General – Page 12

Three Day Training With Lenzie – Spring ’06

This year’s Spring training session was–as always–an incredible learning experience. It was great to spend such focused time with Lenzie and the rest of our classmates to get to delve a little deeper into concepts and ideas than we would normally have the time to spend in our weekly classes. The work itself of course was great, and I felt this session was good for making some connections between ideas I’ve had in my mind but haven’t quite understood within the big picture of Tai-Chi. It was also just a pleasure to have the guests from out of town that we did as they brought a lot of experiences and challenges to the push-hands training, and I find that Tai Chi practioners are always enjoyable to meet. With so many great take aways from both the form work and push hands training, I’m looking forward to continuing on with practice, our weekly classes, and of course Lenzie’s next camp and training session!

^_^

Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music

I’ve long been a fan of Samuel Barber’s music but have until now only known well a handful of pieces. Recently I decided I wanted to know more about his life and works and so checked out the book Samuel Barber : The Composer and His Music from the public library. It’s the first composer biography I have read in a while and although maybe only a hundred pages in, I’ve been enjoying the book immensely.

Reading about Barber in his youth, I was particularly inspired by his being so well-read and being such an eloquent writer himself in his letters. The time and era he lived in really seems like such a different place(though his lament that Europeans were so much more aware of Classical music doesn’t seem so distant), and I found myself drawn in to the character of the society written about as much as the biographical accounts.

It’s been great to find out more of the historical details of the works I’ve long enjoyed, and perhaps more so being exposed to works of his I haven’t yet spent time with, and now am doing so(the Serenade for Strings is quite lovely).
Hopefully this week I will be finishing up the piece I have been working on (with time after to listen and make sure all is well), and when that is finished I think I will have to devote some time to exploring Barber’s scores as well as to become a little more acquainted with the world of poetry (there’s something very inspiring about Barber’s connection with poetry, and it’s a world I simply don’t know very well and I think would enjoy getting to know.)

Quotes from Grisey, Lutoslawski

I had meant to post about Grisey and Murail a month or so ago, but had gotten sidetracked and moved on to other musical interests. I thought I’d quote a couple passages from things I’ve read below.
I found this interview with Gerard Grisey a month or so ago and found alot in it, especially concerning the idea of extended time. This section came at an interesting time as I was busy contemplating the form in the first movement/section of the piece I’ve been working on and contemplating “what happens next”. I also enjoyed his thoughts on Feldman:

GG: Well, you know, I have very often been to juries for composition all around the world. When you look at the scores of young composers, very often you don’t have time to look at the scores completely. But the most important moment is the first change. The composer comes and establishes an idea that everybody understands. Everybody can have an idea. Everybody. The problem is to have a second one. This is a greater problem. And the major problem is to know where and when to bring in this second idea. And very often, you realize after a few pages that he is not a musician. He does the wrong thing. You have this feeling. And yet, you have composers as fascinating as Morton Feldman, for instance, who do the opposite. With Feldman, it’s absolutely extraordinary. It’s like anti-music in the sense that all expectation is constantly deluded. He puts down a pattern and you expect it’s going to go in that direction, and at that moment it doesn’t. Later, it changes at exactly the moment when you think, “That’s going to last.” He is constantly negating whatever you expect. For me, he is the true and the only Minimalist.

I just finished reading a book entitled “Lutoslawski”, edited by Ove Nordwall, which I had gotten from the San Francisco Public Library. It’s great as it came out in the middle of Lutoslawski’s career and covers a lot of ground in that very fruitful period. His thoughts on aleatoric counterpoint and it’s relationship to performers and how it allows a sense of naturalness and expressivity while still achieving a complex counterpoint effect really provoked a lot of thought as it was a very big issue to me (and still is!) in making music representative of what is intended: a problem I have long had with traditional notation and musical ideas existing in their own individual times.
In the the interview between Lutoslawski and Tadeusz Kaczynski on the Symphony No. 2, Lutoslawski ends with saying:

The point is that even if music can arouse in us associations with the rich world of human feelings, in different people these associations will be different. Hence a simple conclusion: it is unimportant whether the compoer writes his work under the influence of extra-musical impulses, whether it is related in his consciousness or subconsciousness to some cycle of events, or whether he himself plans to express something which could be said in words. All this belongs to the field of sources of musical inspiration, but for me it never becomes the ultimate goal. And that is why, just like so many other compoers, I could not answer enquiry about the concrete meaning of my music. Just as I could not say what is the meaning of Debussy’s preludes or Bach’s partitas. But isn’t it part of the great attraction of music that what is says cannot be expressed in any other way?

