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Day Sixty Nine (Year Four)

Another night with time spent in the studio meant another day of feeling like I'm getting closer to where I want to be!  I'll be the first to admit that I'm still a long ways off, but having somewhere I can go to focus my energies has been everything I hoped it would be when we moved.  Now that things are set up and functional, however, I'm noticing things that will make the process easier.

1) A timer.  I had bought a small clock with a timer in it when I was living in WDM, but somehow it never ended up being used for its intended purpose.  Well, now I need to use it so that I make sure to get to everything I want to get to in a practice session.  I'm finding that, if there are four things on my musical to do list for the day, I'll get around to two of them, but not the others.  If I'm going to improve at the rate I'd like to, I need to be getting around to everything (or at least more than half of everything) on my list each day.

Take today, for example.  There were four things on my list.  They were:

1) Lick #2 in Guitar Aerobics
2) More work with the DVD booklets I pulled out last night
3) "Ledbetter"
4) The Blues Goldmine book.

I got through the first two items on the list, but the last two didn't get touched.  Some of that stems from a need to get into the studio earlier in the day than I have been.

2) The need for more time.  Some of this ties in with getting into the studio earlier, but while I've been making strides the last few days (few weeks, really), I really noticed tonight that, just about the time I was really starting to feel like I could settle in for a long stretch of practicing, it was time to blog and get ready for the day tomorrow.  Even with all of the progress of late, when I find myself getting tired at the end of a long day, I feel like I'm letting myself down by short changing my goals.

It was a good day, music-wise, but also a day where it was clear to me that, while progress is being made, there is still a long road ahead.

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