The sun is coming back out and I am loving it! ☀️

Blogging & Dev

Fun month of blogging! I'm wrapping it up on researching JavaScript testing and am switching over to SQL.

Tailwind redesign is still kicking at work! We got docker up and running, too! 🐳

Meetups are great! I had a blast again at React Dallas! If you're in the area, come on out! It's such a great group of folks. ⚛

You can catch up with my tech projects through the Tech tag on my blog.

Music

I released Whiteout this month! Snuck it in right as it started warming up outside.

On a trip up to UNT, I got to wander around my old stomping grounds at the College of Music. It was so rejuvenating to be up there. I lovingly wax nostalgic on the place as "my own Disney World for Music."

I did a few piano recordings while I was there, too! The Bach Prelude in C is my favorite, such a dreamy piece...

You can see what I've shared so far through the Music tag on my blog. I'm also sharing recordings on Instagram.

Drawing

I finished my second AND third sketch books this month! 📒 Dried out my first fine liner! 🖊 I'm crossing right through those artistic rights of passage.

I'm just about wrapping up Drawabox with lots of studies on animals. I'm currently on the hunt for resources for studying the human figure next.

You can see what I've made so far through the Art tag on my blog. I'm also sharing drawings on Instagram.

Words and Sounds

📚

• Tolkein's Fellowship of the Ring is going to take me a while, y'all. 🐉 So far so good, though. It's very cozy — lots of words dedicated to eating supper.
• Form & Essence: A Guide to Practicing Truth I took an arts admin class with Matt back at UT. Matt is such an amazing embodiment of the servant leader, and this book feels like I'm getting to take the best bits of his class all over again.
• I have a few words written through the Books tag on my blog. My favorite this month: Software is Measurably Valuable Creation

🎧

• My friend Thomas Kurtz gave a beautiful recital in Austin! No sound online yet, but all of his recordings are gorgeous.
• The Black Box by aivi & surasshu. An old favorite. I love the mix of classical and chiptune by the composers of Stephen Universe.
• Lumi by Snail's House. Kawaii Future Bass at it's finest.
• Brasilian Skies by Masayoshi Takanaka. The king of City Pop never disappoints. I admit that Star Wars Samba is a favorite track.

📺

• New Ted Lasso is pretty good! The Apple product placement is strong this season. 📱
• We're trying out a few others - Shrinking and The Big Door Prize. So far so good!

Life

Really grateful for some sunshine and warmth! The end of winter is always pretty tough, and this one felt extra long here in Dallas.

It's mostly been heads down for Miranda and I. My favorite nights this month have been the couple where we've put on some music and drawn together.

The best vibe was when we drew camels and snails while listening to Arooj Aftab! 🐌 🐫

👋

My favorite studies on animal construction! Lots of sturdy looking body with noodley legs! 🍜

All part of the Drawabox module on animals.

Listen on Youtube

This one sounds so nostalgic. 💐

Another one from a day trip up to Denton!

Focus is a really big deal.

Minimalism is a movement to live with only what's essential, Essentialism and The One Thing, and 4,000 Weeks are books about honing in on only what's most important. Speaking as a former musician, there are even cultural precedents to go all in on whatever you are most passionate about.

But bouncing around and chasing lots of interests is way more fun!

W.A. Mathieu writes beautifully on this in The Listening Book:

It is valuable to have many pots on many burners, and to keep track of the pots and the fires under them. This means that it is good to nurture diverse musical interests with well-defined, coherent projects in which to develop them... On any given day, go for whatever is cooking best—stir that pot. One's interest boils and cools unpredictably. Don't hassle it. Be responsive to your muse, not controlling. Do what she says. Coherence will come over time.

Call it productive procrastination, if you'd like.

It's what keeps your spirit creating. The important thing in making things is not really the product, it's the process. With too much focus, the process can become heavy. With variety, there's likely always something you'll want to chase after in another craft when the current one simmers down.

For Bowie, it was a dance between painting and songwriting. For me personally, well, I have a lot of options! Drawing, piano, guitar, coding, blogging, writing music. They feed each other beautifully.

If you have one big thing, great! I hope you find time for a bit of exploration, too. Magic happens, there!

