The response to the call for submissions has been great! It's not overwhelming, but it's certainly a good start.

My roommate and I went swimming tonight. Why do I ever stop swimming?!? It's one of the few physical activities that I'm good at.

With that said, I sucked tonight! Being around 2 years since I last hit the pool, I'm not surprised. I imagine we swam for about 45 minutes, ish, and I swam 1000m. I feel good, and excited to make this a regular occurrence, and I'm even planning on giving myself some direction:

Decades ago, I got my bronze medallion, so my goal is to get myself back into the swimming shape that I once was. I looked up the H2O proficiency requirements online and I'm gonna start with the Bronze Star level, then work my way up.

First goal is to swim at about a minute per lap (25m). I'll do 400m sets until I can do them reliably in 12 minutes. There's also a 100m requirement for under 3 minutes, using one lap each of: lifesaving kick, backstroke, breast stroke, and freestyle.

I'll use 2 sets of each of those as my swim workout: 100m + 400m, then a sugar break, then another 100m + 400m. That'll give me a kilometer, and by the time I can fit that into the half hour box, ish, then I'll be ready for more meters anyway!

The pool we went to tonight also has a workout swim which is about 2000m... I'm going to work towards that, because that would be fantastic to do once or twice a week.

Sugars were trending gently downwards throughout the swim, even with half a pack of lifesavers during, and a complete disconnect from the pump for an hour or so... I'm thinking I might have to have some slower acting carbs before swimming, and start a decreased bolus before starting the swim, an hour or so before....but I just hate starting exercise with higher sugars... oh well, it's experiment time!

Guest Posting and Libretto Collecting

First off, I had the great pleasure of guest posting on a fantastic diabetes blog called Six Until Me. (Click here for the link to my guest post) Thank you, Kerri, for your kindness and support!

This is all part of an online media blitz I'm creating to draw attention to THIS, my call for submissions for my upcoming opera project! Basically, I'm going to be writing an opera about diabetes and I need a story. I don't want to be so narcissistic as to use my own story, so I'm asking the diabetes blogosphere to send me story suggestions - either their own, or ones they've read. From there, I'll take those stories and weave them into an exciting opera libretto!

I also posted the call for submissions on forums on two fantastic diabetes networking sites: TuDiabetes and Reality Check, as well as facebook and here! Since the call is hosted on my website, I've been able to track how many people have been looking - and it appears that the blitz is working!

Traffic on my site is up by 1571.43% this week! I don't know how they calculate that, but I like the excitement it gives me. I've had over a hundred views to the call itself, and lots of people seem to be checking out the rest of my site while they're there!

Long story short, the word is getting out there, and I'm starting to get submissions. Hopefully this is great start to a really successful collection of stories!

In conclusion, there is a lot of excitement around this initiative; certainly from me, but also from the diabetes blogosphere!

Stay tuned for new developments...

Well, I'm a far cry away from those years when I was posting every day, but I figure my loyal readers will forgive me!

As I'm sure I've mentioned, this is probably the busiest I've been in my life; at least, it seems like it.

After not playing piano for a while, it's felt good to get back to playing and serious practice, as I prepare for Michael Park and Friends 2!

My compositional productivity had reached an all-time low recently, and after a worrisome lesson last week, I started to weight priorities and the sort. For the first time in my career as a composer, I actually worked like a composer - I put my writing first (I mean, other than when a deadline necessitates it). You know what, I've loved it! I'm refreshed and inspired.

My lesson today went very well. Not that I had much more concrete music (not to be confused with music concrète), but I had done lots of work on sketches and defining my materials.

My teacher's reactions, questions, and insights into my work weren't overt, but I could not have asked for a better, more validating compliment:

We started with a meandering chat about how things change over time, and he was reflective of his 35 years teaching at UBC. The actual compliment came much later, when he said, 'you know, I've never seen anything quite like this, and I've taught well over a hundred students'.

It wasn't inherently positive or negative, he was just intrigued by the originality of my process.

And isn't that what everyone wants? To know that you're special, that you stand out from the crowd, and that you aren't just another drone?

Well, that's what I wanted!

I don't set out to be different; I feel like I fit in with other composers, but time and time again, people tell me that my creativity is unique and original. And just because it makes me feel so nice, I just might believe them for a while!

Futures of the Past

So, you've heard me refer to my graphic novel project over the last few months, and now I can finally share it with you!

It's a collaborative project with poet, Ray Hsu and comic illustrator, Chloe Chan. We got really excited about the idea of each part influencing the others. As we were sketching, improvising, and coming up with material, we sent samples of our work back and forth - feeding off of the collective, creative energy, and inspiring each other!

Please visit the non-embedded youtube video for some more info about the project, my collaborators, and the publisher that will be doing a print version of the comic.