Hey everybody and thanks for reading…
To start today, let’s go back a few months. On January 8th this year, I wrote this:
“The last day of these 100 will be April 20th, by which time the weather will be warmer, the evenings will be brighter, restrictions will be less strict, thousands of people will have been vaccinated in Ireland, and I, and any of you who want to join me, will have at least 50 hours in the bank practising a particular skill”.
I was writing to invite people to join me in a 100-Day challenge. We started on January 11th, and that’s right, we finish today!
Practise something of your choice for 30 mins each day, and show some progress to the group every 10 days. That was the deal. We had many musicians, some writers, a painter, and a Sanskrit student in our group, and it was great to see the progress that people made week after week. Moreover, it was something to work towards, something to keep us busy, especially welcome in the darker days of January and February.
Me, I decided to work on my writing (of music not words). Three of the pieces have made it out into the world (one below in the What’s New section, the other two here and at the start of this podcast episode. Two more are in production and there are plenty more half-finished. As one member said around Day 50, possibly slightly tongue-in-cheek - “it's still astonishing to me that if you practice consistently for a while you get better. Who knew?”
Many in the group are keen to keep going somehow so when we have plans made on what happens next I’ll let you all know here and maybe some of you can join us.
Glory Days is an Ocean FM podcast presented and produced by sports journalist Cathal Mullaney. He featured our 2005 Coolera-Strandhill championship winning team a while ago, and on Sunday I listened to an episode in which a few ex-Eastern Harps players spoke about their 2008 triumph. These were lads I would have played both with and against over the years and it was interesting to hear them talk not only about their mentality and preparation, but about the craic and fights they had too.
The themes were remarkably similar in both episodes. Hard work, team spirit, belief, fighting on through adversity, and all of us looking back with real fondness on those glory days in our lives.
A team photo from those times. 2000 county final.
In the cold light of day however, while it is nice to have these memories to revisit every so often, realistically we should be trying to create new highlights for ourselves or else we’ll get stuck in the past very quickly.
Looking at the themes mentioned above could be a good place to start, and on reflection, maybe taking part in the 100-Day Challenge was the beginning of the process of creating new glory days for some of the members.
What’s New this week?
As mentioned above, below is one of the new tunes that came out of the 100-Day challenge for me. I had a working title for it for the show but wasn’t happy with it. So - has anyone any ideas for a title for it? Please email kieran@kieranquinn.ie if so - I would love to hear your thoughts.
Teenage Theme Night #22 - ‘Nature’ - will take place on this coming Saturday April 24th, premiering on my Facebook page at 8pm.
Loads more videos from February’s “Not a Theme Night” show are now on my YouTube channel. Specifically this and this playlist.
Finally, a song that came back into my life this week, and I can’t stop listening to it.
The title - well I’ll let you have a listen for yourselves, but somewhat suitably for this week, it could be translated as ‘When the Glory Days are Over’. And for those musically-minded among you, here’s a fascinating video about how the song was put together.