To help me stay focused on achieving my goal of finishing my first album, my friend gave me an awesome gift: a Daruma!

Daruma Dolls Courtesy of Wikipedia

A Daruma is a paper mâché round figure that symbolizes the man who founded Zen, Bodhidharma (Wikipedia.com).

Bodhidharma Courtesy of Wikipedia

So what you do with a Daruma is you make a goal and color one of its eyes. (Darumas come with 2 blank eyes.) You cannot color the other eye until your goal is complete. I like that I have my Daruma to remind me to stay focused. Whenever I see its blank eye staring at me, I think “Go work on your music!” 😉

My Daruma 🙂

Sometimes I take a break from my music because I feel overwhelmed about how much left I have to do in order to finish my album, or I feel frustrated because I just can’t get something to sound right. But having my one-eyed Daruma staring at me everyday has made me reflect on why it will be an awesome moment in my life when I finish my album. I’ve come such a long way to get to this point.

I went from being a little kid who sang nursery rhymes and oldies from my mom’s favorite radio station, to a 5^th grader who started writing lyrics and singing my songs on the playground or the bus (I know….nerdy ;-)) to making music for my own songs with the piano, guitar, and drums, to actually making a CD. (I honestly still cannot believe I’m making my first album!!!!)

In order to stay focused, I made a goal for the month of August: finish writing all the songs I want to have on my CD.  I know it’s going to be a lot of work because it has already been a lot of work. You can’t just go “Okay, I just finished a long day of work, and now I have to feel inspired!” Instead it’s more of a me playing the same part of one of my songs over and over again until I figure out what to add to the song or how to make it better. (Yeah for long bus rides to and from work that allow me to listen to my songs over and over again 😉 ) Nonetheless, I’m going to keep pushing forward!!! I really want to finish my CD!!!

People are more likely to achieve a goal if others know about it. So, now that you all know that I’m trying to finish writing all the songs I want to have on my CD by the end of August, I hope upon hopes that I can finish writing these songs in the next 23 days. 🙂

Thank you to my Daruma for reminding me to focus on my goal. 🙂