I think often about Rebecca Solnit's essay "The Blue of Distance". The full piece is linked there, and deserves a dedicated read for the beautiful illustrations on her theme. The core message is this:

We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing. I wonder sometimes whether with a slight adjustment of perspective it could be cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to the human condition as blue is to distance? If you can look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue that can never be possessed? For something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them and the blue instead tints the next beyond. Somewhere in this is the mystery of why tragedies are more beautiful than comedies and why we take a huge pleasure in the sadness of certain songs and stories. Something is always far away.

Any creative practice is made all the more fulfilling because of this effect. What James P. Carse would call an infinite game, music and illustration and software and writing are all fulfilling because the horizon is always moving. There's not necessarily a mountain to climb so much as there are valleys to explore.

Funnily enough, it's easy to get caught up in reaching the destination anyway. Wanting to finish an album, wanting to be able to draw with a certain technique and style. That's not even considering the external factors - wanting to make X amount of money, have X followers.

After "having arrived" at a few intended destinations, I can wholeheartedly confirm that it's "being en route" that is life-giving.

Matt Hinsley in Form & Essence writes about "The Law of Dynamicism" The idea is that we are always stepping towards the horizon. Matt encapsulates how that distance energizes the work at hand:

I am working right now to write this book... In an earlier time I might have said something like, 'I can't wait to finish this book.'... But the reality is...that reality is. I will be then as I am now. Wherever I go, there I am. Today is my perfect day because I am thinking, learning, feeling, breathing, communicating, deepening. When this book is done, there will be another to write, or perhaps a different sort of adventure altogether. But what that is, is insignificant. It will be only another marker along the path in my lifetime of glorious dynamic consciousness.

Have you ever wanted to make a game? Is it a visual novel?! You could do what I did and use web tech to build the game from scratch. OR you could use Ren'py!

We made AC New Muder in React, Node, and Sanity. I learned a TON, and I'm a better developer for having done it!

But, I am tempted to daydream about what it would have been like to lean on an actual game making tool.

As far as I can tell, you barely even need to know Python to get started! Here's what a script looks like from the docs:

define s = Character('Sylvie', color="#c8ffc8")
define m = Character('Me', color="#c8c8ff")

label start:

    s "Hi there! How was class?"

    m "Good..."

    "I can't bring myself to admit that it all went in one ear and out the other."

    s "Are you going home now? Wanna walk back with me?"

    m "Sure!"

We actually considered using this at the start. What stopped us ultimately though was flexibility. I think an interactive map, item storage, and health were not a part of the scope of a tool like this.

AND, we wanted it to be on the web!! Ren'py has great Windows support, potentially less Mac support. For our case: having to download a game like this, launching it on Steam — that would be complicated since our game is based on Nintendo's characters. We wanted an early 2000's flash games feel. We both have a VERY soft spot for those games!

So, it's nice to dream. Maybe next time! But I'm really grateful we used the web platform.

I've been picking up SQL! I wanted to take my MongoDB experience and see what some of that database querying would look like in the world's most popular database querying language.

Not a very narrative write up, but maybe some of these will help pull back the curtain on what SQL looks like!

Notes are courtesy of this introduction to MySQL.

Arithmetic

When selecting, you can do arithmetic on integers. You can also give them alias's with the AS clause:

USE sql_store;

SELECT
    first_name,
    last_name,
    points,
    points * 10 + 100 AS "discount factor"
FROM customers
-- WHERE state = 'FL'
ORDER BY first_name

You can edit the data returned and apply the changes. Neat!

SELECT DISTINCT state returns only the unique values with no repeating values

USE sql_store;

SELECT name, unit_price, ROUND(unit_price * 1.1, 2) AS "New Price"
FROM products

<> is the same as !=

single or double quotes work.

not case sensitive with strings.

