More Unease

Since Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 (or was he?!), it’s been harder to focus. I mean, everything has been batshit crazy, but now? Now the leader of the free world has a virus that has killed over 200,000 Americans. I mean, aside from the Nelson-esque “AH HA,” this is some serious shit. Like, what if our adversaries were to strike? What if a major earth quake were to happen? What if some major electrical grid went down?

Leadership is bad enough at the moment, but them compound with that?

So it’s just been more unease. Like, working from home and all, or when going to sleep at night, you just sort of figure, hey, grown ups are in charge, and they’re handling things.

But more and more it just feels like that’s not the case, which makes it hard to focus on much of anything at the moment.

Juggling Full Time Jobs

Sure, I’ve seen the news. Even if I didn’t check the news, alerts pop up on my phone. Friends message me. Today was quite a day for that.

Years ago I thought of the music media business as driving up a never ending mountain, with bosses in the back seat yelling to go faster.

That still exists, I guess, but now it’s on the consumer to keep ingesting everything. Put your phone down for 15 minutes and you could miss a big Tweet, a new update, a leak, some source coming out, a video, audio, so many things!

Keeping up is a full time job, on top of our full time jobs, of which we already have many. It’s not enough to have the work that we do, but also the work of not contracting a super-deadly virus. The work of staying away from people, only going out when we need. And it’s even overwhelming all the fund raisers going on, the organizations we need to support, the art and music that that we want to nurture.

I always come back to this; I can’t save the world. If I do one thing today, that’s enough. And if I don’t, well, that’s nobodies business. We’re all here to do what we’re all here to do. And that’s enough for today. Tomorrow? Hell, that’s not even here yet.

Just Keep It Moving, I Guess

I have a race this weekend. A for-real race, with other people. A field of about 70 people, starting in waves according to age or elite status. This week I’m taking it easy, as I’ve been pushing the miles the last few months, and now I’m letting the muscles and bones heal up nice and good. I want to be “undercooked” as my coach once told me. Better to be over-rested than burnt out before a race.

Been thinking a lot about habits, goals, energy, side-projects. I’ve sort of been bummed that I haven’t done a creative side thing in awhile, like music or art. But I’ve absolutely been pulled to running.

It keeps me outside. It breaks up the days. I can experience a cold morning, or get out on a busy trail in the evening and see a bunch of dogs. I can run when it’s hot out, or when it’s raining. I can run in new places, new towns, new trails, with new people.

Like, right now making music isn’t going to do that for me. I still love music, and listening, and discovering music, hell, I WORK IN MUSIC.

But right now, as a hobby, or a way to unwind? It’s just not there for me… right now.

God, that’s so much with all of this.

I don’t feel like making music.. right now.
I don’t feel like making videos… right now.

Maybe someday I will. For right now, I need to do some stretching.

Finally Working in Basecamp

I bit the bullet and signed up for Basecamp to better manage my work with Close Mondays. I didn’t even realize it, but I was sold on Jason Fried’s recent forward for a book:

People struggle to know where a project stands. People struggle to maintain accountability across teams. People struggle to know who’s working on what, and when those things will be done. People struggle with presenting a professional appearance with clients. People struggle to keep everything organized in one place so people know where things are. People struggle to communicate clearly so they don’t have to repeat themselves.

I didn’t need project management software, I needed all of the above.

I think the biggest thing is giving someone an assignment via the old way – emailing them, putting it in Slack, etc. That’s fine, but it’s hard to have a record of everything you asked. Or asked of one person. Or things you assigned that are due this week. Or next. And those things float in my head – is it done? Will it be done? Should I send an email about it to follow up? With Basecamp, I can answer all those questions with a few clicks.

I’ve used Todoist for years, but that was mostly just me. Now that things are getting busier, I needed to bring in some help, and managing all that was becoming stressful without a system in place. It took a few months, but I think I found a home with Basecamp.

Making Sharable Clips with TikTok Videos

Using TikTok videos to promote your thing across social media can be tough given the format of the video. The Toktok video is great for sharing as an IG or FB story, but what about everywhere else?

For this clip, I took the raw TikTok video, and put it in the middle of a 1280×720 video (I use ScreenFlow), then took the client’s existing Instagram Story assets and put them on either side.

The result is a shareable video clip that shows off a cool make-up sequence, and reinforces the brand and the actual release we’re trying to promote.

Slow Miles, More Smiles

A month ago I hit 100 miles in one week, between running and biking. That took a tenacity, a mental drive to get out every day because I was running for a cause (we all gotta run for Tommy Rivers Puzey). Finding the drive internally is a challenge, but I’m working on it. Got in a few 30 mile weeks on my feet, and feeling good. Slowing down, focusing on recovery, instead of trying to get faster on every freaking run.

Tonight was the first night after a ride where it wasn’t dreadfully hot. There was no sweat dripping into my eye balls, no feeling like I just got caught in a rainstorm. Instead it felt like a hoodie would have been nice for my back porch dinner.

Another Bandcamp Roulette

Made another Bandcamp Roulette. Still messing up (note the right side screen clip doesn’t take up its full space), but that’s how we learn, right? Also need to figure out an audio ducking solution. Right now all the audio gets recorded into ScreenFlow, while the video of me is recorded using an iPhone. Separating those two channels of audio is easy, but its getting them in sync in post production that’s the hard part.

Evening Tunes – Dengue Dengue Dengue

Completely random Bandcamp find – open the app, electronic, go down the rabbit hole, click on something with some interesting artwork, and wow… this is seriously good evening jams.

No algorithm, trust your gut, trust your eye.

Downtime Thoughts

It’s amazing how we stayed in touch before 2006-ish, before Twitter. Before Facebook. We emailed one another, texted, called. All things we can still do, but none with the endorphin rush of opening up Instagram and seeing the likes, and a peek inside the lives of hundreds of our closest friends.

And IG Stories – oh my goodness! Videos, horror, outrage, kitties – it’s like shots of espresso right into the eyeballs.

Lately I’ve been spending more time on Flickr, as I think I wrote before. Pick a tag, any tag, and get lost in amazing photos. Sort of like Bandcamp, which you all know I love.

It’s the open web. No algorithm. No influencers. No computer-bases trickery to keep me engaged, plugged in, and scrolling. I mean, I love street photography, but there’s only so much I can look at.

The one thing, though I do enjoy with Instagram is the number of runners I follow, and they post some pretty inspiring imagery and stories and videos, and that sometimes helps me get out the door.