I do not go quietly...Into the night that calls me...Even when I'm alone
Man oh man, it sure is hard to find time for the things we enjoy, isn't it? That probably sounds like the most obvious statement on the planet to anyone whose lifestyle can be described as even remotely busy, but hear me out... I've had this problem for many, many years, since well before Miles was born -- hell, probably since I was a kid. At this point, it seems like an absolute certainty that time management is going to continue to be my biggest issue as a functioning human being, forever and always. However, this issue seems to have hit me especially hard ever since I became a father. I love my little boy to pieces, but as someone who highly values his free time, his alone time, his quiet time, and someone who also has a creative passion that involves writing, recording and producing his own music -- something that typically requires long stretches of uninterrupted time in the home studio in order to bring ideas to life -- the constant exhaustion and frequent disruptions that come with parenthood can be endlessly frustrating. At the end of the day, I'm well-aware of how lucky I am to have all the amazing things that I have in my life, including a loving family, first and foremost. So yeah, sometimes complaining about this stuff can feel like I have a bad case of "first-world problems," haha. But at the same time, the urge to make music has become hard-wired into my DNA over the years -- it's an essential part of who I am, and it's very hard for me to feel like a happy, complete, well-rounded person without it. Despite whatever lingering self-doubts I may have about my abilities as a musician, and lord knows I have many of them, the need to express myself musically is always there. And it's not just for selfish reasons, either. While this might sound silly to some people, I need to feel like I'm contributing something of value to the world in order to feel like my life is worthwhile. I've always had a desire to create music that will outlast me, that will live on long after I'm gone, that will serve as some sort of tangible proof that I was a real, living, breathing person with my own thoughts, feelings and ideas to share with the world. Maybe that sounds pretentious as all hell, but I don't really care. Isn't that what making art is supposed to be all about? Isn't that the whole point of this stuff? ...There's also the fact that when I took the copy editor job at C&G three and a half years ago, one of the main motivations was to give myself a more consistent, predictable work schedule so that I could devote more time to music. I was willing to surrender whatever creative satisfaction I had been able to achieve through writing and being a reporter (granted, this wasn't a whole lot) in order to focus all of that energy on making music at home. Writing and recording music was going to be my sole creative outlet, and that's exactly the way I wanted it. Yeah, I know everything changes once you have kids, but I'm still trying to make that scenario work fairly close to how I originally envisioned it. That has not been an easy task, however. So bear with me while I spew out a bunch of mundane details and walk through a typical day in my life circa 2018, in an effort (hopefully not a futile one) to figure out where I might be able to squeeze in a little more free time here and there...
All right, so on a typical workday, I get up around 7:00 or shortly thereafter. A lot of that depends on when Miles wants to get up and how well he slept the night before (and how many times I decide to hit the snooze bar, lol), but that's the general schedule that I'm on. Then I usually relax with him on the couch for a few minutes before I start getting ready for work. It can be a challenge doing that and taking care of the little man at the same time, but I do the best I can. Then Natalie's dad (our primary babysitter) arrives around 8:30 to relieve me so I can finish getting ready. The goal is always to make it to work at 9:00, but realistically, I don't make it there until around 9:30 on most days. Then I work a full day at C&G, which is usually pretty demanding from start to finish. I've gotten used to eating lunch at my desk while I work, as it's something that I do almost every day. From the time I get there in the morning until I finish proofing the papers near the end of the day, I work pretty much nonstop. (That might not sound all that