Time for a break

From traveling.

I knew it was bad the moment I fell over.

Sometimes you just know. This was one of those times.

I’d been dancing with a girl from work. Not the first time I’ve danced with a girl from work, hopefully not the last time either, but in this moment as we were spinning each other around I thought I know what I’ll do, I’ll lift her up and spin. Yeah just like Vin Diesel in the first Fast and the Furious movie, I’ll lift her up and just spin around and around with her in my arms.

As you can probably guess, it didn’t work.

For one, Vin Diesel is quite a strong man, who was lifting a woman a lot shorter than himself, in a planned situation, that did not involve any spinning. Compare that to me who was inebriated, dancing with a girl close to half a foot taller than me who did not know what the fuck I was doing. Not to mention the spinning, I was struggling to stay upright as it was.

The result of that misadventure is a ruptured ACL. It’s a pretty common injury in athletes who play games like rugby, AFL or netball, something where you change directions quickly. While I wouldn’t call myself an athlete, I guess it was a pretty physical movement I was going for. I won’t lie, it hurt, but it’s the not knowing if I’ll really be better again that is more concerning.

So I’m throwing that thought to the back of my mind and instead enjoying the break from full time community mental health nursing in Bunbury, and instead focusing on the things that make me happy.

It’s nice to be back in Geelong, even if it’s not ideal circumstances. It’s summer time and I’ve got some stuff I want to get done that would be difficult to do if I was working still. I’ve got about 8 terabytes of music and video that I recorded just this year from various road trips, so I think I’ll start by getting some music released.

I was staring at 12 hours of music but I’ve managed to get that down to a bit over an hour. Now all I have to do is use Izotope’s RX9 program to split what is just 2 inputs into 8 (separating tracks into drums, vocals, guitar, and other) and then I can mix them a bit better in Reaper. Or at least give it a crack.

I can’t remember how to use these programs as it’s been a couple of years since I’ve even turned the desktop on, but I’m going to try and get it done so there’s something online before the new year.

Why?

Cause I like going onto Bandcamp and seeing what I’ve done, plus a deadline usually works. Not sure if 5 days is a long enough deadline, but we shall give it a crack!

See my bandcamp is like a timeline.

I can look at it and remember where I was and what I was doing with my life. When I was in Soundscrape/The Scrape. When I was living in Bruce street or when I moved to Melbourne (and when I moved back to Geelong to the Roslyn Complex). I can see an album cover and remember when I went on a trip to Europe and did a lot of found sound stuff, or when I really locked down and wrote a lot of novels. And of course, when I did the first big road trip to find my thing, which is what’s led to a lot more outdoor music sessions.

There’s some stuff not on there, like when I was in SectApe or The EPSES but in general most of the things I’ve created in the last decade or so has been put onto bandcamp. I do love making music with friends, both old and new, when I get a chance, but those projects are often their own thing so I don’t add them to my page.

If you missed the link above, you can check out my Bandcamp here.

Looking over it now, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve released anything. Some of those things took a really long time to get done too, especially the mixing stage, which I often got my friend Sam to help with. I may have bitten more off than I can chew now that I look at my deadline, but I’ll give it a crack.

And at worst, if the mixing doesn’t work, I can just release it as it is. It might be a rough cut diamond sure, but when I look at the locations I’m recording in, I need to remember that it’s probably never going to sound amazing, but this past year has been a fantastic experience.