After the Last Cut

There’s this quiet that shows up once the work is done.

Not the kind that means rest. Not the satisfying exhale after a long day. This one feels different.

It’s the moment after the sawdust settles…

After the final shot’s captured…

After the last adjustment on the mic pack and the gear gets packed back in the truck.

Everything you set out to do is technically done.

The footage is captured.

The tools are put away.

And yet… it doesn’t feel done.

Because now comes the waiting.

I’ve built a lot of things in my life—projects that leave your hands bruised, your brain fried, and your body covered in paint, tile dust, or both. But this? Filming a build? Editing a video?

This is different.

This is a creative hangover you don’t see coming.

The cameras stop, but your head keeps spinning.

You walk through the shop knowing you captured something… but it’s frozen. Waiting. Not yet alive.

For the first time in this film journey, I’m sitting in that weird space between completion and release. And man, it’s loud in the quiet.

I keep asking myself:

• Did I get enough B-roll?

• Will it make sense when it’s cut together?

• Is the hook strong enough to pull people in?

• Will they feel it the way I felt it in the moment?

And honestly? I don’t know yet.

The edit hasn’t happened.

But the footage is there.

Waiting.

Gabe, a bass player I follow, described this feeling perfectly in a recent post. He was talking about finishing an album—but it felt like he was narrating my moment.

“The art is frozen. It’s done. But you haven’t released it yet. And in that gap, you lose all perspective. You can’t change it, but no one else has experienced it yet. So you start to question everything.”

That’s it. That’s the feeling.

It’s not bad. It’s just… electric. Unsettled.

Like standing backstage with something you love, not knowing how it’ll land.

But here’s the part that surprised me:

Even after all these years of building, even with the hard-earned confidence of someone who knows his way around a jobsite, this new chapter—this filmmaker-meets-builder identity—brings its own doubts, its own rhythms.

And maybe that’s what makes it worth chasing.

​The video will come.

The story will find its shape.

But right now?

Right now I’m just living in that weird silence after the sawdust clears…

And maybe that’s the most honest part of the process.