Gonna Get Gone

A lot happened late last year, professionally (layoffs) and personally (it’s, uh, complicated), and I found myself in need of a pretty hard reset around January. I spent two months doing some part time work, but that wasn’t feeling very good.

So I’m leaving NYC on June 1st to travel the world. I don’t know exactly where yet, but it’ll likely start with US national parks + car camping, and then Japan, to go island-hopping. After that, I don’t know. Maybe Vietnam or Australia.

I want to do some things before I leave NYC in a little over two months. I’ll come back to this list as I refine it.

NYC:

• Hang with my friends and family before I leave.
• See shows. Comedy, jazz, things at Littlefield / Bell House / House of Yes / Caveat, etc.
• Tourist-y NYC things. Includes daytime food tours, neighborhood tours.
• Explore Central Park a lot more.
• Whatever The Skint or nonsense nyc has should be up there.

Music:

• Play a lot of piano every day, while I still have access to one.
  • Scales, technique, maybe a little Bach.
  • Pop songs, including my own.
  • Jazz comping - can I read a chord chart and follow well?
  • Hopefully I can work up the nerve to do an open mic. I already roughly know what songs I would do.
• Ableton. This will become a bigger focus when I hit the road and don’t have access to a piano.

Learning:

• Basics of car maintenance. I’ll be driving a lot in two months, and relying on my car.
• Basics of wilderness survival / outdoors-y stuff. Food, first-aid, camping, etc. Same reason as above.
• Basics of “vagabonding”. I’ve got some books.
• I’ve been reading Digital Signal Processing and it’s very good (albeit dense), but it’s not as time-sensitive as the above.

Health:

• Keep a routine. This has been pretty solid so far, and is mostly morning walks, meditation, stretching, and going to sleep and waking up the same time.
• Exercise. Lots of runs and lifting. This has also been going well. I wanna schedule a couple of races for end of May, since my running health has felt good.
• Eat well. Mostly eat ENOUGH, which is my perpetual struggle.

This is PLENTY to tide me over for two months. All of this has been ongoing already, and is going pretty well so far. Writing it down helps me crystallize and shape priorities, and makes me fell more accountable.

I’ll be posting notes I take about learning subjects as I go. Probably will include a lot of DSP, mixing, and production stuff.