Monday, December 29, 2008
Loose Ends
I really dropped the ball on documenting my LRC experience. It was so wonderful, awesome, and life-changing that I felt like I needed time to write it out and do it justice, but there just wasn't time. As soon as I got back, I was off and running with a semester that had already started and trying to secure my internship for this past fall. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel: no more school, just putting back the pieces of my life. It may be too late to revisit last spring's adventure. Maybe not. But if it is, I still have the friends I've made, the photos, souvenirs (a really cool DVD of all the bands and my LRC guitar picks :), and who knows, I'm thinking about going again in 2009. Maybe I'll do a better job at documenting. Maybe not!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Two weeks and counting...
So much for the vlog idea. I did ramble out a bit about LRC but there's just not been any time to edit it. Summer Semester is in full swing, and I am working hard to gain some slack so that my weekend away does not cause too much hardship.
Anyway, it's two weeks--no, less than two weeks--until Rock Camp is in session. My official letter arrived right on time. Here's the skinny:
1. I got my instrument assignment: bass guitar
2. The public showcase will be held at the Satyricon. I'll be playing the same scrungy stage which once held the likes of Nirvana and countless other grunge, punk, metal bands. I last saw a band called the American Girls there. True, the original Satyricon closed down a few years ago and was reopened to be an all ages venue, but still...it's the same stage! And, yes, I realize that I knew this and posted about it on my first update. It's excitin'!
3. I've got my room reservations. Decided to go for inexpensive and convenient rather than cooler and further away. I'll have wifi, at at least. Taking advantage of the daily shuttle so I don't have to navigate.
4. I've pre-ordered my official LRC t-shirt. I am a geek.
5. After reading this blog post by an LRC 2007 alumnus and discovering both a Flickr pool and some youtube evidence of previous sessions, I am much more excited than I am scared.
Anyway, it's two weeks--no, less than two weeks--until Rock Camp is in session. My official letter arrived right on time. Here's the skinny:
1. I got my instrument assignment: bass guitar
2. The public showcase will be held at the Satyricon. I'll be playing the same scrungy stage which once held the likes of Nirvana and countless other grunge, punk, metal bands. I last saw a band called the American Girls there. True, the original Satyricon closed down a few years ago and was reopened to be an all ages venue, but still...it's the same stage! And, yes, I realize that I knew this and posted about it on my first update. It's excitin'!
3. I've got my room reservations. Decided to go for inexpensive and convenient rather than cooler and further away. I'll have wifi, at at least. Taking advantage of the daily shuttle so I don't have to navigate.
4. I've pre-ordered my official LRC t-shirt. I am a geek.
5. After reading this blog post by an LRC 2007 alumnus and discovering both a Flickr pool and some youtube evidence of previous sessions, I am much more excited than I am scared.
I'm still kind of scared, though.
Oh, and since the big 4-Oh! probably had no small part in this whole adventure, I can officially say that, as of Friday, I am 40 years old. Hard to wrap my mind around that one, but I've decided that I really don't need to try. I mean, really, aside from the physical slide down the other side of the mountain, it doesn't mean all that much in my world.
So, there will probably be a bit more news between now and when I leave on the 29th. I'm hoping that school stuff will fall in place and that a weekend off won't put me too far behind. I still haven't put a whole lot of thought into what I'm going to be wearing for the showcase. I want to dress up, but how dressed up depends on how hot it is going to be. Also, it seems like most women were just in their jeans and black t-shirts...
Still I'm playing with these options:
Boots--either the knee-high lace up caterpillars, or the red LeVoodoo "combat" Docs.
Space-dyed tights, colorway: Moonrock (if it's not 90 degrees out)
Short black skirt and t-shirt ('punk rock saved my life', 'you are here' gears ringer, or something black)
or
Funky short dress (one that I still own but never really wear)
or
Something else even cooler that I have yet to think of.
Bowler?
Basically, the aim is basic, comfortable, a little retro perhaps. I'm going to be nervous enough without trying to look like someone I am not. Just want to let my own "freak flag" fly free.
