What's a brotha to do?

What's up ladies and gentlemen of the interwebz. It's been a minute since I last wrote a post. I've been on a blog/writing hiatus for a while now. The reason? A lot of work at the main retail gig mostly. Lately, I've been getting these long six-day work weeks. Eight hours, six days a week. They're exhausting but hey, I think they call that a job. 

I've been reading a lot. I recently finished The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Nearly 800 pages! At one point I was averaging about 100 pages a day. I'm currently reading the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Bring on more classics of the western canon! Brothers Karamazov is such a great work with so much gravitas that I think it deserves to be reread in a couple years if not sooner. 

The Canterbury Tales took me a long time to get into. For a while, I contemplated reading it but instead got hooked on video games for a few days. I've been playing a lot of Overwatch within my last two days off, leaving me in a kind of zoned-out, zombified, sort of state. The game is fun but it gets to be a little mind-numbing after a while. I've been in gaming limbo. Most of the time I don't play games at all but every now and then on days off, I play a lot. Missing out on precious reading time on days off.  

Actually, if I don't read pretty often [every day] my mind starts to wander and drift off into this kind of zoned-out mode. What can I say? I have to stay engaged in the literature to feel active in life. I've become such a reader that when I don't read for one-two days, I start to feel not quite like myself. Fiction especially. And philosophy. Literary essays. 

In terms of music, I've been playing weekly jazz duo jams with my friend Jason Thomas. I'll probably post some music from our sessions here at some point soon. The jam sessions have become more improvisational but I would say that we need to increase our repertoire. Especially Coltrane songs. Songs like Afro Blue, My Favorite Things, Naima, etc. 

I had a freaky moment at work during the past week where I met a music student who actually studied with my music mentor, the new music composer Frank Abbinanti. Apparently, Sid studied with Frank for five years [or more] in Chicago before he came out to California to study at Cal Art. This is pretty astounding. I was dumbstruck. This is where I get to say that I believe in God and metaphysics. What are the chances of meeting this guy? Considering that we are both from Chicago and both are mentored by Frank. Apparently, my step-father knows Sid and his father as well from when they used to run a new music orchestra. Wow! How about that? 

Having free time to write a rambling post like this has been great. In fact, I've been so tired from work lately that I haven't had the energy to turn on my laptop and write posts, let alone my usual book reviews. Instead, the last month or so I've been ranting a lot about retail, and my Marxist tendencies, as well as my arrival to class consciousness via retail work. It's a wonderful world. 

Plans for the future? Well, for one thing, I'm going to get back to my usual book review stuff. For another, I plan on going back and working on my first novel, which was written and finished a while ago, but definitely not perfect. I'm actually not satisfied with it and intend on going back to the original version, which didn't have much editing, without messing it up. My problem with my memoir initially was that I finished a rough draft and then wrote a longer, edited version. However, after going over the edited version I realized that it was edited in a wrongheaded way, forcing me to go back to the drawing board. 

Thankfully, I have the original version. Just to explain to you how different the original is from the edited version, the original version is only 50 pages, whereas the edited version is 100 pages. A lot of people have told me that I should submit it to publishers and try to get something done with it. We will see after I rework it again. 

Likewise, I want to write more short stories of a fictional nature. Science fiction and just plain, old, regular fiction. A reader must write if he or she is so inclined. I've been reading a lot of Jack Reacher [the short story collection]  so I'm inspired to write things in that vein. We will see. 

Lastly, it's not that I haven't quite had as much time to write that I haven't written anything. Rather, it's just that I've been damn tired. So tired that I haven't really been playing guitar much. I've stopped attending the bar open mics because I realized their limitations [two songs, ten minutes, buy drinks, too much $] and in fact, when I play and buy drinks there, I'm losing money and free time. In terms of music, I'm more motivated by Frank Abbinanti's musical advice and direction. In terms of writing, I'm very inspired. But sometimes you gotta force yourself to write. Even when you're dead tired. 

The holidays can be a real downer for people. This time of year is hard on workers because most people have to work during the holidays rather than spend time with their families. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. The important thing is to keep doing the things that motivate you and push yourself to get the things you want to be done. If you don't push yourself, nobody else will. 

I've got to keep pushing myself.