Query by date

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE YEAR(order_date) >= YEAR(CURDATE()) - 5

Order of ops in logic operators:

AND goes first. then OR

IN and NOT

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM Customers
WHERE birth_date > '1990-01-01' OR points > 1000 AND
    state NOT IN ('VA', 'GA', 'FL')

BETWEEN

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE birth_date BETWEEN '1990-01-01' AND '2000-01-01'

LIKE operator

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE last_name LIKE 'b__y'
-- % any number of characters
-- _ single character

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE phone LIKE '___-___-___9' AND
    address LIKE '%Trail' OR
    address LIKE '%Avenue'

REGEXP

Special characters:

• ^ beginning
• $ end
• | logical or
• [abcd] match one of these values for one character
• [a-z] match within range for one character

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE last_name REGEXP 'b[ru]'

IS NULL

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE shipped_date IS NULL

Joins

Inner Join: The basic. We're starting from orders and we're pulling in the other table

USE sql_store;

SELECT order_id, first_name, last_name, o.customer_id
FROM orders o
JOIN customers c
    ON o.customer_id = c.customer_id

We're also giving an alias to orders and customers as o and c. Nice!

Another example:

USE sql_store;

SELECT order_id, p.product_id, name, quantity, p.unit_price
FROM order_items oi
JOIN products p
    ON oi.product_id = p.product_id

Join across DB's

Not hard...

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM order_items oi
JOIN sql_inventory.products p
    ON oi.product_id = p.product_id

Self Join

USE sql_hr;

SELECT e.first_name, e.last_name, m.first_name as manager_first_name, m.last_name as manager_last_name
FROM employees e
JOIN employees m
    ON e.reports_to = m.employee_id

Joining Multiple Tables

USE sql_store;

SELECT *
FROM orders o
JOIN customers c
    on c.customer_id = o.customer_id
JOIN order_statuses os
    ON os.order_status_id = o.status

Great visual explanation of Inner and outer joins, with the ven diagram visual. √

Inner and Outer Joins SQL Examples and the Join Block

Another ref for table joins

Inner join - You're getting only the intersections between the tables

Outer joins - you are including one full table plus the intersecting data. A left join includes all the customers, along with their order details. A right join gets the same result as the inner join if you're selected table is the left one.

USE sql_invoicing;

SELECT
    pm.name as payment_method,
   c.name as client_name,
   date,
   amount
FROM payments p
JOIN payment_methods pm
    ON p.payment_method = pm.payment_method_id
JOIN clients c
    ON p.client_id = c.client_id

Compound Join Conditions

order_items has a compound key. Meaning, the unique identifier here is not a single id, but is in fact the combination of two id's from other tables.

Why not use a unique id here? Are there benefits to that? Shouldn't all tables have unique ids?

Well, regardless, here's how you handle it:

SELECT *
FROM order_items oi

Implicit Join

SELECT *
FROM orders o, customers c
WHERE o.customer_id = c.customer_id

Same as what we've been writing above. Not recommended, because leaving out will return a cross join.

Outer Joins

SELECT
    c.customer_id,
    c.first_name,
    o.order_id
FROM customers c
LEFT JOIN orders o
    ON c.customer_id = o.customer_id
ORDER BY c.customer_id

SELECT
    c.customer_id,
    c.first_name,
    o.order_id
FROM customers c
RIGHT JOIN orders o
    ON c.customer_id = o.customer_id
ORDER BY o.order_id

SELECT
    oi.product_id,
    name,
    oi.quantity
FROM products p
LEFT JOIN order_items oi
    ON oi.product_id = p.product_id

Multiple tables:

USE sql_store;

SELECT
    c.customer_id,
    c.first_name,
    o.order_id,
    sh.name as shipper
FROM customers c
LEFT JOIN orders o
    ON o.customer_id = c.customer_id
LEFT JOIN shippers sh
    ON o.shipper_id = sh.shipper_id

Note: Avoid right joins. Right joining can lead to complex, hard to understand queries.

SELECT
    o.order_date,
    o.order_id,
    c.first_name,
    s.name,
    os.name as order_status
FROM orders o
JOIN customers c
    ON o.customer_id = c.customer_id
LEFT JOIN shippers s
    ON o.shipper_id = s.shipper_id
JOIN order_statuses os
    ON o.status = os.order_status_id
ORDER BY order_status, o.order_id

Self Outer Joins

SELECT *
FROM employees e
LEFT JOIN employees m
    ON e.reports_to = m.employee_id

In this case, this query will include the manager that we are requesting.

USING

LEFT JOIN shippers sh
    ON o.shipper_id = sh.shipper_id

-- SAME AS

JOIN shipers
    USING (shipper_id)

Easier to write if the ids match!

