Thursday, October 2, 2014

Projects and Aspirations.

These last few years I have wanted to take on a large literary project, nanowrimo every november, and also learn the violin/cello.   Because of different constraints on my time I had not been able to focus as intently on these projects and desires as I had hoped to. I feel like a large portion of my guilt about not being able to concentrate on these projects stemmed from the feeling of being unable to adequately schedule my time to incorporate these in my life as much as I had hoped to.  When you live as an individual who associates primarily with the verb "to think", one would suppose that they would put all their effort into intellectual pursuits--unfortunately adult life doesn't always allow for focus on the things that we enjoy the most.

Recently I have thrown a lot of the things in my life that I am not completely dedicated to out of my schedule, and instead the few hours I have to myself in the morning I have delegated to my autodidact studies.  I am striving to write for 1 hour a day, to read for at least 1 hour a day where in silence I can completely focus on the text on hand, I also try to listen to one of The Great Courses lectures.  I am also going to try to incorporate cello practice into my daily schedule as soon as I start taking lessons.  

I recently went to the local music store and aquired a cello rental, I had to give up the violin because the awkward angle managed to irritate my prior wrist injuries and always made my wrist hurt long after practice and lessons.  Hopefully the cello will not bother me as much as the violin had.  I figure I will not be able to start cello lessons for at least 2 weeks.  I am hoping the instructor will allow me two lessons a week. I really want to focus as intently as I can on studying the cello in addition to focusing on the autodidact studies. 

Right now I am feeling  bit overwhelmed because in order to improve my writing I am startin back over the basics.  Joshua Fields Millburn's How to Write Better course has it's students start by reading  various grammar books.   Starting from the beginner stage has deafinitely left me feeling a bit overwhelmed because grammar has never been my strong suit.  With a tendency to write like I talk and writing in extensive run on sentences I know that I have to really focus on improving my basic skills.  Truthfully I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole undertaking, but I suppose that inorder to really write the way that I wish to, I must concentrate on exploring the great writers from my literary undertaking and focus on how to truly improve my writing skills.