Spreading Sheets

They say that you need to be organised to get something done. Well I haven’t been doing a lot of the latter of late, so maybe it was time for a little of the former.

Enter my new faithful personal assistant, google docs. In particular, mr google spreadsheet.

This little guy is now holding all my song sketches, lyrics, chords, comments and recording notes. I could say that I miss the smell and feel of 4000 pieces of scrap paper, but the honest truth is it’s a great relief. Not just having it organised, but I always had a slight degree of terror that my pile of paper would somehow destroy or vacate itself – rendering me back in square one. Right where I started, but angrier.

So now, having multiple backups in ‘the cloud’ as the iKids call it, gives me a whole bunch of ‘whew’ whenever I see it. It also looks more formidable, convincing me in my despairing moments that I am….getting….somewhere…..slowly.

Finally, and this is the real kicker, the colour yellow.

I have chosen yellow to mean “this space needs filling with something wonderful”. I have also expanded it’s definition to include “something better” and simply “something” on occasion so far, but at least it’s working.

I have to be able to see something to do that is important, as otherwise it is far too easy to jam away on my synths/guitars or blog my way around the very latest in “music gear I don’t need but still want to watch”. I don’t know if I’m the only musician who loses time to music equipment websites, but my igoogle page is a crack-house of alluring press releases with new filters and 64 bit support.

So the yellow squares are on my side, calling me towards art instead. They are playing a very important role, and I expect I should need to thank them when it comes to digital booklet time. They will have earned it, no doubt.