Update on Me, For Those Interested

For those tracking with me on my own journey here, I thought I’d devote a post to letting you know about a few things going on. I suppose this is also appropriate since we’re approaching the end of the year and I’ve been already taking a bit of mental inventory. 🙂

This year has really been a year of financial stabilizing, something we have genuinely needed. The freelance writing work has continued to increase to the point that at different times this year I’ve actually had to turn down work. The one thing I’m finding, though, is that it has made it more of a challenge to keep up with the local music blogging (which I basically do as a labor of love)–and that has the potential to affect my connection to the music community here, which is central to my sense of mission. But more on that in a moment.

Music-wise, the year has really taken off. I now play four Sunday mornings a month at the coffee shop where I hang out–two of them I run myself, with the help of a friend on guitar. This has effectively become church for me. My friend and I are now actively looking at involving other musicians in the event, making it a sort of fun, jam-session type of environment, and perhaps preceding it with a Bible study. This is probably the one place right now where I feel the strongest sense of mission, and I hope that some meaningful conversations will begin coming out of this experience if we can get it going.

This is also putting me in a transition place. I just mentioned that I’m having a harder time keeping up with the local music scene as a writer, while as an actual performer, more doors seem to be opening for me. At some point, I may have to choose to lay down the music writing in favor of a more direct connection with the music scene as an artist–which is ultimately what I wanted. I don’t think I’m there yet, but it’s an option I’m now considering. I need to be sensitive to when and if that moment arrives.

On a personal level musically, I’m continuing to develop in two ways, which are sort of tying together. I am actively involved now in an apprenticeship program at a local recording studio, where I’m learning about recording and mixing. My teacher/mentor and I are really hitting it off, and he’s agreed to use some of my personal projects to help teach me. I’m already seeing the effects of this instruction in my involvement doing the audio and the soundtrack for The Director’s short film, which we hope to have completed by the end of the year. I’m very glad to have this relationship with the recording studio and with my mentor, and I think it’s going to help me a lot down the road.

The other area of development can be found within the short film itself; it’s really got me thinking about the future. I enjoy songwriting and performing, and have no desire to give up either one; but my experiences scoring short films for The Director have helped me discover that I could actually do this for a living, if given the opportunity. And unlike the singer/songwriter thing, there’s no real expiration date on this type of career; I could score films well into old age. So while I continue to develop a rapport as a musician here in the area, I am keeping one eye toward the extended future. When this recording studio apprenticeship is over, I am seriously considering going back for my master’s degree in music composition.

So that’s what’s going on with me. If you’re the praying type and you want to pray for me, perhaps my greatest request at the moment is for wisdom and direction, to know how to make the most of the options that are in front of me. Thanks!