Keep Showing Up

The music making is hard.

There's no denying that the effort of re-sparking hopes, dreams, and inspiration is tough. It's emotionally exhausting spiritual heavy lifting.

And then you have the actual physical components of the job: the packing and practicing and driving and staying up late and singing for multiple hours and that is also very very hard.

But hardest of all is rewiring everything I have ever been told about work and success.

-That only the special people (and special often means skinny, wealthy, much better at playing along with societies expectations than I am) get to have careers in music. 

-That success requires dominance and a lack of scruples

-That being self-employed is unsafe and impractical, that the only way to ensure security is by taking a job (which, by the way, I’m bad at jobs)

-That suffering makes effort more valuable

Every day I struggle to diffuse at least one if not all of these beliefs.  Just when I think I’ve finally worked through my issues, I find they run deeper than suspected. I’m starting to wonder if they aren’t just bottomless chasms that I will never fully be able to rid myself of. If I will always be unable to survive because of an inability to diffuse my own faulty wiring.

I always figured the hardest part of making music would be finding work.

Instead, my daily struggle is overcoming the tapes inside my head that have taught me that what I contribute isn’t valuable in this world.  These beliefs keep me weighed down in my bed under a cloud of anxiety and depression. They clog my mind, so that I can’t hear the whisper of creativity. They inform me that I’m don’t work hard enough, suffer enough, sacrifice enough to be worthy.  They make every purchase feel like bloodletting until I begin to wonder how long, conceivably, I can actually live off of ramen. 

But I keep showing up. 

Everything you love takes commitment. You will be tested over and over and over again. There will be crossroads sometimes more than there are clear paths. Sometimes it will feel like too much.

Keep showing up.