I caught a nice, beautiful late winter sunset!

T, B, P, D, F and sometimes H are the letters of evil!

Adminisk8or

03/04/2024

There's no moment quite like when your in the dentist chair, halfway through getting a filling done on a root canal, and the doctor addresses you by name, asking a question... but the name he addresses you by isn't yours... .........? .................!

Laughing aside, that actually did happen to me this week, though everything went just fine. And for the most part, nothing else big happened this week. No, most of my time has been filled up on editing a recording I've put off for far too long. I volunteered myself for free to record and edit a musical oratorio comprising a full orchestra, choir, soloists and narrators. And on the one hand, I normally enjoy these editing gigs... but I must confess this one has really put it to me. Just in these past two weeks, I have spent hours and HOURS on this roughly hour-and-a-half recording, comprising of about 22 different audio tracks that were recorded on two different boards at the same time (some with shared mics); and while most of it has not been so bad to work with, I am almost positive that someone made an honest but unfortunate mistake and didn't put any windscreens on any of the on-body mics. Maybe that's just standard in the industry- but for editing a recording? I'd like to say I haven't had to get up and walk outside into the cold weather to cool off from my frustrations- I would really like to say that.

But yeah, when you're spending like an hour on one single song (of 26, might I add) just going through each narrator or solo mic and manually editing out EACH AND EVERY SINGLE letter "T", "B", "P" and sometimes "D", "F", and even overdone "H"s, it really takes things from a gallop to a crawl. And that's after I tried mostly in vain to use EQ filtering to my advantage. I'm only about 3/4 of the way through all the tracks, and each time a soloist or narrator's track comes live (often with a word that happens to begin with one of those explosive consonants), it feels like it rips a chunk out of my waning soul. Maybe it's partly due to the fact that before even getting to this point I had to spend hours exporting and naming all the tracks (from two different recordings) because the software I recorded it in was extremely laggy and would crash and become unusable. It's been a long road, but I'm almost there, and heaven willing, I'll make it.

But first world trials aside, I did have an interesting dream this last week. I, with my wife and my brother, went up on a camping trip. When we departed, we hadn't decided where we wanted to go camping, and because I couldn't think of anything clever enough, I decided to go this remote place that was like a 12 hour drive away. When we arrived at the trailhead (which of course, looks nothing like the actual trailhead I was thinking of in real life), we unloaded our gear in a small clearing in some trees, and then went to walk eastward within a few hundred yards or so of where we parked, out of the grove of trees, to see the view before us: a wide, spacious valley with mountains encircling spanned out ahead of us, with thickets of forests all about. It was twilight, and the view was just heavenly. But as we stood there walking along and seeing the view, it occurred to me that it was getting late, and even though we were but yards away from camp, we should head back fast.

I guess my fear got the better of things, because as I suggested we turn back and head for camp, I suddenly found that it was night already- and not just night, but there was hardly a star or light of any kind in the sky, insomuch that as we reached the thicket of trees again, one could hardly make out the outlines of them. We stumbled our way blindly through these woods, and as we did, a new fear came to me, as I began to wonder if we had actually already passed where we unloaded our gear. At this point, I was halfway to panicking in my mind, but I had just enough wit to at least keep trying to go west, and keep an eye out for any sign of camp. And in fact, it was not but a moment later that I looked directly to my right, and although it was so dim you could've mistaken it for a mirage, I could just make out the remnants of campfire embers (how they got there, who knows, since we didn't setup a campfire). I was so frantic at this point in my mind, that when I saw this, I almost leapt for joy; and because I was afraid of never finding it again, I didn't even bother to try and find where the tent was- I just unrolled my sleeping bag, crawled in, and slept there in the darkness of the night.

I then awoke (still in the dream) early in the morning, and everything was infinitely more visible than it had been when I fell asleep. And now, I could see something I hadn't noticed before- both my brother and my wife had found the tent just fine. Feeling a bit foolish and sheepish, I grabbed my sleeping bag and crawled into the tent, to sleep the remainder of the early morning off inside the shelter of the tent.

I was trying to figure out for myself why this dream felt so significant to me. I'm sure it was partly to do with the trauma of being lost in the dark that I felt in the dream state, but I think there's at least one other thing, and it's all too applicable to me. Especially in situations where things get stressful, critical or otherwise high-energy in nature, although I usually do a good job of keeping my cool, my inner self wants to match the energy of the situation. Maybe it's because I'm a kid at heart, maybe it's because it's just who I am- but I have to be careful sometimes not to let myself get to excited or nervous in some situations (usually it's more the overdose of positive energy rather than fear I struggle with, but that's beside the point).

Perhaps the point is that these high-energy situations happen in life all the time- or at least often enough. And when they come, I have to remember a few things to help myself not get lost in the moment. Besides trying to keep my cool and thinking calmly and logically, I think it's vital to remember that no man is an island. In the dream, I could've asked if my wife or my brother had found the tent (in retrospect, I feel super shameful that I didn't even follow up to see if they made it to safety in that darkness). But the point is that sometimes we get the idea in our heads that in those situations, we are the only ones left thinking clearly- and quite often that's just not the case... in fact, in my dream, it was exactly the opposite.

But life is a classroom, and I'm just thankful I had a dream to help teach me this better, rather than risk having a situation of similar gravity test me when I wasn't ready. And there's so many situations we surely won't be ready for- that's life, right? But until next week, I hope you also have the chance to consider and ponder the wisdom of cool and clear thought, as well as relying on others as a team in tough situations. Until next time, see ya!