personal

[This is a new, short, monthly personal segment I'm adding to my blog, sharing some bite-size pieces of my life so you can get to know me better.]

I’m currently reading the same books I’ve been reading for 2 months now – Sarah Silverman’s “The Bedwetter,” George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones” and Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games.” I know I’m not digging deep to find good books to read, and right now I don’t care. I’m just happy to find any time to read anything for leisure.

My audiobook career is made possible by my husband. Without his support – taking care of the baby while I spend hours a day recording, making sure I eat real food when I take breaks – it would be damn near impossible to complete books on deadline. Also, I’d be terribly malnourished.

My daughter is already 5 1/2 months old. Where has the time gone? She’s so happy and the squeals she makes when we tickle her floor me every time. She also likes to sleep in til 9. We’re totally on the same page.

Have you walked by the spin/cycling room at the gym and seen a skinny blonde woman teaching the class at the front of the room? I was in that class this week. I was terrified when she walked in because I was sure I’d die since it was only my 2nd spin class ever, but I reached my goal of staying for the full 60 minutes. I never thought I’d take a spin class, but it reminds me how much I love biking. It is also a great reminder to try new things, because I might actually like them. Also, I should put air in my tires and take my bike outside, there’s still a few months left for me to hit the greenways in Phoenix without my tires melting.

I’m terrible about seeking out new music. I ask my friends to force it on me, and I hope some of it will stick. I often have VO sessions in a studio about 25 minutes away, and that drive offers me a great time to enjoy new stuff. As a reference, I like rock and indie but not so indie that nobody except the hippest hipsters has heard of it. My to-listen-to list includes ‘Phoenix’ and ‘Florence and the Machine.’ Any other suggestions?

res·o·lu·tion/ˌrezəˈlo͞oSHən/ A firm decision to do or not to do something

This past year, I’ve had 2 huge milestones: the birth of my daughter and leaving my full-time job in radio commercial production for my voiceover career. With big life events can often come some realizations about life. With that in mind, while I haven’t made New Year’s Resolutions in a few years, I’m making this one because it will have a significant positive impact on my life: I resolve to work less this year.

That doesn’t mean to put less energy into my work, make less money, take on fewer or smaller projects, or put my business focus elsewhere. I mean simply that I want to spend less of my precious time working and more time of it doing everything else. It’s about doing less hustling, and more of what you enjoy.

There are 2 blog posts I want to share that align with this resolution: David Roberts’ essay The Medium Chill. The other is Bob Souer’s blog series called “Invite the Avalanche” (start reading part one here). David poses that if you’re happy with your life, working more isn’t going to make you enjoy your life more. It’s about appreciating what you have and after your needs are met, not sacrificing valuable time for money. Bob’s posts share a mentality that can allow you to do that. By outsourcing what slows you down, you can focus on the work at hand, and set up a system that allows you to handle the avalanche of work that comes in.

This isn’t about settling and shutting down your hopes and dreams. I see the two working together to help me prioritize what things are worth my time, and what things are worth paying someone else for their time to do it for me. It’s not so much that I’m working less, but I’m definitely hustling less. Less auditions for one-time clients, less tracking down payments, less busywork. More of my working time can be spent recording voice overs or corresponding with my clients, and less time doing the impersonal, time-consuming stuff.

Here’s 3 tips on how to keep the resolution to work less in 2012:

Remember who and what’s worth not working for. Family, friends, pets, hobbies – there are important things in life that don’t get your time and attention while you’re working. These are the things we work for, but the more you work the less time you have to enjoy them. The more you’re hustling, the less that time spent working feels like it’s been worth it at the end of the day. Make this the year you take back those lost hours and invest them in your life. I intend on keeping my resolution to work less this year, and I think it’s going to be my best year yet.

This blog post celebrates another milestone in my life I’ve recently achieved: I’m happy to say that (officially as of early November) I’m now a full time voice artist + producer.

I don’t suggest anyone decide to quit their job on a whim when becoming fed up with it, or being impatient for a voiceover career to take off. I blogged about having to wait for the right time earlier this year. I’ve had my sights set on an independent career working for myself for quite a while.

Things were looking good business-wise for me, and I had actually hoped to reassess and possibly quit my job for my birthday this year. But, a few days before Christmas 2010 we were thrilled to find out that I was pregnant. This meant the smart thing to do would be to stay at my job as long as possible (making big decisions based on insurance coverage is such a first-world problem!) and take the time I’d have on partially-paid leave to decide if I really could do my part in supporting our family just on my voiceover work. So all this Spring and Summer, I worked extra long hours doing the footwork: building and working on the machine that is my business. I started my leave a few days after my due date in August. 11 days after my due date, we welcomed our daughter Amaya into the world.

