Out with the old - because I'm running out of space.

It might have been a pseudo-response to my article about wanting a studio space for myself. It might be that, it might have been purely practical, but over the past few months, I've put a lot of time into moving and organizing the space where I practice, write and make music. I put in a table to put my laptop on, moved my amp close to the table so I can plug everything in, installed some fun lighting and hung some stuff on the walls. 

So it was a pretty incredible frustration to walk in on Friday and find that there was no longer any space to practice in and all that work was now piled with boxes, furniture and gifts. I know it sounds ungrateful, but Christmas rarely brings me much more than family frustrations and several hundred dollars worth of crap that I now need to find a place for and keep nice. 

I'm exploring ways to avoid Christmas entirely, but I haven't found it yet. 

But holiday avoidance notwithstanding, I still had a pile of crap in the office I needed to deal with and Sunday was the day. For the most part, I needed to get some stuff into shoe boxes and onto a shelf somewhere to be ignored forever or until I just throw it out. I came into possession of some real shit this year and it probably would have been wisest to put it in the same bag as the wrapping paper. 

Some of the stuff is really cool, but I don't have a place for it in my life. I got two LED "neon" signs this year. One that says "On Air" and one that's a guitar. They're cool, they look amazing. But I already have piles of crap that needs to be hung on a wall that's never been put up. And these are going on that pile. Like where am I gonna put this stuff? I don't have a "man cave" or a plugin anywhere near where I could put these things. Maybe I'll toss them up in the garage to never be ignited again. I dunno. Rhonda got the "On Air" sign because of when I had the radio show. But I broadcast the last episode (flight?) exactly four years ago today. It's not really useful to me at this point. 

If I'm sounding ungrateful and negative, it's only because I am. 

Christmas is such a burden. From a religious point of view, I haven't walked into a church for anything but a wedding or funeral in 20 years. And even if I was religious, the way we celebrate today would make the baby Jesus very sad. 

And the other face of Christmas is a celebration of consumerism and capitalism - which I have even less patience for than religion. Aside from the wastefulness I outline above, the season has only meant I need to work twice as hard for the same income and no one really understands why I'm so frustrated and exhausted. I can't even IMAGINE working in retail. Those folks deserve a goddamn knighthood. But they won't get it. I mean sure - the CEOs will benefit. People with the billions will get theirs. But the frontline worker will only be pushed harder to do more with less. 

"Boy Pilot is on a pisser today"

YEAH, I AM. It's been a stressful month and if I'm honest, I'm mad at myself. 

I wrote down two things before the holidays, that if I didn't get them for Xmas, I'd buy them. Well, I got them both, and a week later I can see that I have no use for either thing. The first, a guitar player stool is just an extra piece of specialist furniture I have no place for. It's sitting in the middle of the office to be tripped on. And the other - a pocket watch - has no practical use in the modern world and I basically never go anywhere that I'd want to dress up nice and wear it to. So like the neon signs, it's destined for a dark corner to never be used again. 

I get this way every year, I suppose it's just this year that I've been blogging again and I have somewhere to spew this negativity. I really would like to take some time away from work and home to go write some music and take a break. I can't afford that though and no one got me that for Xmas so I'll have to settle for taking a few days off in Feb or something and making it happen that way. 

Oh and I cannot say enough how grateful I am to be in possession of nearly $200 in gift cards to alcohol establishments. 

Ok. I'm going to try and turn this around a little bit before the end. But I think that for anyone with more than 2 Christmas trees in their house, this will end as negative as it started. 

I managed to co-opt Christmas for my own use a bit this year. 

I've been looking for low-risk places to play my new tunes. Open mics are great but most of the time you get a song or two then you're sent on your way. But with Christmas parties in full swing, I devised a way to make the parties more tolerable for myself while taking advantage of a captive audience to try my material out on. 

So I took my guitar along to three of my Xmas parties and played some of my songs. I outright refused to play Christmas carols. The one vaguely Christmasey song I did have was "A Problem" a violent tale told in an 8-minute-long epic that includes three kazoo solos. I enjoyed it at least. 

I learned a lot playing for people this month and I think it's really solidified how I take this project forward for the next 6 months or so. I have a month's worth of goals and schedules I still need to hit. Beyond that, I think I'll sit down again, set a new set of goals and go from there. And just maybe, I'll schedule in that break I was talking about.