2019 Goals – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hello and a belated Happy New Year. How was your first week of 2019?

The House.

As I’m writing this, a plumber is replacing our boiler, which of course packed in just days after Tim and I moved in to the new house.

So it’s been a cold few days for us.

Nevertheless, it’s taught me to be very grateful for our usual way of life – have you ever thought about just how amazing it is to have hot water on tap? How wonderful it is that our houses heat themselves automatically? How blissful it is to have a hot shower and dry yourself with a warm, dry towel?

I’m feeling very grateful for these little things today.

This is a time I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. Tim and I are in the house, and things are finally starting to settle down into a rhythm. The only things missing right now are a washing machine (lost by the removals company *sob*) and internet (being installed on Friday *yay!*).

Life.

My plan going forward is to put these blogs up on Mondays, but as you can tell, this week’s is a little late due to not having sufficient internet/spending all my time doing laundry at my parents’/trying to stay warm in the freezing-cold house.

Last year I feel like I made a lot of progress with procrastinating less, achieving most of what I set out to do and generally staying a bit more organised. In 2019 I want to continue all of that, but I want the increased productivity to result in more income, please. It sounds shallow, but my goal is to make more than I spend. I don’t want or need loads, just enough to pay the bills and have a bit left over for a rainy day/doing up the house/getting married.

I’ve signed up for some extra work online – teaching English to Chinese children – which is actually really fun and will hopefully tide me over while I find work as a harpist and harp teacher in York. I’m very grateful to a friend of mine for recommending this to me – you know who you are – thank you babe.

My piano will be brought over from Congleton in the next week or so, at which point I can start giving piano lessons in York too – hurray! I am also starting to give harp lessons online (when I have internet) so that is a super-exciting new venture.

Health.

Another 2019 goal of mine is to prioritise my physical and mental health, I’ve gone back to the beginning with my running and starting to work my way through the Couch 2 5k app, I’ll be practising yoga and meditation regularly and trying to eat as well as I can – nothing too strict but my long-term goal is to have a good, healthy quality of life for as many years as I can. Of course, once our garage gym is all set up, Tim and I can do our strength training in there as well.

This may be the subject of another blog post (let me know if you’d like to hear more on this), but the life of a freelancer can be a little chaotic (just a little), with late nights, early mornings, disrupted meal times etc., so keeping our bodies on a schedule when it comes to eating and sleeping really helps our bodies and our health. So, as I’m reading The Circadian Code by Dr. Satchin Panda at the moment, I’m trying to stick to a regular eating/sleeping/waking up schedule to see if that results in an increased amount of energy. Fingers crossed.

So, that’s probably enough from me for now. I really hope you are well (and warm) wherever you are. Check back next week for another post.

Chat soon,
A x
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Countdown to Christmas – 3 weeks to go

Well this feels retro, I’m writing this in the break between a rehearsal and an evening concert. I’m sitting in the cafe of Leeds College of Music, having rehearsed with the Wind Orchestra before their concert tonight. We are playing an arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (amongst other pieces that don’t require a harp). Here’s a photo of the pitched percussion section – harp, piano, celeste.
harpist in York
harp, piano, celeste
This weekend has been exceedingly busy, it began on Friday and finishes on Tuesday evening. Today (Monday 3rd) me and the harp are in Leeds, we were in Sheffield last Saturday and then there’s a CLOUDS meet-up tomorrow. Do you like how I’m including Monday and Tuesday in the weekend? Wednesday I will chill. All day. Burning the candle at both ends can only be sustained for so long.
Things actually calm down a bit from then on, which is unusual for December but not surprising as most of my teaching has now drawn to a close ready for the big move to York. Speaking of which, I’m still clinging on to the hope that we’ll be in our new house by Christmas, we just need to sign contracts and complete. Keep everything crossed. Our journey to a home of our own has been 18 months in the making and I cannot tell you how excited I am to get a bit more settled. Congleton is so lovely but the amount of driving Tim and I are both doing is crazy.
December is a great time to think about the year ahead and start planning and getting organised. What are your goals for 2019 – musical or otherwise? One of my goals will be to keep on schedule with my social media. That means weekly blog posts – pop your email in the box if you’d like to join my little crew (what shall we call ourselves?) and receive these posts into your inbox. It also means weekly videos on my YouTube channel, which you can subscribe to here.
The current plan with the videos is to alternate between a performance video and more of a vlog/life update video. I really enjoy making these and I hope you enjoy seeing a little snippet of what’s going on over here, any feedback is always appreciated.
In the meantime, from the new year I will be scouting out work over in Yorkshire so please do use my contact form to get in touch if you need a harpist in York for music lessons, or for background music for your wedding or social event. You can also email me – angelinawarburton@gmail.com.
As always, thanks so much for reading, here are my social media links if you want to follow me or say hi.
See you next week!
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Moving to York

