The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Hits1015 on 2025-02-25 01:58:33.
An external hard drive failure this weekend made me question everything about what I'm doing. I'm a 4+ decade voice actor and my job requires creating sample montages of short clips of my work called Demos. Through the years I've accumulated literally hundreds of hours of audio files - because of my daily 'auditions' for jobs - (sample reads of a given script that is recorded and returned to clients or agents). As an OCD perfectionist, I have allowed myself to keep - without any structured 'cataloguing' routine - tens of thousands of these files -spread across multiple computers and hard drives - in multiple locations. Every few years I should be doing updates of these demos that promote my work...but the sheer volume and scope of what I've hoarded has made this a monumentally daunting task to the extent that I've not updated anything significantly in at least ten years. For context I'll add that at this point, i technically do not really "have" to work anymore - and i am at traditional retirement age - but it has always frustrated me, feeling like i am not representing myself with the best showcase of my abilities and versatility etc. When I begin going back through these countless archives, I naturally reach burn-out pretty quickly, going into a sort of numb state where i rationalize that i really don't "have" to DO this at all... however my ego drives me to want to finalize something great to replace all the outdated shit that is on my websites promoting me. What all this work is about is finding the "best" representative sample of a given style or "tone" of read... but SO much of my stuff is basically the same. I'm just too close to it all to say, hey, this is nothing special - and delete a file without thinking about it again. In fact I get a genuine sense of relief every time i DO delete something...as much so as finding something that I think is really exceptional.
Maybe this isn't a relatable context for this forum, but it seemed appropriate to post here when I thought more about it. I've heard the stuff about breaking things into 'smaller' tasks but -- what it is more about...is that my objectivity varies greatly in reviewing my own work. One day I can just wholesale plow through all these files and say, 'these are nothing special' and delete them... the next, i'm listening to stuff and it's painstaking to make a decision - I'm saying...no...that's pretty good..i should save that - but in reality it's probably very similar to 100 other things i've already listened through. Sorry for the long-winded ramble here but I'd welcome any perspective on how i might better approach all this. Thanks!