Over the last few days, my sugars have been a wee bit all over the place. This is because I've been stressing over deadlines, and being sloppy with eating/dosing/carbcounting/etc... I told myself that today, I'd take the time to do diabetes well!

It seems like I can't remind myself to do this often enough - the main thing is dosing in advance of eating, and remembering to take my metformin near the end, if not directly after eating. Tonight, I had a 75 g carb dinner - my pre-meal BG was 5.6 and my 2 hour post-prandial was 6.1 mmol (suck it, Dr. Bernstein!).

I can, should, and will do this more often.

It feels good.

1 down, 7 to go!

In terms of my big deadlines for this term, I finished one last week. I took the weekend off and relaxed, but now I'm right back at it!

The piano piece came together quite nicely. I met with the pianist and we had a great reading/question session. I am very much looking forward to working with him on the piece, and ultimately having him perform it.

My next deadline is the soundscore/video for the graphic novel on which I've been collaborating this year. I bid my money adieu and bought ProTools with an Mbox Mini 3 because, let's face it, I don't have time to learn a new program to do a soundscore within a week!

After that, I have the "Michael Park & Friends" concert; I need to keep reminding myself that, while I can lock myself away to finish a composition, piano pieces cannot be learned that way, so a nice steady approach to that rep will be best.

I've been getting much more organized lately. In addition to my post-it note big deadlines that are attached to my calendar, I seem to be constantly updating little daily or weekly to-do lists. Between the program co-ordination I'm doing for this summer, my compositions, my thesis preparation and libretto gathering, doctors appointments and medical paperwork that's popped up, there's just too much to keep in my untrustworthy memory... While this is definitely the busiest time of my life, I think it's also turning out to be my most productive, as well!

Ok, back to work for tonight, and then off to bed!

Starting to feel run down

It's Wednesday night/Thursday morning and I'm trying to put the finishing touches on my piano piece. I need to make sure the piece is structurally complete tonight because I imagine I'll spend all of tomorrow just editing and making sure the piece looks good on the page,and writing program notes etc. I hand the piece over to my pianist on Friday, but I have zero time to work on it at all on Friday.

Friday is out for productivity because I have class, then I teach and then I meet with the pianist shortly after that. Oh ya, I have readings to do for Friday....

All this adds up to = too much work! ergh...

Basically, I'm starting to feel tired. I've been on a horrible sleep schedule for over a month now. I don't go to bed before 4am, and that's fine when I have nothing to wake up for, but lately, I've had classes and meetings. I've been running a sleep deficit and I'm starting to feel it.

Anyway, just one or two more days, ish. I'm very much looking forward to Saturday when I have nothing to do until 7pm, and that's a friend's birthday dinner - fun times!

In other news, the meet&greet for the Art Song Lab went swimmingly tonight - I wish I had time to go into detail, but this year's event is quickly gathering momentum - lots of excitement and positivity around the whole thing!

Almost finished a piece...

Originally the deadline was yesterday, but my pianist extended my deadline by a few days, so I'm a little wee bit more relaxed in my approach to finishing up this piece:

Stories Men Tell

The middle movement is a love story, and it's quite likely the most beautiful thing I've ever written. I don't think I went too overboard, but there's a chance it's a little cheesy, but I think I'm fine with that! Two of the movements are finished, giving me 2 days to finish up the last movement and then tidy everything and assemble some stellar performance notes and do some sort of title page. I'm not as excited about the final movement yet... it should be a lot of fun, but I haven't had that moment of inspiration/breakthrough like I've had with the other two.

Anyway, there will be a performance in April, if not March, so I'll make sure to put the recording up when that comes to fruition!

Look what I made!

Slipper Socks!!

I had started the first sock (gold) more than a month ago. When I finished it, I got distracted by mittens, and composing and Christmas....

Over the last few days, I made and finished the second one (blue), with a most unsuccessful binding off -- it was very tight and I couldn't fit my foot in it, so I had to try two more times before it worked.

I knit them with normal yarn and bigger needles than one should for socks because I just wanted to get the sense of how to do it before I use tiny needles and tiny yarn. Now, I feel prepared.

They are very warm and comfy!

Happy New Year!

I've never been big on new year's resolutions, but the coming months have thrown one at me:

In 5 months, I have about 7 major deadlines - if I'm going to have a hope of finishing things on time, I have to write more and faster!

Contrary to the old Adage, I'm focusing on quantity, not quality! This isn't to say that I'm not concerned about the quality of my work - I'm sure I can still do good work without dwelling on it for months longer than I should. I'm far too early in my career as a composer to be working so slowly. I need to embrace modesty and remind myself that I haven't reached greatness yet - yet all great artists create their share of shit before they reach their stride. If I expect to one day write great stuff, I need to allow myself to write bad stuff first, and hey, maybe good stuff will come out anyway!