Patron Update for December: 2019 planning! (Patreon)

Hey all! Breaking the normal "three subject" format this time because I wanted to focus on one big thing.

Before that though, I do intend on doing a full 2018 retrospective at the end of the year, just like I did with 2017. However, before that I wanted to bounce something off you because it directly affects this campaign.

I'm thinking about taking a break from the Two Hour Track Challenge. Not permanently, but just for a few months to recharge my brain a bit. I feel like the music I'm putting out right now is great, but the challenges get... frustrating when I am trying something new and just don't have the time to fully explore it while the clock ticks down.

Also, I've been doing the challenge at least once a week for three years straight. I think a break of a few months is deserved :)

The takeaway here is that I still intend to provide at least 4 new songs every month exclusively to patrons. I also still plan to stream music production on Wednesdays. There are just a few other directions I want to go:

I have a few album ideas that I want to explore. It was a lot of fun creating the Journey Without, Journey Within album and making it exclusive to patrons. One thing I was thinking was to release Journey publicly and start working on a fresh new album exclusively for you guys.

I want to make more commercially viable music. This is something I've been meaning to do for a LONG time. I put some music up on Pond5 and other "stock music" sites quite a while ago and it did OK, but I think if I sat down and actually gave it a solid effort, I could get some really great songs out there and create another passive income stream. This would be good for you as well because, let's face it, some songs just don't really translate well into background music for videos or games.

I want to shift focus to making games again. Above and beyond music, I think I finally got past the post-project depression of Color Jumper and I'm ready to make some simple games again. The creative pressure every Wednesday to sit down and bang out a song was surprisingly stressful some weeks.

I want to shift focus to making videos again. Again, the Creative Exploration series has fallen by the wayside, as has many of the other educational series that I want to put out (Audio Basics, How to Use LMMS, Pocket Operator and live music jams). I'm hoping that this breathing room will help me better manage my time into making more video content as well.

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Ultimately, I want to get back into doing the Two Hour Track Challenge because it's an absolute joy most of the time. But with all that's going on over the holidays and the NaSoAlMo challenge last month, it really took a lot out of me to keep on top of the weekly challenge as well. So for the time being I'm going to postpone Season 9 of the 2HTC until April and take a few months off.

Please let me know what you think of this! Either in the comments below or directly messaging me. I know the weekly challenge is the bread and butter of this Patreon campaign and I don't want to take that away from people. Just need a bit of breathing room to recharge my batteries a bit more.

I donated to the kitties already, so we're all good there. Thanks for reading! Have a great holiday season and new year. <3

As always, thanks for being a part of this campaign, it means a ton to me.