Well. Here we are. January 31. Song-A-Day has officially started for me, and I have a feeling this is going to be a doozy1Useless trivia: the phrase “it’s a doozy” originated around a magnificent early automobile, the Duesenberg. Here’s a photo. of a month. Once again, I have no ideas going into it, so I have no idea what’s going to happen. That’s not really anything new, though, and not something that bothers me much anymore. In fact, there’s reason #1 for doing Song-A-Day in the first place. I’m no longer afraid of the blank page. It still frustrates me on occasion, but it doesn’t scare me.
No, the real challenge this year is going to be time management. When I started this crazy journey, I was still working a corporate job. I’d rush home from work and work in the evenings. The only thing that kept me from getting all 29 songs done that year was a business trip.
This year, however, I have a new problem. Her name is Olive.
Olive will be 9 months old on February 6. Olive is, quite literally, a rare breed: a Berger Picard.2ber-ZHAY PIH-card. That’s right, they’re named for the same region for which a certain sexy bald captain is named. Picards are a farm and herding breed that dates back to around 900 AD when they were introduced to France, possibly by the Celts. They almost went extinct during World Wars I and II, and there are currently only around 5,000 or so. Happily they’re making a comeback.
I’ll probably talk more about Olive during the month,3I did. See Me and Hank but suffice to say that a 9 month old of any species demands a lot of attention and time. And a 9 month old puppy can’t be trusted, so Mary and I are basically on guard duty around the clock. To make this worse, Olive is a jealous master and doesn’t like it when I do things like play in the studio, watch TV, or write blog posts.
We’re working on addressing the attention-seeking behavioral stuff, but it’s a slow process, in large part because this breed is still pretty “rustic” and hasn’t developed with quite the same sense of obedience you’d find in something like a German Shepherd. For that matter, she hasn’t got the same sense of obedience you’d get from a 14 year old human girl. As a result, training her (Olive, not the 14 year old girl) requires a very different approach than I’ve ever had to use, so I’m having to learn a lot of new skills myself, not the least of which is patience.
Double the Procrastination, Double the Fun
Last year I put off the first couple of blog entries, and that snowballed into me not writing anything. I didn’t even post the tracks to the web site. Now, I’m not of the illusion that this is a widely read blog, but I’ve found it helpful to read back over what I was thinking at the time of writing. I’ve learned that my initial impression of something I’ve written is rarely my lasting one. There’s no way I can capture everything I was thinking, but looking over the project files will at least show me what I did, if not trigger a memory of why I did it. So this year, I’ll be writing an entry not only for that day in 2025, but for that day in 2024 as well. That should help keep both posts at a reasonable length.
Once again, I will be writing a day ahead. Which means… oh, crap! I guess I’d better get started!
Notes
- 1Useless trivia: the phrase “it’s a doozy” originated around a magnificent early automobile, the Duesenberg. Here’s a photo.
- 2ber-ZHAY PIH-card. That’s right, they’re named for the same region for which a certain sexy bald captain is named.
- 3I did. See Me and Hank