^_^

Meredith Monk: Impermanence

For a long time now I’ve been quite a fan of Meredith Monk‘s work. I had first come across it while in college, listening to many of her recordings and checking out scores from the library and the American Music Center (I was a student member at the time). I’m not even sure how I came across her work–perhaps through some books mentioning Minimalists?–but I do remember spending much time listening to her recordings (one of my favorites is a recording called Monk and the Abbess, a recording of pieces by both her and Hildegaard von Bingen). I was also found quite a lot in a book of interviews and essays on and by her (especially her Mission Statement), though it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to read them again; this book seems to be it, but I can’t remember if that is the one or not though I can’t seem to find any others).

While I’ve had quite a joy in listening to her music and engaging with her thoughts and works, I never really understood what it was really about her that really resonated with me. Feldman, Barber, Crumb, Lutoslawski… while I can’t quite articulate in words everything I feel about them, I to some degree feel that I understand what it is about their work that I am engaged with and what draws me back to them time and again.

Tonight, Lisa and I had a chance to attend a performance of Impermanance by Meredith Monk and her Ensemble at Yerba Buena, the first time either of us have had a chance to see her perform live. I was excited to finally be seeing her perform in person, though it was also somewhat of a shock to my system in many ways, as I had not really spent too much time with her music in a while, focusing very much on a different sound world in my own musical work, as well as having been quite busy at my day job the past couple weeks. But what an absolutely pleasant shock it was to be there and to see the performance unfold, just so beautifully done.

Tonight I saw many other composer’s work showing up in Meredith Monk’s work, as well as qualities very much her own. As is usual, musical time has been on my mind, and today I had just finished reading an article by Lutoslawski on the Symphony while riding the F-Line to work, discussing the qualities of limited aleatory in how performers are in their own times, and in being so are able to focus on their musical lines and be expressive in them. That struck me in a number of her pieces tonight, especially in the vocalists, whether it was prewritten out or not, it had that quality of naturalness and freedom to breathe.

Of Feldman, in one piece I heard qualities of his “Three Voices”, perhaps since there were three vocalists singing in mostly repeated measures of material. In another, at the end were a piano and vibraphone playing the same material though seemingly in their own free time, reminiscent of Feldman’s middle period of notation of notated pitches but free durations.

In he choreography I was reminded very much of a work by Merce Cunningham, especially the repeated gestures by performers, each in their own time. Also, the aspect of playfulness and seriousness and beauty in the gestures reminded me of a passage I had read in a book with interviews with some of Cunningham’s former dancers, and how one couldn’t understand how pretending to play jax was dance until Cunningham demonstrated and sure enough it was dance and it was beautiful.

Perhaps I see these things in Monk’s work because I am familiar with these things through these other artists; I do not know Monk’s history and the context of her and the times to know what is truly hers and what may be influences by others. But I think that these things are inconsequential and that she truly uses the many techniques that are available to her with the full intention and effectiveness as anyone else has ever done with the same techniques.

Lisa and I were talking at the break and we were noticing how wonderful the pace of the works were: slow and thoughtful. I think Lisa said it best in saying that the performances were both completely full with intention as well as attention. Another amazing aspect of her work was how no matter how difficult the gestures, there always seemed to be a real sense of control. I have seen other performers do similar types of work but were never nearly as relaxed, often taken up by the spirit of the moment and losing a sense of what was going on around them. Tonight however, the group seemed intimately aware of not only what they were doing but what everyone else was doing as well.

(This leads me to a bit of an aside: I found myself a bit annoyed by the gentlemen seated to the side of us. At times they giggled at the works, and the part that got me was at the break when in conversation they said that “they could do that!” and that they “had done things like that before!” with the sense of either “what’s so special with them?” or “we’re just as good.” It struck me how superficial those comments were, that they were looking at the surface and seeing techniques and not seeing the spirit which was underneath it all, and if that they really *could* do what the ensemble was doing that night, they wouldn’t be of the quality of character to make such statements as they did. Perhaps I’m wrong about these gentleman, but maybe not…)

In the end, the performance left us both very satisfied and grateful for having been able to attend. Thinking at the end, I think it’s not necessarily the technical capacity which really got me, but the strength of the performance, and that seems very much tied to the quality of character and spirit of Meredith Monk. Not having ever met her, she seemed on stage as a person who was tapped in to the spirit of her art work at all times, that she probably carries herself the same way when performing than when waking up and going about her day. That is what I think has been what I have been so attracted to in her work: the seriousness of her intention and the spirit and character of the person who is behind it all.

