Man, where to begin? I’ve been putting this off for too long, so what the hell, I’ll just write it and post it.
Well, an awful lot has happened in my little corner of the world in the past year, and updates to this site and my YouTube channel have been slow as I focused on getting my work done in a (mostly) timely manner, continuing to improve my craft, nurture my passion for the job, and work through one of the most difficult shitty-personal-stuff years I have had. In fact, I would say the amount of stuff that was going on on my websites (here and opensourcesaxophoneproject.com) and my YouTube channel was inversely proportional to how much challenging crap was going on with me personally.
Of course, difficulty can also be a fertile ground for growth, and plenty of that has been going on both personally and professionally. I’ve traveled a bit this year for the first time in a while (the photo you clicked to get to this article if you came from my homepage is of me visiting the workbench of friend and fellow repairman Jack Finucane in Boston), I’ve picked up a lot of new skills, made a lot of new friends, and in general gotten on the road to being a lot happier and fulfilled than I’ve been in a long while.
Anyhow, as time has gone on and I’ve begun to get a handle on things and started to have a planning horizon beyond “one foot in front of the other”, it has felt more and more necessary that I somehow communicated to the people who have been so patient with the lack of updates and so forth that I am still alive, still kicking, and am getting back on the horse. I still have big plans for the Open Source Saxophone Project, have a lot more YouTube videos I plan on making, and will probably get a few horns up for sale here on the website next year as well as get a bit more work done on my waitlist after having frequently defaulted to local customers for a while to streamline my job while I got my shit together.
So all this say: I’m on the way back from around the bend, so watch for this space to become more active in the coming months. I’m still living at my house in North Carolina near Eno River State Park on a bunch of land, still working out of the Airstream (new wood stove coming soon, just in time for winter!), still overhauling saxes, I’m healthy, and as I emerge from this difficult period I find that my passion for repairing saxophones the right way is burning as brightly as ever. Also, bonus: this year was the year I finally have gotten decent at dentwork!
And on a (further) personal note: what a great bunch of clients and friends you all are. I know I have not been as responsive as usual to emails and phone calls, I know my output of articles and videos has been low, but not a single damn one of you had anything but nice and supportive things to say to me. I am truly touched, and hope that I can pay you all back with some good content and good work. Of special note in this category is Brian from GetASax.com, a true mensch who has been a reliable and honest client going on 7 years, whom I now know to also be a steadfast friend.
Thanks for reading and extra especially this year, thank you for your support.