goals

Who has 2 thumbs and hasn’t posted a blog in over 2 months? This gal. (The visual works much better in person.) The short version of what I’ve been up to can be found on my facebook page. It’s great to be busy, it’s just harder to make blogging part of my routine when it’s currently not. Looks like I’m due for a final goals tally, and to create a new list of some kind moving forward. I suppose that means I’ll have another blog post soon!

In the meantime, I’m going to feature a few things I’ve found recently that I wanted to share and figured someone else may find interesting.

Ideaboard fashion website: www.polyvore.com

This website aligns nicely with my recent efforts to not look like a stereotypical radio bum. I’m a sale shopper and refuse to pay full price for clothes (audio gear, on the other hand…) So in Phoenix I’m lucky to have Last Chance just a few miles from my house. It’s Nordstrom’s outlet for all sorts of returns in new (or totally trashed) condition, and also items that didn’t sell well but still may be cute from all over the country. There’s a Dillard’s outlet in Tempe and of course the regular discount places that can be hit or miss. So anyway, this outfit “set” I put together on polyvore.com – it’s like $4,000, which is totally ridiculous. I bet I could find all that stuff for under $150, being the resourceful sale shopper that I am. Polyvore looks like it’ll be a little inspiration to get me thinking more about the image I project with my clothes day after day. Every woman knows that when you feel confident in your clothes, it comes through in everything you do, which can only be good for business.

iPhone app: Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock

You know what else is good for business? Getting a good night’s sleep. Also, it’s critical if you hope to live a long life, according to an article from CNN.com this week that I can’t find now. To play devil’s advocate, I was thinking that if you DO spend an extra hour a night sleeping that over 60 years it’s 2.5 YEARS you spend asleep! So I’d at least want to have an ROI of more than 2.5 years longevity if I put the planning into getting more sleep. If you’re more concerned about just waking up feeling refreshed and not in the middle of vibrant dreaming deep sleep, the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock app can be life changing. It uses the accelerometer in your iPhone to gauge your movement while asleep, and based on that, it predicts where you are in your sleep cycle. There’s good science behind this and millions of people worldwide who swear by how helpful it is, myself obviously included. You just plug your phone in overnight, stick it near your pillow and set a wake up time in Sleep Cycle. You’ll be woken up no earlier than 30 minutes before that time, when the app tries to wake you up in your lightest sleep in that 30 minute window. So it catches you before you drift back off into dreaming about Ben-Hur style races against vicious giant rabbits (or work, or whatever you dream about), and you feel soooooo much more refreshed and ready to start your day. That 2nd photo from the app is actually my sleep cycle from last night… I woke up just before 7 and then went right back to sleep before my 7:10 alarm actually went off.
It’s a 99cent app and has been rated 3.5 stars by 2200 people.

Audio gear: Blue Mikey 2

I was talking to an actor/imaging friend about mobile recording gear for in-a-pinch situations. He’s got a great handheld recorder for interviews, client soundbites, even concert audio – but it’s not a great fit for voiceover work for when I take a daytrip to Flagstaff or Sedona, or a weekend trip to Vegas. If I needed to get a quick audition out to my agent, I don’t want to miss that opportunity. So, here’s another iPhone related item, it plugs into the base of your phone but will work with iTouch if you haven’t jumped on board with the phone yet. I haven’t bought this yet, still in search of personal experience from other VO talent about using it. However, I’m totally in love with the idea of something compact, simple and high quality enough for situations where hauling gear isn’t practical.

I’ve also been reading about pairing this mic with an app called VC Audio Pro, which appears to be a bit clunky but is much better than the serious limitations of the 3G standard voice recorder app. The app is $6.99, and Blue Mikey 2 is $99 at Sweetwater.com. I promise that if I get it, I’ll post audio samples so other people can judge for themselves about its quality.

Fun video: Flash mob + Glee =

I don’t believe in making New Year’s resolutions. If you made some this year, how many are you still maintaining and how many did you ditch by Superbowl weekend (be it the food, skipping a routine exercise plan, maxing out on your beer-a-day limit, whatever)… Point being, we all know January 1st is just as arbitrary as any other day, but there’s way more peer pressure involved and what you need to make goals/resolutions work is your own personal motivation, regardless of other people. That’s part of why I made a list of 36 goals to work on over the course of a year. That one year deadline is still a few months away in early April, but here’s a check-in with how I’m doing with them; the ones in bold have had some progress or I felt the need to comment on them:

