I swear, I sit down at least once a week or so and make an attempt at posting some odd thought or update...but I invariably fail every time. Sometimes I start typing and the thoughts will flow from my fingers and onto the computer screen like water from a hose, but after twenty or thirty minutes of doing this I start to grow a very unsatisfied feeling with every word expressed. So it is deleted. Sometimes, I'll spend an hour or two and I'll manage only a few sentences. It's like I'm hoarding the words, afraid that once I hit 'publish' the words are no longer mine. And again, I'm start growing an unsatisfied feeling with every word expressed. So it is deleted.
 
Months pass as the words pile up in my room like dirty laundry. A mountain of words...shhhh, don't cause an avalanche, do you?
 
It's a bizarre lack of satisfaction that always begins with the question: so what? This frustrates the hell out of me. When I used to blog on myspace, I never asked myself why I was writing. Most of the time, blogging my thoughts was just a way of entertaining myself - a way of working out my thoughts. In a lot of ways, it was therapy - a way for me to relax a little and calm any anxieties I was having. I wasn't writing for an audience. This is not to say that the potential of an audience wasn't a major factor in it...I don't think I would have blogged if I didn't think there was a potential for an audience, but it certainly wasn't the main motivation. I might have averaged 10 views a month - and they were from only a couple people. I always found a great deal of satisfaction with it. I didn't worry about organizing my thoughts. I didn't worry about revising/editing. I didn't worry about offending anyone. I'd just sit down and let my mind go and once the tank was full, I'd hit the publish button.
 
Why is this any different? Where has all the satisfaction gone? Why have I become so selfish with my words, so unwilling to let them go...here? I have the words that could form the answers, but I lack the motivation.
 
Still, I'm determined to post something tonight. Determined to hit the publish button, even if I don't actually say anything of substance. So I write away without the reward of satisfaction.

Well, I have a couple weeks to kill before my second year as an M.F.A. at SDSU begins. I just finished working as a tutor for a five-week summer RWS (Rhetoric and Writing Studies) 101 block class. It was an intense, and sometimes arduous, five weeks of tutoring. But of all the classes I've tutored (five), I really enjoyed and admired this crop of freshmen. Perhaps this was because I saw all of them everyday so I got to know each of them more than I likely would in a normal semester, but I like to think it was mostly because they were all eager and willing to learn. With the exception of one student (who was re-taking the class to make-up a failed grade), this class was their first taste of college. So they cared more about what I had to offer than with previous classes. As such, they had yet to become jaded to the whole college process. I admire their drive and energy and wish I had as much when I started college back in '99. Plus, their level of writing was much higher than I have been used to tutoring...so that was cool. Smart kids.
 
On a separate note, last October I joined a hurling club (crazy fun 3,000 year old Irish sport) and hurt my lower abdominal/right hip on the very first day. I tried to continue with the club as I tried to heal but by February I quit the club because the injury still hadn't healed. It is now August and it is still not healed all the way. Sure, it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it did when it first happened but I still can't run without some pain and discomfort. As such, it has limited my ability to be active and I've gained twenty pounds in the last ten months since the injury. I am feeling fat and frustrated.
 
 

Over the past six weeks, I've been working on two new songs that I'm going to add to my Short Stories Album - an album of songs with short stories corresponding to each song.
 
The first song is called 'Lost in a Hole' and was written and recorded for a novel written by a friend and fellow SDSU M.F.A. student, Ryan Forsythe. His novel is entitled, 'Dick Cheney Saves Paris' (I believe I mentioned this project in my previous entry). The novel is going to have an accompanying soundtrack, not unlike my Short Stories Album - the only difference being that the soundtrack with consist of many different musicians/bands...and the music won't necessarily be direct with it's connection to the novel.
 
Anyway, to listen to the track, visit: http://www.jephpreece.com/Lost%20in%20a%20Hole.html
 
The second song I wrote and recorded is tentatively called 'The Flood (The Suicide of J. Alfred Prufrock).' (The T.S. Eliot reference means nothing. It just came to me when I was thinking about a title. So don't read into it thinking that it coincides somehow with his poem.) The song, as it stands now, is just a demo...which is like a rough draft. Some aspects of the arrangement, lyrics, composition are still being considered...but I might also keep it as it is. 
 
You can listen to the song here: http://www.jephpreece.com/The%20Flood.html

Once again I've managed to avoid updating my news/blog for several months. I'm not exactly sure why this has become such a difficult task. It's not that I've forgotten about this page. Hell, I've even attempted on several occasions to sit down and punch out a fun little read...I just haven't managed to type anything that I felt was worth reading; not that this has ever stopped me in the past. I used to post blogs on my myspace page two or three times a week. Most of the posts were just me rambling off my thoughts. The fact that very few people ever read those blogs meant very little to me when I was writing them. In fact, the blog was primarily motivated by catharsis. I wasn't writing for any particular audience except myself.
 
So what's different? I don't know.
 
I've finished my first of three years in SDSU's MFA program for Creative Writing. I don't know what to say exactly about my first year of graduate school. I ended the year with a pretty balanced mix of positive emotions and negative emotions. It certainly has been great to be living in San Diego again. And I feel like I've finished off the year with some pretty solid new material. At the same time, I don't feel like I've broken out of my creative slump. Sure, I wrote some new stories...but I'm lacking the excitement, confidence, and motivation that I used to have when I'd write and revise. I used to sit down and knock out ten pages in a few hours. And I'd feel so much excitement for whatever I was writing that I couldn't wait to start up again the next day. For the last two years, writing anything has been like trying to pull my own teeth.
 
On a separate note...
 
I turned thirty last month. I didn't do anything special. I didn't even celebrate. I did, however, decide sometime in February or March to stop shaving. I figured a good thick beard would be an appropriate statement, so I dared myself to stop shaving until I was thirty. Then I decided to wait until the end of the semester. Now I'm trying to hold out until July. As it is, I now have a pretty epic beard.
 
On another separate note...
 
I've written and recorded a song for a concept album that will accompany a novel written by a fellow MFA student Ryan Forsythe. I expect to finish the song in the next week or so. So far I'm excited with the direction of the song. It's not really like a lot of the stuff I've written over the past couple years...and yet, it is.
 
You can read about the project here:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanforsythe/dick-cheney-saves-paris-a-novel/posts/85556
 

It's Spring Break at SDSU. I have an entire week of no school or work. So I've decided to try and finish some of the website. I fixed the Solo musician page. The page was a leftover from my first site and the music player had stopped working. I've also finished the photo art page(s).  Many of the various photoshop art I've been making for the past year are displayed. I've wanted to finish the paintings page but I think I left the pictures of the paintings on my little brother's Mac back in Utah...'cause I can't find them pictures anywhere on my laptop. AND since all my paintings are also back home (in boxes somewhere in the basement), it'll be a while before I'll have that page up and running.