New Year's Resolutions?

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crumpart
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by crumpart »

Oh, and overthrow my government.
Devil’s got me Lindt! Devil’s got me Lindt!
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crumpart
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by crumpart »

End of month update.

I haven’t bought a piano tuning kit. I have invested €40 for the first four books I read. I’ve actually finished five, and that will be 6 by the end of today. So far all library books or ones I’ve owned for a while, so that’s working well. I’ve made about 4c in interest so far, so not rolling in extra spacebucks yet, but it’s a start.

As mentioned elsewhere, our house purchase has fallen through thanks to the seller’s solicitor being incompetent and lying to his client. We cancelled Christmas for that and will now spend another year throwing an excessive amount of money into someone else’s mortgage. Hooray! I can still have a bird feeder in our new backyard though, and we’ll start looking for another house to buy in about six months. The new landlord written an out clause into our contract if we find a house at 10 months.

I’ve practiced my violin every day. My lesson app (Trala) launched a major redesign at the start of the year, and all my progress was reset, so I had to go back to the start of the app and work my way through again. I was bitter for about five seconds until I realised it was doing me the world of good to revisit it all. I’m back at the hardest level now and it is DIFFICULT. I sound like I’ve never played before, so at the end of each practice session I go back to the songs from the previous stages and play them much better than I did when I passed the lessons, because they seem excessively easy in comparison. So, progress. Yay!

I missed uploading a new YouTube video last week, but apart from that blip have been fairly consistent. Am up about 50 subscribers to 807, so that’s on track. Also finally made it through Upwork’s registration bots, so when I’ve got this house move sorted out I can start concentrating on varying my income sources.

Doing my best to overthrow the government.
Devil’s got me Lindt! Devil’s got me Lindt!
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sleepysilverdoor
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by sleepysilverdoor »

crumpart wrote:
Fri Jan 31, 2020 12:36 am
End of month update.

I haven’t bought a piano tuning kit.
If you've got a piano, it's a useful skill to have! My uncle taught me in the mid aughts. Setting the temperament is kind of hard, since you can't actually do perfect 5ths and 4ths due to 12-tone equal temperament...but once you get that part down it's basically just octaves up and down and it gets a lot easier. Then again it'd probably be easier if I'd quit being a stubborn bastard and just buy a chromatic tuner instead of a single tuning fork at middle C.
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crumpart
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by crumpart »

Lol. 2020 New Year's Resolutions!

I had to stop paying myself for reading books because, strangely, my "all my eggs in one basket" source of income evaporated in 2020. I managed to earn enough from it to cover my expenses for the year (adobe subscription, fresh books accounting subscription, etc.) and pretty much nothing else.

In good news, I hit my 1000 subscriber YouTube goal at the end of May and started making YouTube ad money, and while I didn't hit my extended subscriber goal, I did get to 1674 subscribers and have a handful of Patreon subscribers, which is a start. I just went through all my videos, and from 2017-2019 I uploaded about 9 videos each year, and in 2020 I uploaded 25, and I'm pretty happy with that increase. I still need to be better at sticking to a schedule, so that will be a goal in 2020. I've also reactivated my old YouTube channel to post music stuff to, so that I'm not diluting my art channel with that. I'll use that channel to upload both practice and finished things, and I'm also interested in the idea of live-streaming and/or making process videos about writing/mixing songs as I learn how to do more things.

For reference when I'm looking back in a year, here are my current subscriber counts...
Screenshot 2021-01-02 at 10.52.26.png
Screenshot 2021-01-02 at 10.52.26.png (54.95 KiB) Viewed 688 times

I lucked into the gift of a secondhand laptop at the start of the year, and it ran rings around my ancient iMac. We've just traded that laptop in for one of the new MacBook Air machines, and the difference again is just unbelievable. It's so fast. And so silent. And has such a good battery. And I finally have an Australian/US keyboard layout again, which makes so much more sense than the dumb UK keyboard layout. Anyway, all that to say I have an excellent new computer now which should be able to render and export video much more reliably.

On the house purchase front, in retrospect I'm pretty glad that the 2020 attempted house purchase fell through, because Toshiro's business was sold while we were in Australia to some kind of vulture company who dismantled most of the Irish business, and in December he left with a decent chunk of payout. He started a new job straight away (for much more money, yay, and for an employer that's not going to be sold to a vulture fund...) but it's on the other side of town, so now we're not stuck living a long way from his work and can look for a house that's much closer. Unfortunately we have to wait six months again for him to pass his trial period (six months is standard here in Ireland, which just seems ridiculously long and absurd) because the bank won't give us a mortgage now until that's passed. Our current rental house is too small and a bit frustrating, but at least we have excellent internet here in the meantime.

On the music front, I counted up yesterday and I made 21 songfight entries, 1 original side fight entry, 8 Nur Ein entries and 5 cover songs (four for side fights here and one for a different thing), which is 35 SONGS RECORDED! I think I made some real progress in 2020, particularly with learning about recording and mixing, and I'd like to do something with some of those songs. I've done enough quantity-wise now that I'm seeing themes and ideas emerge, so we'll see what happens, I guess. I think my biggest win for the year was two weeks ago when I was recording a songfight and MAH OWN HUZZBND, king of refusing to listen to anything he doesn't like in even the smallest way (which includes most of my songs), actually told me I was getting much better at singing.
Devil’s got me Lindt! Devil’s got me Lindt!
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vowlvom
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by vowlvom »

crumpart wrote:
Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:46 am
And I finally have an Australian/US keyboard layout again, which makes so much more sense than the dumb UK keyboard layout.
SHOTS FIRED!

I'm glad I didn't make any 2020 resolutions, because they would have crashed and burned.

In 2021 I just need to stay healthy and sane, somehow. Because at least I had some company for most of 2020. Now I'm all alone and it sucks, especially while I can't go anywhere, do anything or see anyone. Which looks like it will continue for months here 😭
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fluffy
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by fluffy »

fluffy wrote:
Sun Jan 05, 2014 5:31 pm
I realized that all of my resolutions boiled down to "be happy" so that's what I'm trying to do. So far I'm failing.
I’m finally catching up on these from 2014.
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crumpart
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Re: New Year's Resolutions?

Post by crumpart »

So I just made myself a schedule through January for shooting projects, editing and uploading. It's involved, but I think it's doable and varied enough that I won't burn myself out... :?
Devil’s got me Lindt! Devil’s got me Lindt!
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