Until next time--it's back to homework for me.
So, there will probably be a bit more news between now and when I leave on the 29th. I'm hoping that school stuff will fall in place and that a weekend off won't put me too far behind. I still haven't put a whole lot of thought into what I'm going to be wearing for the showcase. I want to dress up, but how dressed up depends on how hot it is going to be. Also, it seems like most women were just in their jeans and black t-shirts...
Still I'm playing with these options:
Boots--either the knee-high lace up caterpillars, or the red LeVoodoo "combat" Docs.
Space-dyed tights, colorway: Moonrock (if it's not 90 degrees out)
Short black skirt and t-shirt ('punk rock saved my life', 'you are here' gears ringer, or something black)
or
Funky short dress (one that I still own but never really wear)
or
Something else even cooler that I have yet to think of.
Bowler?
Basically, the aim is basic, comfortable, a little retro perhaps. I'm going to be nervous enough without trying to look like someone I am not. Just want to let my own "freak flag" fly free.
Until next time--it's back to homework for me.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Ladies Rock Camp: Counting Down, 30 Days
First, Background:
Okay, I'll admit it, if it is not already obvious. I'm an introvert. My self-esteem is often quite fragile. I carry around a LOT of baggage, and it is most burdensome when I find myself in new and uncomfortable situations. That's where the play button gets pushed and the old tapes, recorded between the ages of 7 and 17, begin to play. Which is why, generally, I've tended to stay within my comfort zone. It's easy, of course, in the past few years, to blame it on school. I have no time to do these things that interest me, get involved, that is very true. But I have had this sneaking fear that I'm using that excuse to slip further back into my shell...
...on the other hand, I'm turning 40. Very Soon. I'm not sure how I feel about that, yet. Mostly positive, and the positive comes from a realization of my own internal locus of control and also of finite time. It's this realization that's exerting an opposite pull, to come out of the old shell, ignore what I think people think, how I look...ignore the fear.
Back in January, with both 40 and graduation looming in 2008, I signed up for Ladies Rock Camp, a weekend event to benefit the Rock Camp for Girls. The Girls Rock Camp has operated out of Portland, OR, for several years now. There are now camps sprouting in other cities around the country, as well as a few outside of the States. The week-long camp takes girls between the ages of 10 and 17, teaches them to play an instrument, has them form bands, write an original song, practice, ending with a showcase event at the end of where all the bands perform their songs. From the Girls Rock Camp website:
"We want to eradicate all the limiting myths about music and gender that make girls afraid to speak up, sing out, and make noise. We want to abolish all the obsolete traditions that restrict many girls' and women's free musical expression and obstruct their access to the world of music. We seek to demonstrate—through lessons, mentorship, positive examples, and the shared experiences of the staff and volunteers—that every genre of music from the heaviest to the most delicate, and every technical job and creative endeavor in the music industry, is available to any girl or woman who wants to explore it."
It's more than about music, but it centers on music. When I first heard of this, I thought how awesome! And then I thought, I wish I had something like this when I was kid. Then I read a year or so ago about how they had done a Ladies Rock Camp weekend open to women 19 and over to raise funds for the Girls Camp, and I thought, well, I wish I'd known about that! I'd have signed up for sure!
In January, news about the Girls Rock Camp documentary had me looking around their website. Lo and behold, there was sign-up information about three sessions of the Ladies Rock Camp happening in O8. My excitement exceeded my trepidation (the sessions were months into the future, which helped). It felt sort of like fate, and...I was already shelling out a huge amount of money for spring tuition, what would a few hundred more dollars do, especially if it would go to a worthy cause?
