Can't sleep. Thoughts a-twirlin'.

For some reason, my thoughts have been twirling a lot today around a situation that sort of exploded a few weeks ago.  It will be easy for me to put it all in a nutshell and to be very vague about it and not name names, because the reality is that I myself know very little about the situation itself.

A community of people that I love, that I felt very much a part of experienced some kind of crisis.  In the midst of said crisis, they circled their wagons and I found myself on the outside of the circle.  The knowledge of the details of the crisis itself was within the circle, so I was in the dark as to what exactly had even transpired.  Vague enough for you?

The pocket of my heart where I kept that community, having once overflowed with nothing but warm fuzzies and supernatural delights was now stuffed with unanswered questions and a strong sense of alienation.

In a strange way, it was an answer to prayer.  I had been seeking God as to whether it might be good for me to move there and join this community full time for a season or two, and I was deeply hoping that his answer would be "Yes."  The way things have unfolded, I don't think I could enjoy so much as having lunch there anymore, let alone living and working there.

I had really hoped that I might at some point be filled in a little.  These are, after all, people I love and care about.  But after a few weeks of silence from the involved parties, I'm losing interest.  And the truth is, I'm not entitled to answered questions.  I don't deserve to know what kind of crisis puts a gag order on a whole community.  And I don't need to understand a community that submits to such a gag order.

Yeah, it burns a little to feel like you belong somewhere and are welcome there and then find out that you are actually considered an outsider.  It burns.  But it's a glorious thing to have your life tidied up a bit.  It's a difficult thing to let a fruit-bearing branch be chopped off, but if it makes the rest of the tree stronger, so be it.

Love is Love

I belong to a weird little internet community that is loosely based on do-it-yourself electronic music production. Very loosely. It's mostly based on veering off-topic.

Anyway, nobody had actually produced any music in quite a while so someone demanded that everyone complete a new song by the end of the year. I thought it might be nice to take a break from my ep/album/whatever and just run off a quickie. The plan was to do something so simplistic that I could finish it up in a few hours. Three days later (sigh) I had this song here.

The cool thing is that I learned a LOT of cool stuff in the process of making it and am now really inspired to get to work on more stuff.

I just thought since I talk a lot about my neurotic music-making processes here that I should post some actual music so everyone will know that while I am mostly talk, I'm not all talk.

Most Amazing String Arrangement Ever

I just wrote it, everyone. Actually it's not all that amazing. It just seems like it to me because it's the first one I ever wrote and it actually seems like it's going to work in the song I'm working on. It's very exciting and fun when things work.

Here's how happy I am that it works:



Logic 9 has a really cool Orchestral template that I hope to exploit very much in the future. I think it'll sound pretty convincing once it's all mixed in with the synth stuff. In other words, it won't sound like The Princess Bride soundtrack's cheesy super fake sampled orchestra.

Anyway, this song just uses strings, but I may try to do some brass stuff on other songs. Who knows? With computer magic these days, the sky's the limit.

I can't remember numbers.

If you tell me the address of someplace, I'll remember the street name, but not what number it is or how many miles away. If I read how much something costs, I can never remember, especially when they put that stupid .99 at the end. JUST SAY $5 AND STOP ALL THIS $4.99 BUSINESS. I also get my millions and billions mixed up and that makes me look stupid sometimes.

I got an email the other day from my bank telling me taxes were due and I had to approve payment by some date. I thought it was December 12, because I saw a 12 on the date thing on my computer. We still haven't had the 12th, yet, in case you were wondering. At any rate, this sent me into a panic because I thought I had 5 days to cough up, uhh, some amount of money I can't remember, but I know there were 4 digits. I just payed all my bills for December so I don't exactly have 4 digits in my business account, and thinking it was the 12th, I thought I had only a couple of days to come up with it.

Did I fail to mention that this is the slowest week I've ever had at work? Someone called last minute to book a color and cut and it doubled my total for the week. That's how slow.

So I teetered on the edge of panicking all day until that client came in and wrote her check. The value of the check wasn't was relieved my panic; it was the date on top of the check. Suddenly, I had ten more days than I thought I had.

Until they resent the email this morning, letting me know I had to approve payment by the 11th. How did I ever think Wednesday was the 12th?

I'm still debating whether or not I should panic about that stupid tax bill. Next week, while not history-making slow, is still pretty slow. [prayer]Please God, all those last minute caller-inners who usually make me insane, please let them call this week.[/prayer]

So that's basically how my week is going.