Personal Log 9.16.23

The last two weeks have not been the greatest for me, ‘lots going on… 

My mom was in the hospital, again… her heart & blood pressure went crazy one night so we we dealt w/ that. Earlier that same day my dad tripped & fell, ‘got all bloodied up, ‘was vomiting & he thought it was “the end”... He got checked out for a concussion at the walk-in clinic then got a CAT scan which showed his brain was normal (my mom roared at that, it was the first time she had really laughed in a long time). They’re both better now but it was hard running from one to the other while doing laundry, making meals & trying to maintain my own devotionals/prayer/worship life in the chaos.

The enemy ramped up his attacks on me, both physical & spiritual. I’m not going to go into details just know that attacks happen & it’s vitally important to deflect the attacks w/ both the armor of God & w/ worship. That’s all.

Again, ‘not much spare time as I’m usually exhausted by 8 pm now, but I’ve been really exploring the mandolin more. Let me just be honest, after a while of playing it I can honestly say I find it quite limiting… After watching several videos over the last few months of “How to Play Mandolin” & “The Basics of Mandolin” it’s still just ‘okay’. Granted, I don’t play it like it’s ‘supposed to be played’ (whatever that means, I guess traditionally) I just play it however I want to. One guy was adamant that it’s not a baby guitar so you don’t play it like one, I said “oh yeah?” & started playing it like a baby guitar. He was kinda right but playing it like a baby guitar was somewhat liberating for me, I liked it! Due to it’s structure, it’s more of a lead/solo/melodic instrument & it’s great for that. So right now I’m experimenting with using a hybrid approach of rhythm+bass notes+mini-scales. All in all, I’m developing my own style in playing mandolin; it’s all a learning curve that’s for sure…

So I’m playing the piano more now, it’s been awhile & I’m a bit rusty. I’ve never had a proper piano lesson; I just learned chords, chords inversions & some scales but it has helped me w/ songwriting & music theory in whatever instrument I’m playing. So I approach the piano the same way I approach lead guitar in the fact that I play “around” the main instrument, accenting things here & there; that’s the way I play & it seems to work. 

For 10 minutes a night, I’m practicing the cabasa. I used to play the egg shaker but it’s not really that loud; I was drawn to the cabasa because it can used as a shaker plus it has the scraper & the roll sound. It’s my firm belief that any musician, regardless of what you play, should learn a secondary instrument & one of those should be percussion in nature. An egg shaker is great to learn, tambourine is good too… if I was overseeing a band, I would encourage each person on the team, musician & singer alike, to learn the egg shaker, cabasa or tambourine. Whether they play it or not, it’s just a good foundational rhythm instrument to have in your arsenal. 

After many years, my desktop pc finally died so I’m looking at a new one. The new pc will [hopefully] have 8 G of ram & 500 G of hard drive & will most likely run AV Linux; I also need to get a SATA to a 3.0 USB device so I can read the files & data from a handful of 2.5” & 3.5” hard drives I have laying around. The fun never ends, trust me, it... never... ends…

Lastly, I’m working on devotionals for the Men’s Group + looking to do a deep dive into the Book of James + working on outlines for both the Mayberry Bible Studies & Family Classics Bible Studies; that’s a lot & that’s what’s going on right now.