I was practising earlier today, last night I learned "Weapon" by Matthew Good on guitar and today I tried it with vocals.

I am most definitely inspired by Matt Good lately given the CD release of a concert of his just a few days ago. "Weapon" in particular has really gripped me...the lyrics to the intro really have gotten to me recently. That kind of chilling thing.

 "here by my side, an angel
here by my side, the devil
never turn your back on me, never turn your back on me again
here by my side, it's heaven"

I haven't sang with others for some time, I am reluctant to sing in from others for no reason other than I am embarassed. I know I'm good at it, given the accounts of a couple close friends, but still can't work up the courage to do it in front of people. I think it would be very gratifying and very much a release of whatever is inside me, "freeing" perhaps...just have to get over that being in front of people jittery thing.

Aside from the tangent...the last song I sang that people heard me sing was probably either "Grace, Too" or "Poets" by the Tragically Hip.

And lastly, the "song of the day" for me would go back to Matthew Good, and that would be "Single Explosion." The personal nature of the song really comes out in the aforementioned live performance and I really like that about it...

This week has been rough for me. But this time I've come out on top.

I had very difficult workouts (I am on my university cross country/track and field teams) on both monday and tuesday. This made me very tired for both of these days. Whcih didn't help, I had a lot of things to accomplish....which I was wary of, because I have a history of just not doing things when the road gets tough.

On monday, I had to finish both a lab and assignment for courses I don't like. I was up late, despite my aforementioned difficult workout. I got a handful of hours of sleep to wake up early to get to school for my lab on Tuesday. Now that those things were over, I had an exam to worry about coming up on thursday.

I got home, and went to my mens curling league game. I didn't curl very well at all. We still managed to squeak out a win. On wednesday, I really had to get going on my exam. I studied all day. After 6 or 7 hours of studying I felt fairly confident.

I was off to my wednesday night mixed curling game, We got absolutely waxed. Taken to town, and back again. And it bothered me a lot...we lost an astonishing 9-1 in just four ends of play. Not that my team curled badly either, we did pretty good, we made most of our shots. But the other team got lucky, time after time, and their skip didnt miss a shot. He even made a couple shots that most pros would have missed. On top of that, they were an ignorant, distant team, the kind that gets under your skin and are not fun to play against at all. And ultimately that is why I enjoy curling, it's fun, but with teams like that, they suck all the fun out.

I went up for a few drinks after and then came home and the next day, was off to my exam. The exam was haaaard. Much harder than I expected. Not that I didn't know my stuff, I knew it well enough. But the questions were very vauge, and worth quite a lot of marks. I wrote long-winded answers and hoped for the best. After I talked to some classmates who also thought a couple of the questions were a little eyebrow-raising.

So with my two bad curling games and an exam behind me and an exhausted body physically, I wanted to go home.

And I believe that there has been a significant change in my personal development, just over the past few weeks, that has made me overcome this. If this happened just a couple of months ago, I am sure that I would have just skipped my workout, gone home, turned on the tube and bummed around till I fell asleep.

Not today.

Today I overcame that.

Despite having a bad week, I sucked it up and went and did my workout. It wasn't my greatest workout, but the fact that I had put my bad week behind me and was able to overcome that, and re-adjust my state of mind to be able to work out, gave me an incredible sense of gratification.

By the time I got home, things had completely turned around for me. I even learned that my other blog about my hometown politics, gets read by the Mayor, after hearing him talk about me on a radio show.

Things are looking up, I'm feeling good, relaxed, and ambitious.

And just in the past several weeks, I've been able to shed an addiction of TV and laziness, and just today I raised the bar a little higher for myself.

If I can remind myself of that when things aren't going so hot, I think even the worst of days or the worst of bad weeks won't seem all that bad afterall.

Over the summer and more recently, as in, the last few weeks kind of recent, I've made great strides into bettering myself.

Not that I've done anything radical.

There was a cascading type of effect when 5 weeks ago our TV decided to die. To make a long story short it was taken away for repairs and we didn't get a new one until just yesterday. I decided to make this post because only with the abscence of TV did I realize how detrimental it is to our state of mind, our health, our work ethic.

I used to sit at the TV when I got home for hours. I'd watch hockey, then I'd watch various sci-fi shows until 3 in the morning. My game plan was to get school work done with the TV in the background. Needless to say it didn't work, and I would wake up for school the next morning and decide I wouldn't go because I had only gotten 5 or 6 hours of sleep.

Since the dissapearance of TV I have gotten rid of so much clutter and garbage that it has almost completely changed my life.

