I Need To Eat My Words
I wrote a Steemit post yesterday that I regret today. You can read it here if you like: Writing Songs I Can't Believe Or This Album's Killing Me.
I regret it because I opened the window of my life too wide. Sure, all the fun stuff in my music life, the heroic struggles (after their done), the successes and retroactive wisdom on past failures, is easy to write about. In those writings, I get to be the nice guy, the hero of my own story. Yet, bitterness, anger, jealousy, and self-pity; these topics are also a part of my life. In the closet of all my successes are these skeletons of my emotional day to day life.
I like to write. But I've never consistently written a blog about my 'music life,' because it gets too messy, and gets messy often. I can do a music tech post, a songwriting post or other benign topic every once in awhile.
Though I am emersed in every aspect of the music business, and I do get wrapped up in the latest gear, techniques etc.. What my life is, and has been about, is nothing to do with gear, marketing – even songwriting is more a shadow puppet featured on the path of my real mission.
The Struggle Is Part of the Reward
It's about doing what I love every day. More historically accurate: it is about the heroic struggle to do what I love every day.
To be successful? Ya, sure, that's the plan. But that's such a small part of what the broad picture is, or what the journey has been.
Success in this context, I'm defining as a mainly monetary success, notoriety etc, all the things the 'world,' sees as 'success'.
I have my own idea of success though. I've learned that the world's definition of success – it comes and goes. For me, it came very early, in my teens. It has come in other times in my life also, only to flee again. It seems more like a pit stop than a destination.
Life happens in many 24 hours
When all is said and done; my life IS, and has been, about only the struggle, more specifically, the 24-hour struggle NOT to give up what I love to do; not to allow the pressures of life, family, romance, aging, finances and so on, steal from my days what I love to do.
A quote that has been said in different ways by many, is summed up by Daymond John well: "Success Is Waking Up Every Day And Doing What You Want To Do."
It has always been about the 'struggle,' even in the successful times. Maybe even more so in success – Mo' money mo' problems.
I wrote the Album Is Killing Me post because it was killing me that night! It has emotionally bankrupted me. It feels like it has financially ruined me, but as I explained in the post, I always feel like that after a big project. I can't see over the horizon and it looks dark and scary from the place that I am at. A place where I have invested a year and every dime into a 'work.'
A Real Life Experiment
I wrote the post, even though I knew I'd regret it. I'd regret some of what I said. I don't even believe in some of what I said, but I did in the frenzy of the moment. Bitterness was seeping in, as it does. Self Pity was making a flank attack, as it does. In my better days I fight it off, I remain positive and move on to the next right thing, almost like a horse with blinders on.
I have so much chaos in my life, it's become normal. You become used to it. You have to just relax, calm down, take a deep breath and try to see how you can make things work rather than complain about how they're wrong. - Tom Welling
On my worst days, it completely cripples me. Self-pity, bitterness, and resentment open the floodgates of fear, insecurity, and the most damaging of them all, Jealousy. That is, Jealousy of those who are successful, who look put together, who have not sacrificed the comforts of air-conditioning for a damn music 'career'. Even worse, in an age where no one buys music..haha.
Me in one of those 'music is madding!' ...rants
Funny Thing Happen On The Way To A Blog
So I'm writing this post, to tell you what happened after I wrote my other Self-Pity post. Which was really strange, and left me once again with the understanding that nothing is by accident.
I wrote yesterdays post, and I was really having a bitter day. A fearful day. I don't know what it is about my personality, but though I am mostly a very open person, I love people; when I get afraid; I clamp up. I go into a mode of 'I don't need anyone for anything!" Odd thing is, I I do that in the times that I most need people. It must be some of the immaturity that has lingered on in my mid-life.
I left for an event after writing that post. I didn't want to go. I've been avoiding 'events,' for months. And becoming more and more isolated, self-pitying and fearful about the future. In a real funk.
I finally decided I had missed so many events, It would be best to at least show my face for a few minutes. The post in question, that I wrote yesterday, talked about my hatred of networking, which might have been, still more, veiled fears, bitterness. I wrote a reply to someone also, that said more about my hatred of networking (which I deleted haha).
As if it was preordained, when I reached the event, an art friend started introducing me, with glowing reviews, to others. Even though I was in a bad mood, didn't want to talk to anyone... I somehow left with several important contacts and people excited to work with me on promoting my new project.
Idol Hands, Insecurities Workshop
What happens is, when I go into big projects where I have to hide out for a time... insecurities start creeping into the cracks of my isolation. I let my guard down.
{NSFW Pepitone Heckles Himself)
Also, I've gone out on a big limb on this album. A huge one for me. I start getting worried that I won't be able to prove it 'worthy'. 'Worthy,' of what, or who? ... I don't even know.
Alrighty Then!
When I got home, I watched the new Jim Cary Documentary on Netflix.
In it he said something, and it landed in the right place. He said, he realized you could fail at what you DON'T Love, so why not rather try at what you do love.. at least you failed at something meaningful. (That is a paraphrase from memory). He was talking about his dad, a great musician, who gave up and did what he thought was the 'right,' thing, and went into a career that he didn't love. He talked about the bitterness that set in, the bitterness I know all too well. Not from only myself, but that is also my dad's story.
This hit me so hard. Though he phrased it better, it is, in fact, the exact realization I had 5 years ago when I left a very good secure career as a designer to return to my music career. Maybe I had a good income, maybe I had good insurance and cars etc.. but It had failed. I had run it every way possible and I hated that life.
To Fail At What You Don't Love
My hope was failing, my joy, even my desire to live had failed. I was failing hard at something I didn't even love. So I left with the same thought, well, "how much worse could it be?" If I can't even bare the thought of living in this life I've created, leave it. Go and do what I love... who cares if I fail. If I'm poor. I'd rather fail while chasing what I love. So I left and never looked back. I wake up each day and do what I want to do.. which is my meaning of success. My income was cut by 80%, we barely make it but in a strange paradox, overall, these five years have made the previous 39 worth it. I've had more joy in a few years of life, being 'poor,' and without creature comforts, than I ever imagined was even possible beforehand. The more 'stuff,' I shed, the more I became happy and free, full of energy and vitality.
What happened yesterday was, I saw the reality of how much I had riding on this project. I started hearing all the warnings that were told to me when I left my career.. 'Your insane! How will you pay for insurance", "your going to lose everything", "Your foolish", "You'll lose your house, your wife, your family!" I started looking at the perceived reality and again started believing them over just a short period of isolation.
Serendipities are private business
The serendipities of last night, were the personal kind, that maybe are only proof to me. The fact that I wrote an unplanned blog and said some mean things about networking and other people. Then, compelled to go to an event (when I have no-showed 100), Then contacts were magically handed to me, the exact ones I need right now. Then Jim Carey's words, and him stating the reason I'm still doing this crazy dream, This dream of my idea of 'success'.
'Every disability conceals a vocation if only we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain.' - C.S. Lewis
At the end of the night, it was too odd, too much like someone up there was listening in and wanted to say to me... hey kid, it's okay. Keep going. I got ya...
In a final twist, I was called in to spend the day making the final tweaks and master of my new album. I sat there all day in the studio and at one point, it hit me. Forgive me while I go into the third person: Ezra, you are sitting here on Monday once again taking a recording farther than you thought possible. You are with the people you love to be around, musicians, people who love music. You've done this for 5 years straight.. and there is a roasted chicken in the fridge, gas in the car, and a wife that still loves you at home.. your okay. There is no destination to get to! You're at the destination. Enjoy it. And, chill the F%&k out dude.
Last day in the studio