BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

A busy weekend

This is a bit of a mash up blog.  I was going to post two separate posts about my weekend... but... I'm just combining it to one.

My weekend was pretty darn busy!  Most of my weekends lately seem to have been pretty super busy actually.  I'm REALLY looking forward to Thanksgiving break.  I have a lot of things on the creative side that I want to spend time working on.  So I'll be happy to get to spend some time working on all those things.

Sooooo I'm just going to run through my weekend real quick.  I already posted up that I got a hair cut.  Or as some people joke... multiple hairs cut.

Oh, got a haircut... looks like you got more than 1 hair cut... funny...  I'm sure you've heard someone say it at some point... anywho.... yea, I got my hair(s) cut.

But I also did 2 other notable things this weekend.  The first thing was that I played a show this past friday.  I'd played the same venue a short while ago and was asked to come back.  It was probably one of the best shows I've ever played.  There was a small but appreciative crowd.  I played the usual songs that I play but also debuted a live one that I've never played live before.  "Whatever It Takes" was played for the first time EVER live.

And it rocked.  I wasn't sure how it was going to go.  But for some reason something exploded on it at the end and I was putting all the emotion and energy I had and you could tell that everyone was kinda like whoa... WHERE'd that come from?!?!  That was intense.

I wish I had video'd it.  I KNOW I KNOW that's what EVERYONE says...

"I swear dude I saw bigfoot!  I just didn't have my camera turned on."

But honestly this was awesome.  I'll be playing that song again/more often.  The other thing that happened at the show was for the first time I had people come up to me to talk to me about me as a musician and one of the people there just told me straight up how it is, she was like you can tell that this is your heart and soul.  You can tell that you are 100 percent genuine in what you write and play and that you don't hold back.

I guess I was just kinda taken aback by that and so I sorta just kept saying thanks.

It means a TON to me to get feedback about what I play or write or anything creative.  Especially to be told I'm genuine.  That's kinda my biggest thing is trying to be true/authentic/genuine in what I do.  I don't know... I hate when I come off in anything like i'm not trying as hard as I can.  I know I'm not the best at pretty much everything I do.  I mean, there's nearly always someone better.  So even my best won't be as great as someone else doing just half effort.... But I try really hard at everything I do.  And I guess it just felt good to hear someone say that she really saw that.

Because most of the time we get compared to those who can do things easier than we can without much effort and it's 200 percent better than we could ever do.  And it's just tough.  It's really unfair.  I mean I know yes, life isn't fair.

But sometimes... it just feels good to have someone recognize at least for a moment that even though life isn't fair, they are going to disregard that.... and judge you not compared to anyone else but you, right then and there.

Yea.

Why do we do that though?  Always look at others and then say I can't do ANY of that stuff, or don't have any of the stuff that someone else has.  And then we get down on ourselves!  It's hard to practice it and easier to say it...

But if you can... really try hard to remind yourself that it's ok to just be you and who you are at this moment and to be where you are and have the things you have and the abilities you have.

Actually... it's funny because tonight in our little starbucks meet up (which is now up to 7 people!)

Tonight we discussed the fact that Moses had a speech problem... which I never knew he did... and that he asked that someone else be sent in his place... but he was sent anyways.

Something to that effect.  I probably should look up the reference... but I'm kinda sleepy and just writing this out really quick before bed.  But I thought that was relevant.  Because that kinda goes with what I was thinking from the show on Friday.

Just that idea... that you can still be significant even if your best effort is someone else's half effort.

So yea.   That's what I wanted to say on that.

The second thing I did was that I took some event pictures for my mom and her camp reunion.  Like the pictures that I took for the golf outing these are just straight out of the camera unedited photos.

I like doing the editing part but both the the golf outing and for this reunion they didn't want fancy edits.  They just wanted regular pictures just like they are out of the camera.

I said ok and took them and that was that.  It was cool though, I got some grub out of it... Mmmmmmmm the way to my heart is through food...  Seriously though... I'll do pretty much anything for food.  Most of the people at work know this... We get like free cookies ALL the time as a thank you for fixing computery things.

So I took those photos and they were happy just to have someone to document it.

I should really post a blog on the whole significance of summer camps in my family.  It's something that's been in our family now for, like 3 generations.  My grandfather went to camp... my mom... and my siblings and I...

I'd LOVE to send my kids to camp.... but it's like whoa expensive.  I mean even for us the only way we went was because my mom worked at the camp.  So we got to go as campers since that was part of the deal in her salary.

Hmmm... but that's for another blog.

Next sunday I'm supposed to be doing band photos for my old boss for his folk dance band.  We're trying to find a good indoor place to take the photos.  But we're still not sure where to take these.  We still might try outside but I'm pretty sure it's going to be FREEEEEZING for sure.  That's really the kind of people photography I wanted to be doing... bands.  Music is my first love.  The whole photo thing is really just a hobby for me.  I'm trying to focus more on music.

I guess I just love anything and everything creative and so when it comes to creative interests i'm a bit ADD and I kinda like to try anything creative!

I still want to make those animations... and I'm going to try and work on the one that I half started over Thanksgiving so we'll see how that turns out.

OK, well it's sleep time for me!  So I'll leave you with a photo from the reunion.  They had all kinds of cool old school items siting out on tables and as well all kinds of black and white photo albums and some photos as far back as when the camp first started... which was I THINK like 1930's or 40's maybe?  But there were some pretty old school authentic items from back in the day....  It was interesting to see all those people kind of going back in time in their minds for a few hours.  Well...  so here's one of them...  This item is from the late 60's ish time period...