Suguay Productions

Changes are afoot. Not just in the world in general, though to be sure there are plenty of those. What with the uprising in Egypt, Japan being shifted 8 feet, the uprising in Lybia and so many other events, it would be hard to say that there isn’t a lot of change going on in the world. There are also changes coming to my world and therefore to this site.

As you might have noticed from a previous post my interests are changing. I have taken up music and guitar playing again and I find it taking more and more of my time. As a result I spend less and less time with the games, online or otherwise. Because of this you will find a lack of new posts to the games section. Really, I can’t see trying to write about something I’m no longer participating in, it’s just not right.

These changing interests also leave me spending less time scouring the web for new website tools or things like that. However, I do still support a couple of sites and mine of course so there is the possibility of my running into some software or software component that I will feel compelled to share. I just don’t expect a lot of that.

Along with this change in interests comes, for me, a change in location. I will be leaving Florida to go a little ways north. Not far enough north for me to be dealing with the frozen tundra, just far enough north though to get four seasons instead of the two and to no longer be directly impacted by the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico. There is the added bonus of no longer “trying to reason with hurricane season” as Jimmy Buffett sings. I’m not completely escaping the hurricane zone, I am, however moving far enough out of the bulls eye that the need to be ever vigilant and make the yearly trip to the store to restock the hurricane kit will be no longer necessary.

I am excited about the relocation. I come from a family that moved fairly regularly in my youth and so to discover that I have spent the bulk of my adult life living in the same metropolitan area was a little disappointing to me. So, when the opportunity came to relocate I considered it a blessing. I still consider it a blessing.

The thing about relocating is that it’s all new, (provided you are not relocating back to someplace). There are new places to see, new people to meet, new things to do, and the opportunity to be a new person yourself. You can change your hair, your style of dress, the types of things you do and not worry about what your current friends think because they will be farther away and might not notice as quickly and you will be making new friends who won’t know any different.

So, along with my already changing interests comes the natural change of interests and focus that accompanies a change in scenery. This may give me more material for the blog section of this site, where you can find additional personal musings and ramblings. Then again that too may be a changing interest. Who knows? To be sure though, changes, they are a coming.

Support artist. Buy their music.

Keep music and arts education in our schools.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

My internet went out.

I know, you’re thinking, how can the internet going out be a blessing in disguise. Trust me, it is.

So to clarify, my main internet went out. I still have my smart phone so I still get email, Facebook, Twitter and I can look up something if I really need to. It’s not the same thing though. I can’t play online games like ‘World of Warcraft’, working on my web projects is a challenge at best and in some cases not really an option, and it is a lot less inductive to pointless web browsing.

I recently decided to start playing guitar, more regularly. I want to learn some specific songs and I really want to get a little more serious about it. I also play World of Warcraft and it is usually the topic of conversation or at least part of the conversation with one or two of my co-workers at lunch. My guitar playing has been eating into my WoW time. I get caught up playing guitar and forget, or don’t have time to log into WoW to run daily quests or whatever.  This causes me to feel like I’ve failed at some responsibility with regards my friends. We won’t go there. But it does.

Anyway, I came home Tuesday evening to find no internet connection. After doing the normal reboots and resets,  I called about it. Supposedly there was just then a new service outage in my area. I’m thinking, ok, a few hours. No big deal, I can be patient and go do something else. The next morning, still nothing, but another call finds out that supposedly they are laying a new line and it should be back up by the time I get home from work. It wasn’t, and now supposedly the problem is with my modem. I am now thinking  I’m getting the run around. I schedule the service call. The best I could get without taking off work was Friday afternoon and it was going to cut into my work out. The service options for Saturday were going to cut into my time with my nephew. So I took the Friday time though I was not happy about it. At this point I am frustrated and very unhappy.

After some thought, I decided I could make the Saturday service call work, I’d just get more time with my nephew. So I called back to reschedule the appointment only to find out Saturday was no longer available and I was now looking at Sunday afternoon. No, I did not decide to just keep my original appointment. I took the Sunday one.

Really, what’s a few more hours? I won’t have to miss out on any of my workout on Friday, I will have more time to devote exclusively to my nephew on Saturday, and since I won’t be able to get on the internet to do any number of things I “need” to be doing, “should” be doing, or just do, I won’t have to feel guilty or anything like that about playing my guitar from the time I walk in the door until my fingers won’t move any more.

Permission to do something I really love and enjoy? Now that’s a blessing.

Support Artists. Buy their music.

Keep music and the arts in our schools.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

And now I may never get her back in her room. But is that really so bad?

One day while working out I came to some songs on my iPod that suddenly threw open the door to my inner child’s room and she came charging out. The music is a live version of an LP that I had in my teen years and the songs are songs I really liked then, and, while I have heard them since I was a teen I guess I just forgot how much I like them. Until this one day.   They just sort of came out of the player and smacked me in the face and said, “Hey! Wake up! You love this stuff. It’s not too late.” 
And then my little inner child just came charging out of her room. Sort of like when a kid is so excited to see a person and they run from the house or wherever so fast and with so much enthusiasm and fly into the arms of the person that is coming up the walk, and if the person isn’t ready for it, when the child gets to them they can be hit with so much energy that they a bowled over.

I am already excited about changes coming up in my life and when my little inner child came running through that door, she just added even more happiness and excitement to things for me. She is so happy to be able to come out and play.

Do you know what it turns out my inner child likes to play most? Apparently, I didn’t. I had thought she just liked to do a lot of different things. I mean she really likes drawing and is pretty good at it and gets compliments and all that. She likes to read. She likes to do things with her hands, like build things or fix things and such. Over the years, I’ve given her art stuff, and tools, and books, and toys, and games and I don’t remember what all else. They would make her quiet for a while, I thought they were making her happy, but no, just quiet. Like when a parent buys the screaming child in the store that toy that they only really want just to want it, and the parent is only really buying it so the kid will shut up instead of taking the time to really figure out what is going on and what the child really wants. As it turns out, my inner child really, really, loves music. She likes to listen to it, sing along with it, play it, hang out in places where it’s sold and played, she likes to buy it and watch it and talk about it.

In letting this child out to play I decided I was going to go learn to play one of these songs that had struck me and that quite honestly I have wanted to be able to play since I was a teen. (Trust me that was a long time ago.) So off to the music store I went in search of music for it. I found the music and even someone who could play it and they explained some key parts of it. That was incredibly helpful. I play guitar and this song has a rhythm that has given me a bit of trouble and it gave me some insight into not just this one song but also another song by the same group.

I have been working on learning this song over this past month. First I learned the notes to the intro and then into the chords. And as I would go along and get one part down and then realize that I could play that bit and then work on the next bit and get it, I’d get just a little more excited and it would keep me enthused to work on the next bit. Learning to play this song is not like learning songs I have learned before. I’m learning to play the rhythm guitar section that the rhythm guitarist plays on the recording and in the live shows. It’s not like learning just the chords so you can sing along. It’s cooler.

It’s given me confidence that I can really do this. It been a big step in my learning to play an instrument I have been learning to play since I was a child. I am now hearing the rhythms in other songs clearer and am able to play them better, even if I haven’t worked out the chords and fingerings. For the first time I actually believe I will be able to pick up some songs without needing sheet music, something I never expected I would be able to do. And my inner child is deliriously happy. She’s dancing around and rocking out and spinning in circles of delight.

And now if you will excuse me she’s asking me if she can go play now.

Support artists. Buy their music.

Keep music and the arts in our schools.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.