Peaks & Troughs

Spent a small chunk of my time this weekend doing further edits on the live audio I captured of the two opening acts at Putnam's show the other week. Why, exactly, am I doing this when I have a good half-dozen other things that take priority over it? Because it's the only thing that I have in front of me that I really have any fun doing. Plus, after a particularly sluggish math lesson with my father earlier this afternoon, I find getting deep into editing and balancing audio to be incredibly soothing.

Given that everything in my life these days is either things I don't know how to do (math) or things that require me to break down big mental blocks (design) and things that fall equally into both camps, I think I can forgive myself a couple of hours blown over a basically pointless activity (that isn't just watching TV) that actually plays to my skills and leaves me with a sense of satisfaction when I'm done.

And 'done' may be the most important concept here - pretty much all else that requires my attention is part of a larger project, even some that (literally) have no end in sight. It's nice to just sit and finish a project in one evening. Even if the monetary rewards are nil, the idea of having spent a Sunday evening doing something personally rewarding is... well, you know.

Next up: finishing up some logos for my sister's company. With design work, I often have to hack away at something in small periods over the course of a few days to get something I like. It's vanishingly rare that I can sit down with nothing and stand up after a discrete period satisfied with the results. As a designer, I frequently have a blank page in my mind that equals the Illustrator Document on the screen. It's more a tale of compromising with myself over the course of several sessions until I can just let something go. Let's see how I do this evening.

D.