This is where I am today: I'm signed up for camp at the end of May. I think I'm going to be playing either bass or keyboards (because I have no musical experience whatsoever, it was all pretty much a crap shoot, which is why I can't remember the order of my first and second choices. The old tapes did pipe in a bit, because really I think it would be cool to play lead guitar, but honestly? I have doubts about how much the camp can really accomplish in two days--I fully expect to learn something but I also expect to look ridiculous at some point, maybe several points--and I guess I'd rather be slightly less conspicuous about it. Maybe I should have chosen drums? I just don't know..!). I know what the schedule looks like, and I now know that the Showcase will be held at the Satyricon which excites me no end. In days of yore, the Satyricon was a punk institution--I've seen shows there myself. The club was the site, supposedly, of Nirvana's first paying gig.
I should be hearing from them any day now, to get the detailed information in advance of the camp (actually, while this post has been sitting in draft limbo for finals week, the LETTER arrived, but I'm going to make that another post). I'd like to document it all somehow, but I'm not sure, with school and all, how thinly stretched I'll be over the next few weeks. At the very least, though, I'll try to keep up with this blog, try to do a few pictures and perhaps some video to go with. We'll see. For now, the countdown has begun: 30 days.
Okay, I'll admit it, if it is not already obvious. I'm an introvert. My self-esteem is often quite fragile. I carry around a LOT of baggage, and it is most burdensome when I find myself in new and uncomfortable situations. That's where the play button gets pushed and the old tapes, recorded between the ages of 7 and 17, begin to play. Which is why, generally, I've tended to stay within my comfort zone. It's easy, of course, in the past few years, to blame it on school. I have no time to do these things that interest me, get involved, that is very true. But I have had this sneaking fear that I'm using that excuse to slip further back into my shell...
...on the other hand, I'm turning 40. Very Soon. I'm not sure how I feel about that, yet. Mostly positive, and the positive comes from a realization of my own internal locus of control and also of finite time. It's this realization that's exerting an opposite pull, to come out of the old shell, ignore what I think people think, how I look...ignore the fear.
Back in January, with both 40 and graduation looming in 2008, I signed up for Ladies Rock Camp, a weekend event to benefit the Rock Camp for Girls. The Girls Rock Camp has operated out of Portland, OR, for several years now. There are now camps sprouting in other cities around the country, as well as a few outside of the States. The week-long camp takes girls between the ages of 10 and 17, teaches them to play an instrument, has them form bands, write an original song, practice, ending with a showcase event at the end of where all the bands perform their songs. From the Girls Rock Camp website:
"We want to eradicate all the limiting myths about music and gender that make girls afraid to speak up, sing out, and make noise. We want to abolish all the obsolete traditions that restrict many girls' and women's free musical expression and obstruct their access to the world of music. We seek to demonstrate—through lessons, mentorship, positive examples, and the shared experiences of the staff and volunteers—that every genre of music from the heaviest to the most delicate, and every technical job and creative endeavor in the music industry, is available to any girl or woman who wants to explore it."
It's more than about music, but it centers on music. When I first heard of this, I thought how awesome! And then I thought, I wish I had something like this when I was kid. Then I read a year or so ago about how they had done a Ladies Rock Camp weekend open to women 19 and over to raise funds for the Girls Camp, and I thought, well, I wish I'd known about that! I'd have signed up for sure!
In January, news about the Girls Rock Camp documentary had me looking around their website. Lo and behold, there was sign-up information about three sessions of the Ladies Rock Camp happening in O8. My excitement exceeded my trepidation (the sessions were months into the future, which helped). It felt sort of like fate, and...I was already shelling out a huge amount of money for spring tuition, what would a few hundred more dollars do, especially if it would go to a worthy cause?
This is where I am today: I'm signed up for camp at the end of May. I think I'm going to be playing either bass or keyboards (because I have no musical experience whatsoever, it was all pretty much a crap shoot, which is why I can't remember the order of my first and second choices. The old tapes did pipe in a bit, because really I think it would be cool to play lead guitar, but honestly? I have doubts about how much the camp can really accomplish in two days--I fully expect to learn something but I also expect to look ridiculous at some point, maybe several points--and I guess I'd rather be slightly less conspicuous about it. Maybe I should have chosen drums? I just don't know..!). I know what the schedule looks like, and I now know that the Showcase will be held at the Satyricon which excites me no end. In days of yore, the Satyricon was a punk institution--I've seen shows there myself. The club was the site, supposedly, of Nirvana's first paying gig.
