It's tea time on the last day of February and I've got a glass of Merlot here to wash down the roast beef sandwiches I just ate; after a month of not drinking, it's going down rather nicely. I feel like I need to unwind, because I've spent another busy day making music—today's work included a solo instrumental piece featuring my Epiphone lap steel guitar as well as another collaboration with my FAWM buddy Alex Klages. That's taken my total output for the month to twenty-three songs. That'll do for me, I think. I'm not sure I've got anything left in the tank to get me through an evening session or which might motivate me to get up early tomorrow to spend a final morning making more music before the site stops accepting songs at noon tomorrow. I'm not going to force things (although I do have a collaboration with Craig that he's still working on, so my final total should end up being 24).

I think that all the time I spent at Real World last year has paid off handsomely, because I definitely feel like I've levelled up this month. My quality levels—even if I say so myself—have not only been personally satisfying, they've also been remarkably consistent. And considering that all of the tracks which I put together were full productions with drums, bass, and multiple tracks of guitars at the very minimum, twenty-three songs is a pretty decent showing. It's more than a FAWM-and-a-half, after all.

The FAWM website will probably stay open for another couple of weeks before it goes back into hibernation (which stops it being a target for spammers) so I'll be listening to more songs and leaving comments until it does. I've aleady left more than 500 comments. But it is now physically impossible to listen to every song which has been written for FAWM this year in the month of February, let alone trying to get it done in two weeks in March because we have achieved FAWM escape velocity!

I'm sure you won't be the slightest bit surprised to learn that I've already taken plenty of advantage of my new, stupidly fast broadband connection. Yesterday I updated Netbeans, Libre Office, GIMP, and Notepad++ to their latest versions. I also ran a couple of my music library managers on the studio PC and the laptop, each of which collectively had more than sixty updates available. Native Access didn't even have time to display the "Downloading..." message before it had finished retrieving it from NI's servers, it downloaded everything that quickly. (Of course, being an NI product, it crashed first, which required me to reboot the laptop, but that's pretty much what I've come to expect from using their products...)

Today I'm going to be back to working on music. There are a few days of February left, and while I won't make it to a double FAWM unless things get very strange between now and noon on Sunday when the site will stop accepting new songs, my song count should at least get into the low twenties. The lowest count I've managed in recent years was back in 2017 when I wrote or co-wrote just 16 songs, so I've already beaten that.

And I'll be happy with that. Considering the state I'm in at the moment the fact that I'm able to do anything creative at all feels like a marvel. My sleep score last night was a pitiful 71 and oh boy, it feels like it today.

I need to catch up on my listening and commenting. I've been so out of it that I haven't done any for the past few days, and that's unusual for me. Burr tells me that participants are commenting a lot more than they have in previous years; a few tweaks to the website have made the act of reciprocating comments much easier, and FAWMers can now set themselves a custom goal of how many comments they want to leave and have the website track that for them with a little progress bar.

I know I say this every year but the quality of songwriting going on is incredible. I'm in awe of the talents of so many of the people who take part. And there are some professional-grade productions and mixes being shared, too. Many of them are already at the point where they could be played on the radio (my ears are telling me that mine still have a few rough edges in places, but I'll be polishing those up next week before putting out an album on Bandcamp—because of course I will).

I thought I ought to check in here. I don't normally leave the blog alone for more than a couple of days at a time during February, so I apologise for going dark for the best part of a week.

I'm still at a low ebb at the moment. I'm feeling a little bit better than I was last week, but not by much. I'm very down, and in a lot of pain. That's making sleep very difficult, and it all feeds on itself and... Well, you get the idea.

I'm still FAWMing, but this is happening at a much slower pace than it was in the first half of the month. I've got 17 songs up on my profile page right now and I have three collaborations with other FAWMers under way, so some fun is still being had.

