"Sore ribs" sounds more serious than it is but I couldn't resist the assonance. This past weekend I met some friends at Topgolf, which is like a social driving range? Picture a bowling alley where the main reason to be there is drinking beer, but instead of hurling bowling balls you're whacking golf balls. Not counting mini golf, I had swung a golf club once or maybe twice before this. In the two hours I was there I had maybe thirty times at the tee. It was kind of interesting and novel, and I had a good time with the friends I saw there, but it's an activity I could easily never do again. Four or five days later now, I finally woke up not feeling the effects on my body. Unrelated (related), I am going to try to get into a daily practice of walking around the neighborhood because I am clearly not using my body nearly enough!
Speaking of daily practices and soreness, I'm on a two-week streak of practicing rhythm with Melodics! It's a rhythm game, like Guitar Hero, but rooted in education; the lessons are generally either designed to teach drum rudiments or they're real parts in popular songs. I use a MIDI Fighter to play but it works with any MIDI controller or even a computer keyboard. Some of these lessons get pretty tricky and there's a lot I still just can't do, but I can feel myself getting better! It's a really nice feeling. They also offer lessons for keys and drums, and I have a critically underused electronic drumkit which I cannot use at all, so I should try that too.
That said, I committed to one month of Melodics and I'm thinking I'd like to translate this habit into making some of my own music after it's up. I'm curious to see if any of the muscle memory I'm building for live performance might transform my own music-making and bring some variety into my rhythms. Making more music worth sharing is a goal for this year. That weird performance idea I talked about a couple weeks ago remains a goal for this year too.
I visited a book store this week to flip through a couple photography books for ideas on photo layouts, as I procrastinate on sharing all those Japan photos. I did write about the camera I used which was an important piece of context. I don't know why I'm dragging on this so much to be honest!