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you here on the blog, and as you can see from the title of this post, I have some big news…

Tim and I have been house-hunting since we got engaged in May 2017. However, it was only recently that I started to feel the call to move closer to home. York will always be special to me, it’s where I grew up and went to school until the age of 16. The thought of moving back to York makes me so happy and excited for the future. Tim is going to move his busy Personal Training and Sports Massage business over to York too, so our home is going to be a hub of activity!

So, we started looking in York and found somewhere we like in the Foxwood area, made an offer and it was accepted – hurray! Our solicitors are currently crunching through all the searches and finer details but the crux of the matter is, hopefully we’ll be in our new home by Christmas. Everyone keep your fingers and toes crossed.

This means it’s time to put my Yorkshire feelers out. If you live in York and are interested in having harp lessons, piano lessons, or music theory lessons, please do get in touch. I plan to start teaching in York as soon as possible after the new year, and I would love to help you reach your musical goals.

In the meantime, I do offer lessons via skype, so if you live in York and want to start right away, maybe we can start online and then move to offline lessons when 2019 comes around.

I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to going back to my Yorkshire roots.

As always, here are the ways in which you can contact me should you so desire:

https://twitter.com/harpistangelina

https://www.facebook.com/angelinawarburtonharpist/

https://www.instagram.com/angelinawarburton/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQzzApriMcGEdE1ZxjkWMdg

I also have a Patreon page if you are interested in supporting me in that way:

https://www.patreon.com/harpistangelina

Thanks so much for reading, let’s chat soon,

A x

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Alderley Edge, Prestwich, and the 10k that didn’t happen.

I’m writing this week’s post in a Caffe Nero in Alderley Edge. I’m here to play with Alderley Edge Orchestra for a concert tonight, we are performing Holst’s The Planets and Elinor Nicholson and I are the harp section. 

We arrived early to get good parking spots (harp life), warmed up, and are now both catching up on some admin over cups of tea/coffee.

How’s everyone coping with the Beast from the East? Where I am in south Manchester it hasn’t been too bad, and I’m thrilled that I haven’t lost out on any work due to snow. It can be super frustrating when snow means cancelled gigs, which means no payment, not ideal.

The 10k race that I’ve been training for however, that has had to be cancelled. I can totally see why the organisers took the decision as lots of people were no doubt travelling from a good distance away. It’s a bit gutting to have trained in snow, wind, hail and freezing cold to end up not doing the race, but training is never wasted is it? I’m still fitter and stronger than before and that was the whole idea of competing. I’d decided to treat myself to some new gear after the race, so when I heard that it was cancelled I went ahead and ordered them anyway, maybe I’ll chat about them in the next post. Totally off-brand but exciting anyway…

On the house front, I do have exciting news, a house that we viewed back in January has finally accepted our offer! Hurray! The house is in Prestwich – north Manchester – and I’m keeping everything crossed that this time everything goes smoothly. This is the third house we’ve had an offer accepted on so hopefully it’ll be a case of third time lucky… I’m simply far too excited about actually having a music room/office, and I know Tim is looking forward to having his own gym in the garage.

Could this be the new music room??

I wasn’t expecting buying a house to take this long and we’ve certainly learned a lot along the way. But maybe, just maybe, we’ve finally found our home.

I think that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading as ever, and if you’d like these posts to go straight to your inbox, just pop your email address in the box at the top of the page. I’d love to connect with you that way. These posts sometimes get sent out a day or two early to my email list – so if you fancy that then do sign up.