But I haven't been making music today because I had a visit from the broadband engineer instead. This was what I was getting before Changes Were Made:

And this is what I'm getting now:

Not too shabby, eh? I was pleased to find out that my existing router plugs straight in to the new wall socket, so that's one less item of gear with LEDs on the bookshelf. This prompted a long-overdue bout of tidying up, too. Oh, the cobwebs I discovered behind my bookcases...

I need to look after myself a lot more than I've been doing lately. On Tuesday night I actually resorted to taking some painkillers (which was the first time in a week that I'd done so). I think they helped me to sleep, but not by much. I've not really bounced back from whatever it was that I came down with at Christmas and I've been at a particularly low ebb emotionally for the past fortnight or so. I'm stressed out, and stimming; many of my nervous tics have kicked in strongly. I suspect the biggest factor driving this is plain and simple loneliness: finding out about how c-PTSD is usually treated has made me realise that I will have a significant disadvantage in ever standing a chance of recovering from it, because I'll have to do so on my own. I'm hurting, and there's not an awful lot I can do about it. Knowing that has been taking its toll. I'm not sharing this expecting sympathy, by the way; I want you to know that my life is not the endless round of high tech, rock and roll studio shenanigans that you might think from reading some of the other pages on this website. This is the reality of who I am. It's not always fun. If I'm honest about it, it's not been fun very much at all recently.

The post-FAWM crash doesn't usually hit me until the middle of March, but this year it seems to have kicked in half-way through February. I've not had this happen to me while I'm still making music on a daily basis before. I don't have much in the way of energy or creative mojo at the moment and my production rate for FAWM has dropped through the floor. It hasn't stopped completely, and I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon working on my sixteenth track so far this month, but by six o'clock I just felt... Miserable. I had no desire at all to play guitar, or bass, or even to noodle away with a synth or two. I went downstairs and sat on the sofa where I foolishly made the mistake of switching on the TV news. The state of things out there at the moment no longer makes any sense at all and there doesn't appear to be anyone in a position of authority who is prepared to do anything about the horrendous things going on every day. The behaviour of the people ostensibly in charge of running things fills me with despair. After watching a few minutes of that I didn't feel like reading a book, or listening to an album, or even thinking about anything too deeply. I just sat there, staring at the floor, for quarter of an hour, although it felt like it was a lot longer than that. All I felt was emptiness.

And when I recognised that, I realised that I was seriously down, even for me. Proper "what's the point of doing any of this?" down. That's dangerous, because when you live on your own—as I've done for nearly twenty years, now—you don't have anyone around to cheer you up or pull you out of the hole that you've fallen into. The only person who can do anything about it is me, and he's not in a fit state to do that right now. Yesterday I realised that I simply don't have anything left in the tank and I don't have any idea what to do about it. Making music has always been the most therapeutic course of action open to me; even though I'm supposedly in the middle of the most intensely creative work that I get to do all year, the fact that it isn't making me feel any better is a cause for concern. I'm not going back on meds, though; at my last consultation the doc told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from antidepressants.

After three weeks without alcohol, I'm beginning to think that I was relying on the stuff for self-medication way, WAY more than I thought I was. I guess I'll have to rely on the tried and trusted solution from my younger days and just shut myself away for a while. And read books. The good news is that I don't have any commitments, or tasks to do for anyone else for a few days. I stocked up with essentials at the village shop yesterday so I can just hunker down at home and try and get myself back on an even keel. My current mood will pass, eventually. And I'm going to try and work on some more music this afternoon. But I'm very definitely not in a good state of mind at the moment.

Yesterday I added the fourteenth song to my FAWM profile which means that I've reached the challenge target of writing fourteen songs in twenty-eight days in just two weeks. Last year it took me seventeen days, the year before it took me twenty-five—although to be fair, back then the house was full of workmen installing my solar panels for most of the month. So far, this year is proving to be the most productive I've been since 2022, when I'd reached the target after just thirteen days (and went on to record my all-time best performance of forty-two songs—a treble FAWM—which I followed up with an absolutely ludicrous 117 songs written during Fifty/Ninety that summer). I won't be doing that this year.

