I am writing today from the loneliest of places: an internet based home voiceover studio that currently has no internet service as the result of an speed upgrade gone (temporarily) bad. Thankfully, if you’re reading this the problem has been resolved, and my internet speeds are now jiffy quick, but in the meantime I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on how much, and more importantly, how little of my work really depends on this relatively new technology.
So, what can’t I do without internet service. Well, checking for auditions is much slower due to having to rely on 4G phone connectivity to check email. Plus the urgency isn’t there since I couldn’t really fire off an audition anyway without a whole lot of work-around effort. In today’s “get it out yesterday” audition environment, I’d be so far down the list by the time I submitted that it would be futile to try. I could still handle an ISDN or iPDTL live session by reading the script off my phone, but alas, my live session clients haven’t contacted me yet this week. I’d be delighted to go out to a studio to record, but frankly most of my clients are out of town, or even out of the country, so I rarely get to play in other studios’ sandboxes.
But let’s be real; there’s a ton of stuff I can do to make this a productive day in the VO biz. There is always bookkeeping to be caught up on (ho), and straightening to do (hum). I can read the books I’ve been stockpiling about effective time management (wink). And I can write blog posts to be uploaded later (see what I did there? – meta to the max).
All of this tech bother leads me to reflect on the communication business in general, and how much things have changed over the years. This, in turn, lead me to watching a great video (on my phone) about the evolution of audio technology. It’s from the documentary series How We Got to Now, by Steven Johnson, currently available on PBS streaming. It’s a fascinating look at how audio recording first started and evolved in the late 19th – early 20th century. Highly recommended!
So, all-in-all, it’s not a wasted day in the least. There’s always a way to learn more, and thus add value to my service. And the part about being lonely? I lied. I have a very vocal and active cat in my lap to keep me company.
