Personal Training

On Breaking Habits, Slow Burns & Keeping Your Eyes On The Prize

My head is full of songs all the time. If I wake up in the middle of the night, there’s a song half played, like I left a record on when I went to sleep. In the morning, a song from the jukebox of my mind is waiting to greet me with the morning sun. There’s so much music partying away in my brain, it often spills out - sometimes in productive ways like songwriting, but more often in the form of somewhat tuneless, formless humming that goes nowhere. Apparently its really fucking annoying. I can imagine it probably is.

I’ve always known I hummed relentlessly but now I’ve discovered it lands more on the irritating side than the charming side, I’ve decided to break the habit, and so I’ve become horribly aware of how often I break out this atonal hum. Incessantly it seems! Turns out breaking a deeply entrenched personal habit is really difficult. Who knew?

It’s actually a little depressing too, silencing the sounds that are overflowing from my internal radio. I keep finding myself walking around with balled fists. But it does feel good to tackle something and feel the desired change start to happen. Creakily and slowly for sure, but I’m a faithful believer in both neuroplasticity and persistence. Also in the idea that there’s no such thing as failure, sometimes things just take a little (or a lot) longer than we hoped. Like years and years and years longer. But like Queen Spacey Kacey, I’m alright with a slow burn.

Although I am currently working on developing some exciting new stuff, there’s a passion project children’s picture book I’ve been tinkering with off and on for over fifteen years now, and all of a sudden I’m finding the call very loud and enticing. Would you like to meet him? A sneak peek? This is Freddy Fandango. There might be a little bit of me in Freddy! There’s definitely a bit of my piano playing dad, and probably a smidgin of all the musicians I know and love. We try our best in the real world but we’re not always fully in it, if you know what I mean. Unless we’re playing music of course.

This is Freddy Fandango … but shhh, I shouldn’t have revealed him yet….

Speaking of which, I played a show with my band The Great Beyond last week and it felt cathartic and chaotically beautiful. Someone on the internet said we were ‘truly poetry in motion’. That made me happy. I wish someone would book us a well paid world tour, with long stretches in the Greek Islands, Tuscany and Paris, and give me one of those cool touring apps, like Master Tour, where you wake up in the morning and look at your app to find out your travel plans for the day and whether and where you’re playing that night. Although I don’t like being told what to do, I will make exceptions for Master Tour.

A girl can dream.

With love from me and Freddy and my balled fists and the cacophony in my head… keep your eyes on the prize!

Lo x

PS Please heart this & share away & tell me if you want to meet Freddy?