Finding the Motivation

It’s been hard to stay motivated these past few weeks. The weather has been lousy long beyond what seems reasonable. Usually February offers at least a tease of spring, a day or two during which temperatures climb into the 60s. Not this year. This year there was just more snow, more depressing weather that makes you want to stay inside and watch bad movies on cable.

The past two days I watched baseball. Sure, they were Cubs games, but it was still baseball, and it felt good to fall into that familiar rhythm of the game, even if Cubs TV broadcasters Len Casper and Dan Plesac had to pause occasionally after the fifth inning to figure out the names of some of the players.

Not that the past couple of weeks have been a total loss from a writing standpoint. I’ve started what I think is a promising short story, and I’ve been writing more at work. I have also been making progress with my guitar playing. Last week our Guitar I Repertoire class wrapped up its eight-week session with a performance of “Wagon Wheel” by the band Old Crow Medicine Show.



This may be the lamest blog entry ever. Clearly “Half-Empty Pages’ has suffered of late, but that’s not a reflection of the general motivation I’ve had to write lately. I’ll address the dearth of posts in the coming days, with more than complaints about the weather. In the meantime, enjoy the video. The song was a good one to perform at the last class, five chords – G, D, Em, C and F#. I liked it the first time we played it in class, early on. As a performance song, it stood out for not being written or notably by Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Pretenders or any other well-known band. After we finished, several people in the back of the room asked me about the song.

It’s good to be different.