I should be hearing from them any day now, to get the detailed information in advance of the camp (actually, while this post has been sitting in draft limbo for finals week, the LETTER arrived, but I'm going to make that another post). I'd like to document it all somehow, but I'm not sure, with school and all, how thinly stretched I'll be over the next few weeks. At the very least, though, I'll try to keep up with this blog, try to do a few pictures and perhaps some video to go with. We'll see. For now, the countdown has begun: 30 days.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Anticipating...what?
New beginnings perhaps. Being so close to the end, I find it difficult to be patient. My mind is chaotic with all these possibilities of what I might do when my time, energy, and finances are no longer tied up with school.
I might...
travel
build things
create
activate
Thinking:
My degree won't change my career. I like the library, like that I am surrounded by books and get to play with technology. The degree will allow me to step up a rung perhaps, but the information I'm gaining...it's for me, really. It's an attempt to gather tools to engage, make a difference if it's possible in those areas that matter to me: poverty & diversity
I'm going to need to rediscover those things that were important to me before I started all this, the interests and hobbies. Cooking real food, tending plants, reading books just for the pleasure of them. Technology: Feeling inspired to build things, mix art and technology. My thinking's been so narrow, that if I can't draw (and in all honesty I can't) I can never really be creative.
I might...
travel
build things
create
activate
Thinking:
My degree won't change my career. I like the library, like that I am surrounded by books and get to play with technology. The degree will allow me to step up a rung perhaps, but the information I'm gaining...it's for me, really. It's an attempt to gather tools to engage, make a difference if it's possible in those areas that matter to me: poverty & diversity
I'm going to need to rediscover those things that were important to me before I started all this, the interests and hobbies. Cooking real food, tending plants, reading books just for the pleasure of them. Technology: Feeling inspired to build things, mix art and technology. My thinking's been so narrow, that if I can't draw (and in all honesty I can't) I can never really be creative.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Hiatus
This blog is currently taking yet another break while its owner determines a reason for its existence.
About three years ago, I made the hare-brained decision to go back to school. Through the years, I've accumulated a large number of credits, in quantity probably enough by now to have earned at least one advanced degree, but not the proper combination. It's a jumble of credits: art, science, technology, even some Japanese. Apparently I am indecisive and wary of commitment.
It makes an odd sort of sense that the twisty path would somehow lead me to a full-time position working for a public library. I'm a library assistant, hired out away from the City's I.T. department for my computer support/web skills. Everything was fine, is fine, and most likely I could do okay without a degree and retire someday as a municipal employee, maybe even bump up a level, but something really bothers me about not having a degree, and I don't know why. I admire those people who have direction, whether they have a formal education or not. Maybe I just need direction, and, lacking that, a degree, an accomplishment, is the next best thing?
Today, along with the library job, I'm enrolled half-time at the land grant university I'd enrolled in full-time just before the library hired me, although this time instead of commuting south, I'm attending at a distance. I think time-wise it works out to about the same. The commute time turns into a lot more reading time, interacting with the instructor and other students. There's no sitting in the back of the class, passively absorbing here: participation is a major part of the curriculum. To be sure, I feel as though the online courses change me just as much if not more than the traditional classroom offerings, although at times I really miss the human face-to-face interaction.
I spend so much of my time outside of work now reading for classes and writing for classes that it really feels like my brain is overflowing. By the end of a semester, I have a hard time forming cohesive sentences. The stuff that falls out is the surface, day to day stuff. The intelligent stuff is buried somewhere, or turned in to be graded. I cannot think beyond what I did, what I'm doing, what's coming next. I'd created this blog with the intent of a theme, but it has yet to come to me. My 5 year old LiveJournal account has become the site of this brain dump. It's not quite to the point where I discuss my breakfast, but it's an airing out of all the cobwebs, pretty formless, pretty random. There is otherwise no room to move around my head, to have a creative notion, feel inspired.
