Keeping Your Spark Lit
A wee niblet of good advice from Mr. Handy:
Little reminder about how to keep your spark lit without feeling overwhelmed, even though I’ve pontificated on this at greater length in my big ol’ SERIES: Forget that you have “work to do”. Just turn on the freaking software that you use, load something in, and listen to it. That’s your only requirement. It’s as easy as sitting around listening to iTunes, only instead of clicking on the iTunes icon, you click on the Tracktion icon. Or the Audacity icon. Or Logic, or Audition, or Pro Tools, or whatever you use. Don’t worry about getting work done; just go in like you’re there to listen. Be curious about it. The initiative to start monkeying with it will come on its own, and even if it doesn’t come immediately, that’s fine. You’re visiting that realm — that’s the most important thing!
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That said, sometimes you just have to set a goal and kick yourself in the ass to get it done. That works too. Depends on the day. The trick is knowing that there is no one trick, because you get wise to your own tricks pretty quickly. Gotta keep yourself on your toes! Just like any opponent/dance partner.
Yeah, which advice is good depends on where you’re stuck. I get stuck in “checking the internet and waiting for something to be interesting” mode. Well, that would be great, except the internet isn’t where I work on my stuff, so the probability that I’ll get something done there (here) is zero.
Right, so just shifting over to that other ‘realm’ where your work and work tools happen to be is enough to get you working. That does it for me too, unless what I need to be doing is writing or recording something altogether new. But it’s the same idea, I just have to, say, set up the mic, Audacity, etc. and decide I’m “not going to try to record anything good… just going to hit record and forget about it and mess around.” kinda deal.