goals

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.