Works for matching multiple columns, too

SELECT *
FROM order_items oi
JOIN orde_item_notes oin
    USING (order_id, product_id)

SELECT date, c.name as client, amount, pm.name as credit_card_name
FROM payments p
JOIN clients c
    USING (client_id)
JOIN payment_methods pm
    ON p.payment_method = pm.payment_method_id

Natural Joins

Easier to code, but not recommended.

Joins tables based on the columns that match.

SELECT *
FROM orders o
NATURAL JOIN customers c

Cross Joins

Between two tables, shows all possible combinations for all rows in the two tables.

Colors: red blue green

size: s m l

Res:

red s blue s green s red m blue m green m etc...

SELECT *
FROM customers c, orders o

OR

SELECT *
FROM customers c
CROSS JOIN orders o

Prefer the explicit syntax

Union

SELECT
    order_id,
    order_date,
    'Active' AS status
FROM orders
WHERE order_date >= '2019-01-01'
UNION
SELECT
    order_id,
    order_date,
    'Archived' AS status
FROM orders
WHERE order_date < '2019-01-01'

Can combine records from multiple queries!

Columns that you return should be equal. Otherwise, you will get an error. This will error:

SELECT first_name, last_name -- cause of the error
from customers
UNION
SELECT name -- only one column here
FROM shippers

Inserting a Row

One way, if using all columns:

INSERT INTO customers
VALUES (
    DEFAULT,
    'Chris',
    'Padilla',
    '1922-01-01',
    DEFAULT,
    'address',
    'city',
    'TX',
    DEFAULT
)

If explicitly defining columns

INSERT INTO customers (
    first_name,
    last_name,
    birth_date,
    address,
    city,
    state
)
VALUES (
    'Chris',
    'Padilla',
    '1922-01-01',
    'address',
    'city',
    'TX'
)

INSERTING multiple rows

INSERT INTO products (name)
VALUE ('Chris'),
    ('Jenn')

Inserting Hierarchical Rows

Parent > Child relationships. One parent can have multiple children...

1. Add a new order.
2. Insert based on the LAST_INSERT_ID()

INSERT INTO orders (customer_id, order_date, status)
VALUES (1, '2023-03-27', 1);

INSERT INTO order_items
VALUES
    (LAST_INSERT_ID(), 1, 1, 2.00),
    (LAST_INSERT_ID(), 2, 1, 4.00)

Copying a table...

CREATE TABLE orders_archived AS
SELECT * FROM orders -- Sub query - queries for use in another query

You have to set your primary key and AI column....

Using conditional select statement as a subquery

INSERT INTO orders_archived
SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE order_date < '2019-01-01'

CREATE TABLE invoices_archive AS
SELECT
    i.invoice_id,
    c.name,
    i.invoice_total,
    i.payment_total,
    i.invoice_date,
    i.due_date,
    i.payment_date
FROM invoices i
JOIN clients c
    USING (client_id)
WHERE payment_date IS NOT NULL

Updating a row

UPDATE invoices
SET payment_total = 10, payment_date = "2023-03-27"
WHERE invoice_id = 1

Using variables in your SET... you can use other fields to make updates like so:

UPDATE invoices
SET
    payment_total = invoice_total * 0.5,
    payment_date = due_date
WHERE invoice_id = 3

Updating multiple rows

Uses the same syntax. MySQL specifically has a safe mode that prevents updating multiple rows. You can turn it off by unticking "Safe Updates" in the preferences. You may have to restart MySQL after The IN clause can be handy, too.

