I once overheard two of my friends talking – one said “if I could give you anything I would give you another hour in every day” and the other looked up from her work with a huge grin spread across her face. “That may be the nicest gift I’ve ever gotten” she responded. 

(picture courtesy of kitchenandresidentialdesign.com )

Lord, do I know how that lady feels.  Slowly slowly I’m learning to prioritize when everything seems like it should be the priority.  There’s “part-time-job”, where it’s so easy to prioritize. Why can’t everything be like that?  And then there’s “resident-manager-job”, which is great with the exception of being on call all the time and they know where you live.  And then there’s “music-business-job” which is long and tedious and about as exciting and glamorous as waiting in line at the DMV. The tasks never ever ever stop or go away. Oh and then somewhere in there I’m supposed to be writing some stuff too because there is no “music-business-job” if I don’t have, you know, music.  (Vicious circle.)  Oh, and it has to be GOOD music.  I’ll just quickly schedule inspiration in between email, booking a tour, scheduling the plumber, writing a fundraising campaign, updating personnel files, fixing the cupboard door, calling the painter, designing the in-house marketing pieces,  and finalizing a couple of video shoots.  NO. PROBLEM.

Yes, I am feeling a little overwhelmed, and yes, I am feeling temporarily sorry for myself.  It will go away by tomorrow, so no worries.  I will not turn into a whiny cry baby person who is annoying like guy-who-won’t-stop-talking-to-you-on-the-bus.

On the upside – I have been able to shuffle my hours at “part-time-job” in order to get more done with the “music-business-job” so that I have more time to, you know, write music.

If this constant see-sawing wasn’t already blatantly obvious, there is also a re-occurring exercise in the Artist Way (which I’m still plugging along at) which is meant to draw your attention to anything that may be out of balance in your life.    You draw a circle (the virgo traces the bottom of a glass-such a control freak) divide it into 6 pie pieces and then each piece gets a different label that is a part of life.  Adventure/Romance, Spirituality, Work, Exercise and so forth.  You place a dot between the center of the circle and the outside rim to gauge the level of that part of your life – the rim being 100% and the center being 0. Then connect the dots, baby.    How uneven am I?   Fairly.  I’ll tell you this; work is at 100%.  I think initially I drew the dot outside of the circle on the opposite facing page, but then felt like that was cheating so erased it.  Spirituality is also pretty high, because lately I’m counting every exclamation of “Dear God!” and “Holy Jesus!” as prayers.

I have been a full-time-artist now for 6 months. And I have been very successful thus far. But today I miss my friends that I don’t get to see very often anymore because I’m working all the time.  And I miss having the money to go try out the specialty cocktails at the new hot bar that my full-time-job used to allow for.  I miss going shoe shopping and getting my nails done by strangers and other little piddly things that were just silly and fun.

I knew what I was giving up when I chose this adventure.  And I know this is only temporary (sad-face will be gone tomorrow).  After all, I’m 900 times happier now than I ever was then.  I’m just having a day.  Everything is live and learn -  and one thing I have learned is this: Rebel Yell Whiskey and home-made pedicures are pretty damn fun.

And at the end of the day, it is so worth it.

Sit Kitty Sit is going to SXSW (eeeek!!!!!) – we’re traveling along with Tokyo Raid, and crashing DIY -style at a friends place in Austin.  The whole thing happened kind of last minute and I’m still all in a whirl about it – we are still in the full- flurry of having just released an album, and now there are so many MORE arrangements to make, so many behind-the-scenes lists of things that need to be addressed, so many bands to go see…where do I start??  Like a candy store.  I won’t sleep the whole time I’m there, I’m sure.  I will come home dripping in that stinky stuff we call inspiration.

Have some great gigs lined up, and waiting to hear back about a couple more – that’s the other part… the waiting!   Waiting to hear back.  Waiting for load in details.  Waiting (anxiously) for it to be near enough to the trip to get my color touched up – man I cannot WAIT for Wednesday – bye bye roots!  I need to take advantage of those little pleasures now, as I’ll be traveling into Texas with a pack of 4 rowdy boys and I’m sure quality bathroom time will be limited.  I thank my time in college where I was the “Kween” of a non-greek fraternity for my MacGyver-like skills at getting club-level-hot in under 20 minutes.

