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Forgot about this place...
Mar. 14th, 2025 07:25 pmWas digging around SoundCloud and saw someone's profile had a "Dreamwidth" link in their social links section. Intrigued, I clicked it and found this site... what looks to me like some sort of Livejournal clone type of deal. Been a long, long time since I used Livejournal, but I have fond, sepia-toned memories of it. I opened a new tab, googled the name, and saw the Create Account link was actually purple - well I'll be goddamned. After a couple of failed login attempts, I managed to get in and now I think maybe I should start logging my efforts at music production and sound design and abusing other people's original works by pitching and EQing and chopping and mangling and glitching and...
It's been a strange few years.
I found music production & sound design around when I started getting burned out on tech work in mid 2020 and became absolutely obsessed. It was an escape. Ignorant of any kind of nuance or educated view of the subject, it looked to me like an infinite playground with infinite possibilities. It was the perfect thing to throw myself into to desperately run away from real life. I was forgetting to eat, I was staying up late watching massive YouTube playlists to better understand EQing and compression and time signatures and MIDI. There's a lot I still don't know, and a lot I need a cheatsheet for, but from 2020 to late 2022/early 2023, it became a healing balm, a sanctuary, a fucking fortress in which I could climb to the top of one of the turrets and watch my problems raging and clamoring for attention down below, and spit bomb them and make rude gestures or yell profanities at them and shake my fist, taunting them to even try climbing up to reach me.
In 2023, the burnout got so bad that even this - the one hobby or passion or whatever in my life that survived longer than a few months - seemed like a chore, so I stopped. The MPC collected dust, the DAWs bumped by major version numbers and I wasn't there to marvel at all of the quality of life features they added or to be excited as fuck for this softsynth or that FX plugin.
I sat and I suffered silently all the way until I got notice that I had 2 months left before I would be unemployed (along with the rest of my team and several adjacent teams). It was a really good job. It was reliable. It paid well. I had a relatively prestigious title some degree of bragging rights.
I fucking hated it.
I had been viciously fighting severe career burnout for roughly 4 years at that point. Four years of burnout will do funny things to a person (the real deal, not the hyperbolic "I hate my job" variant). I needed the paycheck but I didn't want the job; a job that I had ironically dreamed of for years. Goodbyes were said, severances were paid out, and by the time the end of the year rolled around, I had somehow finally found peace (even with my bank account screaming at me to do something).
In December of 2024, a friend (and one much more knowledgeable and more clever than me in regards to production) sort of pushed me back by dangling a beat battle in front of me. I said, "Eh, fuck it. Why not?" and I rekindled my endless love for this stuff. And I haven't stopped yet, since returning. And I couldn't be happier.
I'm probably getting ready to cash out my very modest retirement account because the job market is hot garbage and a guy has to fucking eat and pay rent. It's not helping that the current political climate is pecking away at that account. Forcing me every day to say, "Maybe today is the day," so as to avoid even further losses while the markets spiral. My last lifeline, that retirement account, has lost 2 months of rent and food in just the last week or two.
But, strangely... I couldn't be happier. I've been reunited with some of the greatest loves of my life: the sampler, the piano roll, the oscillator and the filter and the... you get the idea (who's even reading this swill, anyway?).
If I can remember to, and I can keep up any semblance of ambition, I'm going to try to use this journal as a log of my efforts and a place to share what I create and what I learn. It could've been any blogging or journal platform, but I like the spontaneity of rediscovering some obscure site I forgot about ages ago and throwing myself into using it. Has it even been ages? Or months? Or just weeks? Who cares...
It's been a strange few years.
I found music production & sound design around when I started getting burned out on tech work in mid 2020 and became absolutely obsessed. It was an escape. Ignorant of any kind of nuance or educated view of the subject, it looked to me like an infinite playground with infinite possibilities. It was the perfect thing to throw myself into to desperately run away from real life. I was forgetting to eat, I was staying up late watching massive YouTube playlists to better understand EQing and compression and time signatures and MIDI. There's a lot I still don't know, and a lot I need a cheatsheet for, but from 2020 to late 2022/early 2023, it became a healing balm, a sanctuary, a fucking fortress in which I could climb to the top of one of the turrets and watch my problems raging and clamoring for attention down below, and spit bomb them and make rude gestures or yell profanities at them and shake my fist, taunting them to even try climbing up to reach me.
In 2023, the burnout got so bad that even this - the one hobby or passion or whatever in my life that survived longer than a few months - seemed like a chore, so I stopped. The MPC collected dust, the DAWs bumped by major version numbers and I wasn't there to marvel at all of the quality of life features they added or to be excited as fuck for this softsynth or that FX plugin.
I sat and I suffered silently all the way until I got notice that I had 2 months left before I would be unemployed (along with the rest of my team and several adjacent teams). It was a really good job. It was reliable. It paid well. I had a relatively prestigious title some degree of bragging rights.
I fucking hated it.
I had been viciously fighting severe career burnout for roughly 4 years at that point. Four years of burnout will do funny things to a person (the real deal, not the hyperbolic "I hate my job" variant). I needed the paycheck but I didn't want the job; a job that I had ironically dreamed of for years. Goodbyes were said, severances were paid out, and by the time the end of the year rolled around, I had somehow finally found peace (even with my bank account screaming at me to do something).
In December of 2024, a friend (and one much more knowledgeable and more clever than me in regards to production) sort of pushed me back by dangling a beat battle in front of me. I said, "Eh, fuck it. Why not?" and I rekindled my endless love for this stuff. And I haven't stopped yet, since returning. And I couldn't be happier.
I'm probably getting ready to cash out my very modest retirement account because the job market is hot garbage and a guy has to fucking eat and pay rent. It's not helping that the current political climate is pecking away at that account. Forcing me every day to say, "Maybe today is the day," so as to avoid even further losses while the markets spiral. My last lifeline, that retirement account, has lost 2 months of rent and food in just the last week or two.
But, strangely... I couldn't be happier. I've been reunited with some of the greatest loves of my life: the sampler, the piano roll, the oscillator and the filter and the... you get the idea (who's even reading this swill, anyway?).
If I can remember to, and I can keep up any semblance of ambition, I'm going to try to use this journal as a log of my efforts and a place to share what I create and what I learn. It could've been any blogging or journal platform, but I like the spontaneity of rediscovering some obscure site I forgot about ages ago and throwing myself into using it. Has it even been ages? Or months? Or just weeks? Who cares...
