Today is Day 9 on Premarin estrogen supplement, 2.5mg daily.
I actually stopped the procrastination and avoidance yesterday and got down to work on programming my live set yesterday, and I think this gig is going to be a good one (providing shit doesn't go all wrong like it did at my gig last year in Oakland at the IAMINDUST festival, and providing I don't lose my composure and get all discombobulated like happened at my last gig this past May). I still have some more programming and rehearsal to do but it feels like it is falling together properly. My mood has lightened considerably, having actually finally done something and demonstrated some competence. My instrumental skills are still quite rusty but given the simplicity of my bass clarinet and alto flute parts I will be able to pull it off, no problem. I might add some saxophone in there but I am going to have to try that out today to see if it is really called for or not. There will be mainly two threats or challenges I am going to have to face when it comes to the real gig. The first one is external: avoiding feedback issues with the two live microphones. Given a proper sound check and a competent sound man running the live board, that should be manageable. The other thing that could be a problem stems from internal difficulties: I could get very nervous in front of a large audience and lose my composure and make mistakes. Typically what happens is I make one mistake, stress out about it, the stress disrupts my focus, I make more mistakes, and it snowballs into a train wreck of missed cues and wrong moves. I will have to try to get a good night's sleep the night before the gig, and go easy on the caffeine (a little is good, a little more can be bad). Then there is also the video, which is all programmed on a DVD Brian made for me. It's just a matter of getting the playback started at the same time as my audio backing track begins, and hoping there are no video playback glitches to throw things out of sync.
So I am feeling a lot better today than I was yesterday at this time. Doing something productive like making music is a great mood lifter, but always the really hard part is getting started, and then getting some satisfying or encouraging results. Sometimes the technical aspects of the creative process can lead to a great deal of frustration and exasperation (I'm not good with electronic technology and computer software navigation and that stuff, and I'm not much of an instrumentalist either). If anyone reading this went and listened to my recorded music, you would disagree. But those recordings were created with a lot of takes and edits and processing and general painstaking production tricks (that I obviously did learn how to utilize, but not without great difficulty).
One other thing I haven't mentioned here, is that I have been avoiding masturbation these past nine days since I started the Premarin. I am wanting to see how the estrogen is affecting my libido and sexual energy. I have no qualms about masturbation, but too often or too much can be depleting in terms of energy. Up till recently, I'd been masturbating every other day on average (sometimes two or more times a day, sometimes only twice in a week). Right now, I feel a level and degree of sexual tension and proximity to arousal that is actually quite nice feeling and gives me more of a sense of being in my body. If I had the opportunity to have sex with a partner, I could really get into that. But since I only have myself to play with, I'm going to leave it alone a while longer. I once thought that by refraining from masturbating, one could build up a sexual drive that could then be channeled (could, but most likely would not, in my case) into seeking and finding a partner. My experience never proved that to be true. But I wish I had someone to play with right now. Just have to sublimate that drive into working on the music, for now...
I actually stopped the procrastination and avoidance yesterday and got down to work on programming my live set yesterday, and I think this gig is going to be a good one (providing shit doesn't go all wrong like it did at my gig last year in Oakland at the IAMINDUST festival, and providing I don't lose my composure and get all discombobulated like happened at my last gig this past May). I still have some more programming and rehearsal to do but it feels like it is falling together properly. My mood has lightened considerably, having actually finally done something and demonstrated some competence. My instrumental skills are still quite rusty but given the simplicity of my bass clarinet and alto flute parts I will be able to pull it off, no problem. I might add some saxophone in there but I am going to have to try that out today to see if it is really called for or not. There will be mainly two threats or challenges I am going to have to face when it comes to the real gig. The first one is external: avoiding feedback issues with the two live microphones. Given a proper sound check and a competent sound man running the live board, that should be manageable. The other thing that could be a problem stems from internal difficulties: I could get very nervous in front of a large audience and lose my composure and make mistakes. Typically what happens is I make one mistake, stress out about it, the stress disrupts my focus, I make more mistakes, and it snowballs into a train wreck of missed cues and wrong moves. I will have to try to get a good night's sleep the night before the gig, and go easy on the caffeine (a little is good, a little more can be bad). Then there is also the video, which is all programmed on a DVD Brian made for me. It's just a matter of getting the playback started at the same time as my audio backing track begins, and hoping there are no video playback glitches to throw things out of sync.
So I am feeling a lot better today than I was yesterday at this time. Doing something productive like making music is a great mood lifter, but always the really hard part is getting started, and then getting some satisfying or encouraging results. Sometimes the technical aspects of the creative process can lead to a great deal of frustration and exasperation (I'm not good with electronic technology and computer software navigation and that stuff, and I'm not much of an instrumentalist either). If anyone reading this went and listened to my recorded music, you would disagree. But those recordings were created with a lot of takes and edits and processing and general painstaking production tricks (that I obviously did learn how to utilize, but not without great difficulty).
One other thing I haven't mentioned here, is that I have been avoiding masturbation these past nine days since I started the Premarin. I am wanting to see how the estrogen is affecting my libido and sexual energy. I have no qualms about masturbation, but too often or too much can be depleting in terms of energy. Up till recently, I'd been masturbating every other day on average (sometimes two or more times a day, sometimes only twice in a week). Right now, I feel a level and degree of sexual tension and proximity to arousal that is actually quite nice feeling and gives me more of a sense of being in my body. If I had the opportunity to have sex with a partner, I could really get into that. But since I only have myself to play with, I'm going to leave it alone a while longer. I once thought that by refraining from masturbating, one could build up a sexual drive that could then be channeled (could, but most likely would not, in my case) into seeking and finding a partner. My experience never proved that to be true. But I wish I had someone to play with right now. Just have to sublimate that drive into working on the music, for now...