Fitness Motivation

Good morning bloggers,

So I don't know about most people, but I find great physical motivation from watching people work out, or seeing people with well built bodies. As a girl, I know a lot of other women who look at female fitness trainers and body builders, and they look to these ladies as motivation to workout. Call me weird, but I don't work that way.

I actually find it more motivating to look at male weight-lifters and watching them workout.

Well I stumbled across gold two nights ago when I stumbled across Team Grenade. Former military men who use military type training and exercise to get ripped.

If anyone knows me, they'll understand why I just had to watch this video, and as anyone who has ever worked out with me can vouch for, it was certainly the motivation for me.

Here's the video that I stumbled across: Team Grenade: Operation Desert Dawn

There's one man from the team that I thought looked like someone I know, which made the whole thing just a little bit funnier! So I decided to look this guy up and found out he's a personal trainer and has his own youtube channel with many workout videos and meals and such. I'll probably be keeping up with this guy for a while and using it as my motivation for a bit.

If you want to check out his channel, his name is Jamie Alderton, Click Here to go check his channel out!

I wasn't the only one to think his videos were motivational, I showed a few people in the Lounge on campus, the place all my other musician classmates hang out, and for an hour straight 4 of us watched these videos in amazement.

I've felt pretty unstoppable the past few days and my workouts have been intense and so well worth it. Even when I've come home late, I've done workouts that have gone past midnight, and to be honest, I feel incredible. I just have to keep it going and not stop!

Watch out world! 

- Tay

The Life of Composition

Isn't life beautiful?

Yes while many of you will read that and thing "oh great another person who is on cloud 9 and thinks everything is peachy" well it's not entirely true. I know there's a lot of crap that goes on in a person's life, but I also know that while things are pretty tough for me right now, I'm also in the best place I've ever been my whole life.

While I can look at my life and think, there's a million things that I want to change about myself, and I'm no where near the person I want to be, and there's a million things that I'm running around and trying to keep up with, I also know that where I am right now is perfectly amazing.

To sum up things quickly, I'm in the winter term of my 3rd year of University in music. I chose this semester to fill my life with nothing but classes that I need to compose for, while I was worried that this would be a stupid mistake because I would have to be coming up with new material constantly every day and would be working non-stop I've come to realize that this is the best thing I've ever done.

School work feels like it's never ending, but at the same time I feel like for once I want and am capable of staying on top of my school work. I haven't fallen behind, I haven't felt the panic of trying to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. Yes, a few assignments were left until the last minute and I knew I would have to stay up all night to finish them, they still got done and they were done well.

This year is also the year that I'm getting the highest marks that I've gotten in all my years of University and it feels wonderful! Not a day goes by where I'm not putting my pencil to a piece of staff paper and writing music and it's one of the greatest feelings ever. I was concerned that by doing all these composition courses at once that I would discover that I didn't like spending all my time on it, but instead I've come to realize that this is exactly where I want to be in life. This is exactly what I want to be doing. Everything that I'm doing this term; composing, arranging, working as a copyist, this is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life.

What a beautiful blessing to have something embed so deeply into your heart that you know this is what you want to do, no more wandering around aimlessly, this is it. End of story.

I truly wish this feeling upon everyone, that they discover what it is that they are meant to do. It's a beautiful feeling.

God Bless!

- Tay

Oboe of a Different Kind

So as I'm sure some people know, I'm an oboist, which means I play the oboe. It's a classical instrument that plays a lot of baroque music. Not very popular today outside of accompaniment in orchestras now a days. Also, if you choose to play a piece meant for oboe you're pretty much guaranteed to be playing it with piano accompaniment.

Well it's time for something new. I had some great chats with some of my classmates tonight while we were all put at the bar, because where else would musicians hang out?

The idea of jazz oboe came up and it seems pretty interesting, a lot of my classmates seem pretty interested in hearing it and want me to give it a try, even willing to help me get better at it.

The second awesome idea was that I wanted to play something that had accompaniment other than piano, so even if that meant doing a few oboe studies/duets and having a guitarist playing the other part. Lucky me, I found someone who is willing to give it a shot. I'm looking forward to trying something new in that way. Oboe and guitar should be a pretty combination.

It's time to branch out from my comfortable circle of music and get more passionate about playing more often and trying new and more interesting styles.

I'm really looking forward to this. Should be good.

- Tay