Life having been a bit hectic for me lately, it was an incredible gift to have been able to attend tonight’s performance and to see not only beautiful works performed wonderfully, but also to see someone who has such an artful spirit. At the same time, I felt a real sense of concern for her work as well, wondering if years from now other ensembles will pick up her works and be able to perform them wih the same qualities that she has done tonight. I do not know, and perhaps the title of her work, Impermanence, may very well apply to the gem which is the work of Meredith Monk. After tonight, I think she is a much more subtle and refined artist than many would first see, and I hope that in time that more and more people will become engaged with her work. For myself, I hope that I can take the lessons of her vision and character into my own life, and hope I can learn to be tapped in to that best of myself at all times as well.

Counterpoint

I’ve started to go the San Francisco Public Library on a regular basis, enjoying very much their CD and DVD collection as well as their fantastic music resources (books, scores). I can’t say enough how great it is as a resource.

I’ve been studying counterpoint on the side for a half-year or so now, not too deeply as I’d like, but here and there as time permits. I had been using Counterpointer for exercises and focusing mostly on looking at 16th Century style, but at the library I picked up Ernst Krenek’s Tonal Counterpoint in the Style of the Eighteenth Century, listed as an “Outline”, which read much like a set of notes. I enjoyed this text immensely as it was in this brief format. A very quick read but very thought provoking for me as well.

For some time I had thought that 16th Century counterpoint was more interesting, but in reading the Krenek text, I found myself drawn to thinking about 18th Century counterpoint and on a larger level, the progression of form, the concerns of material usage within the context of transformations of itself and other material, and treatments of musical time. I’ve long desired to to write a longer text on musical time as it has been the first major concern of mine and continues to this day to be what I meditate most on when contemplating music…

Now thinking about Counterpoint and how it relates to ideas of glissandi, masses of sound, and non-synchronized musical ideas (i.e. in varying tempi layers) amongst other things. A lot of thoughts on these matters lately, I think I’ll have to spend some time whenever I am finished with this piece I have been working on to write down these thoughts. Even if they are only in framents in my head now, it’ll be useful to get them down and to take a step back to see it as a whole. But first things first, and back to working on music…

^_^

(Sidenote: I think I understand now what Feldman was talking about when he said he was a melodist…)

Today at 27

Today I am 27… Birthdays never felt like so much an occasion to celebrate but more so a time to reflect on the life lived, to think about who I am and what I am doing, and to set an agenda for the future year to come. As I believe every year for the past number of years, I think that this year will be the best year yet.

The past year has been incredibly rich, filled with many new experiences, a lot of hard work, at times wonderfully exhausting and other times simply tiring. Time passes and we all grow; there were many lessons from the past year–as there always are–and many of them have still yet to really be digested. Besides the lessons learned, I’ve also been thinking back to what seems a different and previous self and find there are aspects of myself which I think are not as present today as I’d like them to be, and that some of those things will be qualities I will be thinking about and working on as the new year comes.

There’s a great deal to work on–in my work and on myself–but at the same time I think that I am glad that I have gotten to where I am with all of my endeavors, and feel that while things are not perfect, they are doing well, and that the future will afford many opportunities to grow and move towards the goals I have set.

Thinking ahead, I am looking forward to getting back to the piece I had been working on as well as a number of musical ideas I am eager to explore and work with. As always, finding the time to work on my music, listening and studying other music, reading and learning, working a day job, and simply experiencing life is such a balancing act, but as I sit here and am taking a step back from my daily life in San Francisco, I’m not thinking so much on the balancing act but the tasks to be taken and how rich they are. Even though I think I’ll be setting a high personal bar for myself, no matter how tough it’ll be (and I think it’ll probably be completely impossible to achieve all that I’d like to…), I at least know that they’re all worth it.
We’ll see how this coming year plays itself out as the days come and go, but I have a good feeling about this one…

