SCP #78: Lullaby For Adam

I owe it to this project to be honest, and I am still struggling to find enjoyment in the writing process at the moment.  What I really want is time to sit down and work on some of the music I've already written, arranging and practicing it ready for gigs on April 9 and 16.  Instead my time and creative energy is going into writing new music, and I am procrastinating quite badly at the moment.

There are times in my life I have found procrastination to be quite productive.  During my Honours study last year I spent the bulk of my second semester procrastinating working on music for my final recital.  My procrastination weapon of choice was the mandolin, and I put in hours and hours of practice on it when I should have been writing music.  As a result I improved my mandolin skills quite significantly, and while I wish I had been more present in my study I don't regret the time I put into the instrument.

Now, however, I am finding procrastination to be particularly unproductive.  Instead of doing something useful with my time I am spending hours paralysed with fear of starting my day's song.  Any attempt to do something else productive makes me feel horribly guilty, and I can't concentrate on that task because of the nagging voice that tells me I should be working on my song instead.  With these kind of feelings it becomes easier to do "nothing", time wasting kind of tasks, like scrolling through social media feeds or reading light news articles.  

One thing I have found helpful in the past when these sorts of feelings set in is to give my permission to switch off for a few hours with a book or a film.  The entertainment factor helps suppress the negative self-talk, and consuming a little piece of art will often put me in a better frame of mind for being creative myself.  I think I need to give myself time this weekend to do just that, and just try to be kinder to myself.

This is Monday's piece (I hadn't got round to downloading it off my camera yet when I wrote Wednesday's post), and it came after a very long evening of procrastination.  I had completely readied myself for bed, including getting into pyjamas, and it was only then that I managed to feel OK about starting something.  I took the theme lullaby from the previous piece, and my pyjamas worked with the song so I kept them on for the video.