I decided to get a part time job. I ended up revamping my resume, and got a job at a very fun place with very awesome people. I took up learning Buddhism, which has only taught me what a wate of time TV and such really is, and reinforced a previous belief of mine to avoid stressful things. I started reading books regularly, and took out a book from the library for the first time in years, that was a book for pleasure not for research. I've been more involved and more committed with my athletics, both on the track and at the rink. I was involved in the very recent Canadian election. I started a personal journal in which, unlike my (other) blog, I only allow myself to write positive things and events in my day that I enjoy.

Those are the things that have happened, but what have I learned?

I learned a lot about myself, first and foremost. I learned about which things in my daily life were wasteful. I learned which things I enjoy and which things I should do more of. I learned that the biggest and most wasteful thing in life is procrastination.

Now I know why so many people end up in a rut during mid-life. They work the same job for 30 years that they don't really like, but most people do nothing to rid themselves of wasteful activities and practices. Thus most people do not realize their dreams and aspirations....

I can now lead productive days, every day. I can go to school, I can do a workout, and I can come home and read and do things to improve my understanding of the things I am interested in.  This makes me better educated, more informed, and better prepared for my studies, career choices, and most definitely makes me more desireable for employment by various people.

And in closing, the most wasteful thing about TV so deeply ingrained into our society and daily life is that what we watch, is complete garbage. It doesn't better our lives in one bit. And more often than not, we are subject to sub-standard writing and programming as the big networks search for the next cash cow rather than the next well-written show. We are bashed over the head by 10 minutes of advertisements per half hour, for this show or that show, this hair product, that chocolat bar, this insurance company and that oh-so-unhealthy entree that is micro-waveable and ready to go, because you've been convinced you have no time to cook a decent meal.

By the end of the day, the only thing you have is information overload. Hours of the day have been wasted by watching shows with more flash than substance.

TV is like an addiction. The only difference being it's effects are less obvious. And just like an addiction, it is incredibly hard to be able to shut it off. You get used to having it on, you get used to sitting down for 2 or 3 or 5 or 6 hours a day or however much it is, it becomes part of your daily routine.

My challenge to you is to pick up your remote and go cold-turkey on TV for one day. Read a book, or go excersise. Cook a healthy meal from scratch. Do an activity that will better prepare you for your career or  job interview.

I'm glad to say I now get absolutely no gratification out of sitting in front of the idiot box. I hope some of you reading this come to the same revelation.

As someone who appreciates the environment around us, and someone who marvels at the way nature works, I find a simple pleasure in my garden. Watching plants grow and change into a reproductive stage is fascinating, and the benefits are quite tasty.

I grow the usual, lettuce, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, peppers. My favourite plants to grow are broccoli or cauliflower. New additions to my garden this year are some herbs, and a few sunflower plants.

I've also considered making a little pond and constructing some kind of mini shelter to keep the shallow water out of the sun all day to attract some frogs and whatnot  into my garden. My Marigolds and other random annuals keep bees around, and the sunflowers are sure to attract birds.

I grow everything right from seed. I don't get any satisfaction from buying plants somebody else grew and then transplanting them...watching them germinate is half the fun.

Looking forward to making salsas, relishes, juices, and pickled peppers. Just about anything to help me avoid preservative-heavy foods during the winter up here in the more northern regions of North America.

So we're killing all the sharks...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7446112.stm

Sustanability.

That word comes up so often, I think it gets misused. Taken for granted. Something might be sustainable in some area, but not sustainable in another. Perhaps they are fishing for Tuna in the Meditteranean "sustainably," but they're killing off the sharks, which upsets the delicate balance of the ecosystem, making their practices effectively unsustainable.

At the rate we consume things, nothing is sustainable. Logging, fishing...for cod, tuna, how we consume energy at a blistering rate is unsustainable.

This term is taught to ecology students in the first or second year, and I even think I started to be beaten over the head with it in grade school. This idea that we can figure out how much we can take from a given ecosystem, so that it replenishes what we take, and the population numbers stay at a constant level. As demand grows and human population grows, more and more needs to be taken.

Which means more and more of an ecosystem would need to be left intact to support that. But if demand increases, it seems that we'll take what we need now, lowering population numbers and lowering the amount we can extract.

Sustainability...only on paper and in ideals.

Well it's my first day here at Gaia...and my first blog post.

I'll post my ideas here about the world around us, and perhaps some life musings. And maybe the odd thought or two on a new album I picked up along the way.