1. post to my blog at least once a week – Fail!
2. record and donate an audiobook
3. edit new commercial and animation demos - Produced a new commercial demo last fall, didn’t have anything to add to my animation demo, this one’s done. 10/2/09
4. re-record my audiobook demo – Completed 11/27/09.
5. adjust the inputs in my home and work studios for optimal sound – My work studio sound is inferior to my home studio, but also not 100% within my control. I’m going to start bringing a few pieces of my mobile studio gear with me if I can’t get a cleaner sound out of that chain.
6. stick to a realistic workout routine that fits my lifestyle (ongoing, check in every 2 months) – Going well! 26mi bike ride every Saturday, 2 and sometimes 3 days a week at the gym, pretty consistently over the past year, aside from when I had pneumonia.
7. volunteer my time once a month
8. hike Camelback (summit), Squaw Peak (summit), Lookout Mountain (summit), South Mountain (National trail), Cave Creek (Go John trail), Estrella Mountain (Rainbow Valley trail), White Tank Mountains (Goat Camp, Ford Canyon to Mesquite Loop, or Mesquite Canyon to Willow Springs trail) http://www.visitphoenix.com/visitor/index.cfm?action=trails – I’ve got a lot of hiking to start doing…
9. donate blood
10. get back to Raleigh for at least 5 days – Completed September ‘09
11. renew my passport – Meant to do this in 2009, since my husband is an amazing photographer and I could have a flattering passport picture.
12. use my passport – Making grandiose yet vague and unresearched plans
13. plant a garden on the back patio with native plants – So close! Took classes with the Phoenix Permaculture Guild on how to get things to grow in our wacky soil, and it’s going to be planting season again shortly.
14. get more agent representation – I’m going to consider the few producers I work with who have large clients come through their studios to be completion of this, ongoing goal…
15. learn how to use Photojunction
16. reconfigure the layout of my home studio for ease of use
17. improve my technical photography skills – Can you ever really be done on something that is an improvement-based goal? Always striving to improve my skills in whatever I do…
18. organize business and tax paperwork – I’m so good about this, my tax guy loves me because it takes 15 minutes to do our joint married taxes and 2 businesses because I’m queen of spreadsheets.
19. study with a voiceover pro
20. beat GH 80’s (Electric Eye + encore song), GH3 (Battle for your Soul level) and Rock Band 1 (Green Grass and High Tides) on expert guitar
21. give handmade gifts – We gave our close local friends mango chutney and home roasted coffee for Christmas this year.
22. research composting and determine whether it’s something we can do (and if so, start doing it!) – We’ve got a bin, we put stuff in it, sometimes we remember to water it and stab it with a piece of rebar we bought for that purpose (keep it mixed, aerate…) It’s not a fancy schmancy compost bin that spins, but it’s cut down drastically on how much food gets thrown in the trash. We feed our compost bin every 2 days or so with how often we go through biodegradable coffee filters and red pepper cores, etc.
23. find a local farmers’ co-op – Have researched a few but not taken further action
24. get together with other recent newlyweds and hang out/drink beer in our wedding dresses
25. babysit for friends to give them a night off
26. use our National Parks Pass twice to go somewhere besides the Grand Canyon – Hmm… I think this has expired.
27. cook dinner for friends once a month – Good intentions, tough to schedule.
28. create parents’ albums with our wedding photos using Photojunction
29. learn a new craft or take an old hobby up a notch – Yes! I would have to say gardening/compost maintenance type stuff qualifies.
30. spend more time with Andy and our kitties
31. get allergy tested – Turns out, I’m not allergic to much. I also now have a fabulous ENT to keep me working at full capacity with little down time.
32. sign on 2 more radio stations for imaging (voice and/or production)
33. mail letters/photos to out of town friends
34. finish painting throughout the house – I’m going to cross this off now, because it’s very close to being completed.
35. help someone else put together a voice demo - Offered this to a friend, hope to get together to help her with that soon.
36. participate in (or be entered and training for) a triathlon or duathlon – I hate running.

So that’s 16 completed or mostly completed, and 20 to go. It’s also interesting to see how my goals have changed, what’s important now vs what was important to me in my business or personal goals nearly a year ago. My current goals are much more focused and measurable in terms of results, vs having completion goals I’m now looking at number goals. I really do enjoy running my own business, I just hate running (see #36.)

I’m totally a list person. I love lists, they help me feel like I’m making progress when I’m tackling something big, and they help me not forget things when there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s been a little while since I’ve checked in with my goals list. In April I’d posted “36 in 365,” a list of goals to work towards within the next year. Here’s a partial update on where I am making some headway…

3. edit new commercial and animation demos

I’ve compiled and edited a new commercial demo. There was some material from my old demo that I felt was still very representative of my sound and range so I kept those in the mix. I find it really helpful to send my demo out to a few people for reviews before I commit to it. The voiceover community is very helpful if you’re willing to ask for help. My friends found a few things that could be improved upon and I feel more confident that I’m representing myself well with this mostly new material. I also have my imaging demo online, with voicework I do for a station in Tucson. I think nailing down 2 audiobook demos is next on the demo production list, but it feels good to have a new commercial demo put together.

6. stick to a realistic workout routine that fits my lifestyle (ongoing, check in every 2 months)

OK, oops, I forgot to check in back in June. :) However, since making this post, I’ve been more consistently working out 3 days a week. I’ve been thrown off a few weeks here or there with friends and family in town, but I’d definitely say it’s my routine. Isn’t that always the hardest part, building the routine and sticking with it?

15. learn how to use Photojunction —AND—

28. create parents’ albums with our wedding photos using Photojunction

15 – My husband Andy and I own and run a bi-coastal photography business, de L’oeil Photography, which primarily shoots weddings, family portraits and things of that nature. As part of the post-process, sometimes the newlyweds will budget for an album or a coffeetable book. Photojunction is the industry standard for book layouts, and it would be very helpful to our workflow if both of us knew our way around it. I attended an online seminar and spent some time creating page layouts until I felt comfortable with the program. One of my minors in college was in graphic design, so it reminded me of my time with InDesign or Quark, except more user-friendly.

28 – Andy led the charge on putting together a parent album of our wedding photos. We gave one away the other week and it seemed the bring back the joy of the day for them.

29. learn a new craft or take an old hobby up a notch

This one deserves a nod to our friends Michael and Jill, who have recently started a new delicious blog if you’re into frozen treats. I had their homemade mexican chocolate ice cream this Spring and went head over heels about the idea based on their results. The control over what I can put in homemade frozen desserts fits my leaner, greener way of approaching food preparation. Basically, it boils down to that I read labels and try to keep crap out of my body, like partially-hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, extra chemicals for color or preservatives that for the most part you don’t need if you can instead buy fresh or make from scratch. For a few years I’ve made our own bread in a breadmaker to get away from junky additives. Now, I’ve learned how to make our own sorbets (wow, that’s like half sugar – only made it twice) and my more typical treat: gelato. The favorite so far is blueberry-raspberry-pineapple. Yesterday I made my first attempt with lemon-lime gelato and found that that I’ll need to add less water and more sugar than my other recipes. It’s a delicious bit of trial and error, and definitely a new hobby others can appreciate!

Another round of updates coming later this week, including trips to not-so-faraway lands, how I’m not technically a crazy cat lady (even though we just picked up a stray) and my plans to grow stuff other than cactus in a 4ft x 8ft garden in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here. I know I’d set the personal goal of posting to my blog every week, but sometimes life happens offline, too.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month talking shop, being critiqued by and critiquing and picking the brains of 3 very talented women. We met in LA at Pat Fraley’s Audiobook workshop. We all have the goal of doing regular work in the audiobook industry. The four of us have entered Scott Brick’s contest to highlight a new audiobook narrator and throw some work her way, and it would be wonderful if any or all of us make it to the top 25, or better. We know the top 25 will be announced online and I’d love to see some familiar names on that list when it comes out.

Through this process, I feel like I’ve been able to apply a lot of skills that I have and things I’ve been taught and after some practice to find my groove it’s become a comfortable thing for me. In college, I earned bachelor’s degrees in both English lit/writing/editing and in Psychology. Working in radio has not directly required the use of either of these, however they’ve been useful and helpful, especially in copywriting and also in adjusting to and understanding how to work with so many different personality types. Working on audiobook material feels like a homecoming of sorts. I can use the skill my parents have always said was unique and well-developed and underutilized in my regular work: my character voices.

Through narrative pieces, I can pull from the characteristics of many people I’ve met, standalone characters I’ve built, dialects I’ve heard, accents and ways of speaking from my travels and living in 3 vastly different parts of the country. I can also use my literary skills honed from reading classics and assigned pieces in college to make sure I’m really understanding the author’s intent and any allusions there may be to other stories or archetypes. The way of looking at people that I’ve learned through psych studies is more empathetic than I think I’d be without it. It’s helped me see a lady who cuts me off in traffic as someone who might be in a hurry to help a friend in trouble, instead of just thinking she’s some idiot who can’t drive and needs to have her license revoked* (*blog friendly version of my non-empathetic thoughts.) That comes in handy when “good” characters do “bad” things, or an “unlikeable” character is the protagonist.

Audiobooks seem to be the one place where my years in radio and voicework as well as my education all actually come together. It’s been a really good exercise to put a lot of effort and get a lot of feedback in this part of the voiceover world. I’m in the process of editing down a piece that I’ve read (one of my favorite short stories) that I eventually plan to offer on my site as a free download. There’s always so much to do, so many goals to tick off the list, and then you look and somehow it’s July already. I hope to get more blog posts in, but if I am absent for longer than a week then I may have more interesting things to write about when I return.

A little over a week ago, I overhauled my home studio. It was time to make some changes to get a solid, dependable sound out of my equipment, and to make best use out of the space I have. That space is our walk-in master closet. Thankfully, I’m not a shoe-a-holic or hoarder, and there’s actually enough space in there to setup my soundproofing panels, a chair (for audiobook projects), a small folding table and of course, my mic stand. After some tweaking, I’m incredibly happy with the sound coming out of there. I moved from Adobe Audition on a Delta44 audio card with a breakout box in a PC to Pro-Tools 8 on my macbook pro via my new Mbox 2 mini.

After saying all that, I’m not a gearhead. The big difference comes down to quality of the soundcard, and the Mbox 2 mini has far superior sound to the card I put in a PC. Gear out of the way, despite being in a closet I was still getting a bit of reverb and a not-quite deadened sound to the room. A tension rod with one of Andy’s old portrait backdrops hung with clip hooks did the trick, and it also is easily moved out of the way when we need the closet to just be a closet.

I’ve updated my “36 in 365″ goals list post for my studio, I’d say it’s optimized for sound and the layout works nicely. I’ll post pictures soon.

January 1st is a natural fresh start for a lot of people, but I’ve found for setting goals, it feels a bit heavy handed and there’s this added sense of “everybody else is doing it right now” pressure that doesn’t help me be realistic about what will stick for me. I’ve seen a lot of blogs that advocate for making your goals public, in terms of “101 in 1001″… that’s 101 goals completed in 1001 days. I need a timeline that’s a bit more tangible and easily measurable for me, so in the same spirit, I present my “36 in 365:”

1. post to my blog at least once a week
2. record and donate an audiobook
3. edit new commercial and animation demos
4. re-record my audiobook demo
5. adjust the inputs in my home and work studios for optimal sound
6. stick to a realistic workout routine that fits my lifestyle (ongoing, check in every 2 months)
7. volunteer my time once a month
8. hike Camelback (summit), Squaw Peak (summit), Lookout Mountain (summit), South Mountain (National trail), Cave Creek (Go John trail), Estrella Mountain (Rainbow Valley trail), White Tank Mountains (Goat Camp, Ford Canyon to Mesquite Loop, or Mesquite Canyon to Willow Springs trail) http://www.visitphoenix.com/visitor/index.cfm?action=trails
9. donate blood
10. get back to Raleigh for at least 5 days
11. renew my passport
12. use my passport
13. plant a garden on the back patio with native plants
14. get more agent representation
15. learn how to use Photojunction
16. reconfigure the layout of my home studio for ease of use
17. improve my technical photography skills
18. organize business and tax paperwork
19. study with a voiceover pro
20. beat GH 80’s (Electric Eye + encore song), GH3 (Battle for your Soul level) and Rock Band 1 (Green Grass and High Tides) on expert guitar
21. give handmade gifts
22. research composting and determine whether it’s something we can do (and if so, start doing it!)
23. find a local farmers’ co-op
24. get together with other recent newlyweds and hang out/drink beer in our wedding dresses
25. babysit for friends to give them a night off
26. use our National Parks Pass twice to go somewhere besides the Grand Canyon
27. cook dinner for friends once a month
28. create parents’ albums with our wedding photos using Photojunction
29. learn a new craft or take an old hobby up a notch
30. spend more time with Andy and our kitties
31. get allergy tested
32. sign on 2 more radio stations for imaging (voice and/or production)
33. mail letters/photos to out of town friends
34. finish painting throughout the house
35. help someone else put together a voice demo
36. participate in (or be entered and training for) a triathlon or duathlon

So, I’ve got a list, and a deadline. You’ll hear from me within the next week, since that is goal #1.