2026-02-03 14:04:17
forget everything i said about the future, i was wrong. instead of finishing anything i have been stressing myself out to the point of exhaustion. so i will be trying a new approach with my music called putting in as little effort as possible while simultaneously being very intentional with my time. this plan will definitely not fail or backfire in any way, and after this it will be smooth sailing for the rest of my life.
2025-12-31 19:28:50
i made a song last week which i feel is like actually finished, like at the point where i can't really make it any better with the skills i have now, which i usually don't feel about my songs. maybe part of why i feel like it's actually done is because i don't really like it that much. like there are some parts i enjoy especially in the production but i don't think it's really all that great as a complete work. i'm on the fence about whether or not i should go ahead and post it on my failure page because i'm kind of embarrassed about how bad the vocals sound. not my singing itself but the fact that i couldn't get the recordings i took to sound normal at all despite all the work i put into processing them. regardless of whether i post it or not, i still want to try to mix it because i really need to practice mixing since i've been so lazy with it and i know it's holding back my projects from sounding acceptable (especially compression, i blasted my ears out in february experimenting with a compressor, to the point where i could taste blood, and since then i have been scared every time i load one up). even though i don't like the song very much, i'm glad that i made it. i mostly just needed to prove to myself that i could, and that all the time i spent this year learning and practicing wasn't wasted. next year i want to finish more things, and get over my fear that what i make won't be "good enough". and to stop comparing myself to everyone who makes better music than me.
i'm honestly not sure what i should do to pursue music, like what moves i should be taking right now and in the near future. i have a lot of time on my hands rn and i feel so guilty when i don't spend absolutely every hour of every day in logic but i also know that when i don't take time to do other things and just be in my brain and live life then the things i make become boring and repetitive. but also i know the only way to get to the point where i make this my job is to treat it as my job. i also want to collaborate with other people but i'm still very self conscious that i don't know enough yet to be able to do that. i think im close(er) to the point where i would feel comfortable posting beats for sale, but i'm really annoying and particular and i know i would find it hard to put things up that i've worked on long enough to start second guessing about but i also don't wanna just mass produce shitty beats and further contribute to the devaluation of rap music. but also i know i should just get over myself and just start.
i've been on qelbree for a few weeks now and obviously it hasn't solved all my problems but it has helped me stay a bit more organized, and once my brain stopped feeling like an emotional smoothie i've been pretty clear headed and grounded while thinking about my plans for the future, though i have still been a bit lazy and not as strict with myself as i would like to be. surprisingly, i've started getting myself to actually leave the house to go on errands instead of making excuses and putting things off, even despite this abhorrent weather. i have so many vague plans and ideas for what i want to do, and for the first new years in forever i actually feel hopeful about my life in a realistic way, but also i have this fear that nothing will come of this and everything will go to shit and none of the things i'm dreaming about will pan out. i still don't know how to keep a schedule, i still find it very hard to stick to the plans i have with individual projects and besides finishing that one song a few days ago there's nothing else i worked on this year that i can say is complete. i really hope that next year i'll get better on following through on things and maybe start seeing some actual results.
2025-11-07 19:27:34
for every day that something is completed, there are like 10 days (at minimum) where work is done without much to show for it. you can push a boulder up a hill for years but you only spend a few seconds actually getting it to the top. then it's on to the next boulder. i know that a life full of pushing things over the top would get very boring after a while, and the feeling of excitement would eventually dull, and that you need the spaces in between for success to have meaning. but oh my god can i get a few wins, just a little more often? like once a week at least??
and i already know that the answer to all of my problems is just "work hard" and "stay consistent", but i am allergic to both of those things. still trying tho. that should be enough, right?
2025-10-29 10:22:42
going around in circles in my head trying to figure out what i should practice the most, and i end up not working on anything. there was this question on bill wurtz's question page one time like "how do i know what the right thing to do is" and he was like "have you considered doing the wrong thing?" and that runs through my head a lot when i start overthinking my projects. i keep making lists of things to practice every day but i'm so inconsistent with it, it's hilarious. it really doesn't take that much to open up a daw and start making things but i turn it into a really big deal where i tell myself i have to hit certain metrics like making 30 seconds of music or 4 layers of sounds and then i scare myself out of doing anything.
