I'm back! Holiday fun times, hay fever, reflecting on goals / new goals for May + heads up on some more downtime!

Hello everyone! It's good to be back at JabunAudio and I hope you had a great few weeks since the last blog post (and didn't miss me too much). My last two weeks have been super busy and filled with adventures in my hometown including much overindulgence in delicious food, checking out and catching up with all the usual haunts and people, randomly meeting and being invited into the house of a veteran guitar luthier (and playing a LOVELY £2k archtop jazz guitar he built), and seeing the local midnight premier for Avengers: Infinity War (No spoilers in the comments below please)!
          The only downside to the holiday was picking up some horrendous hay fever which I'm still suffering from (not quite as badly, but it's definitely not welcome) and puts a major spanner in what were my plans for May (more on that in a moment). Having only been back in the area for 2 days (mainly running non-audio related errands and sniffling a lot), there's really not much to report in terms of news for JabunAudio for this week, but I thought I'd take this blog post to reflect on last months goals, set some new ones for May, and inform you of some more scheduled downtime over the next few months. Without further wait, let's get started!

So first of all, let's check out those goals from April and see how I did:

1) Finish recording bass for the new BTTB album 
2) Update the JabunAudio website 
3) Do my yearly tax return
4) Set up a Patreon for my music 

Now bear in mind that I was actually away for over a third of April so as stated at the beginning of last month, I thought this may be a bit ambitious. Looking back though, I think I got most of it sorted. Bass recording for the new BTTB album is all done, as is my tax return. I also got most of JabunAudio web updates sorted including the custom domain, some edits to various pages and getting some testimonials sorted too. The only thing left for the website (apart from waiting on a few more testimonials) is sorting out the custom email sub-domain which was delayed due to an error and waiting on refunds at the end of last month, but I think we can pretty much count that goal as done and set a follow-up one this month instead. The Patreon page is well on the way to completion too, but I ran out of time at the end of the month to finish and launch it. That'll be a goal carrying on to this month. 

So here's where the hay fever has really put me in an difficult position. I had planned to record all the vocals for the new BTTB album in May, but that's just not possible (well possible to sound as good as I can) at the moment. I also need to make an intro video for the Patreon page, but I'd like to sound and look my best for it too. Since it's cleared a little bit (without medication) since I returned to the studio, I'm hoping this spell will be short lived and I can get back to using my voice properly next week, but there's no guarantee so we'll see how things play out. With that disclaimer aside, here are the goals I'd like to achieve over the next month:

1) Launch a JabunAudio monthly newsletter (this includes various sub goals I need to sort out)
2) Launch the Patreon page
3) Release a 2018 Mastering Demo Reel
4) Get more involved in the online audio community (Facebook groups & Newgrounds, etc...)
5) Finish recording (Vocals) for the new BTTB album. (Vocals is the hope but if things aren't looking great at the beginning of next week I'll look into working on lead guitar / solos or something else instead) 

​A bigger list than usual this month and with the hay fever and other things, this will certainly be a challenge. Better to aim high though and let's see how I do and reflect accordingly in a month's time! Any goals you're setting for yourself this month? Feel free to leave it in the comments so we can keep each other accountable. Best of luck!

Finally this week, just a little notification of some more upcoming downtime. It's a busy few months in terms of family festivities and I will be away again from May 25th to May 30th as well as June 7th to Jun 12th for various big birthdays and weddings. Should be fun, though I apologies in advance for any inconvenience caused.

That's all for this week and hopefully there'll be some more exciting stuff to share next week. With my running nose and sneezing, I'll be focusing on admin work again for the next few days but we'll see how I feel for recording next week. I hope you have a great week whatever you're up to and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects. See you in the next post, and take care!