great, but the main perk is that I get to listen to music on my headphones the entire time.) Then I try to take a little break and unwind a bit by checking my email, visiting some music websites, etc., before finishing up a little more work and going home. Occasionally, I will socialize with some friends (basically, just Andy and Josh) for a little while, but I spend the vast majority of the time glued to my computer. By the time I get out of there on most days, it's around 7:00 in the evening. Then I go home and eat dinner and spend some quality time with Natalie and Miles. The little dude goes to bed pretty late for a toddler, typically around 9:15 or 9:30, but that schedule seems to work pretty well for us on most nights. So I rock him to sleep and then spend a little more time with Natalie before she goes to bed, which is usually around 10:30. After that is when I should have a few hours of free time to myself, at least in theory... But yeah, things don't always work out that way. First of all, by that point at night, I've already been awake for 15 or 16 hours, and who knows how much sleep I was able to get the night before? Quite often, I'm just really tired and I pass out before I can do anything productive. On other nights (actually, these are often the same nights, haha), Miles will wake up once or twice and sometimes it can be very difficult to get him to go back to sleep. As I think I mentioned in my last post, sometimes he just wants to be held and wakes up every time I try to put him down in his bed. There are also plenty of times when I fall asleep rocking him in the chair, because I'm just super tired, and by the time I wake up it's often three or four hours later, or sometimes even more than that. At that point, whatever I was working on in the basement usually gets put on hold until the next night. Sometimes I want to keep plugging away at it, but when it's like 5:00 in the morning and I'm supposed to be up for work in a couple hours, I basically have three options, and all of them kind of suck: 1.) I can just keep working on music straight through until the time that I would normally get up for work, meaning that I'm depriving myself of sleep and effectively screwing myself over for the next night, because I will also have been awake a few hours longer than I typically would be by that time. 2.) I can continue working on music for a little while longer and then try to go back to sleep for an hour or so before I have to get up for work, which is often very difficult because I end up feeling too awake and full of energy, so I find myself tossing and turning while I think about whatever song I was just working on, and so I can't fall back asleep at all. 3.) I just go to sleep right away and try to rest up for the following night. Usually, option #3 wins out and, unfortunately, I end up getting nothing done as a result... And then there are those in-between nights when, after Natalie and Miles go to bed, I don't want to go to sleep right away, but I also don't have the energy or motivation or creative juices to work on any music. So I just relax and watch some shows on Netflix, or I watch some sports on TV, or I read some music articles, or I go through my seemingly bottomless email inbox, or I write some silly self-indulgent crap in here like I'm doing right now, lol. (The great irony of this entire post is that I'm spending a good amount of time and energy writing about how I never have any time and energy for music, rather than actually spending that time and energy on making music.) I mean, I do have other interests besides making music, and maybe that's part of the problem too: I'm one stubborn SOB in a lot of ways, and I always naively think that I can do it all, even when that's logistically impossible. Even after working a full-time job at the newspaper, and a part-time job teaching guitar, and taking care of my son, and spending time with my wife, and helping out with things around the house -- even after doing all of that stuff, I still feel like I have time to do all the same things that I used to do in high school or college, when I had a hell of a lot more free time on my hands. That sort of willful self-delusion is a big part of my problem. I refuse to sacrifice any of my personal interests, even though part of me knows that doing so means that all of those interests end up being compromised to some degree, including the most important one of all (making music, of course).