I've been listening back to the music I've recorded so far this month and I'm very happy with both the quality and the consistency of the tracks. I have learned an awful lot about the craft of the composer, songwriter, and recording studio engineer since 2022, and that's not just explained by the fact that I've written and recorded more than five hundred songs since FAWM 2022 came to an end. Attending two Real World masterclasses in 2024 and 2025 has definitely helped me to focus on the process of making a recording work as a coherent thing in terms of its sonic qualities, its artistic intent, and its capacity to keep the listener engaged and entertained. The producer camps I've attended there have been instrumental in giving me significantly more confidence in my abilities as a musician than I've ever had before. I think you will be able to hear that self-assurance in the music I've made in the last fortnight. These days, I know what I'm doing. And I've discovered that I can trust my creative instincts.

But what's changed isn't just the result of hanging out with incredible musicians and producers for a few weeks each year. Today, I possess a degree of self-knowledge which at this time last year I had no inkling of whatsoever. "Levelling up" is such a cliché when people start talking about their artistic development, but I feel like the journey of personal discovery that I've been on since last summer has unlocked creative talents in me that I never felt I had, or would ever have. I'm not the same person I was twelve months ago.

I'm exceedingly grateful for that.

I have boring housework stuff to do next; there's a pile of ironing sitting next to me right now and it's been there for over a week. After I've got that out of the way, I need to shift some stuff out of the bathroom so that when Ash turns up tomorrow morning to add the finishing touches to everything, he can get straight to work.

Last night I was back to having a dreadful night's sleep, although I think that was probably because I'd stuffed my face with fish, chips, and mushy peas from the Howe's van at tea time. As a result, I think I'm going to take a day off from making music and focus on listening to music instead. So far this month I've left 274 comments on other people's work on the FAWM website, so let's see if I can get up to 300 today...

Edit: I did. Comment ratio is back up at 1.1:1. Hooray!

Even though I was bemoaning the fact that I'd run out of steam in my last blog entry, I've continued to add another song to my FAWM profile at the rate of one a day, and that means that right now I only need to write one more song in order to "win" FAWM.

The FAWM Slack chat has been responsible for keeping my output going and yesterday, Andy mentioned that he was doing a very aggressive drum and bass track with our mutual friend Sapient and asked if I could add some vocals, please. Which kind of escalated into me doing some vocals, a Chapman Stick bass line, and quite a lot of guitars. I love what he did with everything and it's a very shouty and boisterous track. I've embedded the player so you can listen to it here. Play it as loudly as you possibly can!

I think my exhausted state has reached the point where I just haven't got the energy for ruminating thoughts when I go to bed any more. For the last couple of days, I've had a relatively good night's sleep.

But it might also be because, counterintuitively, I have stopped taking painkillers. There's quite a lot of evidence these days that they can cause something called hyperalgesia (which, bizarrely, increases your sensitivity to pain instead of decreasing it) and while most references to this online focus on its occurrence with opioid-based painkillers, prolonged use of ibuprofen can have some nasty side effects as well. So as an experiment, I decided a few days ago that I was just going to do without for a while and see what happens. Things seem to be improving, and more so than I thought they would.

In related news, I haven't consumed any alcohol for more than two weeks now, and I'm not missing it at all.

Although taking part in FAWM is one of the most rewarding and entertaining things I do all year, I'm finding it very difficult to make any sort of progress this week. Last night my sleep score was a pitiful 71 and at 04:00 I was wide awake, getting myself a cold drink in the kitchen. I'm in a lot of pain, I'm having a lot of c-PTSD flashbacks, and as a result I don't feel like the music I've made in the last few days has been anywhere near as good as I know it could be. I'm ill, I'm hurting, and I feel really off my game.

But we're still less than half-way through the month, so that could still change. And at less than half-way through the month, my song count is already in double figures, so I've got a fair bit of breathing room if I need to ease off on things for a few days.