UPDATE invoices
SET
    payment_total = invoice_total * 0.5,
    payment_date = due_date
WHERE client_id IN (3, 4)

Using Subqueries in an Update Statement

Fun fact - you can select part of your SQL doc to run a script

UPDATE invoices
SET
    payment_total = invoice_total * 0.5,
    payment_date = due_date
WHERE client_id =
    (SELECT client_id
    FROM clients
    WHERE name = 'Myworks')

Use the IN operator for multiple values:

UPDATE invoices
SET
    payment_total = invoice_total * 0.5,
    payment_date = due_date
WHERE client_id IN
    (SELECT client_id
    FROM clients
    WHERE state IN ('CA', 'NY'))

Good practice: Select your query BEFORE you run an update statement on your DB

UPDATE orders
SET comments = 'GOLD'
-- SELECT *
-- FROM orders
WHERE customer_id IN (
    SELECT customer_id
    FROM customers
    WHERE points >= 3000)

Deleting Rows

DELETE FROM invoices
WHERE client_id = (
    SELECT client_id
    FROM clients
    WHERE name = 'Myworks'
)

It's tempting early on to strongly associate with the tools you're using day in and day out. I feel really comfortable with React, so at time's I've thought of myself purely as a front end guy or a React guy or a JavaScript guy.

Ultimately, though, the people you serve need someone who is more versatile. Not that job titles matter, but the gig is typically "Software Engineer," not "React Dev."

As you develop, your problem solving abilities and sensitivity to creating systems transcends and particular tool. That's where the fun problem solving is, anyway. The tool is just a vehicle for speaking with the computer.

Chad Fowler in The Passionate Programmer makes a great case for this:

It's not about where you sit on the perceived value chain of project work (where the architects holds the highest spot of royalty). It's about how generally useful you make yourself...

To visualize what it means to be a generalist, it can help to dissect the IT career landscape into its various independent aspects. I can think of five, but an infinite number exists...:

• Rung on the career ladder
• Platform/OS
• Code vs. Data
• Systems vs. Applications
• Business vs. IT.

So many great dimensions through this lens. Platform/OS is a particularly juicy one. Full stack web dev can be balanced with mobile or desktop development. Developer and designer is another fun one, unsurprisingly common for front end developers.

The last point, especially, is worth noting. If you're with a startup ,the company is small enough where individual entrepreneurship and creativity play just as big a role as your technical skills.

Thankfully, the work is more fulfilling when you lean into generalizing.

Another one down!! This one I picked up so I could have more room to explore compared to my little moleskin.

It started out with figure drawing dissections:

And ended with animal construction studies:

Listen on Youtube

So dreamy...

I was visiting UNT recently for old times sake and made it into a practice room with a baby grand!! So much fun!

"Did I help someone today?"

Let me borrow from Simon Sinek's Golden Circle Model for a second: Why, how, and what.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is no small line in business. KPI's are a target to keep an eye on. Performance metrics and weekly outputs are something to continue monitoring. The "what" matters.

In the trenches, tools do matter. The systems we chose to implement, the ways we refactor our code, the time spent experimenting with a new technology. The "how" matters.

What matters most is certainly the "why" of helping someone.

Everything else almost feels like bike shedding when the question "Did I help someone today?" is the main guide.

Software is pretty expansive when it comes to this question, too!

Some days, that answer is "I helped a coworker debug a problem that's been slowing them down for weeks!" A deep and impactful day!

Some days, it's "I released a feature that will be used by thousands of people!" A broad impact sort of day.

The nice thing is, even on "low productivity days," we can answer affirmatively to that question in some dimension, if we're genuine.

Bring on the clear skies and open windows!!

Purchase on 🤘 Bandcamp and Listen on 🙉 Spotify.

Dave Rupert shared last year this amazing resource of translated video game magazines — Schmuplations.

Dave's post highlights some great connections between game development and Miyamoto's advice for success in the game industry. I did more digging and also enjoyed this Miyamoto quote from the same article:

What advice do you have for aspiring game designers?

No matter what your creative field, you should try to find a job that offers you many chances to realize own potential.

Before that, though, I think it’s important to refine your own sensibilities. 10 years from now, games will have changed. It won’t just be the same style of games you see today. If all you do is mimic what exists now, it will be difficult for you to create anything in the future.

I know it’s a cliche, but I think aspiring designers should follow where their curiosity leads, and try to accumulate as many different experiences as possible.

Another vote for following curiosity. Video games were (and still are?!) a young medium, so it's practically a necessity to be looking outside of games for inspiration from the world. There's simply more out there.

I'm excited to keep digging through the crates on this site! Here are a few more of my favorite snippets, this time from Beep Magazine's Game Music Round Table Interview:

What’s the secret to success in the game industry?

