I finished my last final of my first semester at UGA yesterday and am now making my more definite plans for the summer. Last night I went and played with the East Athens group at The Point where everyone was good about maintaining social distancing policies. It was a nice diversion from what I have been doing and I will probably do that on and off throughout the summer. I also exercises on the elliptical for an hour going for five miles while watching some more of Richard Harrington's course 'Creating and Managing a YouTube Channel (2018)' on LinkedIn Learning. That's one of the things I want to go ahead and get set up properly and will be a focus for the summer. There are several things related to the online presence project that I will be working on including this website and the sister site, the YouTube channels, and the live streaming program and today I will spend some time writing out those plans in more detail. I will also spend time daily on my Spanish studies and instrumental practice as well as cleaning up sections of the house, particularly the studio and garage, and possibly do some work in the yard. For now though I will be focusing on developing my online presence.
As an aside, about eleven or twelve years ago I cataloged my life interests into groupings I refer to as 'domains.' These domains are the personal domain, the music domain, the financial domain, the health domain, the educational domain, the spiritual domain, the home and yard domain, and the computers and technology domain. This was actually an outgrowth of reading a book I stumbled across in the early 1980's while working nights at the Georgia State University Computer Center that was called "Success! The Glenn Bland Method." It stressed the idea of maintaining a balance across four major areas in ones life and set me down the path of periodically writing up summaries of each of my domains with music being one of the most frequently updated. I occasionally find it interesting to go back and read those summaries just to see how much progress I have made on my goals in each of those areas and helps me as I revise my plans for the future. One other thing that I've found to be especially useful is maintaining a journal in some form. I have been doing that since the early 80's as well and I have no doubts that it will be an incredible source of inspiration as I begin to produce more music, particularly in regards to the area of songwriting. I would highly recommend this practice to anyone regardless of what your goals are in life. A final mention this morning goes to 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen. If you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the things you have to do it offers a practical guide to getting organized. And now I think it's time for me to get something (else) done.