^_^

My Best Self

This weekend I was thinking about when am I at my best self, when am I being the person I’d like to be. I find that this exercise is very healthy and beneficial to do, and perhaps have not done it enough lately as the past months were so filled up that I didn’t take a step back to see the bigger picture as often as I should have. I think that I’m really at the best of myself when:

I am doing tai-chi and focusing on everything that goes along with it (mental, spiritual, and physical)
I am regularly spending time to write down my thoughts, as it helps to clarify the ideas and thoughts in my mind
I spend time daily to contemplate life
I am focused
I am aware of daily life and how fascinating every day things really are, and how refreshing the simplest things can be
I am appreciative of all that I have (Lisa, my job, my life here in San Francisco, my family, my Tai-Chi teacher, the musical world I live in, my dear friends) and all that is around me
I am walking slowly and observing the world
My mind is quiet, and I am here in the present

These are some of the things that when I do them I feel that I am at the best of myself. As they say, “Practice makes permanent”, so I think it is best for me to practice the above, to stop doing that which is not of my very best, and to continue to push to cultivate and develop myself towards what I idealize: a thoughtful, caring human being, who sees the world with fascination and lives life beautifully.

December in Ireland – Sounds Electric ’05

December is my favorite month of the year, one which I always look forward to. It is a time of year when I can go home to visit family and is usually a very thoughtful and quiet time as well, a period of reflection and planning for the new year to come. It’s also the month I was born in, which is fun to look forward to. ^_^

This past weekend was the Sounds Electric ’05 conference at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, just 40 minutes outside of Dublin, which ended up being a very enjoyable and memorable event for me. I could not think of a better way to start this favorite month of mine.

I left San Francisco a couple days prior to the conference, leaving noon Wednesday and arriving at Heathrow in London at 6:00AM, then after a short layover took a flight from 9:00 to 10:00AM to Dublin. When I had scheduled my trip, I wanted to spend some time to be able to go around Dublin at least for one day, as I figured I had no idea when I’d be able to visit Ireland again and wanted to make the most of my trip. So after landing and emailing Lisa to let her know I arrived safely, I proceeded–with guidebook in hand–to go around Dublin, seeing the Book of Kells exhibit at Trinity College, Christ Church, walking down Grafton Street and the Temple Bar Area, and finishing up at the Guiness Storehouse (which I rather enjoyed very much!). After all that, I walked up and over the river and down the North side, found the Epicurean Food Hall and ate a quick dinner of Fish and Chips (which were fantastic =) ) and then off to the train station to end my day trip around Dublin and to head on to Maynooth.

From the little I saw of Dublin, I found myself surprised at how loud the city was, with all it’s cars, trucks, and motorcycles buzzing around, as well as how fast the pace of the city was, especially on Grafton Street. The people reminded me of New Yorkers, all busy on their way to somewhere for some reason or another. I was tired though and moving along at a rather slow tempo (I think by the end of the day I had been awake for some 40 hours with only an hour’s worth of sleep in that, having not slept much at all on the plane rides) so perhaps it was just me who was moving slower than everything else.

The train ride to Maynooth that evening was quiet, and it being dark outside, when I arrived to Maynooth I had walked around and gotten a little lost before finally making it to the Conference center check-in there and finally getting to my room. A nice quiet room and a long sleep that evening.

The next day at breakfast I was fortunate to have run into John ffitch, whom I met for the first time there, and whom I had the great pleasure of getting to know better that weekend. After breakfast we headed over to Victor Lazzarini‘s studio where we found Victor, Dr. Boulanger, and his son Philip. As Dr. B and Philip had just landed, altogether we went out for a breakfast for them. Victor had to leave to go pick up more people from the airport, and since Dr. B and Philip were a bit tired from their flight, we walked with them back to their rooms, and then John and I went back to the cafe for more coffee and tea and conversation.

After splitting with John I went back to my room for a brief nap and headed over to the Aula Maxima (the concert hall) to catch a rehearsal there for the night’s concert, as we all had planned to meet there as well. While waiting there I first got to meet Rory Walsh, whom I had seen before on some mailing lists but had not had the pleasure of meeting until then. Quite a programmer and composer, I was very happy to meet him and to get acquainted with the work he was doing. Victor later returned from the Airport with Rajmil Fischman, another composer whom I was lucky to meet at this conference, and I had the pleasure of getting to know him a bit better. John, Dr. B and Philip arrived shortly after and after some time there at the rehearsal we all ended up going to a very tasty Italian restaurant, everyone catching up with everyone else and enjoying a rather nice meal and pleasant conversation.

