F, as in hardness, not failing grade. It is the center point between an H and B pencil, so it is the Goldilocks pencil. Not too hard and not too soft. They seem to last a little longer than a pencil on the B side of the scale.

They have a nice "scritch" level, meaning there is a little friction when you write on the paper. You get a sizzle sound while you write, which I am into.

For the next pencil, I am wavering between a carpenter pencil or a really soft B pencil. The large shape of a carpenter pencil is so satisfying for a drummer, I think. After an F pencil, a 6B would feel like writing with a Sharpie. Still deciding.

Woke up wondering, "If something can floor you, can something door you?"

Is door a verb like floor is a verb? I don't remembering anyone ever saying "something doored me". 

You could use it for things that block you that you just need the key to open.

Example: The key to the drum fill that was dooring me from getting to the end of the song was practice.

Today's writing prompt caught me by surprise. By the end of 200 words I felt like I was doing more of a mental self-check than the usual improvisational word play.

"I am just trying to ___________"

I have been experimenting with giving the morning writing to AI, telling it is an expert on the subconscious, and seeing what it says. It went wild with today's writing so I take it as a signal of a good morning writing prompt.

There is no way I would follow the advice by the way.

My brain likes parameters with the morning 200 word free writing. If I have a pattern to follow, then I can burn through the session. If there is a blank page with no rules then it takes forever to get to 200 words. Having a rhythm or template to fill in seems to lighten the writing time a bit.

Morning Writing Pattern

[one word]. [same word plus another]. [the two words plus a full sentence].

ex: Think. Think about. Think about how to make a morning free writing exercise.

Then I took the last word from the sentence and started again.

ex: Exercise. Exercise your. Exercise your fingers and mind before you start in on things.

Sidenote

My guess is these sorts of exercises are tried and true old-school writing exercises. If they are and you know more, send them my way. I've just been taking drum rudiments and converting them to word writing prompts.

By chance, the station where the onsen hotel we booked six months ago was the same station a friend of our opened up a French bistro. We went to it and surprised him and met his wife.

He got married and moved to a big city in Japan and was going to set up a small shop there. After a few months, they realized something wasn't right.

Nothing was a challenge. They weren't learning anything new. So they sought out a beautiful onsen town in the mountains and moved there. They remodeled an abandoned clothing store into a wonderful bistro.

While we were there and talking about their shop he said a thing the stuck in my mind the rest of the trip.

Change really isn't a change if you are just moving you and your stuff to a different place.

They said so far all the good memories they have had opening the place is the learning how to do everything. Learning the new is the exciting part. Keep learning.

I pushed play on the first album of the day and then opened the app where I do my free writing. Found a good way to let the mind ramble about:

• Type the name of the album.
• Take the last word of the album title and use it to start a new phrase.
• Keep going until 200 words.

Seemed to add a lot more variety to the kinds of words that popped up. The repeating word thing “…[last word]. [first word]…” created a nice rhythm which was kind to my foggy, morning mind.

More on the writing exercise: 200 Words a Day for 4 Months