Month: February 2022

DON’T WAIT

I love this quote from ‘monday monday‘ by Marlee Grace:

“Don’t wait to feel better to write your newsletter, record your podcast, paint your painting. If we wait we will never know the outcome, the one we are waiting to be pleasantly surprised by.”

God dammit I’ve been waiting. Waiting for downtime that never comes. Waiting for the decompression that never arrives. Waiting for a bit of exhale, a sigh of relief, and it’s just never there.

Self employment means you get to work on everything all the time – finances, taxes, marketing, writing, planning, emailing, organizing, health care, and every other god damn thing under the sun. That also means my entire schedule is mine, so my afternoon walks and evening strolls just means my work gets pushed back and then I’m still working on stuff until 8pm.

And as much as I don’t want to wait, and I want to work on some new organizational system, or re-write an SOP for a VA, or try a new automation in Airtable, or spend 30 minutes stretching, or go on a run, a bike ride, a walk… sometimes playing Mario Kart 8 till 11pm is just the right thing to do.

SPRING IS 28 DAYS AWAY

That means there are only 28 days remaining of winter, which honestly have been pretty rough. I’ve fought many bouts of the grumps which I’ve only handled by eating lots of cookies and taking advantage of all the food places within walking distance – pizza, Mexican food, cheese steaks, thai rice bowls, and DONUTS.

I finally put together back to back weeks of 14 miles running. I mean, I was in the single digits. Barely 10. But I kept running here and there. And now on Sunday I ran my first five miler in… forever. Took a solid hour, but whatever.

I’m never one to put too much stock in numbers and all that, but fuck it… we’re heading into our second spring during a fucking pandemic, so why not? As of Sunday, spring is 28 days away. About a month of the last few gasps of winter, of cold and darkness and wind. Onward to making some good things happen over the next 28 days.

THE CONTINUOUS SHOT FROM THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT

The fifth episode of the Book of Boba Fett is my favorite, and one I keep re-watching, mostly for the continuous shot that starts at the 7:04 mark, and lasts until 9:21.

After some gorgeous shots of the ring world of Glavis, we seen Mando walking to the elevator to deliver the bounty.

This interaction says everything, without a single word being said.

The camera goes in motion to Mando’s right, and goes around the entire table. I’ve watched this several times, and it’s fun watching all the subtle movements and reactions that each person sitting around the table has.

See? The camera continued around the table to Mando’s left side, and will follow him out of the club.

The music fades, and we’re left with Mando struggling with his hurt leg.

Mando gets off the elevator, and he walks by the camera and out of frame, ending the continuous shot at the 9:21 mark, cutting to another camera angle.

I haven’t noticed any of the big episode “wrap up” articles making note of this, but I did find a small thread on Reddit talking about.

“Before he 1st goes into the elevator, the shot begins with Mando walking out from behind a arched pillar on his right & a low concrete ledge on his left leading up to the elevator. Those same set pieces are shown in the same spots each floor he enters/exits the elevator from. The CG backdrop & possibly the slight change in lighting are the only things that changes to give the impression that he is ascending & descending levels,” via Reddit

So yeah, I love it so much.

WORKING WITH HOLD TIGHT

I’ve been working with the fine folk at HOLD TIGHT since late last year, but now it’s official:

Over the last couple of years we’ve developed a variety of flexible offerings, including approaching newer media (YouTube reactionaries, Twitch streamers) and building our digital marketing wing – headed up by our legendary Darren Gosling.

The next natural step was to build email marketing into our marketing operation, so allow me to introduce the lovely Seth Werkheiser, who’s joined us as a freelance email marketing executive.

Seth might already be a known face to some of you. He’s been writing about music since 2001 and co-founded Noisecreep in 2008. He’s behind the commendable Metal Bandcamp Gift Club and – along with Hold Tight – works with MNRK Heavy (formerly eOne Heavy), and leading US PR agencies.

Read the full announcement here.

QUIET BUT STILL BUSY

While I haven’t been blogging, I’ve been doing a handful of stuff.

I set up an official site for Goodnight, Metal Friend, my “sleepy time metal music” project. I used Notion and Super, plus a theme that I bought from somewhere I can’t remember, but I love it.

https://goodnightmetalfriend.com

Since I’ve been somewhat better with my doom scrolling, I’ve had the time to source all the music for hour long mixes on a weekly basis. So it’s not that I found the time, I just used it differently.

Speaking of using time differently, I’ve started live-streaming on the Blast Radio app, which has been a lot of fun. Twice a week I get on there and make up some dark-ambient chill music in real time.

Then, since I’ve been making these hour long tracks, I trimmed them a bit and made some edits and now they’re also a release on Bandcamp.

With all that, I started a Goodnight, Metal Friend newsletter, here.

I interviewed Joan Pope for the HEAVY METAL EMAIL newsletter.

CLOSE MONDAYS sent out lots of email campaigns for MNRK Heavy, Death Row Records, and Hold Tight.

I’ve Been shifting a lot of that work from “helping busy independent music publicists” towards the DTC email marketing world by way of automation (Airtable and Zapier and Front) and delegation (moving things to Time Etc.).

Definitely shifting gears towards “I do ecommerce email marketing for heavy metal labels.” Hire me and let’s make tens of thousands of dollars a month, cool? seth@closemondays.com