Progress?

Inch, inch, inch. It seems to take monsters of time and effort to get even the tiniest bit of reportable progress in the bag. But here's where I am right now. My tickets to NYC are booked. My deposit on my sublet apartment is paid. I have sold various household items and the rest are sitting online trying to get noticed. I'm still not 100% sure where I'm staying in Hawaii, but I've got options. Oh and I have officially resigned from my job and put my notice in to my landlord. Very soon I will be a decidedly free-wheeling girl. Which actually, come to think of it, is an insanely exciting and liberating thought. I've been so frickin stressed and busy doing stuff, I hadn't actually stopped to appreciate that until this very second. So I guess that makes me feel better. The yoga challenge I'm still very much in the midst of, surprisingly or not, is doing my head in at the moment. It's been really humid in Sydney over the last week or so, and that's made the yoga room nothing short of infuriating to be in. Not the usual vibe you seek from your yoga practice. Or maybe it's just that I've hit the angry phase. I've had that before. Somewhere in the middle of being calm and dedicated and strong of mind, you hit a FUCK THIS IS ANNOYING AND I FRICKIN HATE MY TEACHER AND THAT STUPID BIRD TWEETING IN THE TREE patch. The anger at the teacher and the bird are completely unjustified, but from somewhere (your hamstrings? Your capacious gluteus maximus?) it gushes forth. I probably have to admit that I have a bit of a natural tendency towards anger and a bit of a lightening quick temper. And somewhere in between stretching out various joints and tendons in revoltingly wet heat, I've opened the floodgate to my reservoirs of pissed off. Oh poor world around me. Usually I'd say, when in a mood like the one I've been in today, that I just need to go to yoga and everything will be okay. Not so sure that'll be the case this time. Although I have a funny feeling, as I realised mid-class last night, that the only way out of this yoga puddle is to swim to the other side of the lake. Push through it, try and keep my mouth shut, and drag myself dripping and exhausted out the other side a lighter, happier human. Maybe? In other non-news, my now extremely boring Take The Ride song is STILL unmixed and unmastered. And I'm still waiting on a meeting with another music biz mate to actually eventuate. Things just keep getting pushed out. But I am having some good ideas about how to spend my first bit of time in New York on a musical front, which is something. My feeling at the moment is that the more I can do completely independently of anyone else, the better. Oh yeah, and no-one seems to be interested in publishing my blog as a book, not that I've been pushing that in the slightest. Whatever. Right now I just want to get my shit sold or packed up, move myself overseas and get into a nice little routine of some description. All this crazying around with a million stupid things to do is sending me spare.

Did I mention my home town got annihilated by an earthquake?

Amongst all my self-centred whatevers, I think I omitted the rather hulking fact that Christchurch, New Zealand, my birthplace, home and stomping ground since I first teeteringly managed to stomp at all, got shaken to its foundations by an enormous aftershock from the original September earthquake that happened there last year. The city has been reduced to rubble, and many people have died or been injured. Lots of people are homeless, and the ground continues to shake. Thanks to some incredibly positive force of the universe, none of my family or friends have died or been hurt. But they're living with the trauma that comes from experiencing a huge natural disaster and seeing the physical reality and history of your life drastically and abruptly altered forever. It's intense. I'm going back to Christchurch to see my family in April, before I head to Hawaii. I imagine it's going to be quite a confronting trip.

I've had a brainwave.

Me oh my I've been a patchy blogger of late. Dropping in once a month or so, delivering scattered messages that dart this way and that. If you're still reading, I'd imagine it's all gotten the tiniest bit boring? Annoying? Something like that. But don't think I haven't been thinking about you - believe me I have. And I've had a bit of a special Claire-thought (whatever that is). If we're all honest, the concept of this blog isn't the most engaging in the world. Progress updates on my personal projects? Quite good for me, maybe mildly interesting for you from a kind of human behaviour + what happens next standpoint. But "quite good" and "mildly" aren't adjectives I've ever particularly aspired to. Maybe my latest idea might be more "freakin awesome". Okay, now I'm going to have to sidetrack for a second. Bear with me. Three days ago, I started another 31-day yoga challenge. O-oh, we know what can happen when I do one of those. Last time, I went teetotal for a whole frickin' year. But don't worry. I don't think I'll be doing that this time. What I've realised (and actually realised the first time, but apparently promptly forgot again) is that yoga challenges do something to my brain. They make me focus. Last time I focused on staying off alcohol, and held that focus by writing a blog about staying off alcohol every single day. I kidded myself that the staying off alcohol was to help me focus on doing more music, but in actual fact, the staying off alcohol ended up taking centre stage. And that's fine. It was something I needed to do. But here's my new idea. If music is the aim (which it is and always has been), why not do a blog that focuses entirely on that? Not New York, not getting books published, just the tunes. And seeing as simple seemed to work best last time, why not make this one freakin' simple too? So my idea? I set myself the challenge of writing and demoing a song a week for an as yet undecided period of time. Every week I put that song up on a dedicated blog for whomever cares to listen to it or comment on it. What I like about this idea is that it's something I have the basic skills to achieve entirely on my own. (Not relying on anyone for anything, it seems, is a good way to get stuff done faster in the music world. I'm still waiting on my mix and mastering for Take the Ride. It's literally taken all summer because of one thing or another.). What I also like is that it will make me stick to the plan - because there'll actually be a plan. A simple one. I'm not going to start it this second, because work is insane and I have a life to pack up and move around the world. But maybe when I get to the big smoke, I'll start it then. I'll keep you posted. Pop back in sometime and I'll let you know where and when.