2017 Goals

I don't celebrate the major holidays or my birthday, but I do take time at the turning of the year to sit down and think about the things I'd like to accomplish in the year ahead. You might call them resolutions, but I call them goals. The word resolution sounds intimidating to me, but a goal sounds doable. It's important to understand that even if you don't quite meet your goals, you're doing something positive just by working toward them.

Each year, I review the previous year's goals, and then I write up a new list and stick them on the fridge. I had four ambitious goals for 2016. I only met one of them, but I made a lot progress toward the other three.

2016 Goals

• Weigh 190 pounds. I bit the bullet and stepped on the scale early last year. 270 pounds. Gulp! This wasn't nearly the 324 pounds I used to weigh, but it was still about 80 pounds too much. I got to work, being more careful with my diet and exercising regularly. I currently weigh 215. I haven't met this goal yet, but I'm well on my way.
• Record Godfrey and Guy's first album. Goal achieved! We recorded our first Godfrey and Guy album, You and the Night, and we're very proud of it. It's a collection of night-themed jazz songs. We added horns, bass, and drums to our voice/guitar duo, and it turned out just as I had hoped. Lori Guy's vocals are sublime, I'm happy with my guitar playing on the recording, and my horn arrangements turned out nicely. And yes, this album is for sale. You can order yours at www.godfreyandguy.com!
• Increase my private student roster to 25. This didn't work out, but for all the right reasons. At the time I wrote this goal, I was teaching at Tessitura, a music studio in Decatur, GA. The owner, Lynnette, had been looking for renters for times the studio wasn't being used. Luckily for her, someone approached her about renting her space full time to open a personal training gym. She couldn't pass up an opportunity like that. She gave me two months notice, which was plenty of time to figure out what to do about my teaching situation. Since most of my students live in or around the same neighborhood, I decided to travel to each student's home to teach. This worked out really well! I'm paying much less in gas than I was in renting the studio. I had to space the students further apart to allow for travel time, which meant that I didn't have time to teach 25 students. My roster increased from 12 to 18 students, and I'm earning more money per lesson than I did teaching at Tessitura. As far as private teaching is concerned, this year turned out just fine.
• Memorize a total of 120 Godfrey and Guy songs. Not quite. The previous year, I had memorized 60 Godfrey and Guy songs. I thought I could memorize another 60 this year, but that was pushing it. Many of the songs I memorized in 2015 were low hanging fruit – songs that were either mostly memorized or pretty easy to memorize. The remaining songs are more challenging. That being said, I memorized 47 more Godfrey and Guy songs this year, for a total of 107.

Suitable for framing
(or sticking on the fridge)

2017 Goals

• Finish guitar method book. I've been pecking away at this project for a little while, but I haven't made any meaningful progress. It's time to get to work and make this happen. With my music education background and experience, I feel I can write a better guitar method than what is already available. I've been using my holiday downtime to get started on this. I'd like to finish it this year and start using it with my students in 2018.
• Record a Godfrey and Guy Christmas album. Now that we have our first recording under our belts, we'd like to record a Christmas album. Our plan is to take older Christmas songs and jazz them up. Why older Christmas songs? Because many of them are public domain, and we won't have to pay for licensing! But also because there are some great songs out there. We're already working on a playlist.
• Weigh 190-195. I dropped 55 pounds in 2016. With 20-25 pounds to go, I feel confident that I can hit the 190-195 mark in the coming year. My Air Force weight was 185, but that was with a super strict diet and lots of running. My aching knees don't allow me to run anymore, and I refuse to diet as strictly as I did in the Air Force. It's hard to say exactly where my weight will eventually settle, but 190-195 seems reasonable.
• Submit choral music to publishers or self publish. I've written a lot of music for my choir at Northwest UU Congregation. I plan to go through the music I've written for my choir and bookmark those that I think are publishable. Some may require revisions, and some may be perfect as they are. Then I'll have to decide whether to submit them to publishers or self-publish. I'm leaning toward self-publishing. With my background as a professional music engraver, I can create a great looking musical score. And with digital technology, I can easily create PDF scores for customers to download.
• Memorize a total of 130 Godfrey and Guy songs. I have memorized 107 Godfrey and Guy songs, so I only have to memorize 23 to meet this goal. Some of the songs that remain unmemorized are tricky, and I have to constantly play through the 107 memorized songs so I don't forget them. With that in mind, I think that memorizing 23 songs is a reasonable goal.

I'm excited about the upcoming year. So what are your goals?

2013 Goals

Every year, I review the previous year's goals and set new ones. I usually come up with quite a list, but I'm narrowing it down this year. Here are my goals for 2013.

