Letter from Bruce Springsteen

Up early again. I woke up at 4 and got up to pee, then got back to sleep till 6, but that was it. So I'm up! First cup of coffee is finished and I have the urge to write out my thoughts, so that's what I'm gonna do.

It strikes me that some of my previous morning pages entries have ended up more like blog posts that brain dumps, and that's kinda not the point of morning pages as I understand them.

I watched Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You last night and it was fantastic. It helped me with a decision, which was whether to help a friend out or not. I decided that I would. Dónal asked if I would like to record with him for a support slot to go out on one of his friend's music channels. He wants me to bring my video gear and record and edit the whole thing as well as play with him. It's actually a LOT of work, and that's why I balked at first. My thought processes went like this:

1. Do I fuck want to play (my typical spectrumy response to pretty much any request for me to leave the house for anything at all).
2. I kinda would like to play, but fuck me, that's a lot of work for someone else's channel.
3. Actually, tearing down my gear out of my studio is far too tall an order.
4. Is this a room for growth in any way? Is it a fixed mindset vs a growth mindset thing (based on this book that I'm reading just now).
5. Is there any way I could do it without having to unplug my digital mixer?
6. What's in this for me?

So I walked the dogs and turned off the audiobook (Mindset) so I could think about it. By the time I got home, I was no closer to making a decision. It was dark and I was wet and cold. In fact, I was probably closer to saying no if I'm honest and I didn't like how that made me feel.

I decided I would put on the new Springsteen studio concert movie Letter to You for some down time, wondering whether that would influence my decision. And d'you know what? It really did. And the decision I made was that yes, of course I would like to record.

It was partly thinking about the signal chain that tech that prevented my getting back to sleep at 6.

Systems Thinking Book

Am I continuing with the Systems Thinking book because of my all or nothing approach to life? Is the challenge I'm finding in understanding it a mindset thing? It's very scientific and I've always said simply and emphatically that 'my brain doesn't do science'. That's a fixed mindset right there. Languages? Yep. Music? Uh-huh. Science and maths? Nope.

If I look back on that, it's almost certainly linked to my high school. Every single pupil in my O Grade chemistry class dropped it. We used to play cards. I got chucked of maths for bad behaviour and was permitted to take only arithmetic after that, which I failed.

Prestwick Academy was the worst.

And now I'm left with the fixed mindset that I don't do science or maths. To be fair, I do find them difficult and I really have no desire to get better at them. But when I come upon a book like Thinking in Systems: A Primer and I know it's a concept that I want to understand, I find my brain struggling to parse the diagrams and understand the jargon. I mean it's fairly jargon free, but you can't describe a thing without using the words that go with that thing really. As a linguist I can understand that.

So, do I continue? I'm half-way through and have understood some of it. That's better than understanding none of it, right?

I write this knowing full well that I will continue because that's my character. It's almost like I want to be able to check the box and say that I've read it, even if it means skimming some of it and not really taking it in. Is there any point in doing that? That's my question.

Playing Guitar

I played the Gretsch White Falcon a bit yesterday while watching the Springsteen movie. It was unplugged, so kind of silly, but it felt nice. I think that's the first time I've picked up the guitar in over a week. I've been thinking about that as I read the Mindset book. It talks about how talent is overrated and that perseverance is a super power. If playing guitar REALLY is my passion, how come I'm not playing all the time? Yes, that old chestnut again. I got good because I played ALL THE TIME. What happened? I mean I'm not going out to work now and am home pretty much all the time, so how come I don't play every day?

I don't know.

I tell myself that the environment isn't right. The house is so cluttered you wouldn't believe it. I don't have a comfortable place to read and the clutter really weighs me down. That's why I love sitting out on the porch so much, but I won't be doing that again until spring. And I like to have a relaxing space to play guitar and to read. But I do still read. I go and lie on my bed and try to block out the clutter and it kind of works. But I couldn't really play guitar in the bedroom as there's nowhere to sit. I tried using my daughter's bedroom as she's out at school on the mainland through the week, but her room is cluttered too and it's not comfortable sitting on her bed.

I can't really get rid of the clutter for reasons that I won't go into here, so now I find myself wishing we had a bigger house, instead of being grateful for the fact that we have a house and that ain't right.

Wait, that wasn't really about playing guitar, was it? Hmmm.