20181124.1130

It's finally happened; I let my buffer run out and a post fail to happen as it ought because of my inattention. I can only plead being busy with the recent observance and having family in town because of it. I still ought to have planned better than I did, and I am abashed that I did not do so. To those who have been reading regularly what I have been posting online, I can only offer an apology for my oversight and the assurance that, even as I complete this post, I will be working to build back up the buffer for this blog that I had boasted before.
I do not do so for money, to be sure; this work is unremunerated entirely, and I make little enough from the other writing endeavors I undertake. No, I do this because I need the continuous practice in the simple act of typing, in the more complex act of attending to formatting and layout, and in the yet more complex act of finding words and their orders and putting the latter into the former. I am well aware of what happens to my skills when I do not practice them; they do not remain static, but atrophy. I already feel that I never do well enough; to have my skills decline, and to be aware to the decline as I become when I attempt to practice them again, is vexatious.
Playing in the community band has served to remind me of such. I noted when I picked up a horn again that I had not done so in anything resembling a serious fashion for some sixteen years, and it was clear to me in the first few rehearsals that I had accumulated quite a bit of rust and other problems in that time. Recently, I was reminded of it again when I went to work through some of the traditional etudes for my instrument: the contents of the Ferling book. (Saxophonists will know it, to be sure.) Pieces I had once played with relative ease were forbidden to me; my fingers would not work upon them. Pieces I had seen before were foreign to my eyes entirely. Had I had an audience for my attempt to play through them that had any knowledge of how they are supposed to sound, I should have been ashamed; as it was, I was not pleased with myself.
I do not want the same thing to be true for my writing as has been true for my playing. (I am working to address the issue, albeit likely not with the diligence it deserves.) It is for that reason, or at least in part for that reason, that I have worked to keep going in this particular webspace, removed from my more professional concerns so as to allow practice, while still potentially in the public eye so as to keep me more or less honest. I do not relish having lapsed in it, even if I had cause to do so; I shall, as in much else, work not to do so again.