Tubes, Family, and Christmas

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Merry Christmas everyone!

I do hope you’ve been having a wonderful time in between two of my favorite holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas, obviously). It’s been a busy time for me and my family, and I see no signs of a slow-down any time soon – even over school break.

Tonight, my family is going to see the tree lighting in downtown Geneva. It’s the kick-off of the annual Santa Lucia Festival. Apparently, she’s a Swedish saint who gives out cookies. Awesome. We’re gonna try to score a few sweets and watch Santa (not a saint) light this big tree outside the Courthouse on Third Street. (If I ever have another daughter, I might pull for the name Lucy.)

Next up…

What happened last week:

Eleanor, my 15-month-old, got tubes put in her ears. If you’re not familiar with the procedure, it’s fairly simple, but for a *musician* dad, it’s intense. Read about it HERE. It’s called a “myringotomy”. I’m emotionally drained right now and kinda depressed. Hoping tonight will help.

And what’s coming this week:

Two huge recording projects from some friends – one new, one old. Gonna be a lot of work – probably 4-5 full, 8-hour days in the studio before Christmas, but well worth it. I’ll be doing tracking and mixing for both recordings.

And last of all:

I’ve had the weight of the next Restoration Project album on my shoulders for a few months now, with little forward progress. I’ve started tracking, but haven’t really felt “right” about any of what I’ve done so far. I plan to bring in a couple of friends from Redeemer Fellowship to kind of get some fresh energy and perspective on things.

Gonna be interesting. Gonna be hard work. But I was just reminded again of a belief that I have long held to:

I want to be known as an individual who, by God’s grace, has pushed the limits of human capacity – to live, to love, to create.

I look forward to the release of the next Restoration Project album in Spring 2013 and hope it breathes new life into our world.

Signing Off…

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I love writing. Maybe more specifically, I love ranting. I like creative writing, developing a blogging voice, thinking about what to post about, editing posts, forgetting to proof-read posts, finding pictures to go along with my post topics, and the like.

But blogging is not writing music. Or playing music. It’s a different creative outlet – one that I think I’m not half-bad at. But not one that I feel I should be spending so much time doing. I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging lately.

After much deliberating, and with so many things vying for my time at this point in my life, I’ve decided to focus my minutes more specifically on music for a while – writing and playing it.

To all of my subscribers and followers, I would like to say thank you for keeping up with my blog… I’d also like to let you know that I’m not completely done with this sort of journaling either. I’d like you all to join me on Twitter, following me there (which is here: http://twitter.com/jaymathesmusic). Yes, it’s shorter bursts of words, but words none-the-less. You can also Like me on Facebook, here: http://facebook.com/jaymathesmusic. And, you can subscribe to my Jaymathes.com news posts, herehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/jaymathesnews. Or, of course, I have a monthly newsletter. Sign up here: http://box5496.temp.domains/~jaymathe/?page_id=33. The point is, you’ll still be able to read words from me – just not here.

So please come along! Hop on a different train with me and continue reading with me…

Twitter: http://twitter.com/jaymathesmusic
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jaymathesmusic
Jaymathes.com News: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jaymathesnews
My Newsletter: http://box5496.temp.domains/~jaymathe/?page_id=33

Also, I still have some unfinished blog business here, too. I do plan to finish up my top 25 albums of all time list, but I may not post that here… I’ll make sure you’re all able to see it, though.

So here’s to a new year of opportunity ahead and 232 posts behind. Cheers!