To be honest, I thought I was going to be easing off on things today, but I just had a really silly idea for a song title and of course now I feel compelled to fire up the bedroom studio and bring the thing into existence, because I'm me. Yes, I sing in Klingon now.

Once FAWM grabs hold of you, it doesn't let go...

I'm very fortunate to keep getting very nice comments on my FAWM songs, so when I checked just now my ratio of "comments made to comments received", which I'd worked quite assiduously yesterday to build back up to 1.0, had dropped down to 0.9 again so I guess I know what I'm going to be doing this afternoon. As of right now I've left 180 comments on other people's work, so let's see if I can push that to 200 before teatime. That'll move me up a tier in the FAWM Century Club, which is always satisfying.

It shouldn't be too difficult to achieve, either. There's plenty of interesting stuff to listen to this year, although I'm steering well clear of anything generated with AI.

Ten days in to the challenge, I have nine songs under my belt for FAWM so I'm well ahead of schedule. I think I might ease off on the work a little this week, because I'm back to feeling very under the weather today. I had a rough night last night, which never helps matters.

I did manage to go out for a walk at lunch time, though. I walked down to the Co-op and took some photographs to document the current state of affairs with the construction of the new railway station, which is due to open in spring next year. Little Bristol Lane has been closed to all traffic since February 3rd because the National Grid are connecting a lot of new power cables to the station infrastructure. In addition to this, the North and South lift shaft towers for the new passenger footbridge were delivered last weekend. As you can see from the photos below, they're quite significant chunks of steelwork; they're 10 metres high. They're currently being covered in cladding and as far as I know the plan is for them to be lifted into position next weekend.

Looking at the site from the cricket pitch on Little Bristol Lane

From the Wotton Road footbridge, you can see most of the site (and the original station, which is clad in scaffolding)

Cladding is being applied to the towers before they're lifted into position

Preparations for widening Station Road are well under way. No more brambles!

It's very exciting seeing all of the work that's going on at the moment but I must admit I'll be a lot happier when everything's finished and I can just drive down to the main road and back without being sent all round the houses.

I've been getting increasingly lax with my sleep hygiene lately and after I mentioned my struggles with getting to sleep (and staying there) in yesterday's blog, I realised that it was well past time that I did something about it. So after 10 pm the PC and the TV were switched off, and I just read in the bath for an hour or so. I didn't unwind on the sofa afterwards, or turn either screen back on before I turned in for the night, which are habits I developed a few months ago when I was feeling particularly stressed out. And I went to bed alcohol-free, and I haven't done that on a Saturday for a very long time.

Before I turned out the light, I also tried talking myself up a bit; as I wrote in the blog yesterday, I was pretty pleased with myself for the fact that I was already 50% of the way to my FAWM target for the year, and so rather than lying in bed stewing about all the aspects of my life that I wish were different, I focused on the parts of it that I'm pretty pleased with—because there are a lot of things which fall into that category, even if I seldom mention them here. Helen tells me I need to work on my affirmations, so that's what I did. After all, I have a lot of things in my life to be profoundly grateful for.

It seems to have done the trick; I woke up this morning actually feeling refreshed, and I can't remember the last time that happened. My watch gave me a sleep score of 97, and even better, it didn't record a single interruption all night (I vaguely remember waking up once at about two in the morning when I turned over in bed and the pain in my hips broke through the dream I was having, but I fell asleep again almost immediately).

So that was nice. I'd like more nights like that, please.

When I woke up this morning, the display on my FAWM home page that shows the ratio of "comments made to comments received" had dropped down to 0.9. Shocking! I need to do some more listening and commenting this afternoon before I work on track number 8.

Apart from one or two FAWMers who have drunk the Generative AI Kool-Aid and are posting material they got the plagiarism machines to make for them and passing it off as their own work, the process of listening is a pleasure. FAWM is crammed full of incredibly talented songwriters and musicians, and given that (as I type this) they've collectively posted 3,937 songs to the site, there's more than enough to listen to there to keep me occupied all day.

