Tinkering & Kinda Tired

Tinkering. Kinda tired. Been wrestling with the stereo and television hookups today. I know. Hard job, huh? But someone had to do it.

Mostly I'm waiting for Windows XP to finish reformatting my laptop's hard drive (again). I screwed up something when I tried to install that damned USB guitar cable, and could never get the system working right again. It was slow as Christmas. So ... when in doubt, reformat. That's an improvement over the impulse to smash it against the wall.

I'm going to have to use the laptop for the Amplitube 2 and Ampeg SVX software. They won't work on 64-bit Windows. Neither will my copy of GigaStudio. So the laptop is going to have a second life after all. I kinda like that. At one point I'd thought that if I could get everything to work on my desktop, the laptop would just wind up in a closet or something. Fate had other plans, though. Fine with me. Whatever. As long as I can get it done.

I haven't tinkered much with the recording yet. Or the writing. Or much of anything, really. Mostly I've been trying to remember what it's like to be a human being. That sounds melodramatic, I know, but I really mean it. I had sort of shut down while in the truck. I did my job and didn't reflect much on how miserable I was. But in order to not think about it, I had stopped feeling anything. Now I'm trying to remember how. What does it say about me that whenever I spontaneously hug Victoria, some part of me feels like a needy child that wants attention? It's like every time I feel some genuine impulse or emotion, I scold myself for wanting it. Or maybe for allowing it. But I keep reminding myself that I'm not alone on a truck anymore. Not only do I need to be human for my own sake, but the people I live with now need me to be human, too.

Well, I didn't start writing to get into all this. I was going to talk about recording, dammit. Or at least how slow it was going getting things up to speed. I had to order an AC adapter for my Axiom keyboard because its software wouldn't run on my computer's operating system. That took awhile. Then I realized that the FireWire cable for my audio interface is about five feet too short to reach my computer (still haven't solved that one). Then I realized that my entire box of guitar cables and patch-cords is gone (I suspect it was pilfered when I allowed the locusts to swarm the house in Kings Mountain), which means I can't hook up everything anyway. And then I realized that something had to be done about the laptop.

But ... I'm confident that I'll get all this rolling one of these days. You'd think I'd be breathless to get started. But I'm not. I think I'm a little afraid of it. I've been telling myself for years that one of these days I'll have all the equipment I need to create wonderful things. Now that I do, I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid that all of that confidence and bluster won't amount to anything. I'm afraid I'll give it a go and it'll all suck. This has defined me for so long. Who am I if not the frustrated artist? What if it all sucks? What if it turns out that I'm just so painfully ordinary, that buying all this equipment was just an exercise in ego inflation? What if instead of the mighty Wicasta, I'm just plain old Kevin?

Not that there's anything wrong with being plain old Kevin, per se. I have people in my life who love plain old Kevin very much. And I could very easily see Kevin sitting on a beach watching the sun set, sipping sangria and just being happy to be alive. The only problem is that Wicasta would be humming tunes in his ear, and he'd be itching to sing them. I'm supposed to be something special. “The Lord has big things in mind for that boy.” But what if I'm not?

Better to not try at all than to find out that I'm just plainfully ordinary after all. But, in the end, I'll give it a go because I really don't know what else to do with myself.