When Plans Stretch Beyond the Timeline

While I don’t want to give away all of my plans for 2026—because, as I’ve learned, plans have a way of changing—there are still a few major pieces of my studio that remain unfinished.

I haven’t fully worked out my MIDI routing. My monosynths are still not officially connected. It’s now 2026, and I also have two more synths waiting at the local music store that were ordered back in 2025. My reference monitors still haven’t been properly calibrated, and while I have a general sense of workflow, it hasn’t yet been locked into something I’d call final.

That said, all of these things are far more clearly planned in my head now than they were when this redesign began in 2022. At this stage, it’s much easier for me to see where things should go and how they should be connected. The uncertainty isn’t conceptual anymore—it’s logistical.

So Why Has It Taken So Long?

This is the part worth unpacking.

The bulk of the physical studio work happened between 2022 and 2023. After that, several realities set in:

• Economic changes made continuing the project far more expensive than originally planned.
  
• 2024–2025 brought the largest student enrollment I’ve ever had, resulting in 12-hour teaching days, five days a week. During that stretch, finding time to eat lunch was difficult—let alone rewire a studio.
  
• By late 2025, I finally managed to regain a slightly better work–life balance, which has opened up some time for studio work, though still in limited pockets.
  

None of these were things I could have predicted when I started.

Learning to Accept the Shift

One of the most important lessons this redesign has taught me is that long-term projects don’t exist in a vacuum.

Timelines fail.
Budgets fall apart.
Life intervenes.

The number of variables that can affect a project like this is almost impossible to calculate ahead of time. Somewhere along the way, I stopped fighting that reality and started accepting it.

The deadlines I originally set for myself simply weren’t realistic—and that’s okay.

If it takes another year, or longer, before my studio fully matches the vision I have for it, I’ve learned to be fine with that. In fact, I think that acceptance has made the process far more sustainable than forcing it ever could have.

Looking Forward

The studio is closer than it’s ever been—not just in terms of gear, but in clarity. The remaining steps are deliberate, not chaotic. Purpose-driven, not rushed.

And if there’s one thing this experience has reinforced, it’s this:
progress doesn’t disappear just because it slows down.

Sometimes it just waits for the right moment to continue.