Floating in your dreams
By As_Yoesual on May 10, 2026 5:21 pm
When I met my wife, now almost 19 years ago, we were opposites.
I was a loner with agoraphobia, dealing with depression and PTSD, and I felt like the world was against me. More than that, I feared the world.
Suzanne, however, was social. She loved going out, had many friends, and saw both the world and the future as an adventure.
My very first dream about her was of me as water and her as frying oil, two things that just don’t go well together.
She thought of me as strange, but interesting. I thought of her as kind and caring.
And while I was working on myself through therapy, and through life itself, I floated along on her dreams, her being, her evolution.
I saw her for what she was. Someone who never backed off, who faced her fears, who kept going. Her perseverance. Her strength.
As I started to learn more about myself, and about who I wanted to be, I realized more and more how beautiful those traits were. How beautiful she was.
And as our lives together continued over the years, we became more entangled. There was no longer only a me and a her. There was an us.
I count myself lucky that I was able to float along on her dreams until I was ready to find my own.
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So, last week I finished a track in just a few days. Afterward, while playing around, I found a particular sound and loop that I liked. It touched me on a more personal level, made me think about my life and Suzanne, and I wanted to try to put that feeling and emotion into a track.
Often, I just grab some sounds I like and make sure they work together somehow. This time, though, I sometimes spent up to half an hour just listening to one particular sound, trying to figure out whether it actually added anything or if I should find something else.
I kept doing this for a few dozen hours until I felt somewhat satisfied.
Before last week was over, I had the whole track laid out, but I wanted to put in as much effort as I could muster. So during this week, I went over every little second, every little bit of automation, every sound, every synth, every return channel, and every frequency, over and over and over. Probably so much that I might have gone overboard and messed things up.
The only day I didn’t work on the track was Thursday, because I was really fekking up my ears and couldn’t sleep due to the tinnitus ringing loudly. So on Friday, I lowered the volume and listened to the track through the speakers of an old car, my TV, my phone, and a few Bluetooth speakers, all while taking notes.
I also sent it to a few friends, and each of them had their own comments on it. I spent the majority of the day fixing what I thought was wrong and incorporating my friends’ suggestions where I thought they were right. And I'll take the rest of their criticism and suggestions with me for future tracks. I truly appreciate them for listening to my work.
Then I didn’t listen to it again until half an hour ago.
It’s good enough. I don’t know what to tweak, what to add, or what to remove.
I might in the future, but at least from a technical standpoint, this is my current level. My plateau.
Onto the next one!
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)
