Beach Vacay

Content by Mitch Osborne

We looked into Direct TV Deals and have decided to switch. I made an appointment for next week when we are going to be on vacation so that it would be set up when we got home. I am going to have my sister go over there and let them in after I tell her exactly where I want everything to go.

We are so excited about our vacation next week. It has been a while since we have taken a family vacation. The last two years, my husband had some personnel changes at his office and just really couldn’t feel comfortable leaving for a week. If we had gone on vacation, it really wouldn’t have been a vacation for him. I know that he would have been worrying non stop about the office.

This year, he is at the point where he can go and enjoy himself. We are going to go to Anna Maria Island in Florida. It is located on the Gulf of Mexico. It is only about thrity minutes away from Sarasota. We have been there before and love it. I just can’t wait to sit on the beach, sip margaritas, and get some sun!

Inspiration In Simple Places

When it comes to writing music I don't think it's necessary to stress out about the lack of inspiration. Ultimately, inspiration (The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative) comes when you least expect it and is actually best served as a surprise. Sure, it's a great feeling to do something with the intent of poking at that creative area in the brain to get something moving and it actually works. But for me, I like just going through life and letting that inspiration hit me in the weirdest places and sometimes some of the most obvious places that I wouldn't even think of looking. Whether it be a magazine article, a news broadcast, a simple sentence that my wife speaks or a song on the radio. Even that painting on my friend's wall or the piece that I hung in my own creative room.

I mentioned in my last post ("Only Apart," Still One of My Faves) about one of my favorite songs that I've written "Only Apart". I had my wife recreate the page from the lyric book of the original lyrics of the song. (I didn't have the heart to cut it out of the actual book.) I then got a float frame so I could see both sides and hung it in my creative room. My intention was merely give the room some decoration and an artistic feel while also reminding me of accomplishes past, but I never thought it would be a rich source of inspiration. With all the scribbles and crossed out words that plaster both sides of the page from top to bottom, this lyric page is exactly what I like to see in my lyric book when I write a song. A messy scrawl of thoughts and even doodles is the ultimate proof that a song has been thought out and toiled over for a good period of time. You can actually leaf through my book and pick out all the songs that have died or stalled and the ones that have been become finished pieces pretty easily (with some rare exceptions).

It's not very often that I get to see a physical representation of my music and it's time like these that I can actually "see" my music as a piece of art instead of just hearing. It might not seem like much but having that lyric page on the wall here behind me is a great source of inspiration just for the sheer fact that I want to make more lyric pages that look just like that and songs just like that one of which I can be just as proud.

So whenever I need a little push when I'm struggling on a song I just sit in my creative room facing that frame and I float away into thought. Really, that was the whole intent of the room anyway with it's orange  walls and comfy feel. It looks like I accomplished what I was going for even in the places that I didn't intend. Rock on!

Teen Mom

Guest post written by Derick Burks

I convinced my sister to start watching the show “Teen Mom”. She and her husband just got satellite TV from www.EXPERTsatellite.com, so she was excited to find a new show that she could consistently watch. I’ve been watching Teen Mom since its first episode and honestly, it’s like watching a train wreck. I think it is so sad that these girls have babies at such a young age and have no family support. Many of them are not in a relationship with the father of their babies. You would think that having a baby would cause these girls to grow up, but many of them are still very immature. I will be interested to see what their children are like when they grow up. Statistically, people who were babies of teenage mothers will most likely have babies when they are teenagers.

I often wonder if this show is deferring teenagers from having children or making them think that they should have children at a young age. I cannot imagine having had a baby when I was in high school or college. I had our first child when I was 26, and only then did I feel that I was truly ready to begin raising a child.

"Only Apart", Still One of My Faves

Out of all my songs, "Only Apart" is still one of my favorites to listen to and perform. I wrote it more than 4 years ago (it feels like longer than that) and it was actually one of the last songs that we worked on as a group in my band Now Transmission. We never quite finished the full band version before we parted ways. As a band it had some cool things going for it but I'll always have a fondness for it in the raw acoustic form. I recorded the video below about 3 years ago but it still pretty much holds the same basic form today.

I've always been really proud of this song and I even framed and hung the page of hand written lyrics on my wall here in my creative room. It really adds to the creative feel. Sometimes I just take it down and look at it. Is that weird? Rock on!