And while the kitten races around the house, and calls are placed to get a toilet fixed, and Mr. F pours shots in the kitchen, I’ve been cleaning out my old piles of tunes.  Looking for some inspiration from the past and maybe refreshing some older songs I haven’t played in a while.  I have three new ones in the hopper, but you know how songs go – they never write themselves as quickly as you want them to.   Now that the new SKS album is all up and live and happy (and WONDERFUL – have you heard it yet?? Is up on iTunes.  Go listen) I want to get back to working on “Dark Diary” – who sadly got put on hold when Mike and I realized we were on to something with this whole classical/rock thing almost 2 YEARS ago … and look where THAT got us (going to SXSW is where it got us!!! Eeeeeeeekk!!)

In honor of that long-dormant solo project, I give to you a BRILLIANT video created and directed by my dear friend Caius, based on one of the spoken journal entries from the yet unreleased “Dark Diary” album.  Enjoy – and as always, thank you for listening!

But no fear – my resolution was not lost.  And while I may not be posting, or even updating my Facebook status very often, I am dutifully keeping track of all the new things I’ve learned so far this year.  In no particular order:

• I learned that the reason there are no cemeteries in San Francisco is because of the Bubonic Plague.  (a few historical ones were allowed to stay, but for all the others the bodies were exhumed and moved to Colma.  eww)
• I learned how to use an elk call that I got for free off a stranger at the DMV
• I learned how to make kombucha at home
• I learned that if you bake certain types of mushrooms, they basically shrivel into nothing (oops)
• I learned that sesame sticks and banana chips go shockingly well together and created a new trail mix recipe that consists of sesame sticks and banana chips
• I learned that when cats get tons of eye boogers all the time it’s actually a form of herpes (eww)
• I learned what a brioche actually IS instead of sort of knowing what it is.

And – if all that were not enough, I decided to re-start The Artist Way by Julia Cameron for a second time.  It has been years, and as I recall I don’t think I finished the entire 12 week program the last time.

I got the idea because I found myself in a bit of an emotional slump. Quite strange considering that everything is quite literally swimming along brilliantly – so I decided that maybe I just needed a little boost.  A return to my creative roots, and some looking inside.  So I walked to my bookshelf to pull down this mighty manual – but, what is this?  Where is it?  I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I know I never would have added it to the giveaway pile, so maybe I lent it to someone??  But nothing rings a bell.  I have no idea what I did with it.  I was blessed enough to find a free copy floating around in SF – but on my way home from picking it up I discovered that two of the pages had chunks torn out of them.  I’m assuming for the prior user to have that info handy in the pocket – but that put a slight damper on my “can I start tonight” attitude – one of the ripped pages was part of  Week 1′s reading.

Not to be deterred, (my Dad is basically MacGyver. I can figure this out) I contacted my dear friend the HookHook, who actually used her iPhone to take pictures of the missing pages in her own copy of the book and emailed them to me.  I promptly printed them out and arts-n-crafted them back into place.

It just looks like a photo page, huh?  Yeah – I did that myself. There actually aren’t any photos in the book.  I sort of feel good about the extra effort I had to put in to get what I needed – I felt like it was a step in the right direction.

I’m just finishing up week one and so far so good.  Anyone out there who’s finished all 12 weeks?  I’d love to hear about your experiences.

As I am what the kids call “self employed” now I have learned the fine art of scheduling down time for myself so as not to drive myself crazy.  I have decided that for my New Year’s Resolution I would pick a new topic to study each week in my down time so that by the end of the year I will have learned 52 new things.

I got the idea originally from my big vacation I just got back from – I was so inspired by Pompeii that I’ve been reading up not only on it’s history, but on volcanoes in general and how they erupt.  I’ve been enjoying it so much I decided to keep looking up other things that I’ve always been curious about, but never took the time to do.  And as the new year was upon us, I figured that this was the perfect opportunity!

I’m sure as I go along, I’ll need suggestions – so please feel free to shout some out.

Some things I’m looking forward to learning:

• The history of the Christmas tree
• the life of Claude Monet
• more about Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Egyptian History (that may take more than one week)
• the background of Yoga
• More about American history (in school it was in one ear and out the other)
• History of Tattoos

There are some other things that I used to know well that I’d love to revisit as well, so this will be 12 months of Learning Stuff.   And I’m sure as I read up on things, I’ll be inspired to add more things to the list – so all in all, the reading will drive on more reading.  I love stuff like that because once you get rolling it kind of feeds itself with little active work on your part.  I just need to pick a place to start.

How about close to home?  This week I’ll read up on the life and times of glorious San Francisco!  That seems as good a place as any, and that is definitely something I’ve meant to do for a long time.

Happy New Year!

