Just like yesterday, I’m going to write this post as quickly as I can. Let me just keep going until I have my required 500 words, and then I’m done.

Wordpress & Blogger: I’ve been thinking a lot about Blogger since I saw Mark Anthony Neal’s blog the other day. I love the formatting of the blog, especially given that the reader can choose from multiple styles of viewing: flipcards, magazine style, mosaic, etc. Of course, Neal is a substantive writer - I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But the style of his blog is really radical. I’ll have to think about using Blogger again.

What I like about Wordpress, though, is the ability to develop the site into almost anything you can think of. I’m really just at the beginning of figuring out how to do this - how to develop a theme - but I can already see that the payoff will be big. I just need to keep on working through a few tutorials and I should be able to build-out a theme that suits my needs better than the typical out-of-the-box theme.

Blogging & Writing: There really is no fundamental difference between blogging and writing, but I do need to differentiate between the short bits I write for blogs and the larger, book-length projects I should be working on. I really need to get my head out of my ass with regard to my dissertation manuscript and see if I can get a publisher. It has been five years now since I defended my diss, so there is no good excuse for not having submitted it to a publisher. It’s really only my anxieties that keep me from moving forward with it. I guess I have been waiting until I have a tenure-track job before I commit myself to a writing project, but that’s really short sighted. Just fucking do it.

Musical Practice: At the same time, I need to re-start my musical practice. I have been on hiatus from practicing since about Thanksgiving. I need to keep in mind that musical practice and writing need to be the two staples of my overall professional practice. I have been doing a lot of coding because I have a vague notion of becoming involved in digital humanities, but even there, writing and musical practice are more fundamental to my skillset.

As for my musical practice, I simply need to get back to practicing the chord solo pieces I was working on before I took a break. Aside from that, it wouldn’t hurt to do some ear training and transcription as well as some piano practice. I need to have very low expectations of myself with regard to the piano - just work a bit on Mikrokosmos and some jazz chords - no big deal. I am a guitarist, though, so I do need to spend most of my musical energy on that instrument. Again, as with writing, just fucking do it.