The concert that evening was very enjoyable, though I have to say that jet lag was starting to dig in and it made it hard to be completely there at the concert. At the conclusion of the concert I ended up going into town with everyone but did not grab a beer at the pub that night, just returned back to the room after purchasing some water and chocolates to go over my presentation I was preparing for Sunday, and then falling asleep.

Saturday morning at breakfast I sat down with John, Dr. B, and Philip and while eating Dr. B was called away. We joked around that his gear had gotten rained on and other things, but we were to find later the reason for this. After breakfast we all headed on to Dr. B’s keynote speech discussing Csound, its relevance today, with many examples of projects from Dr. B’s students and also examples from Hollywood movies where Csound was being used. Dr. B’s talk was as great as any of his other talks I had heard (he’s great to hear lecture if you ever have a chance to catch one!). At one point though a person had come in during Dr. B’s presentation, someone who I didn’t pay attention to as I was listening to the presentation, but Dr. B stops and then introduces him to us all: it was Barry Vercoe! What a treat it was to have the author of Csound and founding member of MIT’s Media Lab there for the occasion of this Csound focused conference, and a complete surprise to us all (even Victor did not know Barry would be there).

(So that’s where Dr. B went at breakfast, to find and greet Barry when he arrived to Maynooth…)

The keynote and the concert from the night before really set a great tone for the conference I think, and it was really a great time from there on out. After the keynote and lunch we returned to the Aula Maxima for the first of two concerts of “tape music” (pre-recorded computer music). It was here I first heard one of Jan Jacob Hofmann‘s pieces and also got to meet and get acquainted with him. (An absolute gem of a human being!). It was great to hear such a good concert of music, as it had been quite some time since I had heard a concert of electronic music in a concert setting.

After the concert was the first session of papers. Victor discussed and demonstrated using the Csound API with TCL, showing some of the potential of using the API for your own projects. It was nice to see how he uses the API and to hear his explanation of it, and really quite helpful to see how his TCLCsound project worked. Following his presentation was one by Simon Schampijer on his project RAViC, a set of FLTK widgets for visualizing audio signals in the time and frequency domain, implemented as a set of plugins to Csound. (After this presentation I ended up on a number of occasions with Simon and was very happy to meet and get to know him, another gem of a human being!). The final presentation was by Alan O Cinneide on his pvspitch pitch tracking opcode, which was nice to hear how he went through the process of creating his opcode and the research details that he considered for the technique he came up with.

After these papers was a featured presentation by Rajmil Fischman, “Real and Virtual Landscapes in Electroacoustic music”, a very thought provoking and well presented presentation on the nature/perception of musical materials and transformations.

A light dinner at SuperMac’s (yes, I can say that I have tried the SuperMac burger!) and then the evening’s concert, an hour long multimedia improvisation with musicians, dancers, and visual work. I was very near exhausted at this point and did fall asleep for a part of the performance (going halfway around the world does take quite a toll!), but I enjoyed very much all that I was able to catch, and hopefully will be able to see these performers again.

After the concert I enjoyed a nice long dinner with Victor, Rajmil, Simon, Neal Smith-Amies (unfortunately I only got to talk with him briefly and didn’t get to know him better), and another fellow whose name I unfortunately did not catch. After the lovely long meal at a Chinese restaurant with quite good food, I ended up passing on going to the pub where most everyone else went and went back to my room to once again go over presentation material.

Sunday morning after breakfast I was fortunate enough to attend the rehearsal of Dr. Boulanger and Rajmil Fischman’s music for their concert that evening which I would be missing due to having to catch a flight. It was great to hear the excerpts of Rajmil’s music as well as getting to hear a full performance of Dr. B’s “Into the Light”, a gorgeous piece with Philip on cello and Dr. B on Radio Baton doing live manipulation. I only wish I could have made the concert that evening!

After the rehearsal, John and I went with Victor to test our laptops with the projector for our presentations later, and running a little late, we entered the afternoon tape music concert after the first piece. After the concert (again very good), a number of us ran over to the cafe and got a bite to eat. I left the group a little early to setup as I was first on the afternoon session of papers.

