dog – T. Hoffman Audio

Hello, hello, hello!

After a mixture of bad weather, a sudden fever, and sometime off I have returned. I took sometime to myself to rest, something I don’t do often enough. I often push myself (which is good!) and never take anytime to rest (which is bad!). I’ve been trying to schedule in a couple of days a month to rest, rather than working everyday. I’ll adjust this as time goes on, but I needed to start somewhere and having a healthy balance between work and rest is important.

These past two weeks I’ve been dealing with terrible weather. Having to dig my way out of the house every week and prepare for a snow/ice storm eats up a lot of time, but fortunately I can usually navigate around that. However – something I can’t really navigate around is becoming ill. If I’m sick there’s not much I can do to change that except take the time needed to recover.

I’m currently on the mend, but this is day 3 of being ill and I’m almost certain I’ll remain sick tomorrow. My hope is that by Monday I’ll be back in fighting shape!

Before I got sick I did manage to finish recording my final project and now I only need to edit and polish it. I was surprisingly satisfied with what I had produced when I finished recording on Monday. Hopefully when I comeback to edit I’ll still feel I did a good job.

I’m particularly interested in going back to one section in particular. I found myself falling into the text with ease and was extremely happy with the bit I recorded. At the time of recording I felt it was one of my better pieces. I often struggle to really connect with the text as an actor, but in that moment I felt at ease as I did so. I’ll often have to do a lot of start-stopping to keep myself from going neutral as I read. This is where slowing down has helped me a ton. It’s much easier to connect with something when the words have a chance to land rather than rushing right through them. I’m looking forward to continuing to perfect and improve upon my craft!

But I could go on for hours about these details. In the meantime here’s a picture of Cooper. Pretty sure I shared this one already, but I love it.

Look I just love this image of Cooper okay?

Another week another audiobook. I spent much of my time this week editing the project I’d finished recording last week. Those of you who read last week’s update (there actually were people, and hello again if you’re here for this week!) will recall I was unhappy with what I had produced. It’s normal for me to not like what I make though, so I was trying to reserve judgement until I went back and had a chance to fix things.

That brings us to this week. When I began to edit the audiobook there were two things that stood out to me. The first was that, yes there were a number of places I could be better and needed to improve/fix. The other was that, no it wasn’t as awful as I thought it was (dare I say it was good in places!?) and I need to stop being so hard on myself.

This is an outcome I was happy to arrive at, even if I had suspected that this was the issue from the beginning. Taking a moment to step away from the art we’ve made and coming back to it fresh is so important. Without hitting that reset button in our brain we’ll see everything just as we saw it a minuet ago. Time and space can give us a more objective look into things, plus we’re typically a stronger artists after a project than before that project

This reminder certainly made my day and filled me with the determination to finish the editing. When I walked away I felt like I had produced something of quality. It’s been a while since I’ve felt a week of work go as smoothly and as harmonious as this past one. It certainly made me eager to get to work on my next project and to keep cracking away at audiobooks!

Sorta like how Cooper is always exploring the woods when out on a walk with the family! Here’s our obligatory picture of him below.

Tag: dog

Back from a (surprise) week off!

Week 4 of January, 2020…week 3 of my reinforced goal