Marcing to my own beat

I have been incredibly busy over the past two weeks. I'm exhausted but I've wanted to write in this blog for a while and now I'm making myself do it.

I've mainly been busy with two things: playing the drums, and revising my novel. Now that Disillusionment is in the mail, it's time to get the novel ready for submission too. I've reviewed four chapters, and rewritten the latter two so far. I'm pretty happy with how it's going. What I'm not happy about is I haven't had time to work on Elsie Worthing since I started this... I really want to finish the next chapter, plus I owe it to my fans who have been enthusiastically supporting every new chapter.

Now, the drums...

I've been playing almost non-stop. I started taking lessons last week. Each morning I play the exercises I have been assigned for at least half an hour. Then I play whatever music I feel like working on. I've learned two Jewel songs and have almost learned one of the Firefly songs. (I wish I could incorporate video into my blog so I could share the practices I videotaped this morning.)

Ruben asked me when I first got my drums if I would like to learn the Firefly songs that Dave was playing. He would like me to work with them eventually. I'm in two minds about this. I'm very honoured and want to do this eventually. But I don't have nearly enough skill yet, I don't think... it's taken me two weeks to learn this one song and I haven't learned the cymbal parts yet. Ruben commented tonight that he hoped I was learning fast... I hope I'm not too slow for him! I'm pleased with my progress, although I miss Dave every time I play the songs he was supposed to be playing. Tonight I'm playing the drum track as I surf the Internet. I'm hoping to get it into my subconscious so I can at last put the cymbals and bass/snare beats together tomorrow.

In the meantime, I had an argument with my therapist last Monday night over this whole issue of the drums. According to her, I'm not honouring Dave's memory by playing with Ruben and Delyana because she thinks he wanted to play and I don't really. "You don't honour Dave's mmemory by taking on his goals instead of your own," she said. "Your highest priority is to become a teacher."

I got really mad at her. I felt and feel that the whole time Dave and I were living together, we were attacked from all sides... everyone, some who cared and some who clearly didn't, tried to convince me that we didn't really love each other, that Dave was just using me, that I was doing wahtever he wanted and not "being myself". I had enough of that then. Now that he's gone, I don't need to hear it.

And I think about the choices I've made in the past few weeks and I wonder... I'm playing at least three hours a day and writing for another two. Schoolwork and job hunting sometimes feel like impositions. There are times when I wonder if I really and truly want to teach, and then I think that if I don't teach then Dave died for no good reason, because I came out here ahead of him when it wasn't necessary.

I don't think that it's that I don't want to teach, really. I do. But the thing is that I'm frustrated with the lack of success in my job search thus far. Also, the idea that teaching is my "highest priority" strikes me as false. It feels like my ride cymbal when I hit it too hard, jarring notes and making so much noise I can't hear all the other things I'm doing right. I want to teach and I think I can make a difference in kids' lives. But honestly, if God told me right now that he would either bless my teaching career or bless my writing career, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment before choosing writing. Just like I never hesitated for a moment when it came to my choosing Dave as my partner. Now, as then, I know exactly what I want and I refuse to give it up for anybody's stupid ideas of who I should be.

I want to teach because I want to make a difference in children's lives. But I want to write for the same reason.

And I wonder, too, exactly what it is that drives me about the drums. My teacher was impressed today that I practice every day. "Half an hour a day?" he said. "I'm usually lucky if I can get my students to practice half an hour a week!" That seems so strange to me... my days are generally spent practicing songs in front of my digital camera, then playing back the video, finding all the places where I'm out of time, and going back and trying again. The batteries in my camera die about once every 24 hours because I'm using them so much.

It's true I have to discipline myself to do my exercises, but I also know that I have to do them in order to get better. My teacher doesn't know yet that I spend a lot of free time playing songs. He says that I have to start with these exercises, and eventually I'll be able to play actual music. I must have absorbed in my blood what Dave so often told me, about how when he was first starting out he practiced his lesson for half an hour a day and then was free to work on whatever music he wanted.

Anyway, I've never played anything obsessively like this. When I'm not playing, I'm either writing or listening to music so I can absorb the drum tracks. Tonight on the way home from my lesson, I was practicing the new stroke I was learning on the steering wheel at red lights. It's almost midnight now, and that means it's way too late to play, but sitting at the computer writing this is the only thing that keeps me from giving in to the urge to try Firedancing Butterflies one more time, just to see if I've absorbed enough from listening to the drum track yet.

I keep wondering if this is healthy. I don't think I would if it wasn't for what my therapist had said, and I know I'm not just imitating Dave, because I wouldn't feel this compulsion to play if that's all it was. But I wonder... am I really in love with the drums? Or am I trying to escape from the emptiness in this house where Dave was supposed to be by getting into the music?

It's at times like this that I miss Dave the most. He had a way of knowing what I felt and knowing what to say to make me shift into thinking clearly. Oh, I would get really irritated when he was too quick to tell me what to do instead of listening. But I miss our endless conversations now.

Well, I had hoped to uplaod at least one of my videos to Photobucket by now, but for some reason everytime it's about to upload, Internet Explorer suddenly fails to find the server and I have to start again. I have a dull ache behind my eyes, as if I am straining them too much. So I suppose that will have to wait for another day.

I have so much more to say but that too will wait...