Christmas in July and Faith without Excuses

Hello Blog Readers! Yes, I meant to post this blog last month. Time just got away from me! Anyway, I wanted to let everyone know that the Christmas CD recording in Dallas, TX went really well. It was truly Christmas in July...in the heat...and the humidity. Whew! I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled with how it turned out thanks to the amazing musicality of my producer, Tom Prasada-Rao. The number of instruments this man can play is just mind-boggling. Truly, I kept saying that I hated to sing over his gorgeous arrangements because they were so beautiful just on their own! Future posts will keep everyone updated and I expect that the cd will be available in mid-October. What I really wanted to write about, though, was how big of a leap of faith this project was and I hope what I share will serve as encouragement to anyone else with dreams they've been putting off. I'll admit right now that I spent a lot of time (an extraordinary ridiculous amount of time) telling people why I couldn't do this project every time it came up in conversation. I had more excuses than even I knew what to do with...all protecting me from actually attempting to create a Christmas CD...all protecting me from moving forward with my music. Excuses are stupid like that. I have an online creativity group and the book The Artists' Way to thank for moving me out of the excuse phase and into the action phase. I literally found myself working on an exercise called Blasting Through The Blocks in April. The point was to name that thing that you've been putting off and then work through an exercise to figure out what the problem is. The author warned that it was a powerful exercise and I guess she was right. I finished the exercise and decided that I could at least call Wildwood Tofu Recording Studios (my first choice) and the producer, Tom, to even see if he was interested (instead of my continued assumption that he wouldn't be interested or available). And, seriously, within 24 hours of making that call I had the studio, airline and rental car booked. WOW! There was a higher power at work, I'm sure of that. And here's the eerie part...the last part of the exercise had required me to write "Okay, Creative Force, you take care of the quality, I'll take care of the quantity" and then I had to sign the piece of paper I wrote that on. I really took that to mean that I had to do something to at least get things started...and then try to get out of the way of the details...and it worked! Yes, there are a zillion decisions left to make in regard to cd graphics, etc. and the cd itself still has to be final mixed and mastered, but I already know in my heart that it's all going to turn out o.k. I have faith. Faith without excuses. In Song, Cheryl

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