It's been an incredibly busy year for me. I worked 18 hours a week at my job and finished the first year at The American School Of Modern Music. Other than that I was practicing or rehearsing almost everyday (although looking back I realize that most of my practice time was ruined because of a serious lack of concentration as a result of exhaustion). We did some gigs around Paris with friends from school and even got paid on some of them. The good thing about the gigs was the variety of music being played. One day we would play Stevie Wonder and more pop oriented songs with a singer, while the next we were trying our best on Mingus tunes and we played a lot of standards. As I am a basically self taught sax player, I had to return to the basics and correct my bad habits like too much reed biting and intonation (I still work on this, it is the single most energy consuming thing to do and most people just underestimate it).

Sometimes I feel that I'm rushing a little thinking that I'm always behind of "schedule" and that really stresses me. This feeling comes and goes every now and then, right now I'm in one of those periods. Patience, patience, patience. And baby steps.