Why Do They Do It?

I couldn't help myself...every time one of them rushed past me panting like a bounding canine, sweat flying, ears stuffed with iPod earplugs playing music loud enough that even I could hear it, I was a little peeved.

We were visiting Maui, and every morning my husband and I would walk along the board walk on Ka'anapali Beach, inevitably being met by one runner after another, sometimes couples, either coming from behind or from in front of us.  The runners coming from behind would sometimes yell, "Coming up on the right!" or left, or whatever, signalling for us to get out of the way.  Get out of the way??  It's called a board WALK.  Secretly I believed that they were feeling somewhat superior to us lowly stragglers.  I was pretty sure I saw a couple of them smiling to themselves when they weren't busy sucking in air.  Yeah, I'm in much better shape (pant!! pant!! pant!!) than you are, they were thinking.

Stop it, Irene.  I would attempt to restrain my negative thoughts, but then another jubilant jogger would race past me and my monkey mind would get the best of me.  Why on earth would you come to a vacation paradise and then JOG?  What kind of vacation is THAT?  Did you drink too many mai tai's last night?  Gotta work off all that mahi mahi, eh?  Think pretty highly of yourself, don't you?

STOP it, Irene.

I must admit, I've never understood the running thing.  I know perfectly good people do it and only for the best of intentions.  My sister runs to keep in shape and to help control weight, and she's a good person.  So why can't I look upon every runner as a good person, simply wanting to stay healthy?

After all, why were my husband and I out walking every day?  That's right.  For the very same reasons;  to work of the mai tai's and mahi mahi, and to make sure we didn't get too out of shape on our vacation.  And we were certainly enjoying the sunshine and the sound of the ocean and the morning birds on our walks.  I would smile at my silliness, take a deep breath and gaze out at that big, blue Pacific Ocean crashing up onto the shore.

Thump, thump, THUMP, THUMP....here comes another one.  Dammit.

What IS it about this running thing that appeals to people so much?  Every time I try it, I feel like my insides are pounding against each other harder than the ice cubes in a martini mixing glass.  My knees begin to shake and buckle and my ankles verge on the point of collapsing.  I can hardly believe there are people in the world who want to do the Badwater Ultramarathon;  you know, the marathon where you run 135 miles through the scorching desert of Death Valley in 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and then up the side of a mountain, all without stopping?  Yeah.  People do that.

But most people don't.

Some people are just born runners.  As a kid, even I recall the act of running as a sort of liberating feeling.  But I hated sports and would resent being forced to participate in races during sports day at school.  Other kids just loved it.  It seemed that if they could, they would keep running and running for hours and hours.  It was in their bones.  I remember in the 70's when running suddenly became the thing to do, and the sport has only grown from there.  Magazines dedicated purely to running were published, runners (as we used to call our shoes) became high tech footwear, water bottles were all the rage.  These days, people run competitively or they join running groups to stay in shape.  Some start running because they've had a lifelong ambition to do a marathon.  And almost every week you can see a promotion for some kind of "race for a cure" where people sign up and take pledges to run.

When I was working at a radio station in the promotions department years ago, I had to participate in a lot of PR events as part of my job.  One time, we had teams from all of the media outlets in the city racing as we pushed beds with wheels through the streets of downtown Victoria.  The others in my team were in much better shape than I was as we began our pursuit.  About a half a block into the race, I thought I was going to die.  The thing is...you can't just start running at breakneck speeds without having at least trained a little bit.  But I didn't really consider that.

On another occasion, my daughter's little league team had an end-of-season picnic and barbeque, and the parents were made to form two teams to play a game so that the kids could watch us for a change.  On my only turn at bat, I hit a grounder and raced to first base as fast as my flabby legs could take me.  I was tagged out, and so were my legs for about a week after.  Ouch.

Sometimes I wonder if people are out there running in order to get that "runner's high" that everyone talks about.   According to my research, as it turns out, not everyone will get runner's high, and even if they do once it doesn't mean they will again.  So that can't just be it.  When I Googled running, I found website after website full of people devoted to it, but no matter how many breathless, happy posts I've read from enthusiastic runners, I still don't get it.

We plan on going back to Maui as soon as we can, and I know that in the meantime I'm going to have to change my attitude, either that or forfeit my otherwise enjoyable walks along Ka'anapali Beach when we get there.   However, I will leave you with a quote from this famous astronaut:

"I believe that every human being has a finite number of heartbeats, and I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises." 

