I’ve been a little out of sorts with audio lately.

Maybe it’s working two jobs, the medical appointments, my home’s total lack of ‘zen’ or ‘feng shui’ or whatever you call it…I’ve just been losing some energy in getting audio things done.  I struggled over a CD manufacturing order for 3 weeks because small complications kept giving me numerous headaches and hiccups, including shelling out money to buy a new computer and printer.

Maybe I’ve been lacking inspiration.  I was able to go on a short break for a week and retreated to WV for a while; by Wednesday I was able to seriously get into scripting for the first time in months.  Now that I’m back in Columbus, the creative juices have dried up again, the stress returned and focus gone.  What gives?

What to do when everything around you seems to bog down what you really want to do?

No joke.  I’ve been away too long…roughly 3k spam messages took root in my comment box in the meantime.  Took at least an hour to weed them all out.  Bah.

But yes, it’s been a while since I’ve been on.  The idealism that I felt when I first started this blog waned a bit as stresses in life started to build, along with two computers dying in succession.  Add in theatre shows and doctor appointments, with increased work at a second job, and this became the first thing to fall behind.  That and, well, what did I have to say?  Not much.  Life became all about work, whatever the next job was I had to do once the previous one had ended for the day.  Which brings me to my entry today.

For several months I’ve felt tied to the proverbial water raft, careening down the Grand Rapids with absolutely no ability to navigate, let alone get out and away to safety.  A bit dramatic, maybe – but a fairly accurate feeling.  I reached my maximum ability to take on projects about a month after the last post, but found my workload increasing against my will simply through circumstance.  Only now does it feel like things have calmed a bit.

…That said, I’ve finally made another realization about my life.

Despite taking on several projects for several years, I’ve been underachieving for a lot of it, and lately been making things particularly hard for myself.  I’m proud of the work I’ve been doing and am happy to do it, but I’ve reached the point where I’m tired of doing things for free, for the sake of networking or gaining more experience.  I want to help people, take on new projects and prefer to prove myself through my work than by a calling card…but it’s become a slippery slope, and cost me a great deal of stress and energy.

For a long time I’ve wanted a job/career in audio of some kind; I used to dabble with the idea of working for a production company, but now I feel pretty solid that desire.  Post-Production Audio, involved in the Entertainment industry – regardless of where the job is.  I love Columbus, but the more years that pass me by, the more I realize the paid work and specific opportunities I want are not here.  My choices are either moving somewhere else, creating my job and making a market for myself, or continue to volunteer my services in hopes that someone will find a job for me.  I’ve been doing the latter and it’s become self-destructive, turning the idea of “progress” into something that happens more by chance than through hard work and perserverance.  I can’t live like that.  It’s time for a change.

Now how to go about doing that….

In other news,  I think I’m going to start a free-expression journal and carry it around with me, for the many times I can’t be near a computer or don’t have the time to update here.  I’ve noticed many instances where I’ve thought of something I want to share, but either forget what it is by the time I sit down to type or it just doesn’t seem that interesting anymore.

Assuming I do this, I’ll scan pages in that I like and share on this blog.  I think it’ll be fun.

It’s also an excuse for me to go out and buy a fun journal to scribble in.
I love notebooks…pretty sure I’m an addict at this point.  :)

Pursuing work in audio engineering is a little disheartening sometimes, especially when you’ve been trained to look at the progression of life in a specific way.  When you go to grade school, you’re told to get good grades so you can get into a good college.  You go to college, and the expectation is to find a job in your field upon graduating and settle down into a comfortable life of financial security and personal satisfaction.  Many of my college classmates have moved on to become teachers or members of different music organizations/groups, and I start to feel like I missed something, or did something wrong.  They followed the progression successfully, so I find myself wondering “Why couldn’t I do that?”

A lot about finding a salaried job nowadays seems like knowing the right people (recommendations, experience with other professionals, etc.), but Audio Engineering I’ve found is twice that.  I could never get the hang of marketing myself to others; I prefer to prove my skills to people and gain relationships by actually doing work.  But that ends up turning into a lot of volunteer services, and while it does create a successful relationship, it becomes taxing and slows down any kind of marketing development.

I want a secure job, but I don’t feel ready to settle for something short of what I love doing.  I should accept the reality of the situation, but…well, that’s what I did when I graduated from college, and that resulted in two years in a job from hell and losing sight of my dreams of performing and grad school.  Now that I’ve picked a different path and have ‘reset’ myself, I’ll be damned if I settle.  Now, if only I could get used to marketing myself to others!  Gyah!

Sometimes we choose the weirdest paths for ourselves.

Some people are born with traits and skills that stand out to us, and many times we judge them on what they’ll become.  The tall black guy should be a basketball player; the girl who draws well should become an illustrator; the boy who knows many different languages should become a linguist or translator.

