Here it is, the turn of the year, another 365 around the sun and another 365 to go. 2007 was a pretty big year for me personally. Picked up my first house, picked up a new(er) car, got my band playing out and about in the Atlanta scene at a ton of cool venues, recorded and met some great groups via the O Zone Lair, had my 25th birthday, and hopefully gained a good bit of knowledge along the way.
I am not sure why getting yourself into a gigantic level of debt is considered “being responsible”, but I did it. As of Jan 7th I’ll have owned the house for one year, which is a pretty big accomplishment. We did a lot of work on it in the first few months of owning it and since then have really stopped doing anything to it. There are some big projects now that will take a good bit of time and a decent chunk of money, but hopefully now that it has been a solid year with no mess ups we can do a refi and try to get a renovation loan to bust out the rest of the work, keeping our savings accounts in tact.
One thing we have been working on the whole year is a project studio the O Zone Lair. Right now it is just a 20×20 room packed full of music and recording gear, but it is fully functional. Over the last year I have done quite a bit of research about building the home project studio and feel like I have a pretty solid idea about what needs to be done with the area we have designated and I am really stoked to get that project finished. We’ve already brought in a lot of really talented musicians and recorded some awesome tracks. Via the internet I have learned a little(a lot really but in the big scope of things..a little) about recording, a little about mixing, and a little about mastering. To the untrained ear I think I have put out some good mixes, but no real professionals recording folk have commented on the work yet!
Midway through the year my 25th birthday rolled around. 1/4 of a century old. Everyday I think about how I will be lucky to get just another 25 years out of my life before I am dead and gone, which helps keep me motivated to go big with my dreams and endeavors.
Playing music around the town has been great. I’ve met a ton of awesome bands that we’ve either played with, or have seen our shows, or even met them at their own shows at these venues. There are only so many places you can play the music that we play and be welcomed and I think we’ve done a good job of digging out some of those. Early in the year we went from being a 3 piece to a 2 piece, bass and drums, and that transition was good for us I think. I love to play bass and doing this allowed us to become an extremely tight rhythm section.
One thing I did learn over the course of the last year is that there is only so much that one person can do. I am interested in so many things but only have a little time to spend on them. Even though the scope of the many things I actually get to do is very similar, there is just no way I can do it all alone. It is hard to get people motivated to do things outside of their daily job. Work has become such an exhausting project for us all that spending free time working on our own projects almost feels like a burden. There is just no time to relax and that does not appeal to a great majority of people. I on the other hand somehow continue to make myself keep on keepin on and I think that if I just continue along I will meet more and more people with the same level of drive, we can work together, and we will all create something great.
That is all.
GL in 08
