August 19
Audiobooks and Perfectionism
I think I’ve finally reached the point where I can just post audio without it being perfect. Sometimes I have to trick my brain into shit–if you lived in my head, you’d understand. I need to call it a ‘draft’ and ensure I mark it accordingly, and if I do that, I will be able to record and put the rest of the audiobooks up–possibly every single one of them–this week.
A thing happened today, one of those wake up things in life. I found myself sleeping on the cleanroom floor as allergies once again took over the main living space so completely, my heart rate wouldn’t return to normal until I locked myself in the cleanroom. I don’t think I’m waiting for ‘perfect’ when I’m waiting for livable, but the reality is, most of the shit I’ve done when it comes to writing and art, for that matter, was while living in mold under extreme stress as my brain was overrun with neurotoxins and my dopamine system was breaking down. I have done nothing while life has been in any sense of the word perfect, and expecting that I’m somehow going to get more things done if only my existence could be momentarily comfortable just isn’t really realistic.
This body is broken–it overreacts to most every thing now. The dream of affording a house that isn’t full of mold is pretty low, unless I want to magically have a fuck ton of cash and move completely away from the state I grew up in to find some low humidity either freezing cold or boiling hot area to live where mold is less likely to grow. I built the cleanroom understanding that; sometimes you have to make your space because it’s just not going to be handed to you. The stars do not align– not in shitshow 2020.
This is still going to be a struggle for me–not the audiobooks, I can already feel I’m past that. I’ve given myself a bridge to cross with the idea of making drafts that will eventually be edited up nicely, but until then, it’s something–anything–to improve accessibility for all readers. No, perfectionism–the dream of being allowed to have my brain when I’m writing certain stories so they can be the best they can be. That’s going to be a lot harder to overcome. But it’s my job as a human being who needs to accept the limits my body and environment place on me to do the work and deal with it as it strikes.
So, yeah, expect a lot of audiobooks being posted this week and the next. Each chapter will be marked clearly visibly as either draft or not– if there’s music at the beginning, it’s a completed edited audio chapter, if not, then it’s a draft. Simple. I’ll be rerecording some of the original audiobooks too where I was just learning the system and fiddled with things that conceptually seemed really fucking cool, but I did not have the skill/knowledge to pull off–looking at you, I’ll Tell with your weird voice mods.
Hope you’re all doing well. Depending on if that solar flare hits tomorrow, this shit might all be moot anyways. 😉
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