Making Lemonade from Life's Lemons

After yesterday's whinefest in regard to my delayed return to singing due to my recent bout of pneumonia, I heard from a bunch of people. That was nice. It's good to know that random folks actually seem to care about a semi-decent, semi-professional singer. More accurately, it's good to have friends who take a couple of minutes to pick you up when you're down, regardless of the circumstances.

I was chatting with Cicadetta Stillwater, who is a hostess at Molaskey's Pub in Second Life. It's a place where I've performed many times over the last five years, and Cica has heard me do my silly show numerous times (and yet she still speaks to me). I mentioned to her that since I'd be spending some time recovering and allowing my voice to return to its former, uh, glory, it might be cool to document that process. I thought at the time of making a video blog (or "vlog", as the cool kids say), but I've always had the tendency to take simple things and make them much more complicated than necessary. Besides, with all this time I'm not spending doing live music shows, I need something to keep me out of trouble. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, so I needed to stop my hands from idling. No snickering, please.

So yesterday, I started on a short film, currently titled "Zak Comes Back". If all goes well, it will show the process I'm going to undertake to get my voice back. Also -- and this is true -- I'm genuinely concerned that I might not make a strong enough effort to spend time each day going through the exercises necessary to regain my singing power. If I have an external reason to do this (i.e., getting footage for the film), it will likely help me stick to a daily routine.

That's the plan for now. I figure that I'll tape a short section each day over the next couple of weeks, editing while I go along, and then premiere the film sometime before my first actual post-sickness gig, whenever that will be. Perhaps it will be fun to make, and hopefully fun to watch as well -- even with all they whiny "woe is me" aspects that will inevitably pop in. I think there will be some more lighthearted aspects as well, and if it comes together as I hope it will, a heartwarming happy ending. I guess we'll all wait and see!