There's a phrase that always comes to mind when I think about all this stuff. I'm not sure if I read it or heard it somewhere or if I just made it up, but it goes like this: Time is a finite resource. That's so simple and obvious, and it's basically just a different wording of the old cliche that life is short. But still, it's a phrase that pops into my head on a regular basis. When I talk/complain/whine about my lack of free time, some people tell me just to wait it out, that things will get easier once Miles is older and he consistently sleeps through the night. Yeah, I'm sure that's true, but I never want to feel like I'm just wasting time or putting things on hold. I mean, we never really know how much time any of us have left, right? I could be gone tomorrow for all I know, and even if I'm not, I still want to make the most of the little bit of time that I do have. Ultimately, I just don't want to look back years from now with regrets about wasted potential -- about songs that remain unfinished or unrecorded, about creative avenues left unexplored, about opportunities for artistic expression and growth that I missed out on. That's why I hate the feeling that I'm just sitting around waiting for a chance to get things done. I'm not a very prolific songwriter, as it's not necessarily something that always comes naturally to me, but I still have songs that are several years old that I haven't recorded yet -- actually, some of them are more than a decade old at this point. And it really bothers me that my OCD, perfectionist nature means that it takes me forever to finish everything. Part of that is because I'm often writing, playing, arranging, recording, producing and mixing every part of a song by myself, and that means the nature of the beast is that my songs take a long time to develop because of all the trial and error involved. Still, I wish I could be more efficient when it comes to making music, and when it comes to every other aspect of my life, for that matter... On my best days, I can use all of these fears and doubts and personal weaknesses as fuel to get things done. You know, the whole carpe diem mentality -- not procrastinating, striking while the iron is hot, lighting a fire under your ass to achieve your full potential. The spirit of creative restlessness often means that you never attain any kind of fulfillment with your artistic endeavors, but the upside to this mentality is that you're always pushing yourself to improve, always searching for more, always reaching higher. Managing my time continues to be an enormous struggle for me, and it probably always will be. But on those good days when I'm able to strike some sort of spark of musical inspiration, it fills me with hope that all those creative thoughts and feelings and ideas swirling inside me are within my grasp. Suddenly, this elusive concept of achieving my creative potential seems possible. And that makes the whole never-ending struggle, the constant race against the clock, feel like it's all worth it -- at least for that brief moment. And then I catch my breath and try to find one of those moments again.
All right, so on a typical workday, I get up around 7:00 or shortly thereafter. A lot of that depends on when Miles wants to get up and how well he slept the night before (and how many times I decide to hit the snooze bar, lol), but that's the general schedule that I'm on. Then I usually relax with him on the couch for a few minutes before I start getting ready for work. It can be a challenge doing that and taking care of the little man at the same time, but I do the best I can. Then Natalie's dad (our primary babysitter) arrives around 8:30 to relieve me so I can finish getting ready. The goal is always to make it to work at 9:00, but realistically, I don't make it there until around 9:30 on most days. Then I work a full day at C&G, which is usually pretty demanding from start to finish. I've gotten used to eating lunch at my desk while I work, as it's something that I do almost every day. From the time I get there in the morning until I finish proofing the papers near the end of the day, I work pretty much nonstop. (That might not sound all that great, but the main perk is that I get to listen to music on my headphones the entire time.) Then I try to take a little break and unwind a bit by checking my email, visiting some music websites, etc., before finishing up a little more work and going home. Occasionally, I will socialize with some friends (basically, just Andy and Josh) for a little while, but I spend the vast majority of the time glued to my computer. By the time I get out of there on most days, it's around 7:00 in the evening. Then I go home and eat dinner and spend some quality time with Natalie and Miles. The little dude goes to bed pretty late for a toddler, typically around 9:15 or 9:30, but that schedule seems to work pretty well for us on most nights. So I rock him to sleep and then spend a little more time with Natalie before she goes to bed, which is usually around 10:30. After that is when I should have a few hours of free time to myself, at least in theory... But yeah, things don't always work out that way. First of all, by that point at night, I've already been awake for 15 or 16 hours, and who knows how much sleep I was able to get the night before? Quite often, I'm just really tired and I pass out before I can do anything productive. On other nights (actually, these are often the same nights, haha), Miles will wake up once or twice and sometimes it can be very difficult to get him to go back to sleep. As I think I mentioned in my last post, sometimes he just wants to be held and wakes up every time I try to put him down in his bed. There are also plenty of times when I fall asleep rocking him in the chair, because I'm just super tired, and by the time I wake up it's often three or four hours later, or