MUSIC
- My 'five a day'. Four hours of composing and one hour of piano a day. That seems about right. Let the Pareto principle come into play. I'm always spreading myself too thin by doing allsorts of different things, and it's about time I knuckle down and focus on two things: composing and pianoing (not a word, but has a nice 'ring' (in the laizzes vibrer sense, obviously) to it). This may seem lots to some people and little to others – but doing this every day is the key, not just doing ten hours on one day a week …
- Finish writing a musical with my lyricist and librettist friend Adrian and try our best to get it performed, published, storm the West End, get a film made, release the soundtrack, make a couple of million or two (am I already being unrealistic … ?).
- Aim to have ten compositions performed in or outside of music college. I figure that this might be quite ambitious, but this could be a solo piano piece or a string quartet, rather than just a large chamber ensemble. I'm going to aim for ten and see what happens …
- Pass my piano diploma. I really need to do this. I'm hoping to learn all the pieces to a good standard, put on a piano solo recital, and then take the exam. Hopefully it will help if I need to get any peripatetic teaching work, and also, it just gives me a goal to practice for.
- Make an album. No stuffy contemporary-classical stuff. Something that people want to listen to. Either something with a bit of a groove, or some relaxing solo piano stuff. Just something low budget but good fun.
- Write more regularly on this Blogger page so that I can write down some more of my more ridiculous musicings.
LIFESTYLE
- Seven-and-a-half hours sleep and no more. Just as it says on the tin. I've read that I don't need any more than this, so why should I sleep any more than this? It's fairly ridiculous and lazy not to. I'm sure I'll see my productivity increase if I stick to this.
- Move to north London. I'm sure there's a gang after me in south London – I've had paint thrown at me. No. More. Paint.
- Bake more. I'm going to bake twelve recipes across the year.
- Eat less junk food. I am such a tray-baker. Throw some oven-cooked food in a baking tray, bang it in the oven, and I'm done. Eugh! This has to end. Time to cook some GOOD food. Let's start small: twelve good main course meals to be made from a good recipe book throughout the year.
THINKING OF OTHERS
- E-mail/text/call people back. I'm sure lots of people have this problem, where they read something sent by someone and don't respond. I go through bouts of dealing with this, and then other times when I completely fail. I need to get a system in place to deal with this, e.g. flagging read e-mails that I need to respond to etc. I will get this right one day … I promise …
- Give more, take less. I have great friends that give so much. It's time to give more and be there more for others. It could mean baking a cake when a friend invites me around their house or something similar. Just making a bit more effort.
- Don't get complacent with family. It's so easy to take from parents and not give back, and the same goes for other family members too. I just hope that the point above will apply to the way I treat family too.
- Hands-on charity. I'm becoming increasingly fed-up of bureaucratic charities which waste my money on calling me back to ask for more. I want to do some more hands-on charity. I'm thinking of making my charitable goal for 2013 of spending £100 on food to give to the homeless on the streets of London, and perhaps encouraging a friend to join me. Knowing me, I'll end up in a hospital somewhere, penniless, clutching to a pile of Big Issues.
Ta-da! I think that's enough for now. I've also posted a blog post on my church music blog page, which has some interesting thoughts on how I can develop music in the church I work at as Director of Music. I'm looking forward to 2013 – and I'm looking forward to it even more now that I've got some things to look forward to striving towards. Have a very happy new year!
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