Seems like it's about time for a little update. I'll try to be brief.
1. I've settled into a nice weekday routine. I usually get up around 8 and then for an hour or two I listen to music and do some reading or some other kind of pursuit, about which I'll write more below. Every morning, no matter, what, I spend at least 2 hours, and sometimes as much as 4, working on music in Ableton Live 11. After that, lunch with Jessica and some chores, and then from 1-7 on weekdays, I teach. These aren't solid blocks every day, but I am pretty busy, and finally making *almost* enough money again. When not teaching or doing administrative things related to my teaching, or my business affairs in general, I'll pick up a guitar and practice something for a little bit. Then dinner and cocktails, usually with some TV, and after that a little reading and gaming. (Stardew Valley! Breath of the Wild! Whatever looks good on the Nintendo eShop!) Then bed, generally. I'm getting pretty good sleep lately. Can't complain.
2. I'm working so much on music because I set myself a goal of writing and releasing an EP this quarter. I have 3 more or less complete tracks and a 4th idea that I'm still developing into a track. My deadline to submit everything for a 4/2 release is 3/12, with about a week's worth of margin after that deadline. It feels good to finally be releasing music again.
3. The "other kind of pursuit" that I alluded to above is, essentially, learning to code. I kept having technical annoyances that I knew I could solve if only I were more skilled at using the command line and scripting in general. And for months and months I was spending half an hour to an hour a day solving sudoku puzzles, to relax. It occurred to me one day that learning to code would fill the exact same role that doing sudoku was doing for me, plus then I'd have a useful skill for all the time spent. This theory has panned out: I know just about as much as I need to know about the command line environment to solve these recurrent annoyances, and I now have a much better technical basis for when I set up a permanent server here, later this year, *and* it has been a very compelling and fun project too. Now I'm using the same time to learn Python, via CodeAcademy for now. I chose Python specifically because it has applications for Ableton Live -- or rather, hacking potential -- that would be fun to exploit, if I get that far. All I can do so far is set variables and do simple arithmetic with them, but I'm having fun with it.
4. For next quarter I have one big creative goal. Instead of working on music for release, for three months I want to focus on practicing sound design. I am skilled enough to modify presets I find, but not quite skilled enough to make my own sound. My plan is to purchase a particular semi-modular hardware synth sometime this month, the Arturia Minibrute 2S, and use that as my learning tool. The hardware imposes limits to start with, which I think I need. But it also comes with a patch bay, which means that once I have mastered the default setup, I can begin fucking with it. The synth works on its own, but it's also extensible into Eurorack, which I am attracted to. And the sequencer on that thing is simply insane. I could go on for hours about it. I've been thinking seriously about doing this for almost exactly one year now, and the desire has never subsided. So I think it's time.
5. One rather sad note: we had to put down one of our cats again. They are all *extremely* old for cats, and this one was very clearly dying when we took him in (as in, just days left) so it didn't wreck me completely for weeks like the previous one did. But it still was deeply sad, and reminded me that my favorite cat, who is sitting beside me as I type right now, is for sure in his last year of life and could take a turn for the worse any day. So I'm enjoying the time we have left, and am being extra-nice to him, and am steeling myself for the inevitable.
I think that's about it, actually. I could write more about the negative aspects of my life right now, which sometimes really dominates my entire consciousness. But today I'm trying to keep it positive. I've got some tracks to finish.