Jen Plays Ukulele

 Welp. The last couple of weeks haven't exactly gone the way I thought they would. But whatever. I just seem to find myself getting sucked into this strange ennui. Thank goodness for my little fox dog to keep me rooted in the world when I need him. That said, I discovered something amazing in the last couple of weeks, and maybe that's why I've been feeling like I'm sort of floating through life again?  Many moons ago, I was a yoga teacher, and I completed both a 200 hour and 300 hour advanced teacher training program. (Not to mention a bunch of additional certifications in kid's yoga and yin yoga and Ayurveda and some other stuff.) Anyway, my favorite part of every program that I did was the kirtan. Kirtan is a form of Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion. (One of the 8 limbs of yoga, which I won't get into here, but there's a great wealth of knowledge on the interwebs about that.)  Anyhoo, like I said, kirtan. Was always my favorite because it usually involved

 Well, things sort of got out of control this week. No nice and orderly blogging schedule! I can't remember what I was doing on Monday, but it wasn't this. And then yesterday, my son and I were both sick with some kind of upper respiratory thing so we just took the day to eat soup and chill. (He's feeling better and back at school, my voice is still a little hoarse and my throat feels kinda dry.) BUT... Just figured I'd amuse you all with some musings.  YES I am working on making a couple of short little videos of what I'm working on for What I'm Working On Wednesday, even though today is Wednesday. See, over the weekend, I gave in to temptation and started making loads of beautiful little pendants using UV resin and dried flowers. SO pretty! SO much fun! But it required me to spread out on the other half of the dining room/work table and the other half of the table is currently covered in dozens of little gemstone cabochons that I'm going to wire wrap into

Oof. It's Thursday morning. And I'm doing my best to keep up with blogging, but for some reason, this last week has been HARD. Trying to make time to write new songs, doing things that are so far outside my comfort zone they give me anxiety attacks, and trying to keep everybody fed and happy have definitely been a challenge for me.  At any rate... Yesterday I started something new. Sort of.  If you listened to the podcast I recorded for my friend Debbie Philp last week (sheesh, it seems like it was a month ago already), I talked about the Judgement card in the Tarot deck. (Stay with me here. You'll see how it all works out in my neurodivergent way.) And I was talking about how we sometimes have to make choices and use our best judgement in life.  Three years ago when I was doing some life coaching with Debbie, she asked me to write down some goals and dreams I had. One of them was to do kirtan performances at yoga studios once they started to open up again. (This was still

 Whew! Here we are again! What the heck? How are we halfway through September already? The last ten days or so have just flown by in a blur of songwriting and baking and spending time with family.  Last weekend, we took my mother in law's ashes down to Rogers Rock on Lake George and scattered them. It was actually a gorgeous day, overcast and warm, and I waded into the lake up over my knees and felt the little fish nibbling at my legs... I swear I felt that lake water lapping at my shins until I went to bed. On the way home, we stopped and got Dunkin' Donuts and it was a good day for healing.  So now after finishing two different songwriting programs in the course of 8 days, I have the bones for 8 new songs laid out in my notebooks. I have to spend some time this week doing some writing to pay the bills, but then I'll be fleshing those out and getting real about what I want to say.  I'm also laying down the bones of a new Tarot course all about using the Major Arcana fo

 Welp. Here we are. Woke up with a major headache this morning, but it seems to be easing up a bit enough to let me get a blog written. Last week did not go as planned. And I can laugh about that. I got some good bones written down for some new songs, so this week I will be working on those. Today I have lots and lots of writing to do and some recording to do and a couple of things to work on for a top-secret project that may or may not manifest itself early next year.  For today, I have to go make some (very rough) recordings of some of the songs I've written and send them over to a local sound engineer. (Part of the top secret project that may or may not manifest itself.) I also have to send some emails and do some writing about ukuleles and do all that while I try to shake off this headache.  I'll have to tell you the story behind the headache later on when I'm not feeling quite so shitty.  I'm also at the point where I want to put my entire life and my entire house