- Neil Armstrong

Enjoying Ka'anapali Beach MY way

Relax, Will Ya?

Okay, Christmas is over, the New Year is almost upon us and then it's back to work.  If you've taken any time off between Christmas and New Years, have you managed to relax at all?  I wonder :-).

Most of us who are busy, busy, busy with our lives, don't know how to wind down when we actually have the chance to.  We may look forward to having some downtime, but when we actually get it, we don't know what to do with it!  Or, it suits us for awhile and then we get bored and restless.  Sometimes I think it's because we really don't know HOW to wind down, as much as we think we want to.

So my New Year's gift to you is this video.  Before I let you hit the play button, I should tell you that I've actually had the mp3 file of this guided meditation on my computer for some time and every now and then when I really need to relax but I'm having trouble, I throw on the earplugs and hit the play button.  It usually puts me to sleep, but that's okay too.  Sometimes, it's just a nice way of forgetting about the rest of the world for awhile.

It is a Buddhist meditation, but actually all that is "Buddhist" about it is the use of some Buddhist terminology like "mindfulness".  Mindfulness is simply the state of being acutely aware.

Unfortunately, the video is in two parts, so you'll have to hit play to get the last part.  I do have an mp3 file of the complete Body Scan so if you'd like it, just let me know and I'll email it to you.

Now.

Follow the instructions.

Find a quiet place.

Loosen any tight clothing.

And prepare to relax.

Happy New Year :-)

Part One:



Part Two:

Is It Ready Yet?

Back in March, I wrote an article all about my new CD, Shades of Grey, even though it was not quite ready to be put out there.  I was pretty sure that it would be released within a couple of weeks at that point.  But no.

I was kind of waylaid when I was given the opportunity to compose music for a local television news program. It would be a good chance to earn some real money and I jumped at it.  So I spent the better part of four months working on it in collaboration with a couple of people from the station.  Well, up until a couple of weeks ago I thought I was just putting the finishing touches on it.  Then I found out that they had actually enlisted another composer to submit music.

One thing I am not is competitive.  Actually, the truth is that I am TOO competitive, and a very sore loser.  So that's why I don't like to be pitted up against anyone else in any situation under any circumstances.  Had I known that someone else was also submitting music, I would not have participated.  You might consider that an imperfection, but there you go.  And of course, once I realized that someone else was submitting music, I gave up all hope.  Which proved to be correct.  So I pretty much wasted four months.  They did give me something called a "kill fee", a term I've never heard before.  I guess the idea is to pay you for your efforts, which is fair, but of course it comes nowhere near the time and effort spent.   Most of all, it's just discouraging.

So I decided to throw myself back into my own music right away just to give myself a sense of accomplishment, and today I finally finished mastering "Grey Shades".

Warning:  the next part of this article is rather technical!

I have never mastered my own work before, but I discovered a program called Izotope Ozone which has all kinds of lovely pre-sets (a MUST for me!) so that I could just hit a pre-set and see what it did to my mix.  I lost objectivity several times...to the point where my daughter came downstairs one day and say "It sounds TERRIBLE!!"  I threw her out of the room, but realized she was right and so I started all over again.  Mastering is a mysterious process.  You mix everything down and then you take the stereo mix and master it...some will tell you that mastering really only has to do with making all of the songs of equal volume and give each one a clean beginning and end.  But it's what mastering does to the mix itself that is the biggest mystery.  It changes the overall sound and gives it that "Oomph!" that the original mix doesn't have.  A lot of people like the idea of the mix being really "loud", on par with professional recordings out there.  Loud is okay as long as it doesn't take out the dynamics...the soft spots should still be soft, not harsh, and the "loud" parts should not kill your ears.  I will never be a mastering master.  But it's been interesting.

My daughter and I more or less designed the cover together.  I had the idea of featuring my convertible somehow and wouldn't it be funny to have my feet sticking out and everything grey except my painted toenails?  So I took some photos and Gracie did the design from there.  The picture was taken in my driveway, so she superimposed an ocean scene in the background and then she made it into a Polaroid picture look.  We fooled around with different things, and what you see is the result.

And now it's done.  I have put the songs up on Soundclick, a website I have been with for many years.  You can listen to the songs in full and you can buy them individually or the whole album.  Soon I will also have it on iTunes and a lot of the other digital music services.

The difficulty is in letting go.  I tweaked and re-mixed and re-mastered many times and the temptation is to do more.  But it's time to let it go.

Now what?

IJ