[Wk12] Improving in Fitness, Gaming & Music

Previous Weeks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

About this blog/diary:
I'm a professional musician and (very) amateur gamer.
Blogging about improving and sticking to a program is very effective for my overall progress!
Having myself been inspired by Haulvern, I hope this humble blog can motivate another someone in need of positive change.
Thanks for checking this out and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!

Week preview: Freshly back from the audition trail, I'm reassessing my gaming goals, settling into my new fitness routine, and planning for coming 3 months of auditions!

Goals for the Week

Fitness Goals:
4 Weight-lifting sessions (log)(program): [image loading]

                  2 Running or Cross-training sessions (log)(program):

            Gaming Goals:
                  Log Write-Ups of OCC Blood Bowl games (Current Standings):
                  Log Write-ups and session prep for my DND 5E Campaign (wiki):
                  Log CS:GO practice sessions and Ranked results: (below)
                  Log Hearthstone Drafts/Results: (below)

            Personal Goals:
                  Daily Mental Discipline sessions: ( [image loading]

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Log daily food intake: (log) (

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Quality challenge-seeking practice session: (

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Weigh-in regularly (log): ( [image loading]

)

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Tuesday 9/16:

Back from an audition trip, I'm feeling totally pumped to ramp up for the coming months of auditions! For those of you who aren't familiar with the auditions for classical musicians, it's one of the most demanding and particular job application processes in the world today, possibly in the history of the world. It's also (at least in America thank to the strong union presence) one of the fairest processes.

Every audition begins with a resume round. If your resume clears the screening by virtue of experience or good education, you'll be given an audition time (usually within a scheduled hour-long slot) and be invited to attend the live audition. All expenses incurred by the audition (airfare, carfare, hotels) are at your own expense. The preliminary round of an audition will on average consist of around five 15 second to 1-minute long orchestral excerpts chosen to showcase your ability to play your instrument. You appear on the audition day an hour before your audition time and, if you're lucky and the audition is well run, are given a warm-up room to yourself away from the ~100 other applicants. At the appointed time, a proctor will come and take you to the stage, on which you likely have never played before. You have that 5-10 minute long time slot to impress an audition panel that can only hear you. They are hidden behind a thick cloth screen to prevent favoritism. Play well enough in the first round, and you'll advance to the "semi-final" round. In this round, the excerpts are usually longer and more numerous. Play well enough again, and you'll advance to the final round. In the final round, anything can happen. The panel can request to play with you in the section testing ensemble skills and screening for potential personality issues. They can and often do ask you to play excerpts again in a different fashion. They can ask you to sight-read anything at all, but most often something from the standard orchestral repertoire.

It's an incredibly demanding and unforgiving experience in every respect. Any mistake can end your day and your hopes from employment. If you have a bad day, are feeling ill, or just generally unsettled there's no rescheduling. You're forced to play under unknown conditions and often pushed to the limit of your mental and physical reserves (as audition days frequently go ~12 hours). On top of that, depending on your chosen instrument, there are usually only 5-6 auditions a year for positions that pay a living wage, and an ever increasing applicant pool of kids getting music education.

But I feel auditions are one of the most beautiful and exciting experiences. I absolutely love the process of auditioning! Never before have I experienced a process that is just so purely you competing against yourself. Because the process is so subjective, because there are so many variables that are beyond your control, the only thing you can focus on is playing the best you can in the given moment. Ever fiber of your being and ounce of mental fortitude need to be focused in the moment to play your best. You can't control how your competition will play. You can't control what the audition will hear and fixate on. All you can do is play your best and see if they're buying what you're selling.

At any rate, I just returned from the audition trail for a middle-tier full-time orchestra (30-40k/year) and ended up getting runner-up! It was a very exciting day, made moreso by that my prep fell slightly short in the weeks leading up to it. It was actually the perfect ending because I don't think my wife would want to leave our current job to take that 50% pay cut. But I was able to do the audition for cheap, and I'll always take an audition if I can do it cost-effectively. I felt sad after the audition though, because one of my buddies who has been playing well (making top four at the last big audition of the year!) didn't advance to the finals with me. He's such a good player and hard worker; if anyone deserves a job it's him.

