I. No More Downloads?

(edit: Yendor helped me find the global audio settings so downloads are back on. I guess you can skip this section but I'm keeping it around to artefact my bandcamp link)

Despite the title this isn't some big emergency, just a confusing oddity. I was planning on turning off downloads for songs that I've released to Bandcamp EPs, but it seems that my songs have had their download function recently switched to "off." I started turning the downloads back on for a few songs before I realized that ALL of my songs have been turned off. I assume it's just a global settings oddity of some kind or that I've fallen asleep on a recent update and don't know how to get all my music on the same page. Since I didn't receive a notification or message from a mod I doubt it's anything serious but the annoying thing is, I have hundreds of songs. I was only going to turn off downloads manually for a fraction of them to encourage people to seek out my Bandcamp profile.

I've always tried to keep my music accessible and free because I have a very small niche audience. I don't like the idea of begging people to buy my music and I like to see the downloads to know that people are actually listening to my music out in the wild. If there is a global setting to turn downloads back on could someone point me in the right direction? Otherwise, if this was some kind of mod action could the logic here be clarified? I'm very confused but... meh. It's not very important...

II. Where Is Quarl?

I've been absent much of this year which is especially odd after shitting out 30 songs in January. No idea why the Jamuary song a day event causes me the perfect amount of anxiety to write so much music in such a short period of time but I'm not complaining about that. Just wish that I had the same manic energy to compile some new albums and make some music videos right now.

Instead of writing EDM this year I've spent most of my time offline playing my drum kit and learning guitar. I'm getting to the point where I feel confident recording my guitar licks and using them for music videos. I've also collected a lot of winter footage of the mountain, some of it is so gorgeous that I wanted to make sure I had equally interesting music to join with it. I'm not stressing myself out to make content, instead choosing to make things when the urge returns. I'm very chaotic when it comes to inspiration. I'll go zero to sixty when a weird idea hits. I recently got sucked into a sub reddit called r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns because I saw them having fun with memes:

III. Free Racoons, Raccoonapalooza!!

Eventually I decided to try making friends with them via a free racoon give away:

Nobody got the Speedy Gonzalez reference but I did have people participate with the image and even included a few extra "winners" despite the event stipulations:

One of you may have noticed that I forgot to give the furry a saddle. She didn't seem to mind. There's probably a joke that could be made about furries going bareback but I don't want to be the person that makes it. I'm tempted to do a similar Raccoonapalooza for Newgrounds but I'm also just as likely to smoke some more weed and put off doing my taxes for another week.

IV. What's In The Future?

Moving forwards, continue to expect a general lack of activity from me. Tom and I are tired of all the snow we accumulated this year and as a coping mechanism I've fallen back on my least productive pastime: smoking weed and playing video games. I still do music things, putting hours of play into daily practices and have developed super unsexy guitar calluses. I think I've also started to develop an overuse pain in my shoulder from constant drumming. That brings me down a little but my routines are consistently getting longer and my endurance better. Eventually I'll make something new that I'm very proud of, just waiting to get a rush of manic energy. That may come with Spring but I fear that Tom and I are going to be very busy this summer...

Aside from our wedding in August, we still have a bunch of construction projects to finish. The music studio we were building currently has snow up to the roof. I doubt we're even going to start working on Tom's office that we talked about last year. We've put off finishing the porch. Tom wants to install geothermal heating to lower costs from other methods of heating the house. The geothermal installation will be our first project this season but we've also talked about getting a dish washer which would require us to take out part of the kitchen "island" and renovate a tad. Tom also took up a full time job instead of just contracting so he'll have less time for projects... I'm not sure where I'll find time to make stuff but stressing out about it is the wrong answer.

One day at a time, thanks for stopping by!

tldr: I'm very busy but also not very busy. Also, raccoons.