words of advice for myself

So I have been collecting some little bits of advice here and there and saving them on my phone lately. Most of these tid-bits are things that I have realized myself through reflection or self-revelation and felt compelled to write these thoughts down, or have heard or read somewhere and wanted to save. I figured I would put them here, especially since it has been ages since I posted anything. So here they are, exactly as they appear on my phone.

* Look at the Challenges and trials of your life as opportunities, not as risks or reasons to get discouraged

* Don't be afraid of what you are feeling. Don't run from it. You don't need to dwell on it, but just observe it and learn from it.

* Look at your emotions and your thoughts with a sense of curiosity.

* Stay present and let yourself feel what you are feeling without judgment.

* Stay in the present. Don't worry about the future, don't dwell in the past.

* You can decide to not let things bother you.

* Try to enjoy yourself. Life is about the experience

* Suffering is teaching me, it is a learning experience.

* Don't examine your feelings! Think about things that have nothing to do with how you feel (<-I said this as just a method to get out of my head when I am feeling overwhelmed)

* Don't be afraid to be who you are (<- Devin Townsend)

* No matter how bad you are feeling, it will go away.

* Your worrying is the cause of your pressure.

* Think about all the things you are blessed with, you have so much to be thankful for and its really easy to lose sight of that.

* Appreciate what you have, not what you want. (<-Someone's post on facebook)

* The grass always seems greener on the other side.

* Having expectations for how you want things to be doesn't allow them to be the way that they are.

* There is nothing to worry about. You will be ok. (<- Something I tell myself when feeling overwhelmed, to calm myself down)

* Stop trying to examine how your feeling and just let yourself feel.

* You are in it, not of it.

* The only way to it is through it.

* Be in the moment.

So ya, lots of common themes there, being in the moment and staying present probably being the biggest one. Its an important thing to remember. Acceptance is so important when dealing with difficult things, it is easy to get overwhelmed and sometimes it is best to just observe things with a sense of curiosity, and just label your thoughts as thoughts rather than criticizing yourself for having those thoughts

Dreams

Had one of those dreams last night, that seemed to kind of sum up where I feel my life is at and where it is going in a way. Unfortunately, it was a pretty depressing dream. I don't remember a whole lot of it, but the parts that I remember are the parts that really stick out. It basically took place at a crowded outdoor park. Im there in the middle of the crowd, and Im kinda confused, trying to figure out what is going on. I see my friend in the distance. He was a really good friend, someone I felt I always could count on to be there, and that he would always be my best friend. I shouted his name to get his attention. He looked right at me, and then without really acknowledging me he just looked away and kept walking off. It seemed like there might have been someone there with him, a female figure holding his hand. He just kept walking, and I got a feeling in my stomach that told me that was probably the last time I would ever see him. The next part of the dream that sticks out happens when I somehow wander into a very busy street right next to the park. My car is parked there, and one of my co-workers is there fixing it, or something. He gets up, and says to me something like "there, you should be able to figure out the rest yourself". He walks off, and I take a look at my car. There are tons of screws and nails all over the ground, and I have no clue what parts of the car they go to. Meanwhile there are other cars on the street, some zooming past me, others honking they're horns, while others are behind me trying to somehow get around. I want to try to fix my car, but I have no idea where to start.

So yea, those were the two parts of my dreams that I remember fairly clearly. I definitely don't feel like it takes a skilled psychiatrist to figure out the meaning behind my dreams, especially knowing what is going on in my life. I knew right away what the dreams symbolized, and it was just another unpleasant reminder of where I am at right now. Hopefully tonight brings me a more hopeful rest.

nothing in particular

Its been a little while since I wrote anything here, and since I was originally going to try and do at least one of these a month...(yikes) I figured I should just write whatever. I spent all day today in my recording studio, I finally figured out how to get superior drummer 2.0 in working order (somewhat) to the point at least where I can drag the midi files into pro tools and edit them. I still need to figure out how to do a tempo change in Pro Tools without screwing up my whole session (s0mething I've been meaning to learn for a couple years now) and how to split each channel of superior drummer to its own seperate track in pro tools, but that is something that can wait until I am meticulously mixing a song (I hardly ever get to that point anyway). But I am stoked that I am finally able to add drums to my songs, and it is super easy. Now all I need is to find a vocalist, thats not something I could ever do on my own, unless someday they make a software program that does what East West Symphonic Choirs does, only for solo voice. Regardless, all this software is really only good for songwriting, it could never really compare to a real drummer and a real vocalist. Not to mention real choirs and orchestras. Maybe someday.

I finished reading the Elric Saga while on a camping trip for 4th of July. Man, that was a freaking awesome ending. The last spoken line in the book "Farewell friend, for I was a thousand times more evil than thou" was just genius. Definitely a story I will have to come back to years from now. Right now I am almost halfway through Robert Jordan's Eye of the World. Not sure how I feel about this one yet, for all the hype this book has as far as being one of the major fantasy stories of our time, Im not sure if I really think its all that amazing. Sure, its well written, but to me it doesn't seem to be terribly original. I recognize lots of themes and elements from other fantasy stories, especially LOTR. But I dunno, there have definitely been times when I didn't want to put it down, which probably means I am enjoying it. We'll see, sometimes books are like movies, in that I am not really able to form an opinion about it until I am finished reading it.