I'll graduate in December 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology/Human Development. I don't believe I will leave the library, but the education is giving me knowledge and skills that I'm hoping will help me make a difference, in issues of diversity, poverty, and human welfare in my community and beyond. While I'm incredibly fascinated by all the knowledge I'm gaining (very few classes have felt even remotely tedious), the all work and little play thing has very much been wearing on me. The human connections, while never massive, have dwindled, and a few very important ones are becoming increasingly strained. I feel like that kid stuck inside learning the violin while all the other kids are outside playing in the sprinkler. I willingly made this choice, and I'll see it through because I truly feel it will be worth it in the end, but god I'm exhausted, and I'm lonely, and it's going to be a long, long winter.
Perhaps, when I come back, all edumacated, with the free time to cook and create and read and travel again, this blog will have some sort of a purpose. 'Til then, I'm trimming back, shunting my resources. I can be found at Flickr (link over there somewhere to the right, I believe), and, if you're up for inane babble, at the LJ link above. Happy 2008!
About three years ago, I made the hare-brained decision to go back to school. Through the years, I've accumulated a large number of credits, in quantity probably enough by now to have earned at least one advanced degree, but not the proper combination. It's a jumble of credits: art, science, technology, even some Japanese. Apparently I am indecisive and wary of commitment.
It makes an odd sort of sense that the twisty path would somehow lead me to a full-time position working for a public library. I'm a library assistant, hired out away from the City's I.T. department for my computer support/web skills. Everything was fine, is fine, and most likely I could do okay without a degree and retire someday as a municipal employee, maybe even bump up a level, but something really bothers me about not having a degree, and I don't know why. I admire those people who have direction, whether they have a formal education or not. Maybe I just need direction, and, lacking that, a degree, an accomplishment, is the next best thing?
Today, along with the library job, I'm enrolled half-time at the land grant university I'd enrolled in full-time just before the library hired me, although this time instead of commuting south, I'm attending at a distance. I think time-wise it works out to about the same. The commute time turns into a lot more reading time, interacting with the instructor and other students. There's no sitting in the back of the class, passively absorbing here: participation is a major part of the curriculum. To be sure, I feel as though the online courses change me just as much if not more than the traditional classroom offerings, although at times I really miss the human face-to-face interaction.
I spend so much of my time outside of work now reading for classes and writing for classes that it really feels like my brain is overflowing. By the end of a semester, I have a hard time forming cohesive sentences. The stuff that falls out is the surface, day to day stuff. The intelligent stuff is buried somewhere, or turned in to be graded. I cannot think beyond what I did, what I'm doing, what's coming next. I'd created this blog with the intent of a theme, but it has yet to come to me. My 5 year old LiveJournal account has become the site of this brain dump. It's not quite to the point where I discuss my breakfast, but it's an airing out of all the cobwebs, pretty formless, pretty random. There is otherwise no room to move around my head, to have a creative notion, feel inspired.
I'll graduate in December 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology/Human Development. I don't believe I will leave the library, but the education is giving me knowledge and skills that I'm hoping will help me make a difference, in issues of diversity, poverty, and human welfare in my community and beyond. While I'm incredibly fascinated by all the knowledge I'm gaining (very few classes have felt even remotely tedious), the all work and little play thing has very much been wearing on me. The human connections, while never massive, have dwindled, and a few very important ones are becoming increasingly strained. I feel like that kid stuck inside learning the violin while all the other kids are outside playing in the sprinkler. I willingly made this choice, and I'll see it through because I truly feel it will be worth it in the end, but god I'm exhausted, and I'm lonely, and it's going to be a long, long winter.
Perhaps, when I come back, all edumacated, with the free time to cook and create and read and travel again, this blog will have some sort of a purpose. 'Til then, I'm trimming back, shunting my resources. I can be found at Flickr (link over there somewhere to the right, I believe), and, if you're up for inane babble, at the LJ link above. Happy 2008!
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