sometimes even more than that. At that point, whatever I was working on in the basement usually gets put on hold until the next night. Sometimes I want to keep plugging away at it, but when it's like 5:00 in the morning and I'm supposed to be up for work in a couple hours, I basically have three options, and all of them kind of suck: 1.) I can just keep working on music straight through until the time that I would normally get up for work, meaning that I'm depriving myself of sleep and effectively screwing myself over for the next night, because I will also have been awake a few hours longer than I typically would be by that time. 2.) I can continue working on music for a little while longer and then try to go back to sleep for an hour or so before I have to get up for work, which is often very difficult because I end up feeling too awake and full of energy, so I find myself tossing and turning while I think about whatever song I was just working on, and so I can't fall back asleep at all. 3.) I just go to sleep right away and try to rest up for the following night. Usually, option #3 wins out and, unfortunately, I end up getting nothing done as a result... And then there are those in-between nights when, after Natalie and Miles go to bed, I don't want to go to sleep right away, but I also don't have the energy or motivation or creative juices to work on any music. So I just relax and watch some shows on Netflix, or I watch some sports on TV, or I read some music articles, or I go through my seemingly bottomless email inbox, or I write some silly self-indulgent crap in here like I'm doing right now, lol. (The great irony of this entire post is that I'm spending a good amount of time and energy writing about how I never have any time and energy for music, rather than actually spending that time and energy on making music.) I mean, I do have other interests besides making music, and maybe that's part of the problem too: I'm one stubborn SOB in a lot of ways, and I always naively think that I can do it all, even when that's logistically impossible. Even after working a full-time job at the newspaper, and a part-time job teaching guitar, and taking care of my son, and spending time with my wife, and helping out with things around the house -- even after doing all of that stuff, I still feel like I have time to do all the same things that I used to do in high school or college, when I had a hell of a lot more free time on my hands. That sort of willful self-delusion is a big part of my problem. I refuse to sacrifice any of my personal interests, even though part of me knows that doing so means that all of those interests end up being compromised to some degree, including the most important one of all (making music, of course).
There's a phrase that always comes to mind when I think about all this stuff. I'm not sure if I read it or heard it somewhere or if I just made it up, but it goes like this: Time is a finite resource. That's so simple and obvious, and it's basically just a different wording of the old cliche that life is short. But still, it's a phrase that pops into my head on a regular basis. When I talk/complain/whine about my lack of free time, some people tell me just to wait it out, that things will get easier once Miles is older and he consistently sleeps through the night. Yeah, I'm sure that's true, but I never want to feel like I'm just wasting time or putting things on hold. I mean, we never really know how much time any of us have left, right? I could be gone tomorrow for all I know, and even if I'm not, I still want to make the most of the little bit of time that I do have. Ultimately, I just don't want to look back years from now with regrets about wasted potential -- about songs that remain unfinished or unrecorded, about creative avenues left unexplored, about opportunities for artistic expression and growth that I missed out on. That's why I hate the feeling that I'm just sitting around waiting for a chance to get things done. I'm not a very prolific songwriter, as it's not necessarily something that always comes naturally to me, but I still have songs that are several years old that I haven't recorded yet -- actually, some of them are more than a decade old at this point. And it really bothers me that my OCD, perfectionist nature means that it takes me forever to finish everything. Part of that is because I'm often writing, playing, arranging, recording, producing and mixing every part of a song by myself, and that means the nature of the beast is that my songs take a long time to develop because of all the trial and error involved. Still, I wish I could be more efficient when it comes to making music, and when it comes to every other aspect of my life, for that matter... On my best days, I can use all of these fears and doubts and personal weaknesses as fuel to get things done. You know, the whole carpe diem mentality -- not procrastinating, striking while the iron is hot, lighting a fire under your ass to achieve your full potential. The spirit of creative restlessness often means that you never attain any kind of fulfillment with your artistic endeavors, but the upside to this mentality is that you're always pushing yourself to improve, always searching for more, always reaching higher. Managing my time continues to be an enormous struggle for me, and it probably always will be. But on those good days when I'm able to strike some sort of spark of musical inspiration, it fills me with hope that all those creative thoughts and feelings and ideas swirling inside me are within my grasp. Suddenly, this elusive concept of achieving my creative potential seems possible. And that makes the whole never-ending struggle, the constant race against the clock, feel like it's all worth it -- at least for that brief moment. And then I catch my breath and try to find one of those moments again.