I’m cleaning the basement. It’s May. The kids are out of school, summer is here and I’ve got an album to write. For anyone keeping track, this is the album that I was suppose to turn in to my Producers laaaaast June. I have psyched myself out. I asked for the one thing I wanted most of all….and I got it. In March 2010, I asked Kathrin Shorr and Tim Burlingame of Sweet Talk Radio to produce my next album. They said yes. Admittedly, I never thought they’d say yes. This immediately threw me into a state of creative paralysis. I couldn’t write a grocery list, couldn’t write a card, couldn’t write a song. You try working with your heroes, it’s daunting. But now that I’ve ‘failed’ to turn in an album, it’s like, I’m free. I’ve failed and it’s cool to have that out of the way. I can’t possibly disappoint anyone by actually turning IN songs…because I could always turn in nothing. Yes, I see that this is a little bit twisted.
So I’m making space. Space and time are hard things to come by when you’re a parent. But it seems the universe is on my side. Space has opened wide in my family’s life this spring. I’m not going to blow this chance.
I keep these little notebooks. Lists of things I need to do each day. I cross things off as I get them done. If there isn’t a line through it, it ain’t done. I keep looking back at what’s not done, day after day. But, you know how there’s always an email that you need to reply to, and it somehow gets farther and farther down the page until you don’t even see it anymore? And how, if there’s 20 of these, you don’t even want to open your email anymore? Yeah, me neither.
When one of my little notebooks of unfinished “to do lists” get too big….I start a new notebook. I can’t bear to even look at the old one anymore. I’ll pretend to “lose” it. But it’s still there. Haunting me. I’ve probably been avoiding people. Because I owe them an email. If it’s you, I apologize. I’ve been so busy. I’ve been avoiding writing an album. Do you even know how time consuming that is?
There’s a giant pile of unnecessary stuff in my garage now. There’s a giant garage sale on my horizon and there’s a giant space that has opened up in my basement. That’s my writing space. Wish me luck. Don’t email. Bring food, the kids need to eat.