Tonight’s artwork because I’m a sucker for a ship in deep space. It’s by Frank Kelly Freas.
Today was another one of those days, man. Nothing seemed to go right. I feel much MUCH less guilty about what happened today, however, than what transpired over the weekend.
Today, I could not control. It was apartment stuff early, and then it was dogs and auditions later, and by the time I got to sit down to work again at 8:00pm, I’d only managed to get an hours worth of work in so far. But, you know what? I still got half a days’ work in. If I can finally get a full day in tomorrow and the next day…well I’ll be almost right back on track, and I can handle that.
I still write about it, but it doesn’t stress me out as much. For reals. I will have these days where I spend a good four unplanned hours doing various apartment-related stuff. They’re gonna happen, folks. It’s why I don’t set editing work goals for myself that require me to work 5 twelve hours days in a week; ie- where one missed day, or even five missed days like today would make hitting my goals an actual impossibility. I’ve built in the cushion. It’s still frustrating to NEED the cushion, but it’s built into the schedule for a reason.
It’s really the same thing with the writing a little bit every day, actually. If something tears me away from getting a few days of writing done, it’s split up into increments small enough that catching up a few days it doable in the span of a few hours. Not full days. That’s a *huge* deal. Feeling impossibly far behind is a very crushing, very negative, very hopeless feeling. It is in my control to set myself up not to feel that, at least as much as possible. Feelings of hoplessness are bound to pop up every now and then 😛 I am a human after all.
I listened to some of my “Footsteps” mix from yesteryear a bit tonight after I’d finished the video I was working on. That first mix, CD 1…it’s still probably the best mix I’ve ever made. My first. I tweeted about it, something along the lines of peaking too early. I remember though that I worked on that thing in between doing homework in my studio apartment in Arcata and working down at the mall in the Gap (no longer there)…I worked on it for 6 months, I think. Maybe a year. It took me that long to get all the records I needed to lift the sound from. See, all the music was recorded from vinyl, and then mixed on my computer using Acid Pro so I could do loops and really, REALLY perfect the volume and bass settings so each mix would be perfectly seamless. You know, basically what REAL DJs were doing for their CD mixes. I worked on it for however long, and when I was *finally* happy with it, I remember I shared it with this guy that worked down at the mall too, “Scrappy Dan.” He was from LA, I remember, and he used to be a DJ. He knew the guys who started Monday Night Social, which still goes on down here, actually, 20 some odd years later…I gave it to him and I don’t think he was expecting anything, really. The next time I saw him, I remember he said he was astounded at how good the mix was, and it made him want to get back into DJing. He said “You spent a really long time on this, didn’t you? Because it sounds like it.”
I’d have kept trying to DJ even if he hadn’t liked it, I know that for sure, but that was sincerely one of my proudest moments as a DJ. I’d handed a mix to someone who knew what I was trying to do, and he got it. He was in. We were speaking the same language.
Ultimately, DJing ended up being a frustrating experience for me, to be honest. Put more positively, it was an amazing learning experience in just how hard things can be in the real world. And, I mean positively in that it’s *important* to learn that lesson first-hand. To learn that everything takes hard work, and to respect those who have put in that hard work. I do wish that I’d found more success with music, but at the same time, I am also *incredibly* proud of what success I did find, and I’ll forever cherish the music that I listened to. That foray into DJing brought so much incredible music into my life. I’ll always be grateful for that.
That’s all for tonight. Pray for me that tomorrow is much more productive on the editing front. I need it 😛