After working very hard all day Saturday and a good big of Sunday morning, I finalized fifteen audio tracks, corrected some issues with the cover art and uploaded my final files to the duplication service. I should have a review/testing copy of World’s Okayest… in hand by the end of the week. I don’t think it’s perfect, but at my current level of experience, I don’t think I’m able to make it any better. It was time to let it go.

Phew.

I guess I really should be celebrating the accomplishment, but after pushing the button yesterday, my brain was just kind of fried. I’d been spending a significant amount of effort developing new skills, making use of (and building new) neural connections, all in service of training my ear and learning about phonic concepts like “which frequency ranges contribute to ‘harshess'” and “how to I create a sense of space” while mixing the CD whilst lacking much relevant experience at all. My lovely wife (who’s currently in the midst of a huge project of making a few dozen costume belts for the dance studio) insisted we go out to lunch to celebrate and browse the used bookstore, which we did, though the key observation about that trip was how I was apparently unable decide whether I wanted a drink or not at the convenience store on the way home. I was wrecked.

Part of that, I think, was a rather big event that colored my perception of my personal accomplishment; I woke Sunday morning to discover that a dear friend and fellow musical traveler lost his wife on Saturday. This hit me way harder than I would have expected. I have great love and respect for my friend, who has always been generous with advice, perspective, friendship and talent, and my thoughts are with him in ways that go way beyond the expected pleasantries. As these things also do, it shifted my perspective on the world, at least in the current moment. I want to say I can’t imagine being in his position, but the scariest aspect of this is that I can, and it scares the ever-loving shit out of me. He’d posted some pictures he recently took of her online with their months’ old puppy, and mentioned how he and the dog are both wandering around the house looking for her, and I just broke down. I put the portal to the internet away for the rest of the day after that, it was too hard.

My successful completion of a months-long project, no matter how personally significant, just kind of feels irrelevant in the face of that, and you know, I think that’s probably the way it should be. I can be proud of my accomplishment later. Right now, my thoughts are, rightfully, with my friend in his time of need.