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So, it has not been every day, but I have been playing my sax at least three times a week. It has been nearly a month. It doesn’t take long for the facial muscles to come back to strengthen the embouchure. I can last for two hours of practice now.

Another thing I have noticed, I am playing songs I had practiced before better than I was playing them before I stopped. It’s like something in my brain has been freed. For only a month’s worth of practice, I feel confident.

On the flip side, my back pain has increased. My diet is terrible. I’m gaining weight, and that adds to the pain. It is terrifying. My life will be miserable if I cannot get things under control.

Forget all that for now. In a few weeks, I hope to record a video. I would like you to hear my progress (if it is progress). I have a few songs that seem to be coming together. A Fine Romance, by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, is an excellent tune from the 1930s. It is a song I used to think I knew. I was a faker back when I was a “professional” musician. I wasted my time.

Maybe I would have been a better player if I’d had the Band-In-a Box program (app) at home back then, but I didn’t. There were so many distractions in my life. The Navy paid me for a job I did not do very well.

Well, now I’m practicing for myself. Perhaps one day I will play with other musicians in front of an audience. For now, it is therapy.