Blog Archives

Welcome to my new website…

So here is my new website, I have to say I am very excited about it, we are still in the process of making it even better, so watch this space!

Tomorrows the day of the EP launch, pretty exciting! It will be available to buy online from Monday 29th November, this website will point you in the right direction!

I will be sure to keep this site up to date with pictures, videos, chord charts, and of course the trusty blog which you are reading now.

I would love it if you have 5 seconds spare, take a brief glance over to the right of the page… Seen it? Yep, if you could sign up to the mailing list that would be fab. I will keep you upto date with latest happenings, events and news, as well as if you sign up before Christmas I’ll send you a free Christmas song i’ve recorded! But i promise I won’t spam you!

Sweet! Let me know what you think to the site, nice one.

Gaz

Mailing list

Hi folks, so I have been meaning to do this for a while, finally got round to it. As you know i am currently working on a 6 track EP, which i am hoping will be ready for you to buy and listen to in the next couple of months. I am also in the middle of sorting out some dates where you can come and hear these songs and more live. So to help me keep in touch about when all this will happen, and how you can get hold of the CD etc, i would really love it if you would join my mailing list.

All i would love you to do, is either reply to this and leave your email address and name. Or send me an email with these details to gaz@gazsimmonds.com, I hope the whole double name thing in the address isn’t too weird haha! I didn’t feel ‘profesional’ enough to go for a ‘mailinglist@gaz…’ haha!!

I promise i will not email you too often! Just once in a while, you know how it goes…

Negative Vs Positive

So lately I have been thinking a lot about how negative the culture we live in often is. Have you ever noticed that in work, or anything you do, no matter how many times you do something well, people only tell you how bad the one thing you got wrong is?! Don’t get me wrong I am not for a minute saying that I only ever get one thing wrong now and again, It definitely happens much more than that!

But sometimes this really gets me down; the main thing that this happens with at church is the sound system!! And the most annoying thing, I’m usually at the other end of the room and it is nothing to do with me! All I want to say is, ‘yes I know its awful system, if you can’t stand it then please go to the back and do it yourself! (Or get out your cheque book and buy a new one!)’ But obviously this is probably not the way to conquer the situation.

This is something I have really been asking God to give me grace for, because it is easy to take the negative stuff to heart. But actually I think there is 3 things we need to do…

1 – Don’t take it to heart, more often than not its just someone’s opinion, one of the amazing things about the world we live in is that no-one in the world seems to share all the same opinions about anything, so sometimes take it with a pinch of salt.

2 – Criticism is a positive thing, however negative it is! It’s amazing how often I do something and suddenly think back to some constructive criticism I received even years ago, and think oh hang on a minute, I’m still learning from that.

3 – Be positive. I find that I seem to get more and more skeptical as time goes on, and I really do ask God to help me to find positive things in everything. Sometimes it is so hard. But I’m getting there!

I find that with some things, we look for negative comments just for the sake of it. Yes, like I said negative things are good because we can learn from them. But we really need to stop searching for negative things just for the sake of it. It’s actually ok to say, hey hang on a minute. That was good!

So my challenge… Go find something you hate, and find something in it that you love!

Comfort Is Over Rated

Comfort can rule our lives. It can even break us away from the things we love to do, because sometimes it is difficult to find the get up and go, sometimes it makes us feel uneasy or vulnerable even to chase after our dreams and passions. It’s much easier to go through the week, go to work, make small talk with colleagues, have dinner, go back to work, send emails, draw rotas, make phone calls, go home, watch TV, sleep, and then start the cycle again. It’s easy to do what needs doing, when that’s always what gets done. Yet it’s so hard to be stretched, to think outside the diary, to find time to do what we really want to do. Even in our downtime we find ourselves just watching TV, or going on Facebook, because that’s easy.

Comfort is so easy to achieve, and always looks so desirable. But the saying rings true, the grass is always greener on the other side. Comfort quickly becomes boring, stale, over rated.

But why is it so hard to leave the comfort zone? Why is it so hard to think outside the box? I love writing, I especially love writing songs. Yet when I sit down with a pen it is sometimes so hard to write. The same, boring ideas float round my head. The same cliché sentences that already send people straight to sleep, the same boring rhymes. Why is it so hard to find a way outside the box?

When we spend too much time being comfortable, it gets harder to break away. Waking up in the morning it can be so hard to get up, and it seems the longer we lie in bed, the more difficult it becomes to get up, well this is how it works for me anyway! Yet when we get into a pattern of getting up, it becomes easier, yes we will have off days. But when you get yourself used to it, it becomes natural.

I envy people who have the perseverance to master their skill so much that it becomes 2nd nature. I long to have the same determination, but I spend too much time getting half way and being satisfied to quickly.

I long to stretch myself so much that I find it hard to sit comfortably, I strongly believe God longs for us to become uncomfortable, He did not send us to earth just to rest, and have an easy time. That’s what heaven is about! But we are here to grow, try, and try again. Sometimes at great cost. When this is not happening, something is wrong.

I find there is nothing worse than looking back on a day off and thinking, well I slept till 12, I watched TV, played on the Xbox, had a shower and got dressed at 4pm, and watched TV all night because it was too late to do anything. What a waste. So my challenge is simple… What can we do today, that will make tomorrow, a yesterday that we will want to live again?

Christmas Shopping

Today me and Katie braved the depths of Meadowhall, to conquer some Christmas shopping. And it was good. Had a really relaxed time shopping, and got some presents all sorted! I love buying presents for people! It is easily my favourite part of Christmas. Now i just spend the next few weeks excited to give them to people, but secretly worried that they will hate it/already have it!! I wish i could share with you all my ideas of what i’m buying people! But the people involved might read this!

Christmas is well and truly upon us anyway. On Wednesday i lead worship at the first Carol Service of the year. Which was just for the local beavers. Was a good event though about 100 kids filled the church, parents and all! It was also the debut of the a couple of the new youth band. So that was really good, they did such a good job, I messed up more than them with the lyrics! Why do christmas carols have so many bizare lyrics?!

Tomorrow we have our Church Christmas Crafts market, which should be fun. I am organizing the cafe, which i am excited/scared about as this isn’t my usual cup of tea, (Get it?! Cafe – Cup of tea!!) But i am really enjoying it. Hopefully it will be a really good Christmassy day.

I am in a good mood right now because i think i have just put the final touches to a couple of songs i have been working on for over a year. Will hopefully get a demo done in the next week or two…

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