February 2, 2012

These Dreams.

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So last night I spent the night at the Holiday Inn closest to work. I didn’t get the best of night’s sleep, but I did manage to get enough to keep me productive throughout the day. Worried that I was going to sleep through my alarm, I woke up several times during the night. Because of this, I had quite a selection of dreams peppered through my slumber to keep things interesting. For the first time in quite a few nights, I didn’t dream about tornadoes (thanks for taking over that duty, Erik) but instead I had one of my “performance frustration dreams”. These dreams usually come up when I’m worried about not doing well at something and they frequently manifest themselves as something music or radio related; for example, I can’t get CDs into the players fast enough to avoid dead air on the radio or I can’t beat match a mix while DJing at a club, no matter how many times I have been able to mix the two records in question in the past.

Last night’s spin on my performance frustration dreams involved a live performance of the group Heart. In my dream I was one of their sound engineers for this comeback concert, and I was in charge of making sure the recorded music augmented their live performances perfectly. Because I had to make sure the tracks matched the instruments, I was challenged with playing vinyl records that had been recorded at home. And because it was a rowdy crowd, I had to spin the record on top of a beer bottle while holding the needle in place. I couldn’t let the record wobble in any way or else Nancy and Ann would sound all warped, and that would be bad. The record ended up falling off the top of the beer bottle and the whole show slowed down into a warbling, draggy sound. Just as everyone was looking at me for messing up this comeback tour, my dream morphed into something more interesting that didn’t involve frustration at all.

That all being said, because of last night’s dream, this track has been my ear bug, playing over and over. If you follow me on Rdio, you’ll notice that I have played this track several times today trying to get it to move back into my enjoyment category and out of my repetitive category.

So, out of respect for the Wilson sisters of Heart, and with my apologizes for wobbling the record that was spinning on top of the beer bottle, here they are with their 1987 hit, “There’s The Girl.”

Great track, by the way. I LOVE the backup vocals on this. Interesting, melodic backup vocals do a lot more for me than lead vocal acrobatics.

Teaching.

Right out of high school I went to college with the intent on getting a degree in Music Education. At the time it seemed like the natural career path for me, because I did have an interest in teaching and I enjoyed my musical aspirations. My music performances (vocal and tuba) brought joy to others so wouldn’t it be a wonderful contribution to the world if I could teach others to do the same thing. However, my heart wasn’t into college that first time around and I abandoned the idea of becoming a music teacher after a while. I could get into a long discussion as to the reasons for this realization but we’ll save that for the next time we have a drink together.

The reason I bring this up is that although I didn’t pursue that education degree, there’s a part of me that still very much enjoys teaching and that is what I’ve been doing at work this latter half of the week. I’ve been working on writing software for the past eight weeks, now it’s time to instruct users on what it does, why it does it and how one goes about accomplishing what they’re destined to accomplish using the application I have written. The classes started last night. So far they have been well received.

I think because I am so passionate about technology and the fact that I like people to get what they can out of a technological experience is why I enjoy teaching others about it so much. Some people may not realize that I feel this way, because there is an IT geek part of me that does the stereotypical roll of the eyes, a big sigh and a click click click of the mouse to fix something that someone has messed up on their computer once in a while, but that’s usually reserved for something that I think the user should know in tandem with a cranky mood I might be having. I don’t respond as well to expected IT support (“make my screensaver do something nifty!”) as I do a genuine interest in how to accomplish something on a computer (“please show me how to change my screensaver).

I think it’s the passion and the belief in the subject that fuels my motivation to teach. And because of my eccentric ways, some might find that my passion might be in something that most find mundane, so I guess in a way it’s a win-win for all involved.

There’s a part of me that wants to pursue teaching technological stuff to others, or at the very least, writing about it and sharing with the world all the nifty things that one can do with the right geek tools when used properly.

Perhaps this is something that I need to put on the bucket list.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad