Log of Excitement! Voice Synthesizers, AMVs, Piano

Starting today I'll be keeping a Log of Excitement. (Even the font is excited!) This is to track my many and varied interests that may come and go over time. It's not for any particular reason except my own curiosity (for now, anyway!). I just want to see which interests stay, which ones fade, how long they stick around, and if they ever come back.

The very loose goal is to help me learn something about myself and how I work as a person. The only hard-and-fast rule of this is that the things in the log must be things I'm actually excited about on a personal level when I add them. Fun things only! No work, only play!

I can edit the list at any time throughout the day, but it's preferred that I don't delete things, only add or change details slightly.

Also, no, of course the name isn't a reference to a Neopets mini-game. Really.

Today's Excitement:

1. Finding out how the UTAU software works and what can be done with it. DONE.
2. Planning out an AMV that I may or may not make, that may or may not be centered around Okita Souji from Hakuoki with "Titanium" as the song.
3. DONE/ADDED: Researched methods behind composing songs (offshoot of looking into UTAU).
4. DONE/ADDED: Arranged a short add-on section for an anime theme song piano arrangement I found previously (Fukai Mori by Do As Infinity, featured in Inuyasha).

Practice Plan for February!

I've been practicing piano since I got my Yamaha digital piano in December (I plan to write a review on it later, so look forward to it!).

My piano upon unwrapping it--you'll have to pardon it for being so shy!

However, while I've been having a ball and feel like I've been learning a lot, I haven't really been committing to an actual practice of... well, practicing.

I've mainly been wandering up to the piano and playing whenever the mood strikes me. Fortunately, the mood's struck me fairly often, but I've noticed that it's starting to trail off a little. And that concerns me, but I also believe that this "malady" is rectifiable.

Know Thyself
Based on what I know about myself, I am fascinated by things I find new, interesting, and a bit challenging to figure out. I'm really competitive (ask anyone who's ever gone up against me in a board game), so that probably has something to do with it--I've got to beat the system!

But this also means that once I get used to something, there's a chance I might just drop it because I "figured it out enough."

I don't want that to happen with my piano.

Fortunately, the piano is a fantastic, many-many-many-headed creature. There are so many songs out there to learn and play! So I'm keeping that in mind as my "guiding star," in a way, to keep going.

It also helps that my piano was expensive, and who wants to flush a wonderful, expensive skill down the drain like that without putting up a good fight? Not me.

So I've decided that I'd like to start up a "practice plan" for the duration of February. I'm going to try and stick with it as much as possible... but if I miss a practice here and there for whatever reason, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. In my experience, beating myself up about small things never ends well.

Practice Plan for February '15!

• Practice 3 days a week for 30 minutes a day. 

I've found that I'm fine playing for around 15 minutes, and then it really helps me get back into it if I take a brief break (around 5 minutes). So I'll be operating on that schedule for the rest of the month.

If I go over the time, fine! If I decide to do a little less, I can deal with it. As long as I get any practice at all in, that's what matters in the end.

Don't Jump In Head-first
With me, it doesn't do any good for me to take on a huge amount of a hobby/interest at once--if I do, I end up crashing and burning more often than not. I'm trying really hard to pace myself this time with piano practice, all while reminding myself that:

1. This is not a race. There is no finish line.
2. "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." -Confucius