FAWM has only been under way for a week but I've already gone deep down the rabbit hole and dropped into hyperfocus mode. I'm averaging one fully-produced number a day at the moment, and I'm enjoying myself a lot. It's mostly keeping me distracted from everything else that's going on at the moment. I'm still having a lot of difficulty getting to sleep at night, although last night my sleep score did finally reach 90 for the first time since I got back from Yorkshire. Long-distance driving really takes it out of me these days, it seems. But get me playing guitar in the back bedroom, and the aches and pains disappear. For a while, at least.

I'm pleased with the standard of work that I've managed to maintain so far this month. The longest I worked on a single track was five hours, but after five years of tweaking my current studio setup and close to sixty years getting to grips with musical instruments in one shape or another, I can get a lot done in that amount of time. And I don't like to brag, but I feel like I'm achieving a consistency that's escaped me in previous years.

Even though I've managed it in previous years I don't think I'll be aiming for a double FAWM (28 songs) let alone a treble FAWM (42 songs) this year, though. If I get to the end of the month with a song count in the mid twenties, I'll be very satisfied. I just need to keep my commenting ratio sitting above one—although that becomes easier, the more comments I leave. My ratio is currently sitting on 1.0 with 120 comments left on other people's songs, so I'm doing all right.

It's been a week since I had any alcohol. That's not particularly unusual for me, but what is strange is that I don't really feel like drinking anything other than squash, tea, or coffee at the moment.

So I'm not going to. Let's see if that helps the quality of my sleep, or makes it worse.

It's a science experiment!

It's February, and that means that for the rest of the month I will be spending most of my waking hours sitting in this very confined space which used to be the house's back bedroom but which is now something very different:

We're four days in to the challenge and I have two tracks completed and posted on the FAWM website, with a complete set of lyrics for a third song already written. I'll be working on that for the rest of today. I also have title ideas for two instrumental tracks after that, so despite my worries in December that my muse was alarmingly absent, that does not appear to be the case.

People have been listening to the music I've made so far and saying some very complimentary things about it. I've had my work cut out leaving as many comments on other people's songs as I've received on mine so that my comment ratio (which is a most welcome new feature of the site this year) stays above one. I get obsessed about doing that, which means I leave a lot of comments. Another of the site's recent upgrades is a "reciprocate" button which allows people to return the commenting favour with a mouse click and a bit of typing, so I tend to find that leaving comments generates even more comments in return. It's the circle of life!

But as someone who has always struggled with low self-esteem (thanks, c-PTSD) it was rather nice to find this discussion on the #FAWM Slack channel yesterday:

"btw, headfirstonly (chris harris) - just heard his two songs, wow, so damn good. He has production skills that are up there with george martin and quincy jones or something"

You can listen to the music I've made so far here; you don't have to have a FAWM account to hear them.

The doc couldn't find anything unusual wrong with me when I saw them on Monday, which was a relief. "Probably a virus" is a weary old medical trope these days but that appears to have been the most likely explanation for what happened to me on Christmas day. At least I know I hadn't had food poisoning; "If it had been, we would not be sitting here having this conversation," Hannah told me, which to be honest wasn't entirely reassuring.

But I am moving forward with treatment for my c-PTSD. I've spent far too long just gritting my teeth and suffering in silence, and I haven't got the spoons to do that any more. I've also started the paperwork to get formally assessed for Autism and ADHD, although that will happen over a much longer timescale.

I might be happy about this, but I've been having absolutely wretched nights ever since because my brain simply will not switch off when I want to go to sleep. Today, I feel completely drained. So I'm off to my happy place for a bit. The rest of the world can wait.

It's February 1st, and you know what that means by now: over the next twenty-eight days I will attempt to write and record fourteen brand new and original songs—a decent album's worth of material—by noon GMT on March 1st (when it will no longer be February anywhere on the planet). Yes, it's February Album Writing Month.

The submissions button has been active for just 18 minutes as I type this and there are already 40 songs listed. My profile page doesn't have anything available just yet so if you'll excuse me, I'm off to do something about that.