. An advice blogumn by Andy Allen and Kalimba Bennett Dear He Said/Then She Said, I am a freelance audio engineer, constantly involved in one or two day jobs on short notice and building a reputation. I recently worked a job that was a disaster. Turns out I made a techincal blunder that rendered all the audio unusable. I offered to pay back my fee but I can’t seem to reimburse my confidence. How do I recover from such a disaster and not sit around dreading my next job? Help! Doomed to Fail HE said: Doomed to Fail, I’m so sorry that happened to you.  It sounds like it was a mildly traumatic experience.  I am a musician and I have recorded a lot of my own music myself as well as with other people, so I think I might have a pretty good understanding of how you feel and what the other party might be thinking. It sounds like you know what went wrong.  If you don’t, then pinpointing your error would be the absolute first step here.  After you’ve identified your mistake, you should run some drills working with that mistake until that particular part of your job becomes second nature to you.  If you don’t feel like you need to run drills and work with it, then just make a dramatic mental note to yourself so that it will be next to impossible for you to ever repeat that mistake again. The most important thing is to regain your confidence.  Confidence will allow you relax and perceive all the different facets of future jobs clearly.  It will allow you to work with steady hands and a steady mind that can vividly recongnize the big picture as well as the minute details...