Inspired by reading great blogs by others centred around projects that last 30 days this year I commenced my own 30 days project. The idea is that for me new years resolutions rarely work, so instead I would try something for 30 days and see how it effected me. Thirty days is about the length of time it takes to develop new working practices, habits and loose some of the old ones.
photo by Mykl Roventine
So far this is what the year has looked like:
January: No new bass or tech gear – I managed it just. In fact my GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) has significantly dropped. Win.
February: Veganism – this worked and lasted six months to the day. Made me feel better, stronger. The down side was not finding food at gigs easily. I had to always carry a supply of snacks.
Also after years of recording for other people I wanted to produce my own album, just for me. This coincided with the RPM challenge. A simple set up based around a Boss GT10b and RC20xl looper I used various basses to produce textual sonic landscapes. No pop tunes here. This was an inspiring process and I’m already planning the next one.
March: It came it went, I can’t remember it.
April: Fretless bass month – This worked out great. I love playing fretless, but don’t do it nearly enough. Unfortunately I had to play fretted for some gigs, which kind of breaks the 30 day rules.
June: 30 days of Jogging – Day one was great, so was day two. Day three an old knee injury made a great excuse and I never went back. Fail. I did enjoy it and intend to go back asap.
July: End of year marking, moderation visits and two new bands (nearly 100 songs to learn in total scuppered any other plans I had.
August: Thirty days of being with my family. Due to to the summer holidays (yay for academia time tables) I was able to take a two week vacation with my family including a weeks visit to a holistic retreat and stay in a Yurt. Win.
Which brings me to the current; 30 days of riding my bike to work (well the bit of my commute that doesn’t feature a train). I bumped in to work colleague Robin Junga on the train commute and as a keen cyclist he suggested I should try part of my daily trip to Leicester by bike. It was some thing I had been thinking about, but a dead bike had put me off. That evening I came home to find a friend had brought round an old bike for me. Inspired by this and the conversation earlier that day (also slightly weirded out, neither people know each other) I decided to give it a whirl.
photo by Jens Dahli
There are still loads of projects I would like to do, a month of practice, yoga, alcohol free, blogging and still a few months left of the year to do them.
This 30 day thing is great, inspiring and uplifting experience, I really recommend it.
And this is some lovely music by a friend of mine that has featured heavily on my commute playlist this year.
Guerilla Bass 