The Joy of Commitment

(from previous blog - 12 October 2011)

In a former life, I was a software developer. I'm not talking about cool games or funky graphics, but big, enterprise level database systems. It was scary. I held responsibility for the critical business decision making data of a number of blue chip organisations. The stress levels could be crippling. You get little or no thanks when you get things right, but by God do you get it in the neck when things go wrong. Every now and then you would be in a position where you would issue a software upgrade or patch that HAD to work first time, or else. If an overnight batch process failed in any way, thousands of people would not get paid. No pressure, then. I would lie awake all night going through lines of code in my mind trying to convince myself that it would going to be alright. Unpopular as I may be to admit it, I have some degree of sympathy with the people currently beavering away to get everyone's Blackberry back on line - I've been there. And I am a Blackberry user.

So I thought I had left all this behind when I jumped out of the I.T. world to pursue my music. Then I had to go through the process (twice now!) of releasing an album. All the old stresses come back. There comes a "commit" point when you have to upload to iTunes and send the audio to the CD manufacturer. You would think that after that point I could put my feet up and breathe out. Not so. I spend the next few days and weeks worrying that I had missed something technically or artistically that can no longer be corrected, despite all of the preview listeners input.

So please have a little sympathy with the plight of the self-published artist next time you listen to one of my albums. If you are one of those wonderful people who takes the trouble to come back to me and say "Love it!", you will understand that my reaction is as much relief as anything else. So thank you for putting me out of my misery in the truest sense.