Pretty quickly during my leave, the Universe sent me all the evidence and signs I needed to decide to quit my job and be a full time voiceover talent. The scales had tipped, and the income from my job didn’t balance out for the 40 hours it took away from my freelance and everything else. I’m so thankful that Andy and I unanimously decided this is what’s best for our family.

This is the life I’ve been working toward all these years. I didn’t want to have to choose to have either a career or a family. I have the joy of raising my daughter with my husband, both of us working from home for our own businesses. We get to show her by example that you really can be anything you want if you’re willing to work hard for it, and wait until the time is right. With Thanksgiving a couple days away, I have a lot to be thankful for this year.

Well, I’m back in business… not that I actually took much time off, but my regular clients knew my availability would be shot for a week and slow for another, and I’m grateful to them for their patience! Due to our child being born 11 days late, I had closer to 5 days completely off but everything has worked out great.

It’s been a wild 2 weeks. Briefly: August 17th around 4pm, I went into labor. My husband and I watched The Hangover and had a light dinner before labor got more intense. We’d planned for a home birth with our wonderful midwife Mary and her assistant Amy, the help of my friend Kristy, and 2 of our photographer friends documenting the experience as a team. By about 1:30am or so, it was clear to our midwife that this baby wasn’t going to come out easily. We got to the hospital affiliated with an OB friend of hers and I was admitted and given an epidural around 3am. The hope was to take away the pain but still gain some progress by 6am. That didn’t happen, and I went in for a (non-emergency) c-section at 7:30 that morning.

At 7:47am, with my husband (and his camera) by my side, the doctor pulled out our baby and my husband declared (twice), “It’s a girl!” We were totally ecstatic! I’d like you to meet the newest, most important person in my life, Amaya Natalie DeLisle. At birth she weighed 9lb, 8.2oz and was 21″ long (no wonder her home birth was not meant to be!) She’s a good eater and thankfully a good sleeper, and allows me stretches of time to be in the studio while she snoozes adorably.

Will this blog now turn into mommy central? No worries, friends. That doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally share Amaya with you or tie-in my new life as a mom in a hopefully insightful way (okay, and sometimes just so you can get to know me a little better.) This is a blog about voiceovers and life, and now my life includes being a mom to a cool little person, but I’ll save the majority of the baby/mom stuff for our family blog. I’ve worked hard over the past 13+ years to build a career that began in radio and directed me towards voiceovers, and now that we’ve started our family I feel like I’ve got the best of both worlds ahead of me. Thanks for following my journey.

I’ve found that as a (very) soon to be new mom, a lot of completely unsolicited opinions about “The Best Way” to handle a newborn/baby/child are directed at me in casual conversation. I’ve learned the most tactful way to handle this is to thank people for sharing their opinions and personal experience and keep in mind they are acting out of good intentions, even when I completely disagree with their opinions.

So far, the most interesting question I’ve answered that generates very polarized responses is “how are you decorating the baby’s room?” They seem disappointed when I tell them that we don’t have a dedicated nursery-bedroom and the baby won’t be getting her/her own room, possibly for the first year or even longer. Since we don’t know if we’re having a boy or a girl, we’ve simply thrown a few fun decorations in the designated baby corner of our bedroom in something totally neutral and cool: dinosaurs. That only happened because my friends threw me an awesome baby shower around our “theme” and we took home their handmade decorations.

Even as a first-time mom, I know that all a baby actually needs is love and attention, to be fed and cared for, and a safe place to sleep. Maybe because I’m in my 30′s and not right out of college (or high school) I’m able to avoid some of the pitfalls others have fallen into – being afraid that the easy answer isn’t the right answer, and all the extras are necessities (ie, omg if you don’t have a diaper genie, the world will end!) and my baby will suffer because of this lack. I have a calm confidence that Andy and I will make the best choices we can and as a team everything will be taken care of to raise our child. I’ve definitely felt judged by other moms about this, like somehow we’re depriving our child of his or her god-given right to an outrageous, thoroughly theme-decorated bedroom with brand new furniture, and if we don’t decide to let our baby ‘cry it out’ then we’re unfit to call ourselves good parents because we’re spoiling our baby. The thing is, I happen to believe there’s a middle ground between meeting all the ‘wants’ of the parents and covering the basic ‘needs’ of the child.

This keeping up with the Joneses attitude and judgement directed at new parents reminded me of the studio and gear wars that go on sometimes subtly, sometimes with great vigor, within the voice over industry. I hope this post can bring some reassurance to those of you recording in closets, soundproofed corners and shared spaces that aren’t designated solely as studio space. Perhaps other voice talent have told you that your studio isn’t representative of someone serious about working in this industry. Maybe the forum bullies have made you feel bad about your setup because you didn’t spend thousands of dollars on all your equipment. This post is to say “you don’t have to do that to get the job done.”