As always, you can follow me on Patreon, Instagram, Twitter & Facebook to keep up with harpy and other shenanigans.

Ax

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Harping, Running, Yoga.

I can’t believe another week has gone by. I spent a good few days relaxing and taking it easy on myself following the events of the week before, and my car also needed a bit more work doing to make sure it was 100% safe.

I had a gig on Valentine’s Day in a lovely little restaurant in Blackburn called Gioia Italiano:

It was so nicely decorated, and not too crowded either.

The following day I decided to record a video. I want to be uploading to YouTube more regularly than of late. I’m quite pleased with this effort because it’s the first time I’ve attempted more than one camera angle:

Please subscribe to my youtube channel if you haven’t already – I’m closing in on 100 subscribers, which is rather exciting.

Aside from music, I’ve been keeping up with my 10k running training. I can’t believe that this time in two weeks I’ll have done the race. Eeek! I can definitely feel my legs getting stronger and my endurance is getting better as well. I’m still probably the slowest runner you know but that really doesn’t matter that much to me. If anything, I’ve stopped exercising to try and look good, it’s more about my mental health now. Running and yoga offer me peace and quiet from my mind, which never seems to switch off. That voice in my head telling me I should be practising or working, that I should be further on in life than I am, that I’m failing, that I’m not earning enough, can’t get to me if all my attention is on keeping my body in motion out on a run, or keeping my body and breath calm and still in yoga.

I’m also trying to get into the habit of meditating daily – starting with just five minutes – so I’ll let you know how I get on with that.

Speaking of yoga, last Saturday was day six of the British Wheel of Yoga Foundation Course that I’m enrolled in. I’m absolutely loving it and seriously considering taking my studies further into Yoga Teacher Training at the end of the course. All I can say is ‘watch this space’!

Thanks as always for reading and supporting. I’ll leave my social media links here in case you want to see what I’m up to until the next post!

Bye for now,

Ax

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Winter Update

It’s time for another seasonal update. I’m back in Manchester after a very varied and busy December. December is always a hectic time and 2017 was no different. I had three concerts that included Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, two of these were delightfully close to where my sister Joanne lives, so it was lovely to spend some time with her. I accompanied her singing some solo carols for these concerts and for the York Annual Community Carol Concert. Here we are in the Parish Church of Hampton-in-Arden.

Playing for the Annual Community Carol Concert was a very special day. My dad was taking part for the 39th and final time, having been the musical director for many, many years. The concert has been a mainstay of my Christmas for my whole life and it always marked the start of Christmas. Happy memories of dad getting an audience of over a thousand to stand up and sit down several times in quick succession (“stand when you sing!!”) and telling us all off for not singing with enough gusto… When I was a child my school choir was asked to take part, I’ve played for the concert with my harp quartet CLOUDS and then last month Joanne and I contributed to the effort – in front of 1300 people and on York Hospital Radio. I am so proud of what my dad has done for the concert and the great causes it supports. You can read more about the concert here.

Following the Community Carols (the very next day in fact), it was time to fly to Norway for some much-needed R&R. Tim and I spent a snowy Christmas with family, we ate all the food and I drank all the wine. I tried skiing for the first time ever:

 

Following Norway it was time to spend the New Year with my family in York. We somehow managed to cram pretty much my whole family (over thirty of us) into my parents’ house for the annual party, so that was a great chance to catch up and enjoy ourselves.

As for Tim and myself, I mentioned in the last seasonal update that we’re house-hunting, and… we still are. Apparently these things take a while! We’ve looked at some gorgeous houses but we haven’t found the right one just yet. Fingers crossed it’ll happen soon.

Looking to the future now, plenty of weddings are already in the diary for this summer, but I do have availability so if you’d like to chat about hiring a Manchester harpist, please do get in touch. You can also subscribe to my youtube channel or follow me on twitter or instagram – where I’m currently taking part in a #30daysofpractice challenge.

As ever, you are more than welcome to come over and visit me on Patreon and check out what’s going on over there.

I think that’s all from me for now. I hope you all had wonderful Christmases and New Years, let’s catch up soon yea?

Thanks for reading!

Ax

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