Stage Fright

I stumbled across this book and decided to look into it because I noticed that in my last band nerves sometimes affected by performance.  It seemed to take a few songs to get to a place where I felt comfortable and I rarely felt that I played as well on stage as I did at rehearsal or at home.

This really bugged me because I had begun playing live at a relatively young age and really didn’t seem to have any issues with nerves after my first gig. Why now? I think a large part of it was that I now had a more realistic understanding of my playing. When I was a teenager, I was pretty cocky.  I certainly was nowhere near as good as I thought I was, but I think that cockiness worked like armor to some extent. I found the idea that one has to be cocky to perform well to be less than useful.

Right now I’m about halfway through the book and there are some intriguing methods described. I’m looking forward to testing them out. I’ll post some results at a later date.

2010!

So 2009 is almost over. I’m strangely optimistic. For me, this decade started in a pretty rough way. I lost my job. My father passed away.The singular upside was that I had also married an awesome woman who unknowingly became my reason for rising above these hard times.

Ultimately, these struggles forced me to grow in ways that I never expected. As the decade zoomed by I returned to school, began playing music in the public eye again, and learned a lot about what I really want out of life.

So what’s the point of this entry? Well, I rarely have one, but since my imaginary reader has asked I guess I’m on the spot.

I think I am finally learning to be thankful for some of the bad things that happen in life, because without them I probably would not have grown. Cliche? Yeah probably, True? Yup! I look forward to the changes that are coming in 2010, even though I now they won’t all be sun-drenched. soul-in love-with-the-world-joy. I look forward to it because I know I will be moving forward.