A freelancer's dream...

When I let three weeks go by without posting, you can assume I'm busy, which is a good thing. When you're a freelancer, like me, you gotta take all the work you can get.  I'm working full time nights at NY1, Monday through Friday, both Saturday and Sunday nights at CNN until the end of July, still picking up two shifts a week at truTV in the mornings before NY1 on Tuesday and Thursday.  This makes it so that, save for taking next Saturday off to attend a friend's wedding out on Long Island, I'll be working for the next 50 days straight.  On top of all of that, I've picked up three and a half voice over gigs in the past month (the half gig was a pickup that I recorded from home for a book promo...they decided they wanted me to say the author's name in the spot) and I'm also scoring a short comedy/drama.  So, yeah.  Lots to do. 

It's summer solstice today, though, and I'm missing all kinds of fun stuff because I'm working.  Not the least of which is the weather (oh my god) but also the yoga in Times Square and the Mermaid Parade and I'm sure there's several live concerts happening around the city, some of which my friends are playing in.  But, I'm missing all of it.  I probably have said this every summer since I moved here, but there is way too much going on in the city every summer to do everything anyway, whether I'm working or not, even if I just stuck to the things that sound particularly awesome.  I guess this just proves that I'll never get sick of living here...I just have to keep my ear to the ground so that if I am able to attend something, I actually know about it in time to make plans to go.

Sure, there's always next summer for most of this stuff.  Though, it still does bum me out a little that, whenever I remember that Celebrate Brooklyn concerts at the Prospect Park Band Shell are a thing, I realize that the few artists that I would go see, fall on days that I can't go.  It's like this every summer.  I mean, I always try to make it to at least one and I usually succeed, but last year, because I work nights, I wasn't able to make any because I didn't find out about the one concert I could make in time to get enough friends interested in going with me.  This year, St. Vincent is playing on August 9th and, while I'm just getting into them, I going to make it a point to go.  It's one of the first weekends I'm going to have off again. 



Summer shenanigans aside, it is nice to have a foot in so many different places and to be getting so much work.  For one thing, it's given me the faith that I can one day quit full time work and be totally devoted to both sides of this career of mine.  Of course, cautiously optimistic is always the way to go.  But add on top of the gigs I am getting, the fact that I'm getting a lot of attention for my VO and music work and have been quoting people for projects just as often as I am booking them.  Granted, at least one of those was a friend asking.  But still.  It's definitely a good thing if my name is out there. 

And for the piece de la resistance: I found the finished versions of those two book promos I voiced online.  Check them out on youtube.com:





I'll have more to update soon with the film score.  It's been coming along nicely though and the director has liked most of my initial ideas.  We're still in the writing phase but I'm nearly done with that and will soon move on to mixing and finalizing everything.  In the meantime, it's also nice to see that it's totally possible for me to work three jobs, get three voice over gigs and still find time to write music.