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Weekly Update - Another Slump, Composing Convenience Concerns

2 years ago909 words

Do you know anything about portable USB monitors??

It's already September?? God...



I've been annoyingly unproductive this week! I'd spent the last week working on ∞ the side project I talked about in last weekend's post ∞, and I wanted to keep up that burst of motivation by spending this week on it too... but I ran out of steam on Tuesday.

I'd been working on it all day every day the week before, including the weekends - usually I try to reserve evenings and weekends for a shift in focus to reduce burnout - so that was a factor there, though I'd also felt quite anxious presenting it to the world, as my mind filled with thoughts of people being either hugely impressed or annoyed and critical, and the lack of response instead just felt deflating, honestly.

It's strange how my own interest in a project is enough when I'm working on it in private, but as soon as I present it publicly in any form, even on this little, out-of-the-way blog, the opinions of others - or lack thereof - determine my own motivation to work on it. It's why I just never write about a lot of stuff I make these days.



Because of that, I tried to get back to work on Atonal Dreams on Wednesday, to revise things to use the new elements, but I felt I had to decide on their names first since they'd be used in the code and dialogue... but I couldn't come up with any portmanteau names for Harmony and Discord that felt just right, I had a bunch of doubts, feelings of writer's block, worries about revising the elements being a bad move and having to backtrack, which would be very irritating for mostly technical reasons...

So I just decided, after spending Thursday in a terrible, indecisive slump, to wait until the new week, next Monday, to try and tackle that in earnest. Even if I can't come up with names I like, I'll at least code things so I could change their names easily in the future if I need to.



Somewhat unrelatedly, something I think about all the time is that I should spend more time composing music, as of the several creative skills I've developed, that's the one I value the most.

I often listen to my compositions while working, with newer, fresher ones motivating me more, so if I compose more often, maybe I'd increase my motivation in general too!

I use my piano during the composing process, but my setup is awkward. My piano keyboard's next to my PC desk so I can swivel in my chair to face it, but it's at a right angle from the screen, meaning I have to either strain my neck, pick up and move the piano, or just keep going back and forth between the piano and monitor while composing.

It's not excessively inconvenient, but there's a behavioural psychology concept called 'response effort' that I think about all the time and have likely written about before: the more effort something takes to do, the less likely we are to do it. And moving around my piano - which from experience feels like the best solution - is often more effort than I can be bothered with, so I go days or weeks without even touching it or composing anything.

I've thought many times over the years that I'd want something like a tablet which I could keep above it permanently exclusively for sheet music, but tablets always seemed both too small and too expensive, so I never got further than doing some searching. And having sheet music files wouldn't be enough anyway if the music was in the process of being created.

I've seen videos by digital music 'producer' types who have their workspace completely designed around musical creation - usually with some kind of shelf for their musical keyboard under their monitor - but I'm not that specialised and don't want to - or can't, really - invest into something so drastic.

Recently, I learned about portable USB monitors, which seem to be mostly used by people on the go to give their laptops a second screen, or their phone a larger one?

Those seem ideal for my needs, as my piano's already next to my PC, and I'd be able to have Sibelius - my composing program - open directly on it.

Like with anything gadget-related, though - or decision-related, honestly - I'm held back from actually buying one because of concerns that I'll get the wrong one and regret it, and I don't know or care enough about gadgets to put in the effort to learn as much as I should about what makes one good.

So it's a long shot, especially since these blog posts have been getting fewer and fewer views lately, but have any of you ever used a portable USB monitor for any reason? And do you have any suggestions or anything?? Ideally I'd prefer a cheaper one, since I'm hardly rolling in cash, but I don't want to get one so cheap it'll immediately break or be no good for my needs.

(I took forever to decide on a PC even after suggestions, but this is way less of an investment so I don't feel I have to be that picky or careful about it.)