There's also a good deal of comradery in audition circuit as the same people usually make semis and finals at every audition. We all understand the process and how ludicrous it is, so there's very little infighting or bullshit backstage. Everyone is nervous and primed, but there's no bickering and backstabbing (usually... there are always a couple idiots on the circuit) as we're all just aiming to do the best we can. It's also nice to check up with friends around the country.

At any rate, I just wanted to share my love of the audition process. It really is what keeps me going, excites me, and challenges me.

Back to the regular blog! Air travel is never fun.... I woke up this morning around 3am (damn papa johns pizza binge kept me from sleeping well), a couple hours before I needed to leave for the airport. Uncharacteristically, I couldn't sleep on the planes despite earplugs and eye-guard, so when I finally made it home, I ended up crashing for a couple hours of hard napping.

Upon waking, I knocked out the overhead press lifting day! It was very nice!! This is last lifting week pushing 1RM numbers before next week's de-load sessions so I'm making sure to push it.

Regarding gaming, I feel like I'm spending too much energy and headspace trying to improve in games versus practicing intelligently and efficiently. This week I'm going to cut back on my multiplayer games with fixed time investments and play some single-player games. While I do generally enjoy the process of improving in gaming, it's also stressful and can exhaust my energies for other pursuits. My wife was the first to notice this as she commented on how frustrated I can become at the end of a particular session. While I don't mind the frustration, she noted that it's something that probably isn't balanced with the enjoyment I derive from the process. I agree completely when it comes to Hearthstone, and slightly less so with CS:GO so I'm going to take a light week on both and see how I feel.

Wednesday 9/17: [image loading]

Whew! A hard day's work at rehearsal this morning led into a full day of errands and chores. Knocked out deadlifts today, but felt some of the back activation I suffered two weeks ago... Not too happy about that. Next load week I'm going to tape myself and upload to the videos for the TL H&F Initiative review. Baah.

I have my reward for keeping to the program for the third month in the mail! I'll be updating my setup with a new Behringer microphone and requisite pop filter. The mic I've been using with my sound board is a holdover from the old days when I recorded myself on minidisc and DAT. It's a great old stereo mic, but doesn't interface well with the board. The output is ridiculously low and only feeds from one of the stereo mics. Hopefully this new mic will fit nicely! Looking forward to doing some DMing on it!

Thursday 9/18: [image loading]

A rather busy day of errand running before an evening rehearsal. The rehearsals this weekend are 3 hours of drive time away, and I drew the short-straw for the carpool so I drove tonight. Not much to say as I didn't get a chance to write this update on the day.

Friday 9/19: [image loading]

My weight is settling back down to pre-Papa John's binge levels! It was a little disheartening to see the effects of the post-audition pizza outing stay with me for so long, but what can you do?

Back on the road again tonight for some more rehearsals, but I'm going to knock out a session or two before heading out. I felt uncomfortable intonation-wise yesterday and hope to correct that. Off to do that now!

Yay! The night's rehearsal was a bit more comfortable! Feeling good! I'm also happy with how I've been eating while on the road, though that's going to change somewhat tomorrow. Don't have control over my dinner and late afternoon mini-meal, but we'll see what happens. I'll try to be conscientious with the free food.

Giving myself the bronze because the quality of practice today was pretty high and effective considering the 6 hours of hard rehearsal around it. Good stuff!

Saturday 9/20: [image loading]

A good day! Concert and afternoon rehearsal went largely well. Didn't chart my food intake as I was away most of the day, and I indulged a little bit in the evening.

Sunday 9/21:

A rather lazy day and a delayed update... Grr. Didn't do audition practice, but did knock out a good work session. Some minor errands took up a good portion of the day. Did knock out squat day though!

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CS:GO Reference Section:

Original Silver Elite Account:

Nova 2 Alt Account:

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Hearthstone Reference Section: Drafting according to LawrenceJames guidelines. 6-7 2s, 3-4 3s, 4-5 4s, 2-3 5s.

[Wk12] Improving in Fitness, Gaming & Music

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