What to do! What to do . . .

Freedom is great! Well, of course, I’m still not as free as my ultimate goal will have me. But, bottom line, I’m still feeling freer then I’ve ever felt before. However, there is still this little thing called earning my own keep. I absolutely abhor the idea of being a “kept man.” I have to be productive. The question is . . . What to do?

Now, that might not seem like a hard question for a “free” individual - after all, this blog is about living and working free. The issue is that I still have to support myself and the question is “HOW?”

Believe me when I say this, and I’m really not tooting my own horn here, I have so much knowledge in so many areas of media work from audio and video production, information content and music development and production, voice-over work, professional speaking, marketing, duplication, book and magazine publishing, audio book and magazine publishing, consulting, professional audio and video equipment sales and distribution and more. Simply stated, I can overwhelm myself with the possibilities, potentialities and opportunities. The challenge is choosing just a couple or three of these areas of expertise, skills and knowledge and focusing in on them. On the one hand, I want to continue exploiting the things I’ve done for these past 45+ years. On the other hand, I’m also wanting to do something that might be new and different and present some new challenges and opportunities. And, then there is a third direction . . . can I really do something that’s outside the box and utilize some of my accumulated knowledge, experience and skills in this new endeavor and what is it? The Internet opens doors that didn’t exist even five or ten years ago.

As part of my down-sizing project, I’ve made the conscious decision to down-size all my audio gear. Since, I need to operate effectively and efficiently in as many as three and, possibly, four locations - how do I set up my gear so that I can move from workstation to workstation in different geographic locations moving the least amount of gear and resources? The answer, so far, is to set up monitors, keyboards, track balls, high quality audio speakers, monitoring systems, a microphone with proper stand, adaptors, cables, etc. and some acoustical conditioning in each location to make each a sound friendly environment. Then, all I need to move from location to location are my digital recorders, my tiny netbook computer that I use for all my business and correspondence, my full-size laptop that I now use exclusively for audio (and an occasional bit of video) production. The computers and digital recorders easily fit into a large backpack along with power adaptors, extra microphones, cables, manuals, batteries, extra flash memory cards and finally a couple small, portable external hard drives. This backpack isn’t exactly light in weight, but I’m not going to be taking it on a 10 mile forced hike anytime soon. I can now walk into any of my three primary workstations and be set up and operating in five minutes or less. I am even portable enough that I can go virtually anywhere by plane, train or car (might as well throw “ship” in there, too) and professionally record, edit and produce high-quality, fully digital audio or video productions, work on e-books, audio books and print books and coordinate the publishing process thereof. I’m interconnected with the world by cell phone, my business line in Nevada, the Internet and Skype.

So, now - “What to do?”

Enthusiastically,
Ed Helvey