Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Anticipation

Right now I am eagerly awaiting my bluegrass music camp. In just under two weeks I will be travelling to Sorrento in the Shuswap to play and hear and dance to bluegrass music for a solid week.

I found out this morning that I now have a ride up to the Shuswap with a doctor from Nanaimo. At least , I hope I do. I sent him an email to confirm it. If the ride doesn't work out, I will have to take the bus, something I'd really rather not do!!!

For the last few weeks I have been trying to learn some new tunes on my guitar to prepare for the camp. Right now I am working on learning all the lyrics to "Bury Me Beneath the Willow". I don't know why it is so hard for me to remember lyrics. I get the chord changes and melody quite quickly, but I'm lyrically challenged!!

The other thing I need to do to prepare is to restring my mandolin. It still has that one broken string from when I was playing it a few days ago. But I've been so busy with the house renovation that it's been a pretty low priority item on my "to-do" list.

I am not feeling stressed about this camp, but I am feeling very excited. I am going to get to see a lot of people I haven't seen for many years, not since the last time I went to camp. How long has it been? Seven years? Could it have been that long already? I guess it has.

As the day approaches I imagine I am going to start to feel more nervous. Especially about leaving my son , Alan, for a week. I know that he will want to be with his papa. Maybe we can do a video Skype once during the week so he can see me as well as talk on the phone. I hope that one day he will want to learn to play the guitar or the violin or something and he can come to camp with me. It could be our 'boys' week away from mama"!!

I sure hope I hear back from the doctor today about the ride. I can't believe how much I was worried about that. I was really dreading the prospect of taking the bus, and as the weeks went by and I hadn't hear from Jay, the camp director, I thought for sure I was going to be getting on the old Greyhound. That's the worst!! I always end up getting bus sick and it's sheer misery. What a way that would have been to start the week of music camp.

Now that the time is almost hear, I'm starting to think that it's time to learn a few more new tunes . Or maybe I should just hone the ones I have more or less down and learn some new ones at camp. After all, one of the reasons to go to camp is to learn some new music and get some new ideas.

I hope I can meet someone from the North Island or maybe even Campbell Rive with whom I can play once camp is over. The one thing I really dread about music camp is what happens afterward. You get rolling, your music chops are really happening, and then, BLAM, it all falls flat. You go back to work and music starts coming last. I don't want that to happen this year. I would like to keep it rolling, but for that to happen , I know that I need to find a partner or a group of people with whom I can get together and play at least once a month. Otherwise it all starts to go the sidelines once school starts up again.

I need to really focus on that while I'm at camp. Network, network, network and see if I can make a connection with someone to keep it all rolling once the school year starts.

Of course, I need to just enjoy my time at camp, too. After all, this is supposed to be a vacation, too. It will be great , no matter what. And now time's up.

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