#2 Radio Silence.....

First of all I'd like to apologise in the mahoosive delay in writing this blog. For reasons I'm actually going to tell you, the last few months have been quite chaotic. I don't want to bombard you with a dissertation so I'm going to keep this particular one short.

I work freelance as a Sound Engineer for a "day job" when I'm not trying to make a living as a musician. As such I often find my life swings between having no work where I have plenty of time to gig/write songs etc, but having rod all money or working my toosh off having loads of money but hardly looking at my guitar! The last few months have been the latter. Now don't get me wrong, this has been great in most ways. As a freelancer living in a new city it can be hard to find work so when it starts picking up, the constant worry with regards to paying rent and feeding yourself (temporarily at least) subsides. As such I'm planning to get into a studio and record the next EP very soon (as I can now afford it!).

Writing a blog isn't particularly time consuming so I can imagine you might be wondering how I could have been too busy to write one in 4 months. This brings me to the other 'element' in my life that up until very recently had been preventing me from writing this.

For a few years now I've had an occasional problem with cramping in my hand when I play guitar. Last year I had such a severe occurrence of it that I couldn't finish the gig that I was at and I couldn't play guitar for a week. Needless to say at this point I decided to get it looked at and to cut a long story short, we (and by we I mean a doctor I've seen) think it could be "Musicians Dystonia". There isn't a cure however it can be managed and as such I was prescribed some medication whilst they conducted further tests. To start with everything was great, my hand felt much better whilst I was playing and I dare say I actually improved! About 5/6 weeks in though I started experiencing some alarming side effects. Severe anxiety, paranoia, memory loss, a constant dry mouth, loss of mental alertness and eventually an inability to concentrate that was so bad that I couldn't drive.

Bleurgh!

The knock on effects of this managed to infiltrate every facet of my life. It was the busiest period of work I've had since going freelance and yet I felt like I was incapable of doing my own job because of the anxiety and paranoia. The worst part however was the effect it had on my music and creativity. It erased it entirely. At it's peak I sat in my garden staring at my guitar completely unable to play it. It would take me ages just to type a text let alone a blog! The whole situation has been incredibly sobering and thought provoking for sure. Lots to put into lyrical content make no mistake. :-)

I don't want this to be a 'negative' blog so I'm very pleased to say that I can off the medication and am now much better, hence this even being written.

The last few months haven't been all work, and side effects either, so next week I'll inform you of all the awesome things that have been happening of late.

Till then, laters. :-)