1. Land higher quality gigs. For the first time since picking up the guitar, I've been satisfied with the frequency of my gigs. In 2013, I'd like to have about the same (or slightly more) gigs, but with a higher percentage of good paying jobs. Nearly all of my gigs are for pay now. Many of them are restaurant gigs that pay okay, but not great. I'm certainly not complaining about the restaurant gigs. It's nice to have steady work. I would just like to find more corporate gigs in the next year.
2. Recruit a roster full of students. I have a handful of students now. I've been teaching from home, but now I'm signed on to teach at Tessitura. I'm the first and only guitar teacher at Tessitura, so I'm in a good position to pick up new students with no in-house competition. Twenty students sounds about right. I enjoy teaching, and twenty students would help provide steady income while still leaving enough time for practicing, gigs, and my church job.
3. Increase my hours at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation from 10 to 15. Currently, my duties are to run the choir, to provide music once a month myself, to coordinate music for Sunday services in general. Based on conversations I've had with congregants, there seems to be increasing interest in forming a children's choir. Having the extra hours would allow me time to do so. I'll need to convince the board and the congregation that this is a good idea.
4. Find a guitar teacher. I'm happy with the progress I made as a guitarist in 2012, especially in the area of improvisation and general technique. As usual, there are a lot of things I want to improve, but trying to get better at everything at once can make you feel scattered and overwhelmed. Working with a teacher again will help me refocus. This year, I'd like to find a guitar teacher to 1) help me develop more comping ideas, 2) help me develop more improvisation ideas, and 3) kick my butt in the area of repertoire, especially memorization.

Things went pretty well in the second half of 2012. I just want to keep doing more of the same in 2013, but with my sights set a little higher.

New Year, New Goals

At the end of each year, I like to sit down and make a list of goals for the new year. I have a list of overall goals that I'd like to meet by 2016, which will mark my 10th year of playing guitar. Each of those goals is broken up into smaller yearly goals.

I didn't do as well at meeting my goals in 2011 as I would have liked. Circumstances changed that made it nearly impossible to meet a long list of goals that was already challenging. Fortunately, these were positive developments. One was becoming the regular guitarist for Act3 Productions, and the other was becoming Director of Music at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

Some of the goals I did not meet included recruiting 20 guitar students, memorizing 50 vocals, recording several backing tracks, and arranging several guitar solos. I found that I simply didn't have the time or energy to meet those goals. The music director job is only a quarter time position, but when I added it to an already busy schedule, my time was stretched pretty thin. It looks like I'll be playing 3-4 musicals a year for Act3 Productions. At my current skill level, it takes a while to learn an entire guitar book for these musicals. In the couple months before a musical, I'll often spend 2-3 hours a day learning my part, so I don't have those 2-3 hours to spend arranging or recording. On the other hand, my guitar playing continues to improve, partially as a result of learning those musicals. I'm finding that it's gradually taking less and less time to prepare for musicals, which gradually allows for more and more time to focus on my own repertoire.

As far as guitar students, I enjoy teaching, but my schedule is filled with music engraving, the church job, practicing, and gigging. If I hadn't landed the church job, I would almost certainly have my 20 students, but I'm not advertising as a teacher these days. If a student approaches me about lessons, I'll teach, but for now, I'm not actively recruiting. If the church job went away, or if music engraving suddenly dried up, I would start looking for students again.

On the plus side, I met my weight goal, I've improved at solo improv without accompaniment, I've written a few arrangements (just not as many as planned), and I've finally become comfortable standing and playing guitar. In fact, now I prefer standing over sitting, unless it's a background music gig.

I'm not making excuses for not meeting some goals. It's just that life happens, things change, and you have to adapt.

In past years, my goals have been centered around guitar or fitness. I'm really enjoying the music director job at NWUUC, which factors into my 2012 goals. Here's my list of goals for 2012:

1. Improve my fingerstyle playing. I started out mainly as a fingerstyle player. Lately, I've been playing mostly with a pick, but I've been watching a lot of Tommy Emmanuel and Martin Taylor videos, and I'd like to get start getting more creative with my fingerstyle playing.
2. Weigh 185 pounds. I've gained weight over the holidays, and I'm not very happy with that. I've been good about exercising, but it's time to get my diet back on track. At least I don't have to lose over 100 pounds this time.
3. Attend a choral conducting workshop. I feel that I'm doing well as a choir director, but my formal training was almost exclusively for band and orchestra. I've spent the first few months of the job getting my bearings, but to be a better music director, I feel it's important to start participating in workshops and clinics.
4. Start piano lessons. Last year, when I almost won a job at another church, I considered taking piano lessons. When I didn't get the job, I dropped the idea. Now that I do have a music director job, I would like to start developing some piano skills.
5. Find one more steady music engraving client. A few years ago, I dropped a few clients so I would have more time to focus on guitar. Unfortunately, I went overboard. One more steady client won't affect my overall schedule that much, and I'll be in a better financial position. As a guitarist, I'm still a little fish in a very big sea. As a music engraver, I'm a shark! In my ideal world, I would spend all my time practicing and gigging while money rains down from the sky. For now, most of my money will still be coming in from music engraving, and I'm fine with that.