Some habits are related to ruts. And some of them are quite easy to fall into. These are not usually the useful or productive type of habits. At least not for me. And I end up falling into them when I’ve had a switch up in things I can do. Like trying not to do certain things while an injury heals. At a certain point though, I get bored with them. And while I am sitting there engaged in whatever it is that I have let take over that time, I’m also thinking, ‘What the heck am I doing? This is really boring.’ or ‘Why am I doing this?’ or even ‘Man I’m just wasting time.’
Just a few days ago I was sitting at my desk, engaged in one of those time sucking habits thinking one of those things. And, thinking that I should just do something else. So I shifted my focus. I have been meaning to get a better grasp on the tools in the latest version of Blender. Most of the basics are the same as what I’ve been using however, I have never put a good effort into really learning the interface and the modeling tools available. Which leaves me a little handicapped when it comes to some of the things I want to create. As part of my trying to figure out what all I need to do to get my big project going, I realized I need to spend some time seriously learning Blender.
Fortunately the Blender community is pretty huge, and generous. And there is a legendary beginning Blender tutorial out there from Blender Guru. I’m not sure how many times he’s remade the tutorial. I know it’s up to date for the version I’m working in now which makes it awesome. It’s also free. And that’s even more awesome. I have been planning on joining Blender Cloud because of all the cool stuff there and the tutorials. And I started to go ahead and sign up. And then I thought again. If I really want to learn this, I need to do the Blender Guru donut tutorial. I’ve heard quite a bit about it and it seems to have taken on legend status or epic status. I’m not sure. But it’s a thing. I mean, if I’m not willing to go through that, I can’t be serious about wanting to learn this.
And so, for that one moment the cycle of the habit of wasted time was broken. I opened up the tutorial and started watching. I really needed to do this ages ago. I learned two things that solved some frustration I was having. Just in the first, ok second, video. The first one was an introduction. And one of the items that I learned was about something that just last month I had been thinking to myself that I wish I could figure out how to do that in Blender. I know how to do it in the Autocad softwares. And now I know how to do it in Blender. The other item was something I’d come across once or twice and couldn’t remember or figure out how to get back to it. It turns out that it is only available as soon as you create a mesh and if you do anything after you create it except click on the particular box, it goes away completely. Yep. No getting back to it. It’s a configuration box for the mesh you just created. And very handy to get into because it can do a few very useful things. And I’ve needed those things a few times recently.
And then just this evening, I watched the next video in the series. And I’ve learned about yet another tool I was looking for or wanting recently. Oh yeah. Working through this tutorial is an awesome idea. And yes. I’m actually working through it. It won’t stick as well if I just watch it. If I work through it and do all the steps and see what I get for myself, then it will stick. At least better. Which means, my current Blender project is making a donut.
I am still working through the shoulder issue. I’ve had some progress. At least it seems like progress. Not being in constant annoying pain helps. And some of the referring pain is not appearing in the wrist either at all or as much. I’ll take it. I see the Therapist again at the end of the week and depending on what that is like will make a difference as to what I’m able to do at the Blues Jam this weekend. Yes. We’ve got another one planned. In fact it’s the 10th Anniversary so I’d really like to at least go, even if I can only sing. I was looking through our list of good old standards and found a couple that I could learn to sing by then. But hopefully I can play at least one set. I’ll just have to see how that goes.
I was telling Kevin, one of the Jam organizers, the situation with the shoulder, and he seemed pretty cool about the idea of having another person that can sing as fill in. The key will be to learn how to direct things without the guitar in hand and keep things together. So maybe that will be the direction some of the music learning takes this year. Not just learning more on the guitar but learning more as a lead in general. I hadn’t really thought about that approach before. You know my attitude is that I’m a guitar player first. Like breaking the habit of killing time, and crawling out of the ruts I was discussing back in the summer, maybe it’s time to mix this up a little and see what happens.
For now, I’m doing my exercises. Practicing guitar when I can and now trying to find some songs to sing. And learning to make a donut in Blender.