The Bat Cave

Man…I can’t believe how lazy and unmotivated I have been the past month. Aside from work, really the only productive thing I’ve done over the past 30 days or so is work on my album. I stopped lifting. I started chewing again. I’m just completely unfocused and I can feel my self-worth and happiness levels sinking with me. Not only that but my sleeping patterns are retarded right now. Whether or not I work the next day, I haven’t gotten to bed before 4am in quite a while. However, I’m starting to feel a change coming finally. Last night I went to bed at 11:30pm and woke up this morning around 8:30, a trend I would like to continue, seeing as how the hours I get in the morning tend to be much more productive than my late night hours. I finally hit the gym again last Thursday, a moment I’ve been dreading for quite some time. The first thing I noticed was how the computer flashed that I hadn’t signed in for 32 days… sad, over a month w/out working out. The second thing I did was hit the weight scale, another thing I haven’t been looking forward to. The result was good and bad. Bad, because I lost 6.5 lbs. Good because I’m still 9.5 lbs heavier than I was when I started working out in mid-March. So I’m glad that I haven’t regressed back to my post-appendicitis weight. Now I start my second round of consistent lifting at 153.5 lbs and I’m going to start cycling creatine and bumping up my calorie intake again this week. I’m also switching up my work schedule a bit, so that I’ll be able to lift regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I have to say, hitting the gym again was a painful experience. Not only was I extremely sore the next day, but I lost some pretty significant muscle mass. I was repping 225 lbs on back squats (3 sets of 5) at my peak and Thursday I was struggling to do 185 and I felt like my hamstrings were going to snap at any moment. I didn’t lose as much on my bench press, but again, I was struggling to put up a weight that I was easily doing a month ago. It will be interesting to track how fast I get back to where I was.

I’m starting to feel skeptical about releasing my album in September. I’m pretty far along in the writing phase, but recording is a different story. It’s almost impossible for me to get a take I’m completely satisfied with and even when I think I hit my standards, I’ll be listening to a finished song and find parts that I know I could do better. It’s quite a maddening cycle. Right now I have one song that is completely recorded, mixed, and mastered, and another 3 songs that are completely recorded, but not entirely finished. I debuted a new song at work this past week and the reactions were solid and actually kind of funny. There are few things more satisfying than watching someone listen to your music and reacting to certain parts the way you envisioned people reacting: the laughs, the “oh shit”s, and the shaking of a head with a smile on the face. Ah yes, I am doing my job. When I get my desired reactions while someone is listening to an unfinished, completely unmixed version of a song, it makes me wonder how much effort I really need to be putting into this. From here forward, I’m going to be trying to finish recording at least one song a week, which should put me pretty close to my desired release date if the mixing process doesn’t take me too long.

After missing over a month of the season, and thinking I wasn’t going to be playing at all this year, I finally found a softball team to play on. My buddy asked me to play for his team last Monday and I did well enough and they are regularly short on players often enough that the coach asked me to come out every week. After having what I consider to be a great season in 2007, I didn’t play all that well last year, but so far this year, I’ve gone 4 for 7 in two games, making pretty solid contact most of the time. I also pulled off an out-saving slide into third base last night that I wish I had on video. It was a true beauty. I was on first base when someone hit a single to left-center and as I was heading into second I see the third base coach waving me over and I’m thinking in my head: “this is a bad idea.” But as a new member of the team, I decide to go ahead and go for it. Halfway to third, I can tell that the throw is going to beat me easily and I can see the third basemen lining up for it on the right side of the bag, so I slide head first far to the left and clearly avoid his tag, while barely hooking my arms onto the base. Usually in softball, the umps like to go with the “if the throw beats the runner, he’s out” rule, but I actually got rewarded for my heads up play and he called me safe. Instead of being out, I scored on the next play. It was beautiful and my new team likes me even more. I look forward to playing regularly the rest of the year and hopefully I can see some added pop to my bat when I get deeper into my workout routine.

Okay… now I’m off to Chips Casino to play in the morning poker tournament, which I took first in yesterday ($175) and hope to defend my title. I’ll also be playing in the 6pm tournament… so hopefully I can turn today into a profit as well. I’m seeing The Hangover at 4:30 today and I’ve been hearing some of the most ridiculous reviews in quite some time for that movie. It didn’t look very funny at all to me in the previews I’ve seen, but it’s hard to ignore the extremely positive word-of-mouth it’s been getting and a #130 ranking on http://www.imdb.com’s all-time list is intriguing as well. I’ll be back with a review tonight or tomorrow. Stay tuned.