10,000 Hours - Guitar

My fingers hurt.

Typing this hurts. Especially every letter that I hit with the fingers of my left hand. Did you know that the letter "E" is the most commonly used letter and that you type it with your left hand? I am now acutely aware of this.

I've practiced every day this week except for the one day I stayed in bed so sick that I couldn't keep water down. I'm giving myself a pass for that day and I don't even feel a little bit bad about it. Aside from that day, I've been picking up the guitar in just about every moment of free time to practice my chords and my note reading.

I'm using a very old lesson book (Deluxe Edition Guitar Self-Taught Ed Sale Radio's Wizard of the Strings c1952) and playing around on Ultimate Guitar to see if there are any songs that I can play yet using chords or tabs. The book might need some updating; maybe something newer would be better, but it's what I have on hand and it's working just fine right now.

I wouldn't say, overall, that it's going well but I'd say that there has been progress. For some reason I expected to be able to play something cool by now and have it be recognizable, with relatively quick switching between chords or notes and no real mistakes. Not anything complicated, of course, but something simple and straight-forward.

I might have been a little ahead of myself in my head. That's okay; I'm always a hopeful person. I'm able to dial that back a bit and just take victory in the little pleasures, like figuring out that to switch between an Am chord and a C chord all I have to do is move one finger, not pick up my whole hand and place it back down.

By this time next week I have three main goals:

• Be able to read all first-position notes on sight
• Feel like I have made actual improvement switching between chords (smoother, faster)
• Finish Lesson Book One (and find new book)

10,000 Hours of Awesome - Art

Color is not my best medium.

This last week I've really focused on shading. I've done a bunch of other drawing as well but shading was what I wanted to get better at. I practiced continually, several times a day. Supposedly you need to practice things to get better at them, what's up with that, right?!

I'm particularly proud of the bottom sphere in this first picture here.

Noses, ears, and hair; my ancient enemies!

 I hate drawing noses.

And ears.

Aside from that I'm relatively happy with this picture here. After I drew it I decided that I wanted to play around with color a little bit and I like how it came out for the most part.

I'm particularly proud of the shading around the eyes in this picture and the proportions being mostly correct (except for the ears, ignore those!).

Please ignore the dancing cyborg.

 Some more shading work. I have a long way to go but I'm working on it. I think finding simple objects and drawing them quickly, then really focusing on the shading should still be a large goal of mine in the following week.

Shading is what makes a drawing look realistic, even if the lines aren't that great. It's a neat little trick to make a someone "meh" picture look cool, but only when done right.

I'm actually pretty happy with his nose.

One of the resources I've been using is Reddit Gets Drawn. People put pictures of themselves or family or friends, asking the community to draw them.

This is the first picture I put there that got a compliment. All the others have either been ignored or (rightfully) critiqued.

My heart skips a beat in my chest every time I post something up there; I know I'm new and that I have a very long journey ahead of me but I want to contribute too!

I pick a picture that inspires me every day and draw it. Most times I just quietly shrug, shake my head, and don't post anything but so far I've put up three of the portraits I've been happy with.

The one I colorized above is one of the other ones I put up; I didn't get any feedback on it and that's okay! I just assume when I don't get feedback that people are following their mother's advice, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything."

I'm watching a video on drawing every day and reading as much as I can. I then try to take those skills from the videos and put them into practice or at least keep them in mind as I draw.

It's a slow process but I'm seeing progress. I like that.

For next week:

~One "Reddit Gets Drawn" portrait per day

~10 30-second gesture drawings per day

~Watch one "how to draw" video each day

~Find nose tutorial

10,000 Hours - Music

A friend of mine loaned me her guitar a few months ago and I had every intention of learning to play. I had books all ready to go, time set aside during the day (Lois' nap time), and I was going to learn.

The first time I tuned the guitar, the high e string snapped.

It's taken me this long to buy a new string because I'm a procrastinator, even when I don't mean to be one.

Now that it's repaired, however, I've been practicing every day for a total of four days.

That's not a lot, but it's a start!

I'm taking it really slowly. Right now I've practiced the G chord and the C chord, switching back and forth between them and having the ability to put my fingers down correctly without looking at them. Whereas with my drawing I jumped in whole-hog and started trying to draw really tough things, I think doing that with the guitar would be a mistake; slow and steady is the key.

That being said, when I'm playing around I do enjoy going to Ultimate-Guitar and playing around with the sheet music that has tabs. Tabs are a way for people who don't know how to read music to easily and quickly learn to play a song on a guitar; the format's very intuitive and it's neat to be able to recognize a tune pretty quickly. Right now I'm most enjoying Dust In the Wind by Kansas. I can't play more than the first bar but it's still fun!

In the mean time, I'll be over here, hitting G, C, G, C, G, C over and over and over again. Maybe I'll get adventurous and throw in a D now and then. Whee!

10,000 Hours - Art

I wish I had more to report here.

My big goal was to draw hands in the past week and I did that. I drew over 50 hands, ranging from 30 second drawings to full on not stopping until I was done drawing, drawings.

I still don't feel comfortable with hands (except maybe when they're balled up into fists - those are easier). They're awkward things at best. I know that if I just keep practicing I'll get better; I'm just getting used to the fact that I need to practice in order to get better.

As for making a watercolor drawing?

