Day 50 has come and gone. You know, as I typed that I had a thought… I sure hope I didn’t forget to update the title of the posts one time, thus throwing off the count of the days. I think yesterday was day 50 but I could be wrong via typo or something.
Yesterday was pretty good. I put rhythm guitars on three songs. They were the only guitar parts I had ready to go. After that it was all about lyrics and melodies. I banged out four songs worth. I tried starting a fifth but my brain sort of shut off at that point and I couldn’t come up with any more.
I’m hoping day 51 (today) will have some vocal tracking and maybe some lead guitars as well. We’ll see. There’s a lot going on today.
Last week we took Robin Sparkles the cat to the vet. We put her in the cat carrier and felt just awful about it. It is the closest I will ever come to feeling like a nazi.
Today we did the same thing with Lily. Like… if I feel this awful doing this to a cat, how could I ever even imagine doing it to a human?
Lily spent the whole day at the vet. I tried to cheer myself up with other things.
Yesterday my step daughter spent most of the day packing. Tomorrow we’re going to help her load up the u-haul pod thingie that is in our driveway right now. That’s the plan for Sunday. Fortunately there won’t be any cats in cages to worry about.
What did I do on day 49? It was just yesterday but I totally forget. I think I added a new song idea. Just a couple of bass riffs in 3/4 time with a super fast tempo. That is idea/song number 45. Oh yeah, I mixed a song. This one. It might have been a decent song if not for the atrocious singing. Oh well.
I think that’s all for day 49. Here’s hoping for something more substantial on day 50… but don’t hold your breath.
Today was a weird day. Nothing bad happened. Nothing went wrong. Everything was fine. Despite all of that though, it was super crazy stressful. Like, woah! The stress! I did score some Letters to Cleo tickets for a show in November though so that’s cool.
Day 47 had no progress. Day 48 was better. Not a lot better, but better.
Before work, while sitting in the parking lot outside of the office, I noodled out a few bass riffs and filed it as idea number 44. After work I put together the song structure for ideas 43 and 44 and then added a bass track to song 42 (which had guitars and drums but no bass).
That’s all. Nothing Earth shattering but a whole bunch better than nothing. The current state is 35 songs done, three ready to mix, four have a full rhythm section including guitars and are ready for lyrics and a melody, and two are just MIDI bass and MIDI drums and are ready for rhythm guitars.
I didn’t have time for music before work and after I got home from work I just wanted to hang out in the living room with my wife. I didn’t have time or energy for anything else.
Day 48 (today) will likely be better, but probably not much better.
I am conflicted and I always get into this state when the kids are involved.
When my step daughter moved away to college in 2019 I was conflicted. On the one hand, I wanted her to go away to school and have a fantastic experience and learn a ton and make new friends and start her life and have everything be amazing. On the other hand I wanted her to stay home with us forever.
Two years later when my step son went away to college it was the same thing. I wanted him to go to school and have the time of his life and learn incredible things and have adventures and excitement and make memories that would last a lifetime while also not wanting him to leave us, ever.
In May of 2025 my step daughter moved home. She graduated and worked a two year contract at the University. When the contract ended she came home to live with us while she figured out her next move. The next move was grad school, but she had to work out the details. It took a little more than a year, but next month she is going to start school in California.
I am so excited for her I could burst… again… just like 2019. Just like my step son in 2021. I fear I might spontaneously combust out of excitement for her future. She’s going to finish grad school with a PHD and then every time I see her I will ask her, “what’s up, doc?” and it will be epic and no one will ever get tired of that stupid Bugs Bunny joke and we will always laugh and it will be perfect.
Also, I don’t want her to move. I mean, I thought moving from Massachusetts to Vermont was bad… California? No way!
She’ll still be here for a few more weeks, but the next milestone in the moving process happened today…
It’s time to start packing. I’m excited and sad at the same time, but what else is new?
I suspect that progress is going to be much slower over the next couple of weeks. I’m going to be working in the office a lot and these days my most musical times of day have been directly before and after work. Those times will be spent driving for the next little while.
On day 46 I managed to get to the office early enough so that I could spend a few minutes noodling bass riffs in GarageBand on my iPhone while sitting in the car in the parking lot. I came up with one song’s worth of stuff. Let’s call it song number 43.
After work I managed to mix one song, bringing my total number of complete songs up to 35. The most interesting, and unusual, thing about this newly completed song is that I don’t hate it. I think I almost actually like it. That feels so weird.
So I am working in the office the rest of this week and most of next week, and this coming weekend has a bunch of things on the agenda already as well. I don’t see a lot of time being available for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge, but I’ll do my best to sneak in progress where I can.
I worked in the office today. It was the first time in over three weeks. That’s crazy. I went on vacation for the last week of July, and then I had the tooth pain nightmare complete with antibiotics that made me feel sick all the time, and then I had the two teeth extracted and couldn’t really brush my teeth for nearly a week along with another round of antibiotics that made me feel sick all the time.
I just didn’t feel up to working around other people. I felt well enough to work, but not well enough to feel like I could be out in public.
My company wants us in the office 40% of the time but the technical end of it is actually 40% of the month. So this month I’m doing all of it at the end of the month. I generally try to do it by the week but this time I’m going by the book and doing it for the month. What does that mean? That means I’m in the office four days this week. That’s what I used to do pre-pandemic. It used to be normal. Now? Now it’s suck.
Inside the Red Head's Head 