Last year was a big year for our family. I worked too much and probably took on too much as well.
Great things came out of it, we bought a house and established our lives together as a family and did lots of gigs. We released Big Scary Mountain. We started to plan the studio that we are going to build. I got a job that I love.
It was madness. I was doing so much and spread so thin that I felt like I was everywhere and no-where at once. All on this mad kind of roller coaster to get where I want to be.
Speaking of, where exactly is that place I want to be?
I’ve pretty much wracked my brains over this question for a number of years now, gone in circles, studied, worked different jobs, tried lots and lots and lots and lots of different things.
People say to me “just do what you’ve got to do to pay the bills”, but I just can’t live my life that way. It’s not really because I’m majorly career driven. It’s because of a few things I guess.
1. I don’t do well with not being able to explore my work creatively, push all the buttons to see what they do, make my own mistakes and understand things based on my own experience. I’m ok at being told what to do, as long as I agree haha…
2. I really value my time. If I feel like it’s being wasted I simply won’t or I’ll be working on a way out. I find it hard to do things that seem to have no bigger end goal.
3. I want to love what I do and do it well.
4. And, keeping all of the above in mind, there’s always the irritating fact of life that you have to earn an income (that you can live off).
I had an interesting conversation with a very inspiring woman who said to me that when you create something new it’s made of a new energy. If you’re doing something you’ve done or has been done before you are using an old energy to create it, because it’s already a thing.
The very fact that something is new means that it is uncharted and largely unknown. It carries more risk and requires more guts. This is how I feel about life at the moment. Like I’m creating something, but I just can’t see what it is right now (which really goes against everything you will learn in any kind of business course).
To be horrendously tacky, I’m following my little old heart with no real idea where it’s taking me. It’s just one foot in front of the other directed by my internal compass that tells me what seems right.
Life is short and I find I’ve just got no tolerance for not being the best I can be anymore. That means doing things that bring out and strengthen my talents and set me on a path to doing the most good I can with those things.
I’m taking on the work that inspires and teaches me. I’m exploring ideas fearlessly. I’m dreaming big. I’m working hard. I’m kinda broke. I’m always working on things, completing them and sensing that they are all stacking up to something…I’m just not exactly sure what.
I’m also abandoning the things that I feel obliged to be doing that I don’t actually want to be doing. This is an exercise in trusting my gut and hoping that if I do the things that inspire me that they will ultimately pay off in creating something new and exciting.
I’m taking the pressure off myself to do what I think I need to do to maintain some kind of appearance of being…whatever the fuck it is we all think we are meant to be in the music industry.
Another friend said something to me the other day that I’m carrying around like a little mantra.
"It’s better not to try and keep up, you end up running your own race a lot better."
Well fuck me, imagine if I spent my whole life trying to keep up with where everybody else seems to be, but I was actually meant to be somewhere else, somewhere where I could create something totally awesome that I love, that brings that joy to other people as well.
I don’t want to be running some race for the sole purpose of creating the illusion of something that isn’t even real, only to make other people feel like they should also be where I am instead of where they are meant to be.
That’s just a cycle of dumb shit robbing the world of what it needs.
And what it needs is you and me.
I really think this is the meaning of life. Not to spend so much time trying to be like everybody else. You are totally unique, which means there’s something that only you can do with the capacity that you can do it.
Imagine if we all just went looking for that thing and did it. Imagine how that would change the world.
Well that’s my mission at this stage in my life.