But it seems to surprise us when those people reject the paths others expect of them and pursue what their minds and hearts desire. The tall guy becomes a journalist; the girl becomes an engineer, and the boy becomes a computer programmer.

Then there are those who have deficiencies or problems thrust upon them from birth or childhood mishaps, which we believe should handicap or deter them from pursuing certain avenues.  It’s the people who disregard this notion, who seek to pursue careers and goals related to the one thing that hinders them, whom I find to be the most brilliant.  It’s easy to go with the flow; it’s difficult to challenge it.

A friend of mine in college was a tuba player, same as me.  I was in Wind Ensemble, She was in University Band.  But despite our differences in ranking, she was amazing to me.  She had a hearing difficency – whether it was she couldn’t distinguish pitches or was almost near deaf, I can’t remember.  By all means, the music department was probably the place she struggled the most, always at a disadvantage because of her hearing, and important sense for any music student.  But she never let it get to her.  I’m sure it drove her nuts sometimes, but she wanted to play tuba and enjoyed playing music so much, she practiced twice as hard as anyone in the tuba department, and spent extra time going through hearing exercises and training herself to hear better.  I may have outranked her in playing ability, but looking back she deserved my spot in Wind Ensemble.  Her commitment far outshined my own, which I believe is more important than any talent one has.

I bring this up because I’ve just come from the Minute Clinic down the street.  I’ve got another ear problem, as usual – apparently my ears are “bulging with fluid”, which would explain my hearing problems for the past few months.  When I was a child I had regular ear infections that would cause me to scream on end, until I became used to the pain as I got older.  Now I get “Sinusitis” every year, sometimes twice.  Perhaps the last thing I should be pursuing as a career is audio production and engineering, given how often my sinuses wreak havoc with my ears.  But I do.  I never thought of it as a handicap, but the more sound design and live sound work I do, the more I realize it getting in the way.

And that’s okay.  Because sound design and audio production are what interest me, and what I want to pursue.  I’ll just have to take better care of myself, and find solutions to get around those difficulties to further my dreams, just like my friend.  Here’s to you!

So I do a lot of projects.  I get bored with downtime and probably take on more than I can chew.  I don’t get enough sleep, I’ll admit. 

When I finished college I began to explore my interests in audio until I arrived at where I am today: a sound designer, voice actress and audio drama producer, amongst other things.  A lot of these activities lend themselves to keeping to oneself, so I feel like I have fallen off the map with friends and family.  I always feel like I’m not advanced enough in my skills because I’m not out in the public eye to receive any vocal judgement like I would with tuba playing in school and college.  I do my best to help out with shows in the Columbus area, but my days are never long enough for me to do everything I want to.  So on the whole, I feel like I’m on the sidelines.

And then I applied for the Neil Gaiman audiobook contest, and posted a link on Facebook.

I know the chances of me amassing the number of votes needed to qualify for the top 20 spots in less than a week are astronomically small, but what amazes me is how much it has been passed around and commented on by friends and collegues.  I honestly didn’t expect more than a handful of people to take notice, but in just a few days I’ve amassed more votes, reviews and encouragement than I ever dreamed of.

It’s so easy to become so focused in your own little world that you don’t realize all that’s going on around you, or the people you’ve helped and affected.  Until this competition, I had never comprehended the network of support I have in Columbus and online.  Knowing now is more encouraging and a bigger reward than any competition could offer, and is definitely a changing moment for me.

• 9:25am –  Arrive at Cup O Joe.
• 9:29am –  Spill coffee all over materials.
• 9:35am –  Attempt a blog entry.  Scrap it.
• 10:12am –  Finish another blog entry.  Scrap it again.
• 10:13am –  Take a swig of coffee.  Choke on it, cough for 30 seconds.
• 10:15am –  Decide doing a time-breakdown of my morning thus far would be more entertaining than any drivel I have to say.  Decide to delete entry attempts already typed.
• 10:16am –  Feel guilty for throwing away writing.  Saved to a document which I will probably forget exists within a few days, only to dig up 6 months later and go “WTF is this?”
• 10:17am –  Spill my coffee, again.
• 10:19am –  Finally see the email from RTC with WordPress invite link to start a blog.  Cool.
• 10:20am –  Wordpress wants to update itself with a new version.  This never ends well.
• 10:22am –  I hate chosing web page themes.  There are too many, yet I never find what I’m looking for.
• 10:24am –  Hey, why are these WordPress formats so different from my other WordPress sites?  Am I not worthy enough to use them, is that it?  At least I found some pretty cool themes.  Still decide to shake fist at WordPress.
• 10:34am –  Now greatly regretting getting the one table next to a window with no pull-down shade.  Dumb sun.
• 10:38am –  Copy post info into blog.  Start thinking maybe I should work on my audio drama script like I had planned to this morning.
• 10:46am –  Gyah!  10:46?!  Where the heck did my morning go?!