Enjoying the Journey

In a previous post, I gave the image of you running in a crowd of people and not knowing where you are going.  If you want to, you can read it here. 

Anyway, I am working through a tough task on the unjobbing front in mastering my next Christian Metal album.  I know that for the vast majority of readers, the term “mastering” doesn’t mean anything.  So I’ll try to fill you in on a high level.  Mastering is the last step in music production and is a very (if not the most) important process.  Up to this point, a musician or band has recorded all of the music, and an engineer has worked with the band to mix the parts so that they are in the right relative ratio to each other.  Everything can be tight as all get out at this point, but the mastering process can make or break even the best of songs.

Mastering is the “sweetening” of the mix.  It is where you make each of the songs sound like they belong, such as same relative “loudness”, pop, and other sonic qualities that people like to hear.  In the mastering process you can really kill the mix by cutting too much of a frequency or boosting too much of another and make an otherwise solid song, both writing and mixing, terribly unenjoyable.  But also, you can bring that song to the next level to be forever memorable in people’s minds. 

Anyway, why am I talking about this….oh yeah that’s right…tying it all together – I have been at the mastering stage on this album since the beginning of the year and I am still not done.  I am struggling to find the right balance, the right sound, the right frequencies to have more of and less of.  Sometimes it feels that I have taken steps back instead of forward, and I feel frustrated.  Just like at times, I am frustrated that I am still at this job instead of unjobbing.  Or when I was taking actuarial exams and didn’t pass every exam the first time.  In a way, it's like writing this blogpost – I wish that I was already done!

But I think that is the problem with my frustration.  Not that I am not at my destination, but that I am not enjoying the journey.  I think most of us struggle with this problem to some degree.  We are so focused on getting to where we are going that we forget to enjoy the journey.  Sure, there are frustrating parts of journeying, but they are necessary; that’s when we grow.  Every time that I failed an actuarial exam I learned something.  Every time that I screwed up the mastering on my album, I learned something too.  We need to be patient and notice these things because that will help us in the future.

But even more than just learning things along the journey, which I think is very important, I think that it illustrates the bigger picture of humanity.  Newton’s first law of motion is summarized as all bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.  Although this applies to physical objects, I think that it is true about  human nature as well.  We want to find a place on earth to settle and get into a holding pattern.  Have a house, work our job, enjoy the proverbial white picket fence.  But we stay put; we don’t journey.  I can sympathize – I want to unjob and be done.  We do that with most things.  Take for instance school.  Who really  enjoyed the years of abuse at school?  Oh you did?  Nose in the corner mister (or missus)!  For most of us, we couldn’t wait until we were out; either for the day, the school year, or for life.  We were consumed with finishing it rather than finding some solace in the journey.

So what does all of this mean?  Well, I think that it means that we have to live in the moment and continue our journey less as conquistadors and more like wonderers (yes, with an O, as in being full of wonder at the world around us).  There is a lot about life that is truly wonderful if we just take the time to enjoy the moment rather than being consumed by thoughts of conquest or acquisition. 

And lastly, we are all pilgrims in this life; we all die and are meant for heaven.  All along the journey of our lives there are glimpses of heaven that keep us going.  In the words of St. Augustine, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in thee.”  We are not meant to stop here on earth; we are meant to journey.  And it is in that journey that we find peace.

I am far from being a thorough practitioner of enjoying the journey.  I really really want to be at home mastering my album right now, but I can’t.  Instead, I am going to focus on what I can do now and know that I will eventually get the mastering done.  Here’s to enjoying the journey!

God bless,

Sven