My enthusiasm for the music I have made ebbs and flows, and sometimes in one day it goes from high tide to low tide very, very quickly.
How to know which way to go with all of this? In one way, I feel like forging ahead as-is, continuing my slog through the mixing and songwriting process and adding onto this project brick by brick until I feel happy with it and ready to let people listen to it. This would certainly be my normal approach. In another way, I feel like going further out on my own--learning to play the drums, learning to play everything, and continuing to write songs until I am convinced that every one is a glistening gem. Recording and mixing the whole thing on my own, as an island. In another way, I want to go back into pre-production, focusing on the basics, and then to reach out to a producer who I like and who can help me figure it all out. Or perhaps I'll release what I've done for free or "pay what you want" so that I can move onto whatever method of creation now feels the truest. Every day is a mixture of these conflicting impulses, and while I don't mind continuing to float along in between all of them, I would like to come to another epiphany soon.
My teaching job is over, and I heave a sigh of relief. It was a very difficult job and I am glad to be done, and to move onto things both more ephemeral and more permanent. Soon my girlfriend and I will know if we have a house, and if we have the house, we have a basement, and if we have a basement I have the blank canvas for a recording studio with much more aural flexibility. It is this sort of possibility that makes my indecision more urgent--I feel like every time I change environments, the change is an opportunity to reconfigure my brain a little bit and to try out new modes of working. So the most recent solution to the problem that I've come up with is to release the songs that I am happy with as an EP, and to keep the other songs in mind as I write more material for another album. What do you think?