3-14-26; 4pm| On Restarting

"If you want to be good at life, you need to be able to face the unknown and go for it."

• Dr Alok Kanojia

I have been backing up my laptop. When this (lengthy) process is finished, I will be wiping it. I've been a Microsoft Windows user since the 7th grade; I learned to program in batch and my love of computers was supported by the accessible complexity of the Windows operating system. For a variety of reasons, mostly security/privacy oriented, I'm no longer a fan of Microsoft or its bloated, telemetry-centric OS. I've got to swap it out.

Here's the catch: I produce in Imageline's DAW, FL Studio. FL runs on Windows and MacOS. I have an Asus laptop and I'm not planning to swap to the Apple ecosystem anytime soon. I'm on to the greener fields of Linux, where many of my fellow "power users" already reside. FL Studio does not run on Linux. I am considered, by most metrics, an above average music producer. In regards to the technical aspect of the art, I'm inarguably "experienced". All of my knowledge was acquired while using FL Studio. Sure, the principles are applicable in any digital audio environment, but I only really* know this one. I will be, for the first time in 4 years, a beginner in my preferred medium again. I will be abandoning my project files, my channel strip presets, and my muscle-memory workflow.

Logically this is a necessary cost for what I want. Emotionally this feels like an undoing of what I've cared for most.

When I was 17 I enrolled in, was accepted, to, and joined a university an hour north of my parent's home. I stayed for the semester, made all A's, and dropped out before taking my exams. I had started experiencing psychotic episodes that would at times last multiple days. The most memorable time, and the time that helped me realize this would become a problem if left unaddressed, was a night in which I took my longboard north until I started reading Tennessee addresses on the buildings I passed. When I realized I had skateboarded across state lines to "get some fresh air" and avoid noises that weren't there, I recognized the severity of the issue.

Returning to my hometown was humiliating, of course. I'm sure you are shocked. I started working in a warehouse and I would keep myself busy for a few years. Now, as my peers have already graduated, I am going back to school online. I put it off for a while specifically because I felt like I'd be starting over, and starting later than I'd like. Maybe I blew my chance, maybe things could've been better, maybe I'd find a workaround to become an expert in my field without going through school again. There were a lot of possibilities.

The problem that appears is that there are a lot of possibilities. You can only walk through one door at a time.
I would rather stand in front of several open doors than leave the room I was in.

The time will pass anyway*

This is the trap of potential. I would argue that "maybe" and "potential" are the equal to "perfect" as enemies of progress. Perfect is the enemy of done. Potential is the enemy of forward. The act of doing requires you to discard what could be, and necessitates that you either make it what is, or what is not. The biggest cost is that you are required to run the risk of failure.
Throughout my dozens of notebooks and online journal entries is the acronym: YOCIR. I used it as my laptop password a year ago. It is still part of my phone password now.* [My password is 17 digits long, including punctualization and capitalization; you will not guess it.] It stands for, "Your only catalyst is resolve". This is a truth to me; I hold very few things in my life as "absolute" truths, but this is one of them. You cannot take one step towards action until you have resolved yourself to it.

Everything hard thing I've done in the past 3 years has been facilitated by me repeating this phrase in my head. I live by it, I may well die by it. Technically, it kept me alive! As I faded out of consciousness following a gnarly motorcycle accident, I thought to myself, "Well it looks like I might die, so I might as well resolve myself to living. If I do end up dying it won't matter, and if I don't end up dying I'll get to be right". I did not die (though it was up in the air for a minute). I resolved myself to surviving and in doing that, I was able to take one step towards the action of living. Congratulations to me, I suppose.

The moment only exists one moment at a time. You are nothing more than now, and you can be different now later, but you are currently this now, now. To be in another now means abandoning your current now. [I love abstracting ideas into the English language and I'm so sorry you all have to experience me turning a noun into a variable lol.] If you want to build a future, you must resolve yourself to it first.

The cost of restarting gets softer as you get older. I've experienced this, sure, but I've also heard it from people older than me. That is comforting. I'm currently very at-home in FL Studio. Moving to another DAW [If you care at all, I'm relearning REAPER.] will likely feel like moving to a new apartment: The walls are bare, I don't know the place by heart, and I do not remember where I put the fucking can opener. This is the cost. It is a cost that would've been large enough to deter a younger me, but as of now, I am resolved to the change. It will be good. The new apartment will have a better landlord, metaphorically, and growth is a form of change after all. No change means no growth, baby!

My artistic output may suffer! That is the risk of failure! I'm resolved to the effort, I'm at peace with the cost. I'm trying. I might not get what I want, but it won't be potential if it happens or if it doesn't. Uncertainty is part of the world and we try to intensely to make ourselves something separate from this world, but we aren't. There is uncertainty that is innate to being, and if you exist then it is innate to you. If you can't become at peace with uncertainty, you can never be at peace with yourself. Good thing that's optional, eh?