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Edible
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Albeit an extremely reflective person, I’m not big on exalting my progress or achieved milestones. Growing up, doing well was expected, and it has definitely poured over into my adulthood.
You got A’s and B’s? Good, you’re doing the bare minimum.
My Mom wasn’t demanding by the way. It was just the precedent in the household - A’s and B’s, or suffer my wrath.
Okay Mom, got it.
That being said, I have seen a ton of growth in myself this past year. More than what I have experienced sans graduating college. I feel like college tends to be the area where people truly grow into themselves. That was not the case for me. My metamorphosis into a more capable adult and a person with a heightened sense of self-awareness definitely took place after graduation.
One thing I can say I have improved on is acknowledging my accomplishments.
If you don’t know, I embarked on a huge personal project, and my reward for hunkering down and getting it done was a week long break/ vacation to Japan (also, a personal trip to Ho Chi Minh).
Near Tokyo Station
Japan was… underwhelming. That’s probably not what most people expect to hear.
I’m not saying it is underwhelming in itself - it was underwhelming because I had particular expectations that weren’t met, because:
I didn’t do my research
I… didn’t do my research.
I am a strong believer in experiences being what you make of them, so I am owning up to my lack of interest being grounded in, again, my lack of research.
Still, I ate some great ramen, had the chance to go to some arcades, and took a 2 hour train ride into the mountains to enjoy my first public onsen (which was fantastic).
Most importantly, I got meet up with a close friend of mine who I went to college with.
Front of the onsen! Cameras weren’t allowed inside.
I’m not a big picture taker, but here are some eats from the trip…
Dango! Unfortunately, store bought, but not bad!
Rainbow Vegan Ramen from AFURI, a popular ramen shop!
Kukkia - tasty, oreo-ish, Japanese wafer cookies!
I’ve made a lot of strides this year. I have to remind myself that
1. I am more than the things I do.
2. Stop comparing yourself to other people. Beat your best, not someone else’s.
3. I am enough.
(That last one is extremely hard for me.)
Here’s to next year. I have fitness goals and relationship goals that I am itching to set into motion.
Here’s to being healthy and creating lasting relationships, be they numerous or few, platonic or romantic!
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Arrangements
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Albeit an extremely reflective person, I’m not big on exalting my progress or achieved milestones. Growing up, doing well was expected, and it has definitely poured over into my adulthood.
That being said, last year saw me taking very big (calculated?) risks and focusing intensely on improving the quality of my work.
I didn’t have a lot of projects, but I had opportunities that I strongly believe have the potential to put me in a position to write for more projects that resonate with me as a composer.
That’s the goal, anyway.
PAST
I finished up my OST Challenge soundtrack. The initial goal was to create 45 minutes of music. The OST is clocking in at… just a little over 60 minutes!
Quantity - Check
As far as quality, I am VERY happy with majority of the compositions. What I’m not happy with, are the vocal recordings.
Long story short, due to an extremely embarrassing mishap coupled with family coming to visit during poor weather here in Vietnam, I was unable to re-record my audio recordings.
The recordings are a mixture of decent singing in a poor environment and poor singing in a poor environment.
I’m eager to see how my mixing/mastering engineer James Hoffman cleans those bad boys up.
I mentioned doing a post-mortem of sorts on the entire ordeal, so I’ll do that. I’ll basically talk about pitfalls I endured as well as positives that came from the experience.
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1. Equipment matters
So, I jumped into the challenge after teetering back and forth on the start date. I knew that I wanted to start the new year off focusing on finding new projects, which meant I wanted to have this personal venture finished and out of my hair. I quickly decided to go ahead with the project. That being said, due to my hasty decision, I didn’t have the opportunity to figure out a more professional recording situation. Granted, it wouldn’t have been as big an issue had I decided to do this in America, but I didn’t let my lack of tech hold me back. Still, I wonder about the quality and how that may effect future viewers.
Also… a good laptop goes a long way. A few of my videos are extremely sluggish and have poor quality. I end up ranting about my laptop quite a bit in my videos..
Trust me, an upgrade will be had in due time.
2. Timezones/Consistency/Timeliness is important.
I wasn’t exactly poignant with my time. If I was going to be late, I tried my best to give an update on how long the delay would be, followed by a tweet stating when exactly I was going online.
That being said, I believe I would have had a lot more viewers had I been back home. I started to get some traction near the end (which was awesome), and I believe that was due to my semi-ish consistent streaming times. It made it easy for people to know when to log on, when to catch a stream, etc.
So, it wasn’t ideal for my American based friends/colleagues, but I was able to garner viewership from other countries!
3. Breaks/Rests
Quite a few times during this challenge, I took impromptu naps.
I have now become a nap person.
I underestimated the toll working and writing consistently with no break would take on me, mentally. I am still surprised at the music I came up with in the end, but I try not to imagine having to do this all the time!
Then again, it makes me wonder if that’s the norm in many cases for composers. Writing to deadlines, and then pouring every inch of our soul into the work.
It’s probably a given..
Anyway, I definitely wish I had the opportunity to truly take a break. I took an impromptu break, from writing AND regular work, because I had reached a mental impasse at one point.
I think, for me, taking a walk and leaving my cove would have been a great way to rejuvenate my mental faculties, but due to time constraints, I didn’t have that opportunity.
Since my trip, I’m practically itching to get back to work and start reaching out for more gigs and new projects to score! I’m giving myself the rest of the week to recuperate, though.
I’m going to jot down what to prepare for in terms of work and composition goals and get ready to jump straight into the list starting on Monday!
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That’s about it, to be honest. I think, for me, those were the more glaring realizations from the project.
I’m immensely proud of myself for the work I put in, though! Now I hope that it nets me work or at least interested parties willing to push my music. I plan to continue streaming, too. It will only be twice a week instead of three times, but exposing my work-space has officially become a thing for me.
PRESENT
Nothing is happening for the rest of this week. I’m going to round things off with preparing for the next few months (my game plan for my composing company), relaxing in the morning, and working to set new habits into motion.
FUTURE
I can definitely say that the next few weeks will be.. ironing out things for Gigabuster, preparing for Ciel’s soundtrack release (it will be released before the game), and getting stems for Journey to the Sun reconverted and sent out.
I created stems before my trip, and realized that I did a few things incorrectly. So, I’m doing them all again!
RUMINATIONS
In one of my streams, I went over goals I wanted to achieve or meet in the upcoming year. I’m going to elaborate on those goals and put them here:
Get a music placement, be it an ad/t.v. show/movie (residual income)
Expand my network of friends/colleagues in the audio/art/movie industry by 1 or 2 people. (lasting connections)
Go to at least two gaming events (Bitsummit and one in Indonesia)
Earn between 15% - 40% more in music work than I did in 2019.
Try pushing a streaming idea I’ve been chewing on to a programmer or investor.
Here’s to putting the ball in motion!