Yodeller

Every year the Christmas feels to be starting earlier and earlier. It's not even past mid October and the Christmas products have been in stores already for weeks.

It's not like there wouldn't be any other celebrations for stores ro sell seasonal stuff around this rime od the year. Even Halloween, which is much closer hasn't gotten much shelf space at the stores yet. And it never will because the prime aisles are filled with Christmas chocolates, Christmas, drinks, Christmas decorations and other Christmas products.

When, and why did it become such a big deal? Dedicating one quarter of a year for single holiday feels a bit excessive. Especially as most of it feels quite annoying. It's also a lot of single use crap that will be thrown away before the year even ends.

This extended period of everything being of the occasion does also make it feel not so special. You get used to it after the first few weeks, then get annoyed and by the time it's actually near it has become so common that it doesn't make any difference. At least it's gone fast after the Christmas is over and the leftovers are sold out with huge discounts.

My album has been put now since yesterday. Youtube was the first service to publish it and there are already some listens on it. The top track has already been listened over 500 times! That's was more than I expected, especially in the first 24 hours. It might be just the algorithm helping me force feeding it to some unfortunate listeners.

It's also now on Spotify. Noticed it there sometime in the afternoon. So now I can finally listen it myself without resorting to any workarounds to get it playing in my systems beyond my phone/laptop and headphones.

I've also had the album up to one service aimed more to creators for almost a week. I have gotten a few likes and comments there and so far the reaction has been positive. I'm quite exited on the reception.

It will most probably never be any real hit, not least because it's not exactly any mainstream style, but I'm just happy if even a handful of listeners find it enjoyable.

Yesterday I was finally able to do the last edits to my creation, to my new album. It was a long road getting there. I worked on this project for over three months, but in the end I'm quite satisfied with the results. This is something a year ago I wouldn't have even dared to dream of - me, a completely non-musical person releasing an album!

Say what you will about A.I. generated content, for me it was a creative process. I didn't just "write a few lines of prompt a d hit generate". I put a lot of effort into it. And I don't care if nobody likes it. I'm not into it for the money. I did it for myself. I enjoyed both the journey and the end result.

Still, I'm excited about the reception. Maybe there are others that share my taste of music and find this creation of my equally enjoyable. I'm not going to be a big rock star because of it, but in this moment I sure feel like one.

At the moment the album is still processing to be uploaded into various services, but it's already up at least on Youtube if you're interested checking it out.

I have started to feel I've lost the spark of writing these daily posts. There doesn't seem to be any purpose beyond just keeping the streak alive with them. It's not that I couldn't still write daily. I've done it without a miss for a long while already even though I haven't cared about the streak that much. It just happens, the power of habits.

I just don't find the joy in it anymore. I originally started writing these just to get better at writing, and get rid of the blank page syndrome. I think I'm good enough writer already. And even if I still would want to become better at it, this might not be the best way to improve any further.

In a way I could even say I'm addicted to these writing sessions. The streak has become an obsession. Even if I already a while ago said I stop caring about the streak and if I don't write some day it wouldn't be a big deal to me. Yet I have still consistently kept writing. Even in times when it has been inconvenient. Even when I don't have anything to write.

It just doesn't happen without conscious decision to actually quit. I'm not yet ready for that. I need to give it some more time to make the final decision.

Last week I finished my album. All songs done and ready for release. But not quite yet. I was hoping to do the final editing, mastering and clearing lyrics over the weekend to be ready for the release. Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish all that until today. Now all that is left is the publication.

Even though A.I. "does all the work" there is still a lot of manual work to get those songs ready for release. My workflow includes several steps, most of them in different tools. It's not just writing a few sentences to the A.I. to prompt it to generate the song and be done with it. A lot of effort is still needed to make something worth publishing (although many skip those steps). I don't just want to generate music. I want to actually put effort to make it reflect my vision.