 So I had a decently productive weekend last weekend, musically speaking. I took my own advice (ha ha!) and put all my "finished" songs into my super special songwriting notebook, and was pretty delighted to see that it's almost full. (Yay!) Then I sat down and worked on two more pieces from the Choan Galvez collection, 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele.  By the end of the afternoon, I had those two pieces memorized in my head, even though my fingers won't quite keep up right now. I noticed that when I started learning these, it seemed like each one took me str FOREVER to learn, but now, I've sort of got a process down for learning new music.  A couple of years ago, a friend and I were talking about memorizing new music, and honestly at the time, it felt really hard for me to memorize anything. She noticed it, too, and we wondered if it was just because of our aging brains (we're both in our late 40s) or if it was just the stress of the times we're living i

 Soooooooooooo it didn't quite go the way I had planned. I had a bit of a tension headache that just made me dizzy and left me feeling kinda fuzzy in the brain, and it didn't clear out until late afternoon, so that didn't leave a heck of a lot of time for songwriting. BUT I got a solid chord progression written down and worked out, and something of a melody, and I got the bare bones of some lyrics worked out. I can always go back to those later, so I'm counting that as a win.  My idea for the day 1 prompts was a song about a vampire luring someone out and biting them. Kinda dark? Maybe. But after all, it's Halloween Eve for the entire month of September, so I feel justified.  The prompt for Day 2 is up in the group, and I had a brief look at it this morning when I finally woke up (after 2 hours of insomnia in the middle of the night, yuck), and now that I've procrastinated by chucking a loaf of chocolate chip banana bread in the oven, I'm off to do some brai

 Hi ho, it's Monday again. Today is Labor Day here in the U.S., and that's a whole other blog. But I will say this: it's about time we went to a four day work week, UBI, and stronger labor unions. This blog (and me) are strongly pro-labor. And it's pretty horrific, what's happening in the world today with the governor of Arkansas making it easier for a 14 year old to get a job than an education. There's probably a song in there, but I don't know what it would be yet. ************************************************ It's disgustingly hot here in northern New York today, and we've got the air conditioner and the air filter going full blast. Just a few more days of summer vacation before school starts. Summers always went by quickly here in the ADK, but lately, they seem to just zip faster than the speed of light.  **************************************************************** We finally finished the oral antibiotics for our rooster, Zelda, who has h

 I know, I just wrote an entire blog about how to survive Mercury retrograde as a songwriter or a musician, and of course, the number one thing to remember about Mercury retrograde is to not start anything new or take on any new projects, but... The 5 In 5 Songwriting Challenge starts on Monday.  So, eff it. I'm gonna do it this time.  I've lurked before and downloaded the prompts from the Facebook group to save for use at a later date (I have a whole bunch of notebooks full of prompts that I can call up whenever I get in a writing rut), but this time I'm dedicating the entire week to writing one song a day - and potentially two on Friday, when I start ANOTHER songwriting challenge/workshop. (But I'll blog more about that one in a few days as we get closer.) It's a fun challenge, and it's totally free - you get 5 songwriting prompts every day for 5 days, and your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to write 5 full songs every day for the 5 days. Bonus

 September first! Always feels like it sneaks up on you. I'm still feeling the weirdness/intensity of this full blue supermoon from the other night, so mostly just trying to take it easy and not overthink too much. That said, I woke up with a fun headache this morning, another symptom of peri/menopause, and I'm going for a ride later on this afternoon to pick up a rehab turtle that needs to get to my friend Debbie down in Schroon Lake.  So while I'm sitting here staring at my calendar and musing over what to do next week, I'm looking at my ukulele practice planner pages that I downloaded from Brittni Paiva's website a few months ago. My Virgo rising loves these because they give me a way to write down and organize and track my practice sessions, and she also has some great gratitide prompts to fill out every week.  Today, I'm grateful for: My snuggly little Tucker dog.  The beautiful views from my dining room window and back porch. That my rooster's foot se