So, what are these passions that are pulling me in differing directions?
As mentioned in this post, one of my newly ignited passions is writing a musical. I've spent some time conceptualizing the idea for my four-person musical, and it has grown to a place now, where I am very excited about the potential. I've created four characters and given them each a unique relationship with music as well as with the other characters. In a way, each of these characters represents a part of me, and each of their relationships represent part of my relationship with Jamie. These portions of myself and my marriage on many levels are universals, and as such I believe this show will be less plot-driven and more character-driven, with the goal being catharsis.
For Christmas this year, I received a wonderful gift, and prior to my involvement with Godspell, I was spending at least 30-60 minutes daily using this gift. This gift is one of my other passions pulling me, it's a banjo, and I want to learn to play the banjo. I've been playing guitar for 19 years now, (my goodness, that's a long time) and I never learned good technique. As such, my playing is highly limited. So as I learn the banjo, I am starting over from scratch and focusing on the technique immediately. The banjo is an instrument that has been experiencing a renaissance in popular music as of late with Sufjan Stevens, The Avett Brothers, and Mumford & Sons. I am interested in this style, but also interested in the old bluegrass style practically invented by Earl Scruggs. I would like to spend several hours per week drilling the Scruggs' Three Finger Rolls and getting serious about this instrument.
In addition to wanting to play the banjo and write a musical, I am very interested in continuing writing music in general (outside of the theatrical context). Though I struggle with lyrics, I can come up with melodies and interesting harmonies fairly well. I have a lot to say, and hopefully through practice, I will become more skilled at fitting lyrics with my music. Even so, I was recently tasked with carrying on the leadership of my church band (as our former leader took another job which relocated him out West), and some of the other leaders thought it would be interesting if our band took a focus more to instrumental music, superimposing scripture readings, responsive readings, and prayer. This fits very well with my writing style, and I can hopefully (along with the rest of my incredibly talented band) create lots of original music for our church.
Speaking of my church, I will be joining them this summer to go on a mission trip to Honduras. We will be partnering with a group called Mercy International to serve Hondurans who were displaced due to a hurricane (in 1998, and they are still living in "temporary" shacks). We will be working to build houses and more importantly to build relationships. This is obviously one of my passions, but the more immediate passion involves this, and that is learning to speak Spanish. I took three years of Spanish in high school, after which I could only say, "Yo soy la vaca verde," meaning, "I am the green cow." A couple years back, I started the approach of using listening programs like Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. I now have some basic language skills. While I will obviously not be fluent by this summer, I would like to at least be able to hold some basic conversation with people. (If you would like to support me for this trip, please visit Razoo at this link.)
There's a few other passions that are pulling me, one of which I will be spending more time on and blogging about in the future, which is the fighting of human trafficking. Also, I want to spend more time with photography (although I am certainly a hobbyist), reading and running, the latter of which I have been able to keep up on somewhat well, and will be dedicating time to this summer, as I train for the Chicago Marathon. But for now, I am stuck, caring about all of these things and being spread too thin to actually focus on any of them. I need to make some hard decisions.
