Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Tetris Life.

My neck is making weird little clicking noises as I bob my head to the perky Russian tune that is the theme song to a Tetris clone that J downloaded onto his computer the other day. You know the song, all you arcade junkies of the '80's. It haunts my dreams, as do visions of brightly coloured blocked tumbling from the sky. But... we cleaned out and re-stocked our storage locker a few days ago, and I think our hours of slack-jawed Netrix playing payed off: we packed and stacked that mofo as tightly as a drum. Cleaning surprise: J actually threw out his entire childhood model train set without nagging from me. Cleaning bonus: finding (and sighing over) adorable pictures of J as a sweet, geeky little boy and cute teenager.

"Medea" has flown off for the last time with her sun-god grandfather and I do the hustle again after just having one gig for a while. Suddenly all three bands are active after a long dormant period, which means days and nights of unpaid practice time; there is music to be written this week for my next theatre project, there is music to arrange for a gig next month, there is a cafe gig with a friend and on top of this there is that other category known as having a life, which means nights at the theatre and birthday parties to arrange and anniversaries to celebrate and friends to see. All of this, work and fun, is juicy and challenging. But it occurs to me just now that when life gets like this it's a lot like Tetris: frantically flipping and stacking and dropping so that everything fits. Panicking as the pace gets faster, and sometimes putting things in the wrong place altogether. Waking some days dogged with the feeling of hours ticking past too quickly, so that walks and photography and exercise and cuddling are put off indefinitely.

And always the little voice that reminds me: find the time. You will only ever regret the things you didn't do. Don't ever be lazy but don't forget to savor those moments of doing little or nothing. Do more. Explore. Practice. Do less. Rest. Stay in and nest. Go out and play. Get some work done. Get some fresh air.

What do your voices tell you as you play through all the levels in your Tetris life?

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