It’s not like I don’t have things to do.  Sit Kitty Sit is releasing a new album next month.  I have piano students (and am looking for more – tell your friends) and am handling the booking for the band, as well as performing out solo quite a bit and trying to get funding for larger future projects.   But – my “safety net” part time job recently fell through, which has left me what feels like gads of free time.

What that has meant lately is a LOT of documentary style crime drama TV shows on Netflix.   First I found “Disappeared” which is by Investigation Discovery.  I watched all of those.  Now I’m watching “Solved” by the same channel.  I have learned a few things in particular.  1 – people are really stupid and bad liers.  2 – if you’re going to go on the lam, it’s all about gold coins. 3- Walmart is everyone’s go-to place in times of emergency.

For Example:

- Man kills wife, goes to WalMart and looking at the receipt is like a checklist for “i just killed someone”  – bleach, febreeze, carpet cleaner that specializes in removing blood, giant ruber tub with wheels.  He doesn’t even buy like a candy bar or anything to make it look less mysterious.  Uses the dead wife’s credit card.  Then he does the worst fake cry ever done by man on local TV.  Everyone who sees it says “oh – THAT’s who killed her”  Seriously.

- Man kills girl.  Goes to WalMart. buys suitcase. Uses his credit card.  Leaves the product bar code in the suitcase.  Puts girl in suitcase.  Leaves it in a dumpster.  Seriously??  Barcode means they can trace WHEN and WHERE it was bought – watch security cameras – see you – see you using your credit card – pull up your credit card info -BAM.

- Man supposedly kills his brother and brothers girlfriend, then tries to assume his brothers identity.  Did I mention that his brother was sort of a celebrity?  Yeah.  He tried to assume a celebrity’s identity.  Bright.  I mean really – you’d have to claim to be some kind of recluse author to think you could get away with that.   In the police interview tapes he keeps changing his story and always starts by saying “See, what happened was this…” He got busted trying to buy gold coins using his brother’s identity.

- Kid goes missing. Evidence points to the possibility that he left on purpose of his own free will.  Sure enough, they find images of him purchasing cold medicine on the security cameras at – you guessed it – Wal Mart about 150 miles away from home.

I think my favorite was this big dramatic story about a girl who had gone missing – her family went all out and searched for her for 6 years.  (Spoiler Alert)  Turns out, she was living in Oregon and had no idea they were looking for her.  She was perfectly fine and pretty shocked about the whole thing.
This is after the police had spent numerous man hours interviewing people, holding people, and bringing cadaver dogs out to remote locations where psychics claimed her body was buried.  Totally fine.  In Oregon.

Huh. Feel a song coming on…

*whew*

After spending a few days in Barcelona attempting to stay dry  (as the old adage goes: the rains in Spain stay mainly in Barcelona) we boarded the beautiful Celebrity Solstice for a 12 day port intensive cruise of the Mediterranean.

I don’t know about you – but when I think “Mediterranean Cruise” I picture myself in a lounge chair with a cocktail well rested and sunned upon.  Perhaps there are cruises like this.  Maybe in the Caribbean?

Now let me explain what “port intensive” means.   It means this:

Go to sleep. Wake up.  Speak French. Visit the ENTIRE French Riviera in 8 hours. Go to sleep, wake up.  Figure out how to speak Italian, get on train, do Florence in 1 day. Go to sleep. Wake up. Get on another train, see all of Rome including the Vatican Museum in 9 hours. Go to sleep.  Wake up. Visit the ENTIRE Amalfi Coast in 8 hours…   and don’t forget to dress for dinner, and eat eat eat every spare moment you have.  And if that’s not enough there is a full calendar of events on the ship from sunrise until well after midnight every night.   Are you bored yet?

I admit, I had to change my thinking.  I had gone into vacation-relaxed-mode by the time I got on the plane to fly to Barcelona where  I should have been resting up and exercising like I was about to climb a mountain.   It was a lot of information in a short amount of time and I definitely got overwhelmed!

And inspired.    I mean, LOOK at this:

It was such a whirlwind – so much beauty in such a short amount of time.  At the time I really wanted to just stand still and let it soak in.  But there weren’t enough hours to just sit at BE.

The one place where time actually stopped for me was Pompeii.  After hearing the stories for so many years – to see it with my own eyes – to kick off my shoes and walk on the cool marble floors myself… that was incredible.

And then returning to Venice – the only place on this entire journey that I had been to before… that was a great sensation.  Foreign, but familiar.  And Venice seems so completely beautiful just for the sake of being beautiful.  How can you not love it?

