Wallitner Weekly 25

Hello everyone!

A lot of productive things happened this past week.

I can’t believe we’ve been doing these WW’s for nearly half a year. 25 weeks feels good, thanks for being here!

This week we hit affiliate on twitch, this means we are now able to have subscribers and we can now make money on twitch. I am very excited that that side hustle is starting to work out. I’ve made friends from around the world streaming on there, its been a very good time.

As promised, I have the first chapter of my theory textbook ready as a sample for those of you who subscribe to the newsletter. If you’re reading this through the archive, check your email. If you’re reading this in the future, you’ll have to buy the book (haha).

The layout is a pretty rough for the book, I am just drafting it out in google docs at the moment, but the idea is there. I still hope to have it be a survivors guide, so it is a very surface level book of everything. Proven by the eight pages to learn all of note recognition in standard notation and the six most common clefs.

I have started mapping out how id like to record those mini episodes on the part writing rules and the counterpoint rules. I hope to have a few done in the coming week that I can share with the public.

I’ve got lots of plans for next week too!

Classes have started at the colleges near me so I am hoping to start tutoring again soon. I plan to press on with this textbook in hopes that it will help my future students. And I plan to continue building on the WallitPlays twitch channel as well. I am still working out the finer details, but I am balancing these two sides of my life pretty well now and I am excited for the future. It feels good to entertain people and then also educate people. I feel fulfilled. Now I just need to keep going and try to improve what I already am doing.

I Wish You Pain.

Hows that for a title? Got your attention? Allow me to explain. I fell deep into a rabbit hole this past week. I was thinking about a singer songwriter named Andy Grammar whom I hadn’t heard in a while. I got a song of his stuck in my head from way back when and I googled him to see what he was up to. Then I listened to some of his more recent songs. One of those songs is called “wish you pain” and the idea of it intrigued me enough to write about it. The idea behind the song is that when something bad happens to us, it propels us to be better. Some of the hottest tempers turn into the most patient. Some of the loosest cannons raise the safest kids. Theres this strange growth that happens when we hit rock bottom and bounce back better than ever. So Andy sings I wish you pain.

Now that kept me up at night. And I thought about how it applies to me and how it applies to others and I just thought about it up and down and left and right. And there’s layers to it. For example, sometimes when people are hurt they get cold hearted and they put up walls and they become numb. But if you become numb then you can’t feel pain. And if you can’t feel pain you can’t process, you can’t move on, you can’t grow. It’s an interesting and backwards statement. Pain = growth and happiness.

Then I thought about different kind of pains. Like growing pains. Pain via change. The music video for the song Andy wrote includes a bunch of testimonials from people. Like one guy who lost his job and he was stressed and scared, but he was able to use that extra free time to spend extra time with his dying father. There is beauty in the pain.

Then I went deeper into the rabbit hole and found a vlog Andy did about things that inspire him and he quoted the book “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. The quote is “The more important a call or action is to our souls evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” and that hit me hard. Like really hard. Because there are days as a musician where I think “this is what I am meant to be doing with my life” and I just can’t bring myself to pick up the pen and write or play or do music. And it’s because of how important music is to me. There is SUCH a resistance. And it’s painful sometimes. But pain is how we grow. Nothing grows in our comfort zone.

So yes, I wish you pain. Just like Andy Grammars song. I hope you feel things. I hope it hurts. Then I hope you learn and you grow and you remember. And then I hope you Smile.