Writers Blocks (for a vJ5 neck)

Here I go again.  The daily grind.  Gotta spit out another creative thing on my blog.

If that sounds a bit harsh I don't mean it to.  This is certainly becoming a challenging thing to keep up on a daily basis.  Which is interesting.  It's not all that complicated.  And on the surface, it doesn't look like too much trouble.

But it's more challenging than I initially thought it would be.  It's challenging because I have to be thinking about what is worth sharing almost all the time.  I may have many ideas over the course of a day, but for each one I have to ask myself "is this worth putting on the blog"?  I may do several things that will present well here, but then I have to remember to take a pic or two.

And then I have to actually sit down and compose the idea clearly.  Write, read, edit, delete, write, edit...

It's definitely uncharted territory for me.  But so far, it's been really rewarding.  I love it when I get feedback.  And I struggle with judging the posts when I don't get any feedback.  I wonder if I somehow messed up and didn't communicate clearly.  I wonder if the concepts are too alien.  I wonder if I'm coming off self centered, arrogant, or a bit spacey.  I wonder if my post is simply not finding enough readers to stimulate a response.  I wonder.  And judge.  And then I catch myself and let it go.

It's a great tool to keep track of where my head is at.  And to really let go and just present as much "real" here as I can.  It's kind of like making a bass guitar, but in a much smaller dose.  I create and write about it.  Then I hit "publish" and set it free.  It was was it was when I wrote it.  Hopefully it represented my true state of mind at the time.  Then it's out there and needs to be truly let go of.  Attachments removed.

My main commitment here is honesty in the moment to myself and the reader.  I wonder what it will be like to go back and read old posts after I do this for a while.  Should be interesting.

Anyway, today I put blocks in a vJ5 neck.  Not a crazy hard thing to do, but certainly a place to practice full attention.  The recess that is routed into the fingerboard has rounded corners, and the blocks that we cut on the laser are have unrounded corners.  So I need to chisel the corners out.  It's tricky to get them perfectly square. But it's very satisfying when I do.  Which is almost always - I've gotten good at it over the years and I'm good at really paying attention.  But then I have to sand the blocks down because they are slightly over sized on purpose so they can be sanded down so they fit perfectly.

It took me an hour to get the blocks into one neck.  Next step will be to sand the fingerboard true and put the frets it.  That'll probably take about an hour too.  Then I'll sand the neck for finish.  Then...

It's one step after another, building upon the one before til finally it can all be assembled into an instrument.  And then it gets set free to be played and loved.  Or not.

Kind of like life.  One moment after another.  Sometimes several of them building to a momentous occasion.  Then the moments need to be set free and let go of.  Or they get in the way of the next ones.