The “Post Project Hole”

The contrast between being under extreme pressure and suddenly not having anything to do at all can sometimes be quite extreme in the media world. While on one day you’re doing all-nighters to hit a deadline, the next day you might not have anything to do at all. That whole issue gets even more extreme when working on large scale projects that you’re working on over a long time. Especially after ending this project with a big scoring session at the end of the working process including all the adrenalin and joy that comes with that, many composers have the feeling of falling into a hole after that. Suddenly that moment you anticipated for several weeks or months has passed and there’s nothing left doing. It gets even more problematic when there’s no new project in the near future at that moment.

And even if you could theoretically continue with the next project avoiding being idle at all, it might be a wiser choice to give yourself a bit of rest to regenerate. While this is different for everybody and some people might enjoy going into complete not-doing-anything-mode after a stressful project, my personal experience is rather that it is very tricky to radically do that switch without having some psychological side effects. So when you see such a moment coming, be prepared for it. Plan a short vacation etc. for the days after the project is done or something else that keeps you from being completely idle and set yourself a target to look forward to.