Hey friends,
Every morning for the past 2 weeks I've been reciting this prayer by St. Francis. It sets the tone for my day & I thought I'd share with y'all.
🙏 Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. That where there is hatred I may bring love, that where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, where there is error I may bring truth, where there is doubt I may bring faith, where there is despair I may bring hope, where there are shadows I may bring light, and where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek to comfort, rather than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds, it is by forgiving that we are forgiven, and it is by dying that we awaken to eternal life. Amen.
Have a great week!
-Alex
3️⃣ Things I've Been Up To
📚 What I'm reading - Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard.
I'd be lying if I said this book was fun to read. Kierkegaard is known as the father of existentialism, a philosophy that I dig a lot. He's responsible for the idea we know of as a "leap of faith". This was the first of his books that I've read, and wow did it feel like work. His writing is definitely something that takes time to crawl through (and, boy, does he take his sweet time!), but all that being said it was worth the effort. Will post a proper book review on my Youtube channel soon!
🎶 What I'm listening to - In Spite of Ourselves by John Prine & Iris DeMent.
This song makes me happy. It's simple, it's funny, and it's timeless. A great love song by 2 country icons that don't take themselves too seriously to sing about having "balls like a big brass monkey".
🎤 Gear I'm Using - Shure SM7B Dynamic Microphone
I was recording the audio for my Youtube videos with a "shotgun mic". The mic was out of frame, which was nice, but it was picking up too many reflections from the room, which made my voice sound like garbage. Obviously I could have made some improvements to the sound treatment of the room, but that takes a lot of work & trial and error, so I thought I would give this mic a try & it 's absolutely fantastic for recording crisp & clean vocals. I'm still messing around with the technical side of where I should place it, what gain to use, etc., but it completely changed the audio production quality of my videos. If you're creating stationary content that requires vocal recordings & you don't want to worry about room treatments, this is the mic you should get.
🎥 This Week's Video
This week's book review is on one of my favorite novels, "The Idiot", written by the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky.