Hello everybody, how are we all going so far with 2022?
I ended 2021 by giving birth to a whole new human! It’s been pretty great, I mean hard and all the challenges that come with having a new baby, but still really amazing and wonderful.
Meet Marshall (aka: Mars/ The Mars Bar).
So we are pretty stoked about him.
But God damn, having a baby is not easy! Even with an amazingly supportive partner and a fairly chill baby, it’s still haaaard! Sleep deprivation is a complete bitch. It is mother fucking horrible. I’ve been finding it hard to stay on top of my mental health just because I’m so tired all the time.
My mum summed up sleep deprivation: walking around with one eye closed because it’s the closest thing you can get to sleep (actual thing she used to do). This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it’s like with a baby that likes to wake up a billion times a night.
You know he woke up every 15 min last night from about 2am onwards?
So my life is kind of a rollercoaster between being super tired and then super overwhelmed with how much I love the little turd.
Actually, it’s been an interesting time and I’m excited to share where I’m at.
I hit a bit of a wall and slumped into depression. It just felt like I existed in a cloud of pain. It’s painful being tired all the time and unable to sleep. And it was making me feel unmotivated (which is really unlike me). Being tired physically and unmotivated mentally is a really crap combo.
I really want to get back into my music because I need to. COVID has been a weird time for me and hasn’t involved a lot of creativity (bar creating an entire person). So we’ve been working our arses off trying to get the studio finished so we can be musicians that do things again.
The main things I’m looking forward to are a) being able to hold lessons in the new space and b) having a place to hide from everyone and make music!!!
Since becoming a parent it’s been seriously hard to make music, which sucks, because I’m constantly interrupted. I guess I’ve done quite a bit under the circumstances, it’s just cost me my health and sanity on too many occasions. And then with COVID and home schooling and everybody here aaaaaalll the ttiiiiiiiime.
Just nope. No deal.
But, hoorah! We’ve transformed our double garage into a studio. It’s a proper, flashy renovation and I’m really proud of how it’s turned out.
See:
It’s not finished yet, but we have some walls completed and the roof and you wouldn’t even believe how much pain and sweat and swearing went into them if I told you (soundproofing is fun!! Said nobody ever).
So that’s been a ray of sunshine I can see, just not quite bask in yet.
And then I had a type of epiphany that I wanted to start a new project. I’m not really sure exactly what that will be…my first thought was to form a new band and just play guitar, co-write with other writers and not be the front person. Just get out and do some gigs for fun, try out new material and see where it goes.
For some reason, this gave me something to mentally lock onto and my sanity returned. Something about the idea just felt right. You know when you know it’s the right thing to do? It’s a good feeling.
And then the next day I decided to message my friend Alana-Lee, who kicks arse as a songwriter and human in general, and she basically asked me to come and play guitar for her for a small ‘warm up after COVID’ gig and turns out we both had exactly the same idea to get out and play/ write some new music with some new peeps.
So I’m excited at how easily that came together. I guess when you’re on the right track with an idea it does seem to fall into place, ya know?
Another thing I’ve been thinking on is (my usual mantra) of being myself. I think I get jammed up in my mind overthinking things a lot. So I’m trying to make decisions based on the truth of who I am and what I want without overthinking the life out of every single thing.
You know, you can only be yourself and it will go where it does. Luckily, you always know what to do when you’re being yourself because…the answers are all there in your head in the form of whatever the fuck actually feels like the right thing to do.
Now I gotta go! Mars has just woken up from another crappy 35min nap!
Adios amigos X