Review: Metronome Bootcamp

Thought I'd start writing some short reviews of the stuff I've been using to help learn guitar. These are all from the view of a beginner.

I'm going to start with Metronome Bootcamp. This free course says it will help your timing and feel. These seem to be neglected in a lot of courses so this is something that was really welcome.

The lessons are in an easy to follow format and written in an entertaining way. It is presented as a one excercise per night kind of deal and it might be for a more advanced player. Personally I found it better to do one lesson a week and then add the excercises into my daily practice routine for the week. 

Lessons take you from very basic use of a metronome through different divisions. Along the way it gives you excercises that build into a toolkit to help with improving your timing on anything you learn.

Which brings me on to the metronome ap recommend in the course Tempo lite. You could use any metronome but this ap is probably the most versatile I've used. Being able to set trackers and automate the tempo slowly ramping up is reall useful for drilling excercises and speed training. And it's available for Android and iPhone (really hate it when a recommended ap is only for iPhone users).

So in summary a really well written and easy to follow course.

Cost: free (if you decide to get the pro version of Tempo it's currently £1.39 but you do not need this for the course)

The course can be found here:

https://learn.guitaros.com/p/metronome-boot-camp

How vaccines work for the uninitiated.

Seen a lot of people saying "But the vaccine doesn't stop you getting it". This is an absolute misunderstanding of how vaccines work. 

Think of your body like a house. The first time you see an ant in your house you probably add ant spray to your shopping list. But by the time you go to the shop and have the ant spray the ants have been busy and your now have to deal with an infestation. But from then on you keep ant spray in the house and kill any ants you see. Having the ant spray doesn't stop the ants getting in but stops the infestation. Your immune system works in the same way. 

When you get a virus your body starts making antibodies that are specific to that virus. If it's never seen it before it has to work out how to build those anti bodies and by the time it has the virus has multiplied to a point where you are sick. So a vaccine gives it enough information to learn how to build the antibody and trains it for when it encounters the virus. Then the next time that virus is in your body you can make the antibodies much faster than if it hadn't ever seen that virus before. But you will still have caught the virus. Your body can't kill it before it's in your body just stop it from multiplying to the point where it makes you sick. 

What's in a name? Is it Long Covid or Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome.

Let's start by trying to name my illness. I have ME. I use that name but others know it as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. These aren't actually illnesses as such they are a name for a list of symptoms (and so often used as a dump code diagnosis but that's a different rant).

I don't use CFS mainly because that name creates confusion with chronic fatigue which is a symptom of lots of things and only one symptom of ME. There is a long history of trying to get the name CFS dropped completely and in the UK at least its now recognised these two names are interchangeable. You may also hear Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (also post surgery or post cancer ect) . Generally this is usually used to describe the same symptoms in the first few months after an illness and after 6 months if your not better it's CFS but some people use PVFS interchangeably with CFS/ME. We can complicate this even further by bringing in Fibromyalgia which is another list of symptoms which over laps with ME/CFS/PVFS to an extent and sometimes people use them interchangeably (but there are some distinct differences there that mean they may not be the same) . 

But now we keep hearing long covid used to describe the exact same set of symptoms. I've even heard people say they don't have CFS or PVFS they have something different then describe my exact symptoms. 

Now I get it. I can understand people don't want to use CFS and there is a lot of stigma associated with that diagnosis. But it's really not helpful to try to disassociate yourself from that instead of challenging the stigma. It just leaves people like me even more left behind and the community divided. This is a community that recognised, before the medics did, that covid was going to cause post viral fatigue on a scale we hadn't seen before and are wanting to support people who suffer PVFS after covid. 

So please before you decide you have one of these "long" illnesses go take a proper look at what Post Viral and Chronic Fatigue actually are instead dismissing them because of the stigma. 

Organising my brain: I might be addicted to Trello

Recently I realised how much extra energy I need to keep on top of things, whether its ADHD or just brain fog cause by the ME, remembering things is my nemesis. So looking into how I can get organised led me to Trello and Kanban boards. This is what they look like:

I found Trello really easy to use and it didn't take long until my Trello boards looked like this:

And that's just my personal ones!!! So here is a quick guided tour of my boards.

First up is Bills and it does what it says on the tin. Literally a list of bills, how much they are and how they are paid:

This helps with my budgeting and reminding what I need to pay.

In a similar vein is Reminders:

This is a list of the things I'm likely to forget to do and when things are up for renewal. I want a list of the renewal dates for things so I can review if I want to cancel it instead of it auto renewing and then me realising I really didn't want it for another year (which is what usually happens).

