It’s funny, the day after writing about how I don’t need to get sucked into the vibration of the rat race, I found myself immersed in such energy anyway.
I didn’t really let my guard down, it was just a wave that was coming, a cycle playing out, one that’s played out many times before.
The universe sometimes presents us with patterns. A negative pattern is a sign that the universe is testing you. The natural tendency of the universe is to maintain its current state. Your subconscious mind also wants to maintain its current state… a survival mechanism maybe, it wants stay out of danger and if you’ve made it this far doing what you’ve done and being who you are, chances are you’ll continue to survive if you don’t change.
I find that every time I challenge myself to get out of old habits, life has a funny way of throwing the same bullshit at me as it has many times before. Funnily enough it always seems to happen in February.
For years it was visa problems and money problems. Recently it’s just been money problems. If the visa problems got better, there’s no reason the money problems shouldn’t. But it will require me to keep a cool head and not get sucked into feeling like shit.
I’ve been having less and less work coming to me, and for a while it felt good because I had more time to focus on my passion projects but now it’s starting to get to the point where my spare funds are dwindling and I’m going to have to start dipping into the money we want to use to open a shop. That’s not good.
It’s so strange how this always happens during tax season when things are rough enough as it is.
But I know that my future is our shop and doing all my music and writing and teaching and community building out of it, so I don’t want to waste my energy searching for more work, the thing that drains me most.
I don’t dislike my work at all, but I dislike trying to sell myself in a market that is tired and stingy and not looking to spend money on something they may have been eager to spend it on a few years ago. More and more people seem to be struggling and everyone has less time. I want to build a lifestyle where the work finds me and so I’m trying to give as much energy to art and making progress on myself as possible.
So, as with every time this happens I double down. Before I doubled down on advertising to find students, and I failed and panicked each time until a few months later suddenly things came together. Then recently I’ve been doubling down on my art and panicking when the social media algorithms fuck me but something always happens to bring things together later so that I can continue to survive.
I keep making huge progress and then the floor falls out from under me. Every year.
But this year I resolved not to let it happen and my resolve was met with the algorithms fucking me again. I don’t care about likes for my ego but if I want to build something, it’s a whole lot easier when you get likes on social media. It’s essentially marketing.
So I was knocked down yesterday by money issues and stood strong and then today I was knocked down again by a lack of sustained interest in what I’m doing which leads to that old fear that I will not be able to make it all work.
I won’t let it get to me though. I’m going to keep at it. Even if I get zero likes. That only gives me more reason to talk to people because an algorithm can’t control your conversations and conversations are more meaningful than a social media post anyway.
Despite being shadow banned by Instagram and X for posting at non-peak hours or whatever other reason, I kept making stuff.
Today I fixed an old music short, started reworking two old song ideas and made a new music video (still image at the top). I can’t be stopped! Tomorrow I’ll get to work on making a catalogue for @tentententen’s hats for international sales.
Not many people are paying attention to my work at the moment but that always changes suddenly. I haven’t found any new students but those also tend to appear suddenly, and not from my advertising efforts because word of mouth works 10x better.
It’s just waves. The algorithms are hardly the only way to reach people. I’ve got to get more active in my physical life because that’s where momentum is built and the hat shop gives us a chance to make money while we are being social and joining the events we want to join.
So I’m doing may best to stay calm and to just say “fuck the algorithms to hell” and not spend too much of my energy on them beyond that. I got songs to make and hats to sell!
Here is my latest music short:
Summer Nights in Winter
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