Invisible Suffering caused by Stigma.

At first glance, you wouldn’t expect that I’d be the person who suffers daily from stigma. I’m white, conventionally attractive. I finished High school, then Uni, and now work in the arts. My house is clean and tidy, I pay all my bills and I appear to function in a relatively normal way.

On the inside none of these things are true, and I can’t talk about it beyond vague-ities because there’s this gigantic cloud of stigma waiting to rain on this lovely little life I’ve struggled to build. I exist behind this perfectly manicured mask of functionality, and I’m acutely aware of the dire long term consequences if it slips.

My experience of stigma is never being able to exist as yourself safely in a majority of spaces. It’s not feeling safe to reach out to systems and supports that are supposed to be able to help you because the label carries more risk then suffering in silence and pretending to be fine. It’s watching people exhaustingly raise awareness all the time, yet not seeing politicians make systemic changes that will actually help.

I’m one of the lucky ones. The stigma I experience isn’t directed at me, because I pass, and I spend all my spoons to continue passing. It’s exhausting.
My heart aches for all those who can’t escape whatever stigma affects them. It’s not fair, but what’s the solution? I can only observe what the solution is not.

Things change too slowly. The pace of change makes me so angry. It doesn’t have to be like this, but it is, was and continues to be like this.

About the look: On a more positive note, how fun is this vaguely 90’s grunge inspired look !? I bought the fabric for this skirt almost 10 years ago now from my favourite little vintage shop located in Woy Woy. It sat there, in my stash, begging to be made into clothes for so long, not because I didn’t love it, but because there was so little of it.
I couldn’t resist leaning into the yellow of the tartan pattern, hence allllll the yellow.

My Head is full of Daisys

I want to talk about practice. Specifically about being proficient at your instrument in one very specific style, then learning a new style and basically being a beginner all over again. This my friends, has basically been my experience with learning "Jazz" 

There's a tonne of music that fits into the jazz category. Within this, there are less, but still a substantial amount of pieces that fit into the category of "Jazz Standard". On top of this, there's an expectation that when one plays jazz standards, (for the most part) they do so from memory.

This is what I've been struggling with. 

Last year, I dived into playing jazz with some really rad people. These people are all brilliant musicians, with a vast knowledge of the genera, and have been playing in the style significantly longer than I have. I made the mistake of trying to play catch up. 

Playing catch up is not fun. It's frustrating, and hard, and if you go about it in the wrong way, and or combine it with negative self talk, it will not get you anywhere. 

Basically I tried to memorise all of the things all at once, then wondered why I was experiencing practice burn out, and why none of the standards were sticking in my brain. I felt pretty shit for not getting them quickly, because all of the other musicians in my life already have them down, and seem to be able to add new ones without any trouble. The difference is, they built their repertoire the same way I built mine - one piece at a time over many many many years. I was trying to do it in a matter of months, which for ye olde average musician, doesn't work. 

I'm going to be honest, in the last few months I've let my flute practice slip. Sure, I've been writing a lot of music, and practicing a lot, but not flute, mostly because I burnt out. But this evening, I had a revelation. I've got to take learning this new (to me) genera S-L-O-W-L-Y. I need to focus on one piece at a time, like I've been doing with the ukulele.

I've made a new rule. I'm not allowed to move on to a new (jazz) piece until I can play the head and the chords on ukulele and flute. This will force me to go slowly and learn throughly and (in theory) allow me to skip the burn out I've experienced with other practice regimes. 

In unrelated music news: I put a new video up on my youtube channel! This one's called follow the light. Like all of my other videos, it's not perfect, BUT it's the best one I've made (in my opinion). I feel like I'm starting to get a hang of the process. Anyway, give it a listen if you're curious :) And if you REALLY like it, you can download it here FOR FREE on my JJJ Unearthed. :)  

Silver Bells

I recently gave in and subscribed to Photoshop Creative Cloud so I could shoot RAW, and by gosh, RAW is incredible. Like, the internet always talks about how great it is, but I didn't believe it till I saw it, and now I've seen it. 

For those of you who don't do the photography thing, DSLR's shoot (basically) in two modes: Jpeg and RAW. When you shoot Jpeg, the picture quality isn't as good and you don't have as much control in the editing process. You get to control everything with RAW.

The only downside is that because the file size (and my SD cards with shitty write speed) my camera takes less shots per second shooting continuously compared to Jpeg. (So, I'll probably still shoot Jpeg for my "normal blog type stuff") 

I made this skirt last night as well. I've been thinking about making a scallop hem circle skirt for a while, and decided to pull the trigger when I happened upon this silver wetsuit type knit. 

Sewing this made me realise I kind of need to get a walking foot. I was going to attach the bauble trim I've got around the waist around the edge of the scallops as well, but couldn't do it with just my basic foot attachment. (I mean, I could have tried, but I value my sleep more than I wanted a pom pom trim)