What I know I have to do.

 I was up until 6AM again but not before getting in something like 2 hours of practice. This is the way, as they say. I've got to become skilled enough that when I'm back home I'm not just another useless being who mopes around, adding little or nothing to society. 

I'm on page 19 now, and have played the pieces there except for "Muffins" at the bottom of the page. I decided to save "Muffins" for later. I'm gratified that playing C is becoming easier and the pieces are starting to get into "finger memory" and also I think my tone is getting better. 

I'm also not messing around playing quietly. In one of the books about shakuhachi I read, one of the great teachers said that new students should play loud for their first few years, I guess to build up strength. And in one of the books by James Galway, he mentions auditioning somewhere and the examiner saying something like, "Why do you have to play it so loud?" Things would be a lot easier for me if I played quietly in practice, but then how am I supposed to do, out there in front of the Old Spaghetti Factory or somewhere, trying to "put it across"? 

I've got to develop as much skill over the next two years as I can. "Red", the flute player who was a fixture downtown, probably RIP now, got by surprisingly well with a playing style that was so smooth that his main problem was people not realizing it was him playing and not Muzak. Yet he had the little Chinese bakery in Mountain View paying him, he said, to play out front. But he was a *very* rudimentary player, and that's not for me. I want to play real music. 

I need to develop to the point where I may land back home with no more than I can carry in my pockets or on my back. And be able to make money right off, be able to rent a storage space to use as a home base, and to get along and survive. I need to be sure of making enough to get by on sleazebag hotels or something if nothing else, and get established. I look at how well I've established things here, stopped drinking and stayed away from it, am saving money, and am able to come up with an angle to achieve just about anything. 

I *really* want to get on friendly terms with my older sister again, but that's probably going to take time, and the way to keep that from happening is to show up poor and begging. Which again is why I haven't dared to think about moving home until I've got Social Security up my sleeve, and I also intend to show up back there with enough money to do nothing for a year, if I choose.