The Mid-November Total Life Assessment

This fall has been all about the big questions for me. Who do I want to be? What do I want to accomplish? What kind of life do I want to have?

I make a lot of lists. By default I tend to rebel against any method of organization, strategy, or planning, but my mom is a list-maker and when I was young she used to make me write out to-do lists. When I was an adolescent I thought that was a perfectly stupid way to spend my time. After all, I know what I need to do, or want to do, so why waste the time and the paper writing it down? But still, any time I found myself overwhelmed with all of the projects I had taken on - dramachoirmediaworkschoolcrosscountryandsoforth - Mom would sit me down and say let's make a list. Eventually, I had to admit that it felt good to cross off completed items. A few years ago I began listing on my own steam.

I can make lists of my goals, of places I want to go and things I want to do, but right now it doesn't seem to be making things clearer. I think that this is because the goals are really simple, and they don't need to be elaborated or broken down into tasks. Life is short, and I want to enjoy mine. I want to see as much of the world as I can see, and I want to make beautiful things.




My Twitter diary is up and running. I started it November 1, but I accidentally erased the first post. I'm not going to worry about it, though. So far, I have managed to be very disciplined and post every day, usually right before I go to sleep. The most interesting challenge so far - other than trying to hit exactly 140 characters - is negotiating the public nature of Twitter with the desire to document things that I don't necessarily want the entire world to know. One of the goals of this project is to create a document that will help me remember what has been important to me, and when things actually happen. So I've been playing with different ways to code information that I want to remember, but don't want to make public. It's a fun game.

I'm letting NaNoWriMo go this year (again). I was slammed with schoolwork and social obligations at the beginning of the month, and now I'm far too behind to catch up. I'm not beating myself up about it, because I've been pretty happy with some of the other writing projects I've been working on. Yesterday, I submitted a few things to 12th Street, the New School's literary journal. I think that my subject matter might be just a little too strange for 12th Street, but we'll see. My submission last year was rejected, so I'm not terribly optimistic about it. That's okay, though, it just means that there's another home out there somewhere for my stuff.

The soundwalk project I mentioned a while ago has been graded and peer-reviewed, and I was surprised at the positive feedback I received. Maybe my dreams for the project were too ambitious...but the responses made me reconsider abandoning the project. Maybe I will return to it for my final project, and try to make the audio walking tour of my dreams!

I haven't been working on music much. Tried to attack a lyric problem, but my head's not really in songwriting mode lately. BUT, I have been coordinating with Joe and Jonny to finish the Listing album, and we've blocked off studio time in January. The new Close-Far studio is going to be gorgeous. Jonathan lost his old studio space this summer, and at the time it seemed like a tragedy, but now I think that it may have been a stroke of luck. The new place is in a former radio station, so it's already set up for sound, and I think it'll seem a lot more legit to his potential clients. I am also looking forward to recording in a space that is not a basement. I mean, I have fond memories of basements, but last January I spent the better part of the month in the dark, embracing a space heater, and shivering.

The electricity essay is coming along. I wrote a chunk about circuits and hacking, and my professor compared me to Jacques Cousteau. I hardly have to tell you how happy that made me.