REConnect - what's up?

[njlang]

Great to see some more people have signed in here!

I apologize if this feels a little like a ghost-town paying tribute to a ghost-town Slow pace can be good though. Everybody is busy and we can only actively engage with a handful of community spaces.

Here's a new topic that might be a good one for this forum!

What are you doing now? If you don't think you are doing anything interesting at the moment, then what do you want to do next?

[njlang]

I'll start it off.

For the last several years I've been most actively involved in a music collaboration community called Endlesss

Playing around with music and technology via Endlesss has been an amazing journey. Endlesss inspired me to build a music making arcade machine, which turned into many more. I did a lot of travelling in the last couple years to deliver and set these up (https://discover.endlesss.fm/beatmachine) It has been so much fun!

I am an active proponent of using technology to assist with music collaboration and Endlesss has been an exciting start-up to be involved in.

[LatteSundae]

Well this is a cool little hide out. I didn't get to Hitrecord until 2017, by then all the cool kids were already there lol.
This kinda feels like the nerds are taking over the asylum... Which I'm all for.
Side note NJ is an evil genius.

But to answer the question, ever since 2019, I've been dealing with not dealing with stuff, by that I mean, I was a firm believer in the 'stiff upper lip' approach, I kept going and pushing myself until one day my brain said "that's enough trauma for me thanks" and now I deal with seizures.
The joke is I've been having them since I was a kid, but didn't know what to call them and since I could still function, I ignored them.
Then one day last year, I get told they're called 'dissociative seizures', having something to call them made it easier to deal with.
It sucks though, because when they're really bad, it affects my voice, I either sound like a robotic child or I can't speak at all and since making music has become my emotional hideaway, it makes it harder for me to 'process' crap. Maybe one day they'll stop, eitheway, I'm still here.

Now you maybe wondering or saying, "what's this gotta do with anything?" and/or "Thanks for depressing me"...
Well... I've sort of given up on writing so this is another form of therapy for me... writing this post.
The annoying thing is I'M SUPPOSED TO BE A WRITER!!!
I truly believe it is my gifting, the music stuff I do, and do so frequently, is because when I try to sit and write... I can't anymore.
Too much rejection has made me doubt myself, heck, that's the whole reason I joined Hitrecord, to be with other creative freaks in the hope I would find a writing crew. Instead I kinda slid in with the music freaks and now it's the only thing that keeps me sane.

I keep telling myself to either stop procrastinating with music and get back to writing, or sell my music and make it worth my while.
But I don't care about money and I don't want to kill the little creativity I have left, by 'trying to make it'. I killed my writing passion by trying to impress writing judges, instead of just writing stuff I would watch, like I used to. If I do that with my music... I don't even wanna finish that thought.

So yeah... in an ideal world, I'd be married to a career guy, who keeps me kepted, so I can spend my days creating and not feeling like a massive failure

[njlang]

Hey!

I think it's pretty common for most people to frequently feel like a failure in all sorts of ways. I have a large number of ideas and things I want to do so there are always a whole lot of things I never get to or am unable to give enough attention.

I almost missed an opportunity that was really important to me at the time I put this forum up. Thankfully, I wasn't too late and was able to get my act together. I definitely would have missed out if not for people encouraging me.

I was agonizing about what I should put here on this forum and how to invite people in a way that might sound appealing. If nobody showed up I would feel like a failure, and at the same time, since I am usually painfully slow at written communication, always overthinking, I simultaneously didn't want people to show up here

So it was an awkward moment when I put it out there, hoping that some people would find it interesting and meaningful somehow, and also hoping for things to remain quiet.

Needless to say, I didn't try too hard to get people here. But even if I had, it's usually hard to get very many people to do stuff in general.

Sorry about the seizures. Glad to hear you have found more about what is going on. I'm sure it's such a relief to be able to give it a name and be able to read from others who deal with that too. Both for ideas to make things easier to deal with as well as just to know you aren't alone.

What kind of writing are you most interested in?

[LatteSundae]

Hey NJ, thanks for the reply, kinda was talking to myself as well as aware others would be able to see it, if they happened by.
But I hear you and I know I'm not the only one who thinks their life would be different, sometimes I get trapped in my own head though.
Thankfully, today is not a head day.

ALSO! I checked out 'Endless' - I'll be on the look out, if I ever find said machine I'll have to film it and post it on HR lol.

I don't really know my genre, someone once said back in my uni days that my genre is 'dirty realism', so I should pull the band aid off and look into that, she if they were right, I don't like to plan what I write which is good as well as bad, but in terms of format I'm definitely a script girl, novels are harder work in my opinion, I love dialogue, it was always my strength when I wrote on the regular.

I'm being nosey, but what was the opportunity you "missed out on" - you don't have to answer or give details, just wondered if it was a creative one or otherwise.

Right now I'm working on my secret santa gift for hitrecord, won't say who I got, but hoping they like what I end up with.
Just gotta pick my moment, as rarely get the house to myself and I don't want my folks to think I've gone off the deep end

[njlang]

It's so cool to find out your passion for writing! I never realized since I've almost exclusively explored audio/video records. There has to be so much wealth hidden away in all those text records.

The opportunity I mentioned was related to Endlesss. They are building out a new web app called Clubs that is like a place to start music communities.
The first thing that was created there was a tool to build and remix music loops. They asked the Endlesss community to add to the origins loop library that would kick it off. There will be payments to everybody who contributed loops, but beyond that I also just really wanted to participate.

I've been using Endlesss for about 4 years now. That is part of what was freezing me up trying to figure out how I was going to find good loops I had recorded that I should submit. I just didn't know where to begin. Beginning... often the most difficult thing.

But in the end, I let complication go and just started submitted what was easiest to access in the very last days before the deadline. I was happy to get more than 250 loops in the sample library to be a part of it.

[LatteSundae]

Whoa - that's awesome!!!
I don't know what I would do without sound libraries, especially when it comes to drum loops.
I use Ableton and when I still had social media I would message the contributors whose beat I used in something saying "thanks".
If they responded I'll never know but it felt good to say so.

As for the writing I'm trying to make myself write again and music is and has always been a form of therapy and I have no intention of trying to take it further. But I may stop using it as a creative side piece though and as I said get back to writing, that I do wanna take further but I've got to try again, I burned out in my 30s as my 20s was full of rejection. I need to make writing fun and a habit again and then I can think about my career.

I was freaking out on HR recently as people have been asking me to get involved with their stuff, if it was back in the day I'd feel honoured.
Now it just scares me, I'm highly cynical of people on HR now that I don't already 'know' and even some I do 'know'.
Just wannabe left alone and stay under the radar at this point. I like that it's 'quiet' on there now, like some apocalyptic event happened and the few survivours are left to continue telling stories. I think once I've completed the play along journey I'll call it a day and just heart the peeps I support

I noticed that Rectify is back I couldn't access it for awhile or maybe that was my issue (?)