~Last second nerves~

This week I got back the first draft of the full set of masters for The Queen of Time!...

The first listen was an amazing and bewildering experience, hearing everything for the 1st and for the 1,000,000th time all at once. Overall I think the tracks sound GREAT and I'm excited to get things released as soon as possible!..

But over the next few days, I started feeling less and less sure that everything was as good as I I wanted it to be... There are a few sections of a few tracks that I find myself wishing I had done differently. "If I just made this one different mixing decision," or "if I hadn't changed this one line..." what if *that* would make the difference between a track you want to skip, and track you want to download? Will I regret it forever if I let my song get published, when I know it could be better?...

I very nearly decided to delay things and go back to the mixes and make a few changes... but at this phase in the project that just doesn't seem realistic. Addressing the things I want to fix would take at least a couple months and now that other people (and money) are involved, it would not be frugal.

As an artist I've always struggled to know when the project is done. Honestly, the anxiety I'm currently experiencing is the thing that's prevented me from releasing work in the past. Yes, I've heard the platitudes- "-your own worst critic", "- work is never complete, merely abandoned." All true, lol... But I feel like being your own worst critic can also be a super power- It compels you to constantly improve and make better stuff. And the more you listen to it- the better the work gets!..

But I also have to understand that I'm constantly growing and changing as a person, and my tastes and preferences and ideas will change over time. If I let the project incubate forever, then the project never feels finished, and it continues rolling forward with me, and never quite catches up with who I am, or what I'm capable of... The decisions I made about a mix last year are not the same decisions I would make now (for better or worse).

There is always going to be *something* that I feel like I want to improve about a project... It's very tempting to keep fixing the next worst thing until... What? I'd like to believe "until everything is prefect" but that's simply impossible. By the time I've truly perfected the original idea, I've moved on as a person, and I may not even be able to recognize what the original idea was.

Ultimately I'm still deciding whether or not to release it in its current form. I don't feel amazing about it, but I know that I almost certainly never will, and that's okay. We release work not so that we can bask in the glow of a job well done- but so that we can learn from and appreciate the human experience of others. Publishing the project means allowing people to actually see this thing I've made, and that's really exciting! But at the same time, I really want the project to be as good as it can be. I'm certain to continue to grow and change as an artist, and publishing this project- calling it done- allows me to do that, but delaying it might allow me to feel more confident in the finished product- which is also really good for the project.