Reading Tips from Hansi

I have been on a huge book buying spree lately, buying books way faster than I can read them and yet I am still always on the lookout for a good book. Pretty much all the books I have been getting lately have been either in the mythology or the fantasy style genres, with some exceptions (one example being a huge collection of Lovecraft's stories I just got which I guess falls more under the dark fantasy/horror category). Some of my latest purchases have been Moorcock's Elric Saga, The Poetic Edda, Jordan's Wheel of Time, and Howard's The Coming of Conan. And yet there are still many books which I am still interested in and will probably get pretty soon here, such as Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and Tad Williams' (who is actually from my hometown San Jose, CA) Shadowmarch series.

Since there are so many books in the Scifi-Fantasy section of the bookstore, sometimes its hard to know what is good and what is crap. So I try to get tips from various sources to help me decide what books I would enjoy, and one of the sources that I have a good deal of trust in is Hansi Kürsch, from Blind Guardian. Hansi uses the books he reads as lyrical inspiration for just about all his songs, and since I like his songs so much I figured I might probably like the books that inspired those songs. Some of his sources are more obvious ones that I have already read such as Lord of the Rings and other works by Tolkien, and others are ones I have never heard of. So for the purposes of this blog and for my reading enjoyment, I have used wikipedia to figure out all (or most all) of the literature that Hansi has used thus far as subject matter for his music, and here is the list:

The Bible

Tolkien's work - LOTR, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion

Stephen King - It, Dark Tower Series, The Talisman, The Tommyknockers

Michael Moorcock - Eternal Champion Series

Norse Mythology

Welsh Folklore

Frank Herbert - Dune

Peter Straub - Floating Dragon

Poul Anderson - The Mermaid's Children

The German Legend of Faust

L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz

J.M. Barrie - Peter Pan

Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland

T.H. White - The Once and Future King

C.S. Lewis - Chronicles of Narnia

Robert Howard - Corum Novels

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - The Death Gate Cycle, Dragonlance

Homer- The Iliad, The Odyssey

Old German Folklore

Gottfried von Strassburg - Tristan and Isolde

Virgil - Aeneid

Walter Moer - A Wild Ride Through the Night

Tad Williams - Otherland

Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time

Boring Ice Cream

So I am sitting here right now with some cookie dough ice cream, and I realized that it is just regular vanilla ice cream with cookie dough pieces haphazardly thrown in. What was I thinking buying this? This has got to be some of the most boring food I've ever ate. And I still have well over a pint of it to get rid of? What a shame. Next time Im only going for bubble gum ice cream. At least they do that right, they don't just chuck a bunch of bubble gum into vanilla ice cream and call it a day. The ice cream itself should have some flavor too, right?

Tobias Never Fails to Disappoint

Well, the new Avantasia is out and unsurprisingly it is God awful. Maybe not God awful per-say, there are ok moments but on the whole it is a huge disappointment. It is not as bad as the latest Edguy release, but that is like saying its not as bad as a hernia. Ok, maybe I am being way too harsh, but I cannot deny that I would like nothing more than for Tobias to create music that has the same feel and the same atmosphere as the first 2 Avantasia albums, or any of the Edguy albums before Rocket Ride. Maybe I am so stubborn in my views of what I feel Edguy and Avantasia should be that I am failing to recognize them for what they are. But what are they? I honestly don't want to find out, because that would involve a serious alteration of what the music of Edguy and Avantasia means to me personally, and that is not something I want to change. But thats just the thing, if it was stylistically even in the same arena then I wouldn't have to change my views. Thats really what annoys me the most, if it sounds nothing like Avantasia then why call it Avantasia? I dunno. Needless to say, I have decided to separate the old Avantasia from the new Avantasia in my iTunes by labeling the old Avantasia simply "Avantasia", and labeling the new Avantasia "Tobias Sammet's Avantasia". That way they are not even close to each other in my iTunes library. This may seem a little obsessive, but hey, music is my obsession.

Well anyway, new Blind Guardian comes out soon and they have yet to disappoint, so Im looking forward to that.

Sketchy People

Don't ever get involved with sketchy people. I made the mistake of living with a sketchy person for well over a year, and it has cost me many things: namely money. What drives a person to become an alcoholic I'm still not really sure. Is it genetics? Poor life decisions? Unfortunate circumstances? Or a combination of all the above? The effect it has on the individual is undeniable, but look at the widespread impact it has on others. Constant disturbances, "borrowing" of money, the never-ending asking of favors, this was my reality. Not to mention hundreds of dollars worth of food and alcohol disappearing, as well as disrespect for myself and my personal belongings. Having to cope with another persons problems as well as dealing with problems of my own was draining to say the least, and although I am no longer in that situation I am still dealing with the stress. When someone owes you hundreds of dollars and just keeps blowing you off every time you ask them about it, it really wears at your patience. What do you do? Do you just write off all that money which is rightfully yours, or move on with your life? Here's what you do: don't ever get involved with sketchy people.