In the past few months I’ve started following some “career development” accounts on Twitter, and signing up for some emails. Then immediately regretted my choices in life.
Everyone loves a success story, but dear lord, must everything be “how I quit my job at NASA and earned $500,000 a month selling e-Books?”
Like, not everyone is destined for e-book writing. Or starting an online course.
“Get on Twitter, be helpful, then you can write an ebook and teach a class, and earn six figures in a month.”
Like, what?
I can’t find the “how to pay your cell phone bill with a helpful skill” sort of articles or videos, because all the algorithms are tilted towards the six figure hustle porn.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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
Just a quiet nighttime run through town with the snow coming down. Only a few people out tonight, still and quiet, the sound of snow coming down on my hood. Absolutely magical.
Unfortunately the only way to put a video of mine on this site is to upload it to YouTube, which seems silly, since this audio file actually expires in less than 24 hours, but just posting about it on social media ain’t the answer!
So if you read this blog – I make up these tones and sounds in real time, and stream them on Blast Radio, live to the world. To listen to you need to download the Blast Radio app, but I promise it’s pretty nice. Get it here.
On tonight’s broadcast I had four listeners, which is more than I had a week ago when I started doing this. So I’m just putting this here as a small piece of history. Not really aiming for the stars with this, after all, but I enjoy making these, so if you like them, tune in. Listen here while it’s still live.
Yes, I have downloaded archived copies of each stream, and will be putting them on Bandcamp in a bit. Stay tuned.
I’m going to do a live stream this Friday, January 14th at 9pm ET on both Blast Radio (audio only) and Mix Cloud which will have a video element – bookmark this page here.
My latest mix (#20) was live streamed last Friday. Click below to listen..
I’ve watched a lot of people get into the live streaming thing, mostly on Twitch, or Instagram Live, neither of which I enjoy. Right now Blast Radio and Mixcloud do the job, but my ultimate set up would be something I control, on my own domain name, on my own website.
Cancelled my co-working spot because, well, COVID. We’re heading towards 30,000 new cases per day. My friend’s uncle is in the ICU with COVID, and had to wait six hours for a hospital bed. Just gonna lay low a bit, I think.