Since when do our clients really care what our studios look like? At the end of the day we’re dealing in sound, and the best sounding talent will usually win out, regardless of how ramshackle your space may look. I believe 100% that if you spend more money WISELY, you can get a substantially better sounding studio. I won’t be going into that here. While you can add in a dedicated preamp, a channel strip or processor, any number of pieces of hardware that are now mimicked via software plug-ins, an ISDN line or a mixer and phone setup, this post is talking about the minimum for good sound; it’s about beds and blankets, not matching nursery furniture.

These are the very basic items you need for your studio:
- a soundproofed area: walled in or separated with heavy curtains or sleeping bags, a space that doesn’t let outside noises seep into your recordings
- a mic: there’s a million opinions on this, I’m more old school and prefer to spend more money on my mic but you could get a USB mic that compliments your voice and doesn’t eat all your budget
- a computing device with a DAW: that’s digital audio workstation, whether you can make do with the limitations of Audacity, enjoy using Garage Band that came with your Mac or want ProTools, the workhorse that some will say is overkill, you’ve gotta have a way to get your VO recorded. I’ll go so far as to say there are even apps for the iPad that claim to have good quality, I disagree based on the samples I’ve heard but that doesn’t mean that something awesome won’t come out tomorrow for $4.99.
- cables: you can degrade good quality audio if your cabling is crap. Shielded cables are best suited for audio transmission as they add an extra layer of insulation from static and other electronic interference.
- Add a good pair of headphones and/or a monitor to your setup, and you’ve met the basic needs of recording from home.

It all boils down to this: are your clients being well-served by the space you record in and the equipment you use to send them your voice? 

If you’re unsure, get in touch with a reputable studio near you and see if one of their engineers would be willing to consult you on your studio sound. I couldn’t tell you what the going rate is on that but you should expect to pay them for their time and expertise. Be very selective if asking other voice talent to evaluate your studio sound, as you’ll want to ask someone who has an audio production or sound engineering background. Dan Lenard is a well-informed guy who can evaluate your sound by sending a sample and discussing it over Skype. With over 8 years working full-time as an audio producer and VO talent, I’m willing to throw my 2 cents your way and give you my ears for a few minutes as well.

I’m not one who settles for good enough, and I bet you’re not, either. You can ‘get by’ with just the basics and it really can sound fantastic if you don’t skimp on quality. The basic needs of a studio are relatively simple, just as a newborn doesn’t ‘need’ all the extras. However, on both fronts, I’m motivated not to just meet the bare minimum requirements, but to keep pushing ahead to offer the very best I can. Besides, who doesn’t love dinosaurs?

Because I have the tendency to be very detailed and write novellas instead of blog posts, here’s a short recap of my trip to NYC for the Audiobook Publishers’ Association Conference from May. My husband was there on business as well (meeting with photo editors, as setup by his agents and himself) so we hardly were able to catch up unless we had dinner together, otherwise it was sometime after 1 or 2am!

Saturday: Got into town that evening, saw my extended family and a friend came in to visit us from Boston.

Sunday: Lots of walking and just hanging out during the day (ate lunch at Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner building, yum!) Then, the conference unofficially started with the APA Mixer at 3 Monkeys bar that night; afterwards I got together with my audiobook crew and caught up after the mixer and had an early night in preparation for our busy day

Monday: APAC! Highlight: my one-on-one critique session with Bob Deyan from Deyan Audio. Elevated my read in a major way and encouraged me to keep pressing on and don’t lose hope that I’ll be working more in this industry! The conference was pretty good, and my friends surprised me that night with a baby shower in the hotel room!

Tuesday: BEA (Book Expo America) – lots and lots of walking, Gary joined me midday and we made the most of our time in the huge Javitz Center. Must have put a few miles on my shoes that day. Back to the hotel to update the rest of the girls on our day and then prep to head out for The Audies!

Tuesday evening: started at 7pm, ended at 2:30am. The Audies were a lot of fun and it was great to spend more time with people we’d met on Sunday and Monday. Everyone looked fabulous, and our group of narrators was no exception (I even found a lovely maternity dress to wear!) The awards were a lot of fun and we cheered on friends, narrators and the many producers we knew. We were invited to the Audies After-Party and of course we went, extending our evening a few more hours and having a lot of fun chatting with everyone.

Rachel Fulginiti, me, Amy Rubinate, Heather Henderson, Gary Dikeos; photo by Andy DeLisle

Wednesday morning: catch a cab at 7:45am to get to the airport! Did you read anything about sleeping during this trip? Didn’t think so. It was so totally worth losing sleep to make the most of our time we had with friends and new connections! We headed not home but ‘back home’ – to Raleigh, NC to spend 6 days with friends and family and have a little vacation time after going non-stop in New York!