We often see the start of a new year as some kind of reset, almost like we can’t do anything unless we first set the usual “good resolutions for the new year”. Lately, every year I’ve made a ton of resolutions and ended up achieving almost none of them: just having a resolution creates this self-imposed anxiety that I’d rather avoid. So what now? I want to try summarizing what happened this past year and see if I can still feel satisfied even without setting specific goals from the start.
🇪 Let’s start from the end: in the last month or so I began studying Spanish (with Duolingo), because my brother-in-law lives in Spain and it seems like a good way to keep my brain active. Every time I visit my nieces I feel a bit “limited” in conversation, even though they basically speak Italian much better than I (don’t) speak Spanish.
👨 Still starting from the end, this year I decided to take better care of myself: I did a series of medical visits and specialist exams and it turned out it was time for a small surgery. Nothing serious, but it had to be done. I’m glad I faced the issue and that I’m now on the road to recovery.
📘 I also read a lot of books: 13 to be exact. Maybe that’s not much for some people, but for me it’s a lot, and honestly, I don’t think I’ll stop.
🚗 I took a few trips, planned new ones, and visited exhibitions and events. I visited Ferrara, Padova, Paestum, and Perugia (even if just for an aperitivo and dinner). I also joined a guided tour of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, visited the Salone del Libro di Torino, StraniMondi in Milan, and the Escher exhibition at Mudec.
🏠 I did some home improvements, because taking care of your home is a bit like taking care of yourself! I had the entrance redone with artificial grass and a new walkway. I also replaced the battery of my solar system: I noticed some strange consumption patterns and it turned out the battery had even swollen and become useless. I think my energy bill will thank me.
💻 I also worked on some nerdy side projects and made a few fixes to my web app “Oggi in TV” (if you like watching regular italian TV channels, this app is for you!). I also started exploring new AI tools like “app builders”, zero coding and lots of prompting. Specifically I tried:
- Base44, with which I created “CarBro” and kept track of the prompts I used in this GitHub repo.
- Chef, where I tried to create a music web player that reads from personal cloud services. Total failure, but to be fair, I only gave it the very first prompt, immediately used up all the free tokens, and abandoned it.
I now realize I’ve never talked about anything like this on the blog before, simply because I used to see it as a “thematic” blog, dedicated only to music production. I think I’ll start writing about other things too.
🎸 And now music: played, listened to, and seen live! Wanted to go back to concerts a bit more often and ended up going to just a couple of events, but both were incredibly satisfying: Savatage at Alcatraz in Milan (I was honestly moved by how good the show was) and the Metalitalia Festival at Live in Trezzo sull’Adda — amazing bands, great company, awesome experience! I’ve already got my tickets for the Savatage concert next year ?.
🎛 And what about music I produced? Well, here I can say I achieved one of my most ambitious projects: I finally released the first full-length album by Outerburst. “Witchcraft” came out on October 24th and not only was the listener response satisfying, it also accompanied me throughout the whole year as I worked on it. I learned a lot, but above all it helped me “get back in the game” after a few years of letting my studio desk gather dust. I gained new skills, opened and closed the SIAE paperwork to print CDs independently: annoying technical issues aside, it wasn’t hard at all, just boring. I had the digipak CD printed, another one of my obsessions finally realized. What can I say, I really worked my butt off on this album and couldn’t be happier with it.
Still in music territory, rehearsals and work for the new From The Depth album have started again! Finally!
And in the middle of all this, I also created NAM profiles for my gear: check out my previous post for details.
What can I say? Am I satisfied? Definitely. Was it necessary to set goals at the beginning of the year? Absolutely not. In fact, I’m sure that not having resolutions actually helped motivate me more. I simply started “doing” instead of “wanting to do”. Obvious stuff, you might say. Maybe so, but it was still worth it.
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