I hope this doesn’t come off wrong, but I don’t really remember trying super hard. One day I looked up and noticed things were going pretty well. Of course, I’ve been very blessed to have talented people and teachers around me. So I would probably have to say I didn’t really try super hard to get where I am… it just happened naturally.

A vote for effortlessness. It's what's easy and natural that we end up excelling at, and so, opportunities open. A nice counter to the notion that all that's worthwhile is on the other side of hard work alone.

A couple more on breaking into games. I don't ultimately see myself in games, but it's fun to see how musicians made it in way back when!

What advice do you have for aspiring game designers?

At present there are two in-roads to working in game music. The first is to join a game development company. For that it’s helpful to go to a 4-year college, and all the better if it’s a music school. The other way would be to gain some notoriety as a composer first, perhaps in a rock band or something, but basically if you can build a reputation in the music industry as a player, composer, or arranger, you might end up getting commissioned for this sort of work. Whichever path you choose, having that can-do spirit of “I want to write music no matter what!!” is important. If you can carry that passion with you wherever you go, and sustain it, I think nothing will serve you better.

Just an interesting perspective that still feels true. Though, in the indie world these days, it helps to have another skill to bring to the table: art, development, story writing, etc.

Here's that counter point from Mieko Ishikawa, composer for the Ys series:

For those who want to write video game music, I think knowing a bit of computer programming is a big advantage. There’s lots of people out there who can write songs, but if that’s your only talent, I think it will be rough-going in this industry.

Seems like good advice for creative work in general. Go all in on trying to make it on your art alone, and then pick up auxiliary skills to sustain your creative work.

Having been a teacher and, generally, someone who places a high value on exploring the world through learning, I end up reading a few books on education.

I'm only just coming across Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams, a manifesto on education. It also happens to be about the values in our society, but education is the driver.

The illustrated version is beautifully done. Here are my favorite points from first glance:

33. Who Will Teach Bravery? The essence of the connection revolution is that it rewards those who connect, stand out, and take what feels like a chance. Can risk-taking be taught? Of course it can. It gets taught by mentors, by parents, by great music teachers, and by life.

44. Defining The Role of A Teacher. Teaching is no longer about delivering facts that are unavailable in any other format... What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, to push us or encourage us or create a space where want to learn to do them better.

56. 1000 Hours. Over the last three years, Jeremy Gleigh... has devoted precisely an hour a day to learning something new and unassigned...This is a rare choice...Someone actually choosing to become a polymath, signing himself up to get a little smarter on a new topic every single day... The only barrier to learning for most young adults in the developed world is now merely the decision to learn.

If you've been in music, likely you've had an instructor teach bravery. Sometimes it's the director that encourages you to give it one more try. Or the drum tech that's not giving up on a section of percussionists struggling with a tricky passage. Or the private teacher that so wholly embodies their instrument and the musicianship of a piece. So much so that it's impossible to resist the allure of striving for that sense of awe and wonder in our own musicianship.

Those teachers have also created environments where students can be fully immersed in a world of music, no matter how big or small. It's what makes classroom band more special in my mind than solely taking private lessons - you can't beat a thriving community of learners where you're playing a unique role in the musical process. Every band needs a kid on tuba and another on flute playing together.

A somewhat disappointing truth is that many students that graduate high school, having played an instrument for 7 years at that point, don't pick it up again. I think there's a missed opportunity - leading with greater creativity and exploration in the classroom. I'm sure Seth explores those ideas in the book as well.

On the other hand, though, it's still one of the best vehicles for learning resourcefulness that we have. To the last point I've quoted - all the musicians I know have absolutely no problem applying creativity, persistence, and bravery in their endeavors beyond the instrument. I have musician friends who are also photographers, who knit, work with aquaponics, code for fun, mountain climb, and write novels. Many of my colleagues are now master teachers. A significant number of them also have skillfully transitioned into roles in tech, finance, health, marketing, entrepreneurship, and sales.

The vision of the once young musician grows beyond music, beyond the self, beyond a local tribe to a larger community and a greater opportunity for contribution and the wonderful lives that support that.

In that case, music education is doing exactly what I think it is uniquely best at: Expanding Dreams.

Miranda and I drew camels and snails while listening to Arooj Aftab this week! 🐌 🐫