Like many binaries, once you see the words grouped together, they seem to define themselves. Casual leisure: spontaneous, short-term, impersonal, passive, noncommittal, uncomplicated. Serious leisure: planned, long-term, vulnerable, active, time-consuming, skillful.

     For those that feel more inclined toward the serious side, a large part of the satisfaction and payoff is tied to the expression of vulnerability in the long-term: seeing all of the threads eventually come together after months or years is immensely fulfilling. The questions and answers contained within that tapestry reveals something intimate and personal about their daily life and mental processes.

     For the amateur artist, following the satisfactory completion of a new work, everything feels right with the world for a short while. In the midst of a hobby that frequently feels detached and impractical, there exists a beautiful set of moments where they feel capable, skilled, and valuable somehow. Curiosity and wonder are renewed. It’s easy to become obsessed with the allocation of free time, with the completion of the next thing, with that feeling. It is possible to get a bit lost in that pursuit.

     The product of a serious leisure pursuit can be wonderfully shareable, social, and discussable. That same vulnerability that makes it meaningful and memorable, in turn, comes with the risk of misunderstanding, differing opinions, or differences in taste. Often, talking about a serious hobby with others immediately turns to money. A profitable hobby is immediately more legible and easier to discuss, and music (especially original music) is no such hobby. Those without a serious leisure pursuit can have a hard time understanding the pursuer’s motivation. To a business-minded person in a business-minded world, the return on investment looks a lot like failure. So, despite the time, the misunderstanding, and the lack of clear motivation, why do we all keep doing this?

     This album is a messy, essayistic attempt at answering that question. It is a tribute to fleeting creative phases, all of the different states of mind that go into making a record, and all of the pressures and feelings that are tied to being an independent creative person in 2023, whether those are internal or external, positive or negative. It is a tribute to the self-improving pursuit of serious leisure.