The first one I made, I used the wrong pencils and washing it with water only made a wet piece of paper and a very confused me. It took me a while to figure out how I had messed up.

The second one I made isn't even worth discussing at this point.

I think I may need to get better at drawing before I really start branching out into color. I need to learn shading, so that will be my focus this week.

My goals for the next week:

• Draw 50 feet
• 10 30-second drawings each day
• One 10 minute drawing - focus on shading
• Read about shading techniques

Early Riser

A long time ago I did a weird sleep experiment where I got up very early in the morning after going to bed fairly late. I made sure I got the six hours of sleep that my body tells me it needs to function well but I was going to bed by 10 and getting up at 4 in the morning.

Well, I was insane. Nobody wants to be up quite that early.

That being said, I am trying to make the transition to waking every morning between 6:00 and 6:30. Right now I'm on target with waking between 7:00 and 7:30 even without my alarm and today I was awake at 6:22, 8 minutes before I had set my alarm.

Why?

Truth to be told, I don't have a set good reason for it. I know getting up early means that I'm usually more productive but getting up at 7:30 seems to have been accomplishing that just fine for the past few weeks. I know that getting up earlier usually helps keep me in a better mood during the day but see the previous statement for why that doesn't matter.

Maybe a part of it is that I'd like an hour to myself? The little one wakes up sometime around quarter after seven most mornings or 8 at the latest. That means 2 mornings out of 5 I can do my showering, shaving, medicine and what-not as soon as I get up. On those other 3 mornings I have to wait; often until 11:30, which is her nap time.

Wait.

What that means, I realize as I write this, is that I want to wake up early so that I can take a shower.

Holy crap.

I'm a grownup.

10,000 Hours - Art (NSFW)

There has been a lot of sickness floating around the house lately and business pulling Laura away which has given me less time to do my art. Unfortunately this has given me a lot of great excuses not to get things done the way they should be done and I have spent little to no time drawing.

Until today.

We're healthy again and Laura's returned home. I spent some time drawing, added a to do line on my to do list to draw at least one page of art per day, and am hoping to be back in the swing of things.

One thing for sure? I need to work on hands, feet, and proportions. I actually really like what I did with this particular drawing but after a few seconds of looking at it all I see are the flaws.

I tried to do some water color but absolutely nothing good came of it at this point. I'll keep practicing but I have nothing to share on that end. Maybe I'll do a charcoal drawing and try to capture the hair in water color pencils. That might look nice.

My goals for next week:

• Draw more hands and feet
• Practice water colors, especially hair
• Do at least 10 30-second-long figure gestures per day and one 10 minute

Let's Talk About Who I Am

A few years ago I learned from a doctor that I have a testosterone count lower than most women. The doctor asked a few questions about what my teen years were like and explained that I probably had low testosterone my entire life, never reaching the levels I should have had; it was a bit of a revelation, if not a surprise.

Interestingly, what led to the diagnosis was me talking to the doctor about how I was depressed and listless. He ran a bunch of extra blood tests and told me that this was probably the cause of the depression, listlessness, and low energy.

For the last few years I've been on Androgel (a testosterone replacement therapy) on and off. Losing insurance meant I had to go off it since it's ridiculously expensive and then I was finally able to go back on it when I moved out here.

Here's the thing:

I am literally a different person when I'm on this drug.

The depression isn't 100% gone; I still have some bad days. The listlessness, though, is gone and I feel driven to do things. Even on my bad days I get off my butt and get a few things done around the house, whereas before a bad day meant that I didn't get out of bed or if I did then I didn't get off the couch. On good days I'm a whirlwind of productivity. The difference is insane.

I'm more inclined to get things done, stick with plans on how I want to handle my day, and am generally happier. Granted, I'm still learning how to use this energy; I spent roughly 30 years trying to be as unproductive as possible so now here I am with the energy and drive to get things done and I'm not quite as good at them as I could be since I don't have the practice.

There are a few downsides to the drug though. It's not a perfect solution, it's just close to one.

I'm angrier than I used to be. Those that know me know that I'm one of the calmest people on the face of the Earth. With Androgel, I have a very faint level of frustration that flows in the background of my brain. It comes to the front when things don't go as planned and it results in me being a bit more snappy than I should be.

I feel like I'm a huge jerk when I'm in that mood but I'm told that my level of "jerk" is quite a few other people's level of "being a human being," so that makes me feel good. I'm just not used to anger; it's a part of me but one that I have almost never had to deal with. I could push it aside in the past whereas now it's strong enough to push my rational brain to the back for a bit, at its worst.

I'm more creative too, on Androgel. I've been drawing, writing, and following my passions a bit more than in the past.

Because now I have passions.

I wonder if those things are linked: Anger and passion. Can you have one without the other? Has the lack of one strong emotion robbed me of the other?

Has the lack of testosterone robbed me of the strong feelings needed to follow my dreams? Will having raised the levels in my blood help me find talents and skills I never knew I had, or maybe just help me develop them because I can enjoy things on a level that I never have before?

I'll never know what could have been. I'll only know what comes next and even that I'll only know after it happens.

In the meantime, I'll be following my passions. I need to stay on testosterone.

The truth of the matter is that I like who I am better when I'm on it. I feel more like the real me even though this version of me hasn't been around even 1/10th the time I've been on this planet.