yesterday i learned a little bit about EQing hi hats and now i'm super self conscious that everything i've made so far is completely unlistenable since i haven't been doing that at all. another item on the pile of things i need to practice! but it's actually so hard for me to hear what's going on when i try to eq things in the high end it's kind of embarrassing. like i can tell when there's a difference but i really can't tell if the difference(..making a cut at a specific frequency) makes the sound better or worse. like how do i make sure i'm not cutting frequencies that are essential to the tone of the sample?? so i guess that's the only thing i'm going to think about for the rest of the week.
this is so aggravating because i've been so obsessed with small details that i'm now realizing kind of don't matter and yet i had no idea that something simple like that could have such a major impact on a track, like this is actually causing me to spiral a bit, but i'm fine. i'm sure i'll figure it out eventually.
2025-10-16 22:41:29
i would love to engage with my non music hobbies more but i don't know how to do that without them taking over my music time. the most i can do is read occasionally. even watching films seems so time consuming and wasteful now, let alone watching tv shows. i still watch youtube sometimes tho so maybe it's just the idea of having to take something seriously that i don't like.
i'm on the fence right now about whether i should upgrade my recording gear or not. with my current set up i get a lot of hiss and it's really getting on my nerves because i'm starting to get more into vocal production and having to try to cut out the hiss while preserving my actual voice is a pain in the ass. everything i'm using right now is second hand, and i managed to find some (what i assume are)reasonably priced brand new replacements but i literally have no way of knowing if any of those things are going to solve the problem and idk if i'm that comfortable spending a lot of money on something i'm not actually making any money from.
common sense says that i really shouldn't upgrade anything anyway until i get good enough at production/singing/mixing for it to actually matter but it's so demotivating to spend hours tweaking things just for them to still sound like shit.
i hate ending blog posts on a negative note, so i will make a list of things i am very happy about:
2025-10-12 08:25:11
i'm always scared to talk too much about things in my life when it's going well because im a little bit scared i will jinx it and everything will fall apart. it's not even like things are going that much better than before, it's just that i had this massive mindset shift about a month and a half ago and now everything feels so free and new (actually now that i think about it the past 12 months have been full of these shifts, maybe this is just a regular thing for me now). finally making music that i think i'd be okay with posting online but i'm still not sure how i would want to do that. i have ideas but am not executing any of them. i'm not taking this very seriously actually, because that would mean i care. still agonizing over it every day , though.
also, a few months ago i completed the challenge of listening to 365 albums. towards the end i ramped it up and was listening to like 10 albums a day because i was worried i wouldn't make it before the end of the year. idk why i thought that. one thing i realized while doing the challenge is that i love finding new artists and genres i never would have listened to before, it's so fun. there's so much good music out there. currently trying to push myself to get through all the albums i have saved on spotify before the person who's family plan i'm on decides to cancel their subscription (i actually don't know for sure if that will happen, but it might.) i'm going through in alphabetical order and i'm currently near the end of the letter D (doubting thomas - the infidel) and there are 8 more before i get to the letter E.
2025-08-04 11:57:20
watched 28 days later (2002) at around 1 o'clock in the morning. i put it off for years because when i learned about how the infection was created by showing monkeys images of civil unrest in nonwhite countries i was like wtf kind of plot is that. turns out the rest of the film is actually good. very well shot in my opinion, the visual distortion adds flavor. most of the dialogue was terrible. obsessed with how well the ending was edited. i <3 cinema sometimes(most of the time). i followed it up with a 2:30 am viewing of disney's robin hood (1973) and that was good also. was surprised to hear the hamster-dance melody in the intro and to see where the twitter meme came from.
i'm really struggling between feeling like i'm enough as a person and trying to better myself. like on one hand i know i'm okay and at least a better person than my dad but also that's not enough but also what is enough. maybe being a good person is just a never ending uphill push. maybe my priorities(like what i should be improving) are in the wrong place. but how will i ever know?
read a book about the history of the internet and it confirmed my feeling that i need to extract myself from all the addictive services and websites that i use. i don't want to be a product and i don't want to spend the rest of my life just consuming.
life = never ending fight to drink more water and eat more fiber.
death = stagnation = spending 8+ hours on the internet.
i'm always like "i wish i could talk to people irl about this stuff" but i literally can i'm just scared to try. i don't want to feel vulnerable around people who know me. (i guess i'm not that much better than my dad, huh?)
head is buzzing with caffeine and i think i'm dissociating okay bye!