Next up Books:

I have a huge to read pile (I haven't had time to add everything here yet) but I can never decide what to read next. Hopefully being able to see them in one place will help. I also hope to start writing some mini reviews of the books I read.

On a similar theme TV and Films:

When I sit down to watch TV the last thing I need is to spend ages trying to decide what to watch. Or I know what I want to watch but cant remember what it was on. Having this list makes it easier to decide. 

Next up Cleaning:

One of the joys of ME is just not having the energy to do things. The days when I used to just blitz the whole house in one day every month are long gone. So I'm trying to get into a cleaning rota where at least one room gets cleaned every week and every room gets a deep clean every 6 months. The problem is I can't always do a whole room in one go so this is what those cards look like:

Breaking it down into smaller jobs means I can either do it all in one day or I can pick up what I'm able to do that day and keep track of what I did so I don't have to spend 15 minutes each day trying to remember what I needed to do next. 

Next up DIY:

I love doing DIY but this is something I don't often have the energy to do. This board is a list of small jobs around the house so I can pick one to do when I have the energy instead of using that energy trying to remember what needs doing.

Next Food:

Which works with Meal Planner:

I tend to get stuck in a rut of what to eat. It gets to tea time and I'm too exhausted to plan beyond just grabbing whatever is easiest. So I'm making a list of meals that I like and are fairly easy to prepare and using them to actually plan my meals for the week. I also want to add in some recipes I want to try so that I can try to be slightly more creative with what I eat. Hopefully I can also get back into some batch cooking so I can get away from having to buy loads of ready meals. The meal cards look like this:

So I can check I have everything I need in and use it to make a shopping list for the week.

Next another two boards that work together Guitar Resources:

This is a board for me to store links and exercises that I can use to make my Practice Schedule:

Again this saves time and energy sat trying to work out what to practice. So I can use that energy on actually playing instead.  

Next up Health:

Another joy of chronic illness. I'm constantly being asked about what medications I'm on and what treatments I've had so this is a place for me to store those so I can look it up easily.

On to Journal:

I've been keeping a hand written journal for a while now but this is a way to just a quicker way to track some habits. The cards are still under development but they look like this:

So a combined to do list, food diary and I use the description box to write a short journal entry at the end of each day. 

Next Name Change:

As you can imagine the paperwork involved in changing your name is incredible. This was actually the first board as I needed a way to keep track of what I had done and then I realised what else I could use this for.

Lastly the two most important ones. Spending:

When I'm not well I tend to over eat and over spend so I need to get my budget under control. When I spend any money I add it to this. I can then use these lists to put together a budget and work out where I'm over spending.

And lastly To Do:

This is the board I spend most time on. It has my daily Journal entries, a to do list of things I don't do regularly and my shopping list. This one is saved to the home screen on my phone so I can easily dip into it.

A brain full of pandas!!

I've had a revelation that I have pandas in my brain*!! I've always known I'm weird. I struggled with things that others seem to find easy and people look at me like I'm an alien when I explain something that makes perfect sense to me (like brain pandas) . But I'm probably just just weird that doesn't mean there is something "wrong" with me. After all I didn't struggle with school I just didn't live up to my potential. I wasn't badly behaved just over emotional and impulsive. I had plenty of freinds even if I always felt a bit disconnected from people. I can be very organised and productive its just something I have to work at instead of it being natural. 

But recently looking the things other women shared about their Adhd I started to realise its all just a bit too familiar. So I took the prediagnosis screening test and came out with a very high probability that I have it. This doesn't mean I definitely do and I'm not even sure whether I'll even try to get an official diagnosis but it's given me a way to start to tackle some of the brick walls I keep running into. Knowing that the pandas are there means I can start learning all about how to care for pandas. 

*So why is my brain full of pandas? Someone on the Women with Adhd Reddit shared this video and its made me not hate my brain quite as much

 Pandas cause chaos

Lullabies

Golden boy high on his throne

Too afraid to fall

Your words are written on my heart

And burnt into my soul

Golden boy you saved my life

But you will never know

You weren't here to see flowers grow

From the seeds you sow

Golden boy I love you still

Although I know your flaws

You sang your lost boy lullabies

And kept my pain with yours

name change frustrations Google addition.

I decided I wanted a new Gmail address with my new name. It used to be that you could have multiple addresses under a Google account. All you had to do was add a new address and then changed which one you wanted to use as your main one. Simple. But now you can't do that you have to have a completly new Google account for each address. And there is no easy way to transfer all your info to a new account so you just have to start from scratch and everything that uses your Google account (ie YouTube) also doesn't let you change which Google account it's linked to. There is absolutely no sense to any of it.

I eventually worked out you can transfer your YouTube channel via a brand account which is actually really simple. They just don't bother telling you that.