Goals for 2020: Doing the work

This year, 2020, I set personal goals. One goal is simple: keeping a list of books I read this year. The key is finding one convenient place to keep a running list, remembering to add to it as I finish reading each book.

Not having one convenient place doomed my 2019 book list. I’d finish books, put the keepers on a bookshelf, and giveaways in a box. Later I’d remember my book listing goal, try to remember what I’d read, give up, and vow to get it done “next year.”

This year I set up on my personal Facebook page an “SKF Books Read in 2020” photo album. It’s working. The six books I’ve read or finished reading this year are already listed. If I’m near a computer or my smart phone I can easily update my list.

I have another long standing goal. Achieving it is more complex than my book list, but I’m committed to reaching this goal too.

I’m a songwriter. That started back in the 1970s or earlier. I have a music publishing company, professional song demos. I’ve been in bands where songs I’ve written were part of our repertoire. My songs were ideas coming to me in song format.

I write songs on guitar or piano. Sometimes melodies and/or lyrics come to mind while I’m driving. I have to take care to write down those ideas as soon as I can — which sounds perilously close to my past trouble keeping book lists.

Back in my band days, when music was my life focus, my circle of friends included guitar players and pianists. I relied on them to take my hesitant guitar and piano playing, and play them as the songs I had written.

Years ago I put my band days behind me. Three of my closest musician friends died. Others drifted apart. My songs lay quiet for decades. My non-musical career was such that I never developed new friendships with musicians.

Then around 2014 I accepted an invitation from a co-worker friend at the Maine Department of Corrections to a few jam sessions with folk musicians. I played percussion, mostly wire brushes on a snare drum. Just that modest reintroduction to music-making made me realize how much I missed that part of my life.

I wanted my songs back and decided I would figure out a way to record them myself, and then — win, lose, or draw — I’d release my songs to the public. That’s my 2020 goal.

My reluctance, my fear, is my biggest obstacle. But there were/are other lesser obstacles.

I owned neither a guitar nor a piano. I bought a guitar. Obstacle cleared.

Next I discovered I had forgotten how to play most of my songs. What chords did I use? Was it this chord or that chord? What were the second verse lyrics? In some cases I had forgotten altogether writing certain songs.

After many months I had learned again to play and sing 15 original songs well enough to record them on rough digital demos. Obstacle cleared.

My next obstacle is recording my songs as finished products, to give the public a quality listening experience. That means learning how to use a computer-based recording studio called GarageBand. Just to learn the basics of GarageBand I paid to take two online how-to courses. Obstacle clearing.

Once I’m able to play my 15 songs without mistakes, I need a quality digital recorder to capture the songs so I can edit the songs with GarageBand. For that I bought a ZOOM H4n PRO recorder. It fits my “quality digital recorder” bill. That leaves trial-and-error period obstacles with both the recorder and recording studio.

Then the only obstacle to reaching my 2020 goal is me doing the work. Think good thoughts. Most of all I don’t want to be buried someday with the music still inside me.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections. He now works in the private sector.