Comment by internetvin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by internetvin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Some background on how and why I started this.

I was going through a very difficult time in my life. My father in law passed away suddenly two days before my son and first child were born. Things were very emotional and stressful. I couldn't find any clarity. I didn't have any time for myself to figure it all out.

One day, while sitting alone in my friends startup office I heard the song Naked Life by Oko Ebombo. I am not sure why it was this song or if it could have been another song. Maybe I was depressed enough. But this song made me want to make music. I messaged some friends with a link to the track and asked, "how do you make this?" Most of them responded with things like, take singing lessons, get guitar lessons and so on. None of this was an option for me. I had to be back in my apartment to help my wife in an hour.

So I downloaded GarageBand for iOS, made a track and uploaded it to SoundCloud. Once that happened, I started to feel better. Prior to that moment I had never made any music in my life. The next day I did the same thing and I just didn't stop.

I wrote about this process on Twitter in a thread titled, "What I learned making some kind of music for 365 consecutive days:"

https://twitter.com/internetVin/status/1019033516028280832

I am following the same process now to teach myself how to code. I never want to stop doing this.

As someone who's also learning how to make music with Logic Pro X because I listened to songs that I wanted to create myself, I can understand you. Your story is absolutely inspiring.

Mastering a skill in solitary is said to be a key aspect of individuation. The amount of personal development I've experienced in the last 2 years is all due to the desire to be able to do something e.g. making music, understanding people and the world, learning to lead others and build a small company, learning how to comfort people in bad times, learning the meaning of real connection with other people and so many more. We should all embrace those wishes we have and these goals we'd like to achieve and support ourselves. I think this is a very life-affirming and supportive view that can change the people in a profound way.

P.S.: I'm also a fan of beeple. He is very inspirational for me in his regularity, something I'm still struggling with.

P.P.S.: The tool looks amazing. For just 6 months of experience, this is a great thing to achieve. Connecting with the Slack API and building something that looks good (also on mobile) isn't easy. You're doing great!

This is beautiful. It's surreal to read something so aligned with my own experiences on life and the world around me. Unreal

Wow. I've really shed a tear. I've signed up, looking forward to talk with you about your experiences and wishes.

I cannot say just how much this resonates with me.

I've had similar experiences in the past of successful "learning binge" by making something daily, but never for a sustained period of more than a month.

Desire having considered doing it all again in public, posting my progress on GitHub maybe, I am now weirdly hesitant to even apply for this free service which enables me to do just that!

I think it's the fear of commitment. May be soon but not today.

But congratulations on successfully rolling out the first version of this awesome tool. All the best for iterations!

thank you so much. I find when I feel fear like that it's because the thing I'm about to try might actually work.

> I feel fear like that it's because the thing I'm about to try might actually work.

Exactly, this is incredible, because deep down you know this, and yet the fear is real.

I too did this except 1 month at a time.

I use to produce music or 'jams' once a day for a month or so. I also did 3D quite a bit and produced 1 spaceship concept a day as part of "#shiptember"

It's a really fun way to learn to do something and inevitably become REALLY fast at it and produce incredible work that you'd never thought possible to start with. You know the software/hardware so good that by the end of it, it's effortless.

The king of this is of course `beeple`.

The point is: create, every day. It's under many forms and disciplines but usually it's under the umbrella of "progress before perfection" and "#everyday".

This sounds a lot like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which focuses on writing (regardless of quality) a certain number of words each day.

If you enjoy jam sessions and would like to do this online, try with DFM [1]. I don't know if they still do it to this day, but back in the very early '00s I listened to their jam sessions weekly.

Doing it IRL has its + and -

[1] http://dfm.nu

I try and do this but end up usually just working through tutorials each day rather than making something. I suppose its a balance. I've been thinking of making little tutorial videos of me making little dinky web apps, I probably just need to put the tutorials on hold and start making.

This has absolutely been my experience. The artist Beeple is an excellent example of this and someone who inspired me a lot. Your work sounds really cool

This goes on my list of "things I want to have in my new world religion if I ever get around to creating one".

Absolutely unreal

Weird suggestions provided there's no guitar in the song (only bass), and he's not exactly "singing" in the sense usually attributed to the word.

Those are two of the suggestions I received in that moment. I didn’t think they were weird, I just thought they were things that I couldn’t do. Not knowing what to do or feeling like there was nothing I could do was my general state at that time.

It’s so cool to me that you listened to the track

Reply on news.ycombinator.com