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2024-04-08 (Week 2314): Slowing Down to Regroup
I’m glad to say that last week was less busy than expected due to canceled and rescheduled plans. That said, Friday at work was a bit of a gong show with our drainage pit at the brewery getting pumped. The pump truck driver had an overflow in the warehouse, which caused a highly putrescent stench. Thankfully, I was able to spend most of the rest of my shift in the two cold rooms, building pallets for taproom backup and then backing up the taproom. The cold rooms were relatively odorless.
This weekend, there was lots of cleaning, tidying, and building new, more efficient end tables than the old ones. My partner and I also went to a local RV show to plan for a quieter future. It’s still a long way down the road, but we found 5-6 different ones that we liked, so we will do more research and continue planning.
As for my creative endeavors, “The Calm After the Storm” comes out Friday on all major streaming platforms, and I was amping myself up to roll right into the next piece this week. However, I sat with things and realized I didn’t need to crank out one piece a month. I’d be forcing myself to create an old habit I’m trying to break.
What I’m going to do instead is dial it back to one piece a quarter, which gives me a few months to consider the following piece (I have an idea), the themes behind it, work more with the samples and programs I have to write music, and perhaps acquire some new ones. I have my eyes on a sample pack from Goldbaby and almost all the free packs to sift through. The samples I used for “The Calm After the Storm” come from the Free Pipe Pack (melody) and the Pulse Free Pack (bass).
I realize that I’m trying to work at a breakneck speed to express all this creativity, and I continue to wonder why I do that to myself. I’ve made some giant leaps to get to where I am now, but I realize I’m at a good, creative place again and can slow down.
At least this time, it’s more honest since I’m not trying to appease a faceless public; I’m trying to appease myself. I’m satisfied with how “The Calm After the Storm” turned out, and I’m considering how to expand and build upon those ideas with the next piece.
I’ve also made significant strides in cleaning up my notes, going from 128 single-spaced pages to 34 1.5-spaced pages with a blank line between each note. I’m slowly accumulating and integrating more notes, but as long as I go through them every few months, I should be able to keep them manageable.
I also think slowing down now will help me figure out what I’m ultimately trying to accomplish with all of this creativity. I’m not certain, but it feels like the writing is to give me a guide to life, and the music is to help me realize where all the music I’ve listened to and enjoyed over the years has led me. It’s somewhere atmospheric and moody, but perhaps that comes with eschewing drums from the proceedings.
There’s also a long list of questions piling up in the aforementioned 34 pages that I want to sit down and answer once I get them all organized. I’ll likely use the method I learned so many years ago from an old influence, wherein I answer the same question a number of ways until the best answer rings true.
In reading all of this back, I think the only slowing down I’m doing is forcing myself to perform for the marketplace (aside from doing my weekly 40+), but that’s fine. I need to sit with myself more before sharing my findings.
Until next week!
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