Had an explosive start to November where I jammed out a ton of the Drones for Drones album (more info here). After that things slowed down really dramatically. Part of that was just general burnout from pushing myself too hard, but the rest of it is my schedule getting scattered with family events and other things. No complaints; it is the holidays after all!
That being said, I've been struggling to get my momentum back, but it's getting there! I cleaned my studio up yesterday and that's helping me quite a bit.
I have a pretty exciting December planned, honestly. The first half of the month, I am going to focus on three more songs for Drones for Drones. I think having 9 songs at 90 minutes is a good goal for that album. I am also finishing up the remaster of Autoplagiarism, Side B and cleaning up Season 24 for release.
On the 19th or so, I start my holiday break from work. My goal during that break is to learn Godot/C# and make a small cozy puzzle style game called Catnip Caverns. I have really gotten the itch to make games again and I just don't trust Unity enough any more to invest time into that platform. It's a shame, but that's how it goes with capitalism, I guess.
Near the end of the year, I plan on doing a YouTube stream where I listen to ALL the songs I made this year and categorize them. I feel like I have enough for 4 or 5 albums that I can work on finishing in 2025/2026. The remaining songs will get posted in the Orphans album or just end up on the cutting room floor.
And this leads me into...
2025 Plans
This is a rough plan, but I wanted people to be aware of my thoughts.
I think I'm going to stop doing the song a week challenge. I have been writing a song (or two, or sometimes three) every week for nine years now and I need a break from it. It might just be the holidays and changing seasons, but I've been struggling to get excited to sit down and write things that goes beyond burnout and I want to stem that as soon as possible.
I do still plan on writing new music when the inspiration hits, of course. I also have a lot of work to do cleaning up the songs made this year into albums. Plus, there are a few collaborations coming up next year that I'm excited about. All told, I have 8 albums already planned for release next year and that is before all of the Sketchbook songs I mentioned above.
Ideally, this will give me more time to make games and do other creative projects. Plus, games need soundtracks, so that's more music 😅
How this would look for you is maybe less weekly updates and more monthly downloads of all the new things I've done that prior month. I feel like I often over-share with messages on here and get annoying (I have the weekly songs post later today or tomorrow).
I'll give more information in the yearly 2025 update, but I wanted to let people know what's going on in my head so it's less of a surprise in a month.
Anyway, thanks for reading! I really appreciate you. Off to donate to some kitties 😺
-ben