This is the first real vacation where I am just combing over the photos I took – finally the world will sit still.  Finally I can put myself back in those places and figure out how I feel, what my mind is doing, and really experience it.  One of my favorite pictures is behind my eyelids – the Sistine chapel – where the nice security guard constantly reminds: “NO PHOTO” – which kept f’ing up my che.  I wanted to say “stop yelling, man.  I’m trying to revel here.”

So many songs were born on this journey – I’m depending on the quiet of my mind and the pics on my iPhone to help me finish them.

Glad to be back – wish me luck!

Which is *kind* of a big deal. (yay!)

This will be the biggest solo show I’ve played in a long time, and I’m super excited.  I’m pulling out a bunch of songs I haven’t played in forever and some new ones and mixing them in with the tunes that Sit Kitty Sit has been doing and re-vamping them in a style that I’m calling “sassy-acoustic”.   This one is not to be missed. Bring your camera (and post the pics on my Facebook page).

I’ll be sharing the stage with Curt Yugi and Tatam Reeves – both excellent singer/songwriters.  I have a hunch that this will be a very inspiring evening!

More info on the “Live” page.

*sigh*

So I was super-excited starting in on the part-time work force last week.  I have a 20 hour a week position with a new up-start company that’s really low key and fun.  Mr. F had recently gotten in at a really great catering company and spoke so highly of it, I figured… why not?  I’ve got event experience and I don’t mind serving hors d’oeuvres, so I signed up as well.  I figured it would be good to have the option to pick up extra work here and there if I need to.

I worked my first catering event last night – and while, as I said, I have no issues serving people, I DO have issues with this:

Yeah.

…..yeaaah.

So let me tell you.  I had a real “oh, how the mighty have fallen” moment when they pulled these shirts out.  I had been okay with being a cater-waiter after being a high level sales person for so many years. I had sort of been looking forward to wearing my new cute tie.  I had even made a special run downtown to have a vest as according to the dress code listed for the event.

And then THIS happened.  And let me tell you – this shirt is ridiculously tight on me. It may as well have been a sports bra. AND I had to wear my white dress shirt UNDER it, because we can’t let tattoos show. Oh yes, my friends.  I was a hottie.

The Oktoberfest theme of the evening was especially highlighted for me, as with my extreme t-shirt wearing and the blond hair oh so many of the inebriated guests enjoyed pointing out how “authentic” I looked.  “You really look German!” “um, thank you?” “That shirt is awesome!”  “is it?”

Humble pie, folks.  Humble pie.

Mr. F was working at another event and finished up before me – drove over and was waiting outside to pick me up when I headed down the stairs.  I still had the shirt on – he started laughing before I even got 20 feet from him.

It’s worth it though, right?  If I do that part time to do music full time?

I think it is… but barely.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people – “how is it going?” “how does it feel?” along with, I must add, an ENORMOUS amount of support. (thank you thank you thank you thank you all)

How IS it going?  Well, I’m having a hard time settling down.  I’m still getting over the remaining dregs of a bad cold (of course I get a horrible cold when I’m making big change) so I still bust into coughing when I exert myself, which has kept me from going back to yoga.  My mind is spinning about 9,000 miles per hour – a wild blur of to-do lists, and, more exciting, WANT-to-do lists.  Lists and lists of the things I want to do now that I have time.  Those are fun lists, but they are still just as distracting, constantly taking me away from NOW. I’ve dealt with it by building actual to-do lists the way I always did at my day-job – adding on things that I accomplish that I also did that weren’t on the list to remind myself when I get frustrated with a task that no, really, you ARE kicking ass, just give yourself a break.

The kitchen has been scoured from top to bottom more than once.  The laundry has been done.  Today I actually let the living room slide because I’ve been working on the new SKS website, and the other list of to-do’s – which is impressive.  That is a really really LONG to-do list.  But we’re doing it.  Bit by bit, and with a lot of help.

The part I have a hunch I’m going to have difficulty with is the removal of one hat to don another.  For instance, I’ve been working on IT, data entry and admin-style work ALL DAY.  Now, after finishing this post I will be heading off to rehearsal with Mike – time to be the artist.  Time to perform and let the music flow through me – talk about a completely different type of energy.  That’s like trying to get the water running out of a hose to run backward.

I’m very glad that I have learned the skills to be aware of this challenge, and to be able to watch how I react to it before I make any changes (here’s to 6 years of therapy)

Omg- I just realized that I’ll be able to rehearse during the day now!! What an amazing concept!