I was given 45 minutes to present, and as I got into it and was going along I noticed that I had a good more I wanted to cover and already 45 minutes had passed! I quickly went through the rest that I could in 15 minutes and made it through the presentation. Whew! I usually get pretty nervous when it comes to speaking in front of people and I hope I wasn’t too inarticulate up there (I have tendency to mumble, which my parents remind me everytime I’m home: “Speak clear-ly Steven!” my mother always says ^_^ ). I felt bad as Rory Wlash and Andres Vidal, who presented after me, had to rush a bit on my account through their presentations, but I can say that their presentations were excellent and seemed very well received to me (if anything I enjoyed the presentations very much!). After that session I had gotten good feedback which made me feel that the presentation I gave went well, so was happy with that.

After a short break, we returned to hear John ffitch’s talk about Csound, the state of it now and a bit of background about how we got to where we are and where he wanted to go with it. It was great to hear John’s talk about how he got into Csound as well as to get his view of things as they were very illuminating (and I find I enjoy John speaking very much as I like his sense of humor =) ).

Barry Vercoe was given a space to present on Extended Csound but unfortunately I had to leave after John’s presentation and was unable to hear the QA session for John as well as Barry’s presentation which I would have loved to have caught. I also wished I could have been there for Dr. B’s and Rajmil’s concert that evening, but I had to catch a plane that night to London and then wait in Heathrow until the morning to catch the first plane to San Francisco to get back to work.

Leaving for the Dublin airport with Victor, we had a great conversation on our way there, and parting our ways I felt a sense of sadness to be missing the last bit of the conference and to be leaving that really great group of people, but also a sense of real joy to have been able to be there and to be a part of it. I think I will always look back to that trip to Ireland and that conference very fondly, and can’t thank Victor and all who worked to organize the concert for putting on such a memorable event. Home now in San Francisco, I return very inspired to work, happy to have met so many wonderful people, and looking forward to listening to more of their music and to when I can meet these people again.

It’s already been a great year for me, and entering into December on such a great note, I’m looking forward to working away the evenings, programming and composing, and to the holidays soon to come.

^_^

Roy Harris, Samuel Barber, Feldman

I have been listening to a lot of Barber again, part of my personal management plan to begin listening and studying a lot music again; I’ve long been enamored with Barber’s colors, the way ideas can move a major 2nd and bring about a lushness and bitter sweet character, and now am finding myself once again very entranced. I find myself coming back to his First Essay for Orchestra, there’s just so much there in that piece.

I had never really given Roy Harris’s music much attention, no particular reason I guess, but today on Rhapsody I put on Roy Harris: Symphonies Nos. 7 & 9, currently listening to Symphony no.7 and am enjoying very much the colors. I don’t know what you call that era of American music, but the big harmonies and sound are always a draw for me. The character of the piece at times is perhaps too light for me, but the colors, there is something there that I am very interested in. I think will spend more time with his music, as well as other’s from that era.

The other day while listening walking down the street, listening to Barber, I got to thinking about Feldman’s music as well, and some relationship between the two. Perhaps it’s the nostalgic character, but thinking of late Feldman works, maybe there’s technical reason as well: open harmonies, major 2nd’s…

Personal Management

Life has been busy these past few months since I got back from Poland: work, jury duty, time with friends, supporting Lisa in her work for her Doctoral qualifying exam (she passed and did marvelously!), as well as other other general tasks. The past couple of weeks saw my schedule lighten up, and in that time I spent mostly organizing myself.

I’ve been listening to a lot of FranklinCovey audiobooks the past few weeks, downloading their trial software and studying up on their ideas of personal management and planning system. There’s a lot of really good ideas there I think, and using my preferred organizer software KOrganizer/PI which I use at work, home, and on my Zaurus PDA, I’ve gotten better at organizing my todo’s and scheduling myself according to my values and goals. There’s still quite a room for improvement in how I manage my time and activities, but I think some very good steps have been taken.

It’s interesting how much of a process this is, of adjusting one’s behaviors and thought patterns (one of the greatest quotes I heard on one of the audiobooks was “you can’t do the same things and expect different results”), and how one makes plans, evaluates how successful one is at them, and continually adjusts to get closer to the goals.

I hope that the lessons learned the past few weeks will grow into a more productive, fulfilling, and rewarding lifestyle. I think that already there are changes happening for the better, and I’m looking forward to working with these new ideas and concepts to move my goals forward.