As of recent, I haven't been very talkative, either online or IRL. The truth is, I'm just tired and want some space. I promise it's not depression-related (at least, I really hope it's not), but all I want to do as of recent is disc golf and sleep. What that tells me is that I'm sick of sitting inside and want to get out and enjoy the weather while it's enjoyable. It also tells me that I'm too busy and need to lighten up a bit on the things that I can lighten up on (social life, internet, etc.), so that I can more feasibly take care of the things that I need to take care of (work, academics, etc.) without becoming overly stressed like I'm so prone to. Also, the winter makes me restless and jittery, wanting to get out but not having much to do. Then by the time summer rolls around I've worn myself out and all I want to do is relax.
I'm powering through the end of this semester with a vengeance. During the entirety of my collegiate career, I've never been this far behind on anything. I'm scrambling to catch up on old assignments while trying to remember to do current assignments. Shame on me for procrastinating for so long. Moving off campus has been refreshing in regard to being able to actually sleeping at night, but more challenging than I had expected in regard to staying motivated to keep on top of my academics. Additionally, this is my second to last semester, so I know by this point that any hope of raising my GPA the .08 points necessary to earn that shiny gold honors cord has already gone out the window. If anything, I just want to keep myself above a 3.3 by the time I graduate. If what the graduate advisers at Stout told me is true, then as long as I stay between a 3.0 and a 3.5, I should be golden for getting into grad school.
Speaking of grad school and graduating and the end of my undergrad and things with the word "grad" in them, I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do with my life when I graduate in December. Odds are, I'll wind up back in Wisconsin, but doing what? There are a few stressful things about the prospect of graduating. First, the excitement of finishing school is only making it more tempting to slack off. Second, since I'm a student worker, my current employment will end as soon as I walk across the stage and receive my diploma. Third, I know that no matter where I end up, for the sake of my mental health, there's no way I can let myself end up back at my dad's house. So what does this mean? Well, I need to bust ass and get my academic work done. Finish strong, right? But on top of that, I also have to find myself a job to go into after I graduate. I'm starting to look into options for that now, because I don't want to find myself between a rock and a hard place, a diploma in one hand and an empty wallet in the other.
Of course, there's also the pressure of wanting to find work that will actually be something meaningful to what I want to do in life: helping people. In particular, I would like to get a job in which I would be working with juvenile delinquents. Of course, there's not much in that area I can do with a bachelor's that will earn a sizable income, but it could be just enough to get me by financially while gaining experience that will help me when it comes time to start grad school. And speaking of grad school, I don't even know if I want to start in the fall of 2016 or if I want to wait until 2017 or even 2018. There's just no real knowing at this point. Lincoln Hills (the juvi I spent over a year of my teenage life in) is almost continuously hiring for youth counselors, and I've heard that my past experience as an inmate there could be greatly beneficial to the kids having someone they can relate to and who can relate to them. With any luck, this could be my foot in the door to a decent career doing something actually meaningful.
On a lesser note... I am an impulsive spender. By impulsive, I mean I set out on Friday to spend maybe $100-130 on two pairs of shoes, and ended up spending $375ish on two pairs of shoes, Starbucks, Chipotle, jeans, and here comes the big kicker, studio monitors. Of course, I'm fairly okay with the monitors; they'd be somewhere between $400 and $600 new, and I picked them up used for $180 at Music Go Round. There's nothing wrong with them, so far as I can tell, and they sound phenomenal (and look right at home) here in the studio. See?
You can kind of see in this picture, but I've also set up the work space to have the computer placed under the desk, with a separate monitor, keyboard, and mouse up top, so that I can help eliminate some of the computer noise that likes to bleed its way into my recordings. I still need to find a way to really block out that space under the desk while recording so the computer is better isolated, but that'll have to wait a couple weeks until I can finish these last couple songs for class and I'm ready to start actually recording everything.
Anyway, I need to tuck this away so I can go take care of some things that are calling my attention, like homework and an appointment (that internship life, yo). So, until later.
Yesterday, my roommate and I revamped our music room. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
Before:
We had some equipment. We even had a big stack of acoustic foam panels (40 square feet of it) in the upstairs bedroom waiting to go up. But the room was a logistical nightmare, a deathtrap zone, a catastrophic natural disaster waiting to happen. We didn't have a proper desk but were just using a couple TV trays (which roommate number 3 wanted to be put back on the rack in the living room). So we gutted the room, planned a new layout, cleaned up, and affixed the foam to cardboard panels which were hung on the walls (so that they can come down later when I move out, since they're actually mine). Then, we acquired an old retail display platform from our landlord (which we set on top of a pair of Peavey PV115 PA mains) to serve as our work station. Found a psychedelic blue cloth and put it over the window, and we were done!
The result:
As for now, the space functions and sounds much better than before. There is less acoustic reflection off the walls. I may order a little more foam to attach to the ceiling at certain points, and also so we can make a mic isolation shield for vocals, and we need to affix the corner foam to, well, the corners, but as for now I'm remarkably pleased with how well it turned out.
So what's the next step (after the few things I mentioned)? Well, some rack equipment that I want to acquire include a 2-channel tube mic preamp, noisegate, and EQ. Unfortunately, that means another $1000-1200, which I simply don't have at the moment. But, when I do purchase said items, it will probably be in the order of gate, preamp, and then EQ. I also want to upgrade my free Pro Tools Express to Pro Tools 11. That will be another $200, but it's worth it for beat detective and auto tune. I also got the new SoundToys Little Alter Boy plugin. Luckily, I found the website during a light traffic period and was able to download it during the "free before April 1st" window. As for now, I'm only going to record things for school (because academics, and because the semester is winding down and I'm running out of time).
Anyway, speaking of academics, I should get back to some homework. Peace out.
Oh, and if you want a cool 360 panorama of the room, click here. Maybe I need to put a link to my Flikr in my new social media launch page, epitome of toast?
This is just a very quick update to let you know that Epitome of Toast is now live! Yes, it's pretty basic. However,the purpose of it is to simply serve as a portal to my social media. I'm hoping to keep it that way (though, I do need to continue working on it).
It may not seem like much to y'all, but I have some super-cool-to-me news to share. Today, I purchased the domain "epitomeoftoast.com" from Google. For now, it's just set up to forward to my blog. However, I will (hopefully soon) be setting up a homepage on the domain that will contain social media links to my pages (Facebook, Blogger, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc.) Anyway, this is simply an experiment, to see if this is something I want to do long-term.
Also, unrelated, more vlogs are coming... maybe.
I know it's only Thursday, but my weekend stars in approximately 2 1/2 hours. Plans for tonight and for Saturday morning have been confirmed and I'm leaving immediately after my exam (which should be relatively simple) at 3:20. My main question is: what of the tentative plans for tomorrow night? It's what I'm looking forward to the most in the next couple days, so I'm hoping it happens, but I'm entirely uncertain at this point. Hopefully I'll find a place to stay tonight because tomorrow I'd like to take my car in for an alignment, and I'd like to shower in the morning since I'm planning to get a haircut.
Anyway, I feel pretty accomplished today because I managed to start a load of laundry this morning, dry it over lunch, put it all away, and pack for the trip. I wasn't sure if I wanted to take recording equipment with me or not, as I may have much of the weekend with nothing going on, but I think that leaving the recording equipment here will be a perfect (and maybe necessary) excuse to focus on academic work while I'm away. And speaking of academic work, I knocked out one assignment this morning in class (to be fair, I forgot that it was due), and managed to knock out study notes for my exam this afternoon. All of that with maybe just a couple small sips of coffee. I honestly think it was the pressure of the "oh crap I'm leaving this afternoon" deadline.
Anyway, I've got 25 minutes until my exam, so I'm going to make sure I've